I had an interesting evening last night

Actually, it was this morning..around 2 am.  I was coming home from my wonderful job with all its security and benefits and easy working hours, and it was raining. Nothing unusual so far, this has been the norm probably hundreds of times, me waiting alone at the train station in the cool rain for the very last train home, having hustled as quickly as possible from my job as a projectionist to make it with some 3 minutes or so to spare. Unfortunately, tonight thanks to the rain and/or the thin layer of greasy filth on the soles of my shoes I accumulated shuffling about my duties, I slipped while trying to enter through the marginally opened doors of the antique train. My foot squeaked off the railing like Galileo dropping a rock and plunged itself and my attached leg into the space between the platform and the train-what they call “the gap”, as in “mind the gap (you clumsy bastards)”. In the process of cursing and struggling to drag my body into the train, with the idiotic station manager blowing his whistle to signal the driver to close the doors I managed to scrape a minor gouge in my shin also, adding injury to insult. Finally, I scrambled into the car, scuttling like a crab that had just shed its shell.

The interesting part of all this came a few minutes later, as I slumped into a seat grumbling to myself about being so clumsy. There was no clamour, no notice, no indication of any kind that anyone at all had seen or noticed anything untoward happening at all. Being late at night, the platform was fairly deserted, except for maybe two other sad travellers like myself, but none down near my end of the train. And I have to assume that the whistle-blowing attendant wasn’t just being obnoxious and telling me to get on the damn train already, he or she probably didn’t see me at all.  So, what I came to realize pretty quickly was that if it had been a little worse-say for instance I had slipped completely through the gap to fall down where the train tracks are, and if I had somehow hit my head and been rendered unconscious or had the wind knocked out of me, I could very well have been under the train when it pulled away and no one would have noticed.  This would have, at the least put a damper on my evening, and more likely been a one-way trip to a dirt nap.  And no one would know, probably for hours. Probably not until the next security sweep of the tracks before the 4am trains, or maybe even not until the train arrived and crushed up what was left of me for the second time.

I am quite used to being alone. Thanks to my current situation with my wife (separated, estranged, waiting for a divorce, whatever you call it) and for my upbringing and isolated lifestyle; I am not at all unfamiliar with having no one know or care in particular where I am at any given time. And I have been depressed, sometimes bad enough sometimes that falling unconsciously underneath a train doesn’t seem so terribly bad. But I must say, last night didn’t seem like a solution that almost happened, or a failure of the self-reliance I pride myself on (I don’t have much else to pride myself on); it was just sad. It makes me angry that that could be my life.  It makes me angry that this is my life.

So, I am going to take some steps to change things. Updates to follow.

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