As I walked the long corridors, I felt my left leg slowly numbing up. I wasn’t sure if I was only imagining it or if it was actually growing tired. I felt heavy, dull, and rather desperate. I knew I would eventually find the place, but as I walked back and forth trying to find my way, climbing three flights of stairs up then down then one flight back up, walking what seemed like an endlessly long corridor, I grew angrier by the second. Why would they send it that far out? I cursed beneath my breath, hoping I wouldn’t have to waste more than the twenty minutes already wasted trying to find the so-called pharmacy.
The corridors I walked were mostly empty. An old hospital, partially abandoned. I came across a patient or two in one hallway on one floor, but that was mostly it. A couple of nurses walking lazily with no sense of real purpose, and the occasional security guard every 12 meters or so. I walked past large windows overlooking the hospital campus, letting me know that I’m crossing the distances from one building to other extensions. I walked back that first corridor when I realized I was heading the wrong direction, only to make similar trips through other corridors on another floor. Hours later in the day, as I thought back on the long trips through the empty abandoned hallways, it felt like a dream. A very random dream; the kind where one wakes up confused and upset for no apparent reason.
It felt futile. It felt like a punishment. I just didn’t know what I was being punished for.
My anger turned into resentment for everything these institutions are and represent. For everything that could’ve been a million times better but is not. For the status quo and for how I’m supposed to accept it because it is what it is and there’s no easy way around it. And all the while, a voice in my head reminds me that “hey, you know you have it easy… you know you’re privileged and you know millions go through worse EVERY DAY”. But that didn’t make me feel any better. If anything, it made me feel worse. And why should I feel better only because I suffer less? Why should it be enough that I’m not the only one suffering? Why should it be tolerated at all? Why am I expected to feel okay by telling myself that some people have it worse? I do not want anyone to have it worse… I do not want to be the privileged one among many, that is if you call walking and climbing stairs clueless for 25 minutes - after wasting two hours waiting for someone to sign a piece of paper - privilege. Why should it be strange for me to feel like shit afterwards just because I eventually got what I went there for?
And yes, today it took me forever but NEXT time it won’t because now I know where the office is. But the fact that there’s a next time, and a time after, and a time after…. Even if I will know my way around… it feels like nooses being pulled tighter around my neck and arms and my entire body. A trap. And I go there willingly.
I couldn’t help thinking “What if I actually had trouble walking? What if my condition was significantly worse? How do they expect people with possible physical disability to walk endless corridors and climb whole flights of stairs? What is this fuckery? Who the fuck is in charge? Why is everything in this shithole so fucked up?”
The image of the hospital yard from the large windows and the empty corridors haunts me. It felt surreal. It was nothing. A drop in the ocean. But it felt like some sort of mental torture. Like some evil psychopath was behind it all. But it’s more likely that whomever is behind it is simply a thoughtless idiot; someone in charge who did not think it through quite enough. Isn’t that the way it is in most governmental matters? All it takes is some bureaucratic ass who wanted things done a certain way without thinking it through.
I used to think I’m done getting angry over things like that. I know it will always be irritating, but I actually thought that by now I’m beyond it. Turns out I’m not. Those fucking hallways.
And the thing is, while walking, I wasn’t completely oblivious to the old architecture of the hospital. It felt like a museum of sorts. If I wasn’t furious, I might’ve paused to admire what’s left of the old building. The high ceiling, the caged elevators, the walls with an ancient smell… But I was too frustrated.
I hate it when I’m incapable of seeing the beauty in the ugliest of things, and today was a reminder that this ability has been escaping me lately. Rather, I feel robbed off of it.
I felt powerless. I now think of my all-time self-proclaimed super powers, and I mourn them.
It just didn’t have to be like this. It could’ve been better. All of it. All of life.
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