Living alone diaries #27; Getting robbed (almost) and Job interviews
This week was…eventful.
I wish I could say that the title was clickbait, but it sadly isn’t.
Let me start in chronological order of events.
So, you know I’m currently undergoing my service year, and the government gives people who are serving a monthly allowance. This allowance can only be gotten when you do something called clearance.
Clearance is basically proving that you are still in the state they posted you to and that you are still actively working there. This is why to complete clearance — which is done during the first few days of the month — you need a letter from your employer, basically telling NYSC to clear you and that you’ve been working and fulfilling your duties.
As you can imagine, this letter is very important.
Since clearance starts on the first day of every month, I usually get my clearance letter during the last few days of the preceding month.
The problem started when the person at my workplace who prints out the letter and signs it didn’t come to work on the last day of the month.
Very good.
I went to work the next day, which was the 1st (the day I was supposed to go and get my clearance done) and it was more of the same, I went again the following day, already irritated at this point, only for the person to be around, but there was an electricity problem, so he couldn’t print it out.
So amazing and so lovely.
The weekend rolled around and Monday was here.
More of the same, no electricity, and the person that was supposed to sign it was absent.
At this point, I’m like what is the universe really doing, I don’t understand.
I was finally able to go for clearance on Wednesday after I got the letter the day before.
Then guess what happened.
I was given a query for coming late to complete clearance
I was so mad that day.
This was a hundred percent not my fault, but I’m the one getting queried for it?
So, how a query works is that you have to acknowledge it and reply to it, then take that reply back to your employer, they’ll sign it, then you’ll go back to the secretariat (where clearance holds) and submit it, then be told to do some menial community service thing; maybe sweep or mop or something.
Anyways, long story short I was able to finish clearance, but thankfully I didn’t do any community service, hallelujah.
I should have known that from that chaotic day, there was only more of the same in store for me.
Let me set the scene.
It’s Thursday now, the day after that dreadful clearance, and it’s the day of the weekly CDS meetings that are mandatory for all serving.
I’m on my way to the secretariat because as well as clearance, CDS is also held there. Everything is great, the air is cool, I’m feeling good, clean, gorgeous, sexy, you know? I’m feeling good.
Then suddenly, I hear this grating, agitating noise — no I’m kidding, but if you got that reference then you got it.
Anyways, I’m feeling good, feeling alright, and I get to the junction where I’ll need to drop from the keke (motorized tricycle) I’m in, to get into another that will take me straight to the meeting venue.
I’m about to get in when the driver says that I should go round through the other side (the left side, which is on the other side from where I would naturally get in, because of where I was standing) because the two people already in the back want to get something along the road as we go along and they want to sit on the right side of the keke.
Fair enough.
I go around the keke and in through the left side, so I’m sitting at the extreme, and the two passengers are sitting on my right.
As we’re going, the guy in the middle — on my immediate right — starts coughing violently, and I’m talking violently. Like this man is about to die from how hard he’s coughing.
Quite naturally, I was disgusted.
You know how babies cough, with their whole mouths wide open like goalposts? That’s how this man was coughing, but with the strength of an adult.
Soon enough, and to my absolute and crippling horror, it seemed like this man was going to throw up.
In a full keke, while it was moving, on me.
I died many deaths in that vehicle.
He’s leaning over me, since I’m sitting at the edge, and the open air is on my left side, and about to quite literally throw up in my lap. Obviously, I’m scooting myself into the keke, trying to remove myself from the line of fire as much as possible, in case he really does start to vomit.
This is where things get interesting.
As I’m scooting over to the right in my horror at his anticipated oral eviction, I’m unintentionally pressing the right side of my body into him.
So much so, that I almost don’t notice the right side of my trousers getting tighter.
The side where my phone was.
The moment after that was so dramatic.
In a flash I realized that this whole thing had been a very elaborate scam; the driver telling me to sit in a specific place, this man’s absurd coughing, the way the driver seemed to pay no mind to said coughing, and the possible emesis that seemed about to take place in his vehicle…
There was to be a robbery, and I was the victim.
Now, I’m a pretty mellow person, and I’m rarely — if ever — driven to real anger. Irritation? More likely, but anger? It takes something intensely agitating for me to get properly angry.
At that moment I was furious.
How dare these lowlifes try to steal from me? Because I look like a brainless mug of piss? If there’s one thing I absolutely detest, it’s people trying to cheat me or pull a fast one on me, because it means they underestimate me. It means you think I am stupid.
And nothing in this world annoys me more than being underestimated.
I didn’t even know when I turned around at the coughing man and asked him if he was stupid or insane. Looking back, I should have punched his bald head.
He then issued one feeble apology and then at this point I started to feel my anxiety, so I just asked the driver — who was oh so conveniently quiet during this whole thing — to drop me on the side of the road.
It wasn’t until after that that I started to realize that I could have been hurt. They could have actually physically assaulted me; slapped me to stun me, then pushed me out of the keke, I could have been actually hurt.
That’s when the anxiety really hit.
If you’ve been reading this journal for any amount of time, you know that one of my biggest sources of anxiety is getting robbed and being unsafe in general.
I never go out and feel safe to do it, and sometimes I have to psyche myself up to do it. Whenever I have to go out, I feel myself stalling, taking extra time to do nothing because I need time to “prepare” myself to go out.
It gets bad sometimes, but this whole thing just made it so much more real to me.
My biggest fear almost happened to me. Crazy.
After the anger and the anxiety, then came the gratefulness;
Wow, I could have really gotten robbed of my phone, and I know everyone reading this knows how horrible it is not to have your phone for an extended period.
And then in my current state of abject joblessness? Where on earth would I have gotten the money to replace it? How would I text or call or keep up with life?
The depression would have destroyed me.
Anyways, I walked to the meeting and pretended that I was okay, even though my heart felt like it would beat out of my chest the whole time.
For the rest of that day and the day after, I felt extremely on edge and my chest felt filled with anxiety.
This whole thing highlighted all the things that could happen, all my fears suddenly seemed validated and twice as menacing. I couldn’t try and gaslight myself by saying oh it’s just your anxiety because it’s not, it’s real. and worse things happen every day.
Worse things could happen to me.
I can imagine that to people who don’t deal with anxious feelings, this would probably seem like an overreaction to something that only almost happened, and one thing I’m tired of is constantly having to make people understand why things affect me the way they do.
Having to live the majority of your life wary and on edge is not something most people understand or are willing to empathize with.
Anyways, moving past that now.
This entry is already really long, and I’m not sure anyone wants to read about my life for this long, so I’ll cap it here. More stuff happened that I want to write about, but another time.
I also have a job interview today, but I’ll write about the outcome of that in my next entry.
Wish me luck!
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