#i want to post them as stand alone doodles sue me

[jellyfishdoodler]

ADHD and Autism creatures (theyre best friends from different dimensions)

[themelessness]

A story I need to tell *TW: suicide/depression*

Hi, I’m 17.

This is the weather from last night. See that big rainy mess that blankets central Texas in the evening? That’s what I was in the middle of last night, working at the neighborhood pool for a ‘security’ company hired by my community’s HOA. I had the 4-10pm shift, which I had signed myself up for, thinking it wouldn���t be as hot (Texas summer) and probably not as busy, being a Sunday night.

What no one saw coming was that big rainy mess. The temperature dropped ten degrees, and I was outside, just under a covered patio, at a folding table in a pool chair under a fleece blanket. At 1800 (6 pm) I texted my boss to ask if I should leave, as I had closed the pool after the overcast had become a thunderstorm. He told me to never leave unless he instructs me to. Fair enough, he doesn’t want the pool suddenly abandoned of staff without warning.

So it’s getting dark, it’s getting colder, it’s raining, there are thunder and lightning, and I message the Boss again, saying I should really leave. More agitated, he tells me I don’t make the rules, and I need to stay to keep people from trying to get into the pool. I’m not in a neighborhood where “trouble kids” are going to be trying to get into the pool in the middle of a thunderstorm, if their moms even let them out of the house. Our gate as an automated lock that’s on a timer, and I bet I could have figured out how to override it to stay locked until the next morning, but the control panel was in another building, and it would involve running out into the storm in my worn-down Chucks on the wet concrete, or worse, doing it barefoot. So I stayed put.

Until the depression kicked in.

I took this job at the pool to be around people, to be busy with checking the chemicals and keeping people safe, to be able to sit and doodle in the evening sun with the breeze blowing through the covered patio of the front gate, which is exactly what all of my coworkers have experienced. We all love the job, and for $8 an hour, no one was complaining about having to use a little bug spray at night. But sitting there alone, cold, scared, out in the storm, I started to go a little blank, I became numb. And something in me told me, it only takes three hours to die of exposure. I remembered a Girl Scout training course I did for outdoor emergency survival, where it was also instructed that water and rain can speed up that time frame, lowering human body temperature much faster, often irreparably. I wrote a goodbye letter on my clipboard, Mental illness is as much an illness of the body as it is of the mind. When the brain is sick, as is the whole being. And I stood up, and I walked out into the rain.

I couldn’t feel a thing. I didn’t need to think, and I wasn’t. Everything I usually think about when I get the dark feelings was gone. My dog, my friends, my desire to see Italy again, were all gone from my mind. I was at peace. I was cold, I’d gone numb, and I was ready to go.

I stopped answering my phone. I stood in the rain for nearly an hour before my ex boyfriend pulled into the pool parking lot, umbrella and blankets and towels in hand, and came inside the gate. He dragged me back under the cover, I fought and kicked and struggled. He dried me and wrapped me in towels, and gave me his own warm socks and slippers for my feet. My mom pulled into the lot shortly after he did. He took me to the car, and we sat with my mom for a few minutes before he drove home.

I texted my boss again to tell him I was leaving. He scolded me. Mom and I went back into the gates to finish closing up the pool. I left the keys in the lockbox and turned off the lights. When we got home, I saw that he had sent me a message to tell me to leave my staff shirt in the supply closet, I was fired.

“Never abandon a job site, it’s against protocol. You are done working for this company.”

I never signed a contract. We were all paid by checks left in the pool binder, anyone could access them. These ‘policies’ were not posted anywhere, I had given him warning.

And it was 63 degrees and storming on a Sunday night in May in the southern United States. I had to be dragged away from the pool, I was so cold.

I’m not an adult, I’m not a security guard, I’m not contracted or paid a living wage, or even a lifeguard. My job is to check addresses of people who walk into the pool gates, and occasionally check the Chlorine and pH levels of the two pools we have. I was not abandoning a job site, there was no job for me to do. I’m not the security electrician responsible for knowing how the automated system works. I’m not the chemical technician responsible for the pumps and filters of the plumbing equipment, or the giant chlorine tank I could be fully submerged in. I’m not a medical attendant. I’m a kid that sits with a laptop open to an Excel spreadsheet that types in the first couple letters of a last name to make sure that the people who walk in are actually supposed to be there. That’s it. In a storm, the pool is closed, I have no work to do. I was fired, for not doing my job -  nothing.

And yes, I added to my cold because I walked out willingly into the storm but that’s how cold it was. Cold enough that I could simply stand there and wait to die. Even a healthy person with no history of mental illness would have become very sick waiting for the shift to end that night. And I was fired, for taking care of myself. If I had stayed put under the cover with my little blanket for four hours, I’d be worse off than I am now, having stood in the rain for just under an hour, because someone came to my rescue. If I had stayed through the end of my shift, no help, I likely wouldn’t have been able to move or call for help by 10.

So sue me, Ben. At least I’m alive.