This morning, at about eight, I found myself awake in this disappointing world once again. I decided to stay in bed for a little while longer, immersing myself in my usual daydreams that take place in 1972 and involve someone I would like to talk to. Then my phone rang. I don’t engage with people; I only use my phone to text my parents rarely. A call is always either spam or something bad.

It was the HR department of the Basque public health organization for which I worked as a technician for seven years. They were offering me a job to cover someone’s paternity leave. I was immediately distraught, but also confused, because I had spoken with the Occupational Health department last year, and given that nobody had called me for work in December, I figured the matter was settled. It clearly wasn’t. The job offer wasn’t at the usual hospital, but at another I’ve never worked (but that is located basically next door to the previous one). That threw me off bad. I asked the HR person if I could think about it. She told me that I could only think about it for like ten minutes at the most, because I was supposed to start this very same morning.

I hung up. Anxiety had already spiked to the point of nausea. Working in IT had sent me to the ER thrice for heart and brain problems. The last one made me feel like I had a stroke, and I’m not convinced that my brain left fully healed. They called it a hemiplegic migraine, something I had never experienced before. All triggered by stress.

I have so-called high-functioning autism, which, despite how it may sound like, is only high-functioning relative to autists that spend all day groaning and hitting themselves (or others). I also have the Pure O OCD comorbidity. Intrusive thoughts, adherence to strict patterns. Living in my mind, if I say so myself, is a sort of hell.

It was obvious from the beginning that working IT at a big hospital was like someone pushing me against a person-shaped whole in the wall that simply didn’t match. Day to day, you only rarely know what you’re going to deal with. Someone may call from an operating room because their computer has ceased working during someone’s spine surgery, and they know it’s not our job but the technician from the external company doesn’t know how to fix it and whether we could go and make it work. Someone may call you to blame “computer guys” because they accidentally gave a baby an incorrect dose and killed it. Both of which happened. Of course most are mundane like someone forgetting how their fingers work when typing their password. Or calling to say their computer didn’t have internet, claiming that nothing had changed, and neglecting to say that they had pulled out the network cable and put it back on incorrectly.

I could mention many things about that job. All I want to say is that by the end, they put me in charge of supervising the replacement of about one thousand printers across the complex. That involved me going room to room, meeting people, having to argue with them because they didn’t want their printers replaced, asking me to install functionalities that I had nothing to do with handling, and the general bitching that you get when you put women together in an office. I also struggled to handle a Gen-Z worker who was a pain in the ass, to put it mildly. Motherfucker agreed to replace printers in some rooms at some time and date, which had me organizing with local workers to avoid disturbing their schedules, only for the motherfucker to change his mind basically because he felt like replacing other printers. He also did things like leaving work early then telling his boss that I had claimed he could replace nothing more that day.

By the end, I was done with everything. My brain made it clear when I suddenly smelled of burnt dust, my right hand could barely hold my pen, and I lost sensitivity in the right half of my body. Hemiplegic migraine, so said a doctor younger than me. In the past, some doctors had gotten annoyed when I mentioned the fact that I had only started experiencing heart issues when they jabbed me with the Moderna poison, which now is widely known to cause heart problems. I have very, very little confidence in the medical profession after having had to deal with them both as a worker and as a patient.

But I figured, I’m unemployed, I’m unlikely to get work as a forty-year-old programmer who has only worked at it for nine months in the last ten years, at least under contract. So I called the HR person back and said that I was taking the contract. A month and a half at a new hospital dedicated purely to cancer patients. After I hung up, I groaned out of pure psychic pain. The anxiety in my chest was something akin to panic.

I was waiting for the bus when I received a call from HR. A supervisor. Asked me how come I had accepted a job at the other hospital when they had been informed by Occupational Health that I wasn’t taking offers as a technician. That I can’t choose to work as a technician for one hospital but not another. I told them that I thought Occupational Health had already handled that. They told me they would call back. I waited at the bus stop while construction workers drilled incredibly loudly close by, and some fucking imbecile listened to music without earbuds. I thought, as I do often, about how is it possible that people actually want to live in this world. About five minutes before my bus came, HR called back. I was supposed to meet with Occupational Health immediately.

So I took the bus to Donostia and met with the doctor who had seen me previously. I thought she had declared me unfit for the job position due to my autism, OCD, and 52% disability in general. My certification for “job fitness” is currently expired. She told me that I should have spoken with HR to tell them that I quit the job listings. Then she asked me if I had been looking for a job in the meantime. I told her no, that I had been dealing with autism-related issues and that I struggled to leave the house. Then I stopped talking because I felt like I would tear up.

In the end, she told me that she’d speak with HR and tell them not to call me for technician jobs anymore. Right now I’m beginning to feel relieved about it, but on my way back, I was in a bad place. Standing at the bus stop with my earbuds on, listening to nineties Weezer, while old people milled about close by, asking people about bus times. A young woman stopped before me to ask likely for the same thing, and I pointed at my earbuds without making eye contact. All I wanted, all I want really, is to be left the fuck alone. For the world to forget I exist. To have a small place for myself and to be left in peace.

Anyway, I guess that’s it. I really hope I’ll never hear from that public health organization again jobwise. But I suspect that I’ll receive a call from HR at some point for me to formalize abandoning the job listings.

In forty years, I feel like I haven’t changed at all in what matters. I’m still that child that wanted to be left to his devices and daydream the day away. Everything else is just garbage that society has piled up on me. What I’ve learned from my experience is that I’m not suited for anything that society demands of me. I have no plans for the future either. If it gets too bad, the recourse is a tall bridge. I don’t like being around anyway.