Today I had one of those rare (for me) moments when I feel like I'm not worth the air I breathe. One of the things I hate most is being taken care of. Not because it makes me out to be weak, which I do despise, but more because I cannot tolerate being a burden on other people. I can't stand the thought of someone having to expend their time and resources on me when I haven't earned it. Now I'll cheat and lie and steal and do whatever else that gives me an unfair gain at the expense of someone else, but all those things still require a conscious initiative and acquired ability to perform, which means that, in my mind, they are still in the same realm as using any other skill to one's advantage in the capitalist free market system. We all knew going into this arrangment that I'm not some big diesel-armed hoss of a man like most guys in this business, but Jim and I were both aware of my capacities, and he gives me stuff I'm able to do. So I may not be able to lift and throw around big slabs of concrete and what-have-you, but I can do what I'm told, and so far I've been able to do everything that's been asked of me. So even though I'm not doing everything that needs to be done, and every once in a while I have to be shown how to do all this mechanical stuff I've never been around before, but I'm doing my job, and at the end of the day I pretty much feel like I've earned my pay, so I can deal with that. But today I not only didn't feel like I was earning my pay, but even felt like a burden, an $8/hour burden to be exact, on a man who works hard for his living and has always been too damn good to this skinny little kid. I hate that they did every fathomable thing for me when it was my own damn fault for not getting some water earlier, even when he suggested it. I hate that after all these years and everything I've done, I still feel like I have something to prove to the people I respect, and I can't just take a break when I know I need one. Because, friends, when you've got this much pride, shame is not an option, but the choice I made today was even worse. And it was a choice, and I still say it was my own damn fault no matter what they say to convince me these things happen to the best of us. That was the biggest kicker; had I been struck down through the fault of somebody else's stupidity, I wouldn't mind aid at all, but it kills me to recieve aid when I did it to myself through my own stupid choices. I even knew it was coming, too, damnit, because it's all too familiar.
That's why I've always thought heat stroke was the worst of the common first aid cases. For me at least, it's always accompanied by that total psychological meltdown where I feel completely worthless like I just described. I don't know if there's something neorological process going on there or if it's just my nature to have all these conservative, social Darwinist principles riding on my every mistake, but whatever it is, it's far worse than any physical pain. I can cut myself all up or break a bone or light my face on fire (last Monday) and not even care because no matter how bad it is, it's isolated and it's temporary, but with a thing like heat stroke, your entire body just shuts down right there. I don't think I lost consciousness totally today, at least not for more than a moment, but that it such a weird thing when you're only half-way here, or worse yet when your mind is totally lucid but you can't move at all or even talk.
Whoever said my pride would kill me came a little bit closer to being right today, in more ways than one - first on my refusal to prevent the heat stroke that took me totally out of comission, and second on the psychological anguish that is always so much worse every time I pull that shit.
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