My Colleague Repeats Herself Constantly

Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles a reader’s existential worry. He wants to hear about what’s ailing, torturing, or nagging you. Submit your lifelong or in-the-moment problems to [email protected].

Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.

Dear James,

I find myself growing irritable at one thing in my life, and one thing alone.

I work with an older woman who repeats herself constantly. She has the same three jokes and says them daily, and expects us all to laugh and/or respond as if we haven’t heard them before. I notice my younger colleagues nodding and smiling. I am less genteel. In fact, I seethe at my desk, rolling my eyes so far back in my head, I fear they may get stuck. It creates a rage in me that is truly inexplicable.

I’d like to think a younger me would just ignore it and laugh on cue, but current me has considered quitting this great job over not being able to handle something so insanely trivial.

I’m sure you're thinking, “Well, if that’s the worst thing in your life, you’re doing okay.” But I do have real things to worry about; they don’t seem to affect me like this. It’s just this one stupid thing.

Does the irritability of minor annoyances worsen with age? I thought that with age came wisdom. One would think I would be wise enough to not let this rattle me to my core so much. I’ve truly considered that I might be going insane.

Dear Reader,

Oooooh—I feel it. The dreadful imposition of another’s sensibility; the silent rancor of the oppressed; the sensation, as you listen to this poor lady and her jokes, that your time, your life, your essence is being not just wasted but forced slowly backwards through your veins. I say “poor lady,” but she’s also kind of an unwitting tyrant, isn’t she? A helpless autocrat in the workplace. Her attempts at humor, horribly renewed each morning, have become a reign of terror.

As for age bringing wisdom, I dunno. Age brings little rashes in awkward places. Age brings the end of patience. I’m going to quote an expert in this field: myself. “Patience, one discovers, is not a virtue but a quantity. Like oil in the car or milk in the fridge. Not limitless and oceanic, but quite finite. I ran out years ago. All I have now is stamina. I can endure. Radiant with suppressed exasperation, I can hang in there.”

But—clearly—you have hung in there too long. You have endured enough. It’s time to sort this out, before you scream, quit, or brain this person with a stapler.

First stop: the heart. Your heart. Which can be reached, in this case, via the imagination. Make an imaginative effort with this woman. To me, she sounds lonely, or stuck. What in her life, and in her inner life, has so drastically narrowed her awareness? How did she get stranded with this routine, with these three terrible jokes? We never know—unless we know—what other people are going through, what it costs them to just keep showing up, in however reduced a form. I try to keep in mind these lines from Franz Wright: “Someone in Hell is sitting beside you on the train. / Somebody burning unnoticed walks past in the street.”

Second: confrontation. Nothing succeeds like direct action. I don’t mean yelling, or a terrible scene. I mean something like (said with as much gentleness and good humor as you can muster—and you’ll have to dig deep): “You know what? I’ve heard that one, Gloria.” You may be amazed at the result. Think of it as a service to you both: a double emancipation.

Within earshot of the chimes of freedom,
James

Dear James,

I’ve had insomnia my whole life. Sleep and I are in an abusive relationship. I’ve had all the tests: EEGs tell me I have too much REM. I’ve done all the things: CBT-I, Ambien, benzos, Benadryl, melatonin, in various combinations. I sometimes fall asleep well and then wake up sweating, feeling sick about dreams about babies hatching from eggs in a creek behind a retired paint factory, or pulling dozens of mummified rats out of my floorboards and getting arrested for mailing them to Donald Trump, or driving a flying school bus full of children through the Bermuda Triangle. Other times, I feel like I’m almost asleep all night but not quite. A lot of the time while I’m awake in the night, I’m having existential dread. It doesn’t help that I studied existentialism and sleep disorders between undergrad and grad school. I feel like no one has told me anything new; I know all the things, and I know I’m doomed. Sometimes I try to imagine myself happy, like, This is good for me, or I’m better at this than anyone else, so ha! Joke’s on you, but how long can I delude myself? Anyway, if you have anything new for me that I haven’t tried yet, I’d love to hear it.

Dear Reader,

The worst thing about insomnia, for me, is the sense of overexposure to my own brain. I even wrote half a poem about it:

Prone, alone, dry as a bone,
scratching around for the sleep hormone,
condemned to my own society—
too much of me, too much of me!
My Self, deprived of oblivion’s dose,
is the bloke on the bus who sits too close,
who breathes too loud, who is too warm,
who fills his neighbor with thoughts of harm.

But your brain is much more interesting than mine. Look at all this imagery! I’m actually rather jealous of your visions and reveries and between-states. Not for you, the tedious binary of being awake/being asleep. You’re also a vivid writer, so I recommend plunging into the half realm, the hypnagogia, and making it your own. Write it up! For an idea of how to proceed, read Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater: De Quincey was very good on the teemingness and fathomlessness of the drifting mind. And listen to Aphex Twin. (Selected Ambient Works, Volume II would be the place to start.)

Sweet dreams,
James

By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.