I recall writing this and having to stop and sleep to regain my energy. I was depressed and about to lose my job. This was a dark time in my life and reliving it is not easy. I know I need to do this again until the pain is livable and I have resolved the memory in my head.
Even now more than a year after the event I still feel the exhaustion of those days.
11th February 2011
Dear Cassi,
Almost a month has passed since my last letter and I guess that means you haven’t had much to read at work. That would be a bad joke; I have a lot of those. In any case life just keeps on moving and I just keep on sleeping through it.
Where I left off in my last letter was when I walked out of Leach for the last time. I’ll never forget that evil smile on Scotts face. I can tell you something else, knowing that it was my last day I checked that snack machine one last time just in case there was something I really wanted. It was a funny sort of nostalgia but as long as I had worked at that place those machines had been there and the vending man had treated me as a friend.
That was a Monday; I got a call from (Rusty) on a Tuesday asking me to come to the office on my last day of finals which was that Wednesday. There are a lot of days in this paragraph.
When I got there he told me that I was doing a great job, but that I was making fifty cents to much and hour. He tried to get me to take a job out in Long Beach more than forty miles from my home, but he had no idea how much it paid. When I said no he said the only job he had open was a swing shift and that conflicted with my classes for the semester.
When I said no to the swing shift he started yelling. That’s kind of (Rusty) for you, he thinks he can get what he wants that way. It was bullshit and he knew it, but I digress.
I’m going to try to keep these letters one page long so they don’t get lolegaled. I’m going to try to send you pages of the new draft of my novel as well. Some of it is stuff you have read and some isn’t.
Richard Leland Neal
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