Something Happened

Life works like this.

It’s all fucking relative. This is so clichéd it’s a bad joke, really, but it’s true. You go through your stupid little life with blinders on, thinking you’ve got “real” problems when things don’t break your way. Then something smacks you in the mouth and reminds you what a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool problem actually looks and feels like.

Honestly? It’s liberating, especially for someone like me, who has a history of problems that actually are “real” on just about anyone’s scale. I didn’t want the reminder, but I probably needed it. What I didn’t need was for it to be at someone else’s expense, but that’s how it is. And no, it’s not my fault. I’m the solution here, not the cause.

It happened yesterday morning. That would be Sunday, if you’re keeping track. My phone rang at exactly 10:23 AM, Eastern Daylight Time, and the news I received was markedly unpleasant. Ridiculously unpleasant. So unpleasant, in fact, that it knocked me out of this fucking stupor I’ve been in, and brought me back to some semblance of reality. My paradigms? They fucking shifted, that’s for sure. Every other “problem” in my life is now just fucking background noise.

I figure there’s two kinds of bad news: the kind that knocks you on your ass and doesn’t let you move, and the kind that leaves you no option but to get up and fucking do something. Yesterday’s was the second kind.

And what was it?

Make a list of a the five worst pieces of news you could ever possibly hear. It’s not number one, but it’s not number five, either. That’s what it was. Do the math.