It's been a week.
I have always had pretty rotten luck. Not that I necessarily believe in luck, so much, or fate. Or maybe I do. I tend to find myself always going back and forth on belief in the cosmic nature of reality, or whatever the hell wants to call it. But the point is that I tend to often have pretty big setbacks, and fairly often. Sometimes these are of my own doing, other times it does feel like fate wants me to suffer. Obviously, I am still here, so fate either is doing a shitty job of killing me, or it has other plans.
But this week, it feels like I am cursed.
On Wednesday, there was a outbreak of covid at work, I tested negative, and went home at the end of the day feeling fine and excited for a day off, only for there to be a pretty severe fire in my apartment building. Luckily, no one was hurt and nothing too important was damaged, and I was able to replace what was damaged beyond repair, and everything seemed okay. I handled the fire and that intensity rather well. Cleaned up the room, replaced stuff, watched TV. Nothing too terrible.
Then I was told I needed to move to a new room while the building is repaired. Again, annoying, but doable. Then it was that I had to go to this hotel in the middle of nowhere for the weekend, far from work or home.
And then I got covid.
I spent that weekend in the hotel sick as hell, got home today and moved into my new room. Went to the store, got covid tests...I have this inescapable fear that somehow I'm going to lose my job (there is no evidence for this, just a worry I have...I have pretty severe work PTSD, and it likely is only in my head, but...what if it's not), the new room is fine but it's small and I don't feel terribly comfortable, I still feel a bit sick and...
Well, it's a lot.
I hate whining. Or, rather, hate sounding like I'm whining, and I often fear that I am a whiny person in the eyes of others. People tend to get annoyed at my apologizing, my over-explanation, my various other likely-autistic traits...and I don't want to be whiny. I don't mind complaining. In fact, I kinda like complaining, but I can't stand the idea that people may think I want them to pity me.
Of course, all of this traces back to the same inescapable issue that is "But, Nathaniel, what do you care what other people think" and I don't, but I care what You think. To quote Turk from Scrubs. But that isn't why I wanted to write tonight, not really anyway. I mean, there was the desire to talk about the past few days, which have been somewhat lonely and isolating (it sucks going through scary stuff alone sometimes), but a simple recap is relatively pointless and unproductive.
I haven't had a lot of time to process things, what with all the delirium, and stress, and fear, and all that stuff I've already driven into the ground here, but I do know that there is an inkling of an idea that I need to take some sort of stock of my life and what I've been doing.
Things had been somewhat on the upswing for me. Got out a toxic job, found one I didn't hate doing, was starting to make progress in developing basic working relationships and, maybe, even being somewhat liked at work. Granted, I'm poor(er) now, but it was an upswing.
Obviously, that upswing isn't gone, exactly (hopefully), but it has been kinda taken out behind the building and roughed up a bit, and when you take a beating, your life flashes before your eyes and other cliches...edible may be kicking in and I've been watching too much Rick and Morty...but it occurs to me that both the fire and the covid are, in fact, events that could have killed me, as they have killed others, and that while it feels like I'm being punished karmically, maybe it's also possible that fate saved me? Kinda all perspective, yeah? Especially if you don't really believe in fate, or karma, or luck...or much of anything really?
Einstein did his best work when he was working as a Patent Clerk, or whatever.
But, call it fate, call it karma, I believe we were destined to get thrown out of this dump. To go into business for ourselves.
Yeah. Edible kicking in. That was just Ghostbusters.
Point is: I didn't die. Again. So many times in my life these things pile on, and I get discouraged and feel like the world is ending, and somehow I get dumped on the side of the road to dust myself off and hike back to town, bruised and battered, but not dead or destroyed, and usually not that worse off than when I started.
Granted, I rarely get ahead (not sure I have ever pulled that off), but I'm not as far behind as I tend to think I am, this time included.
But it does mean I need to maybe get serious about some things, even though many of those things are silly. I need to stop putting off watching movies I want to watch, for one. I need to figure out better living situations, I need to enrich myself more, get into the world, write stuff and make art.
Trying to view this positively, which is rare for me...I'm going to have to cut this short before I make much sense of it. The smaller apartment means the horrible piece of a shit motherfucker of a roommate is even worse to deal with, and he has decided that 10pm is the perfect time to move his stuff in despite his doing nothing all day as per usual. Must be nice. And his dry heaving noises and his tik tok videos and all that other useless shit.
I hate him so much.
I actually have hated very few people in my whole life, and I genuinely wish harm upon this trash bag of a human.
Anyway, this was about the unusual way in which I have found myself adjusting to setbacks. It's rare that I hang onto, well, maybe hope is stretching it, but something hope adjacent? Maybe this journey of self-discovery is managing itself better than I thought.
In taking stock, which was kinda the point of this (coming off of two events that have killed others who aren't me throughout history), I realize I have come to better understanding of myself in terms of my mental health, my kinks and sexuality (and maybe some spiritualism, these past couple months have been interesting in that mode of private self-examination, which isn't as dirty as that sentence sounds), my personal views on people, and my own ability to cope with setbacks. It isn't a bad start.
So, just gotta keep rolling with it, I guess. But I think I can do that. And that's actually...well, it's something.
Just wish I didn't feel like I had been hit by a truck.
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