The day before the layoff

Phrase of the day: "The rain falls on the righteous and the wicked."  This was meant to be a thing about blessings, I think, since rain was scarce in that place at that time, and it makes things grow and keeps things alive.  In the Midwest, we act like it's a negative: sometimes it pours when you don't have an umbrella, and the rain that's soaking you doesn't care if you're good or bad: it just falls.  And that's the thing.  Whether you look at this as something about blessings or curses, things happen to people, and you don't get to control them.  This is life in a fallen world.

The week before the layoff: Tuesday

I wonder if this is the last Tuesday I will take this route to work past the half-dead, half-alive tree and the marsh.  Will this be the last Tuesday I do work at this desk surrounded by this three-sided view of clouds watching this plant shiver as heavy machinery moves the floor?  Will this be the last Tuesday I go to this store and then that store and get gas at this gas station and then go home? 

I pray it will be the last Tuesday I ever have to do research on hip surgery (while contemplating potential job and insurance loss). 

Will tomorrow be the day that everything falls apart for me like it did for my cube-neighbor today?  He was one of our managers, an irreplaceable expert.  But they did tell us that this lay-off had nothing to do with how good we are.  It is a thing of cold, hard numbers, HR and finance, not our bosses or those who work with us and give us performance bonuses. 

Now I wish again that I had maintained my goal of only achieving expectations.  Who knew that exceeding them would have the consequence of making me more attractive to a cut based on numbers?

Regret vs. Common Sense vs. Expectations vs. Peace

And then there's this simple question from the doctor:

"You've been in pain from this for 5-and-a-half years, and this is the first time a doctor is seeing it? "

Well, yes.  Funny how that happened.  I fell and landed on my back and then saw doctors for that and then had physical therapy.  At physical therapy, they improved my back, and my hip started hurting.  The PT folks said to come back if the hip didn't improve on its own.  When it still hurt a few years later and I had a better job, I went to PT for it without seeing a doctor.  It makes sense.  But five and a half years?  Is my sense of pain and my way of dealing with it so screwed up that I would let this thing happen to me when I would not let it happen to another?

The regrets start again. 

What if
I had gone
right when it
started hurting
or at least earlier
than 5 years? 
Could I have prevented something?  Lessened
some damage?  Did my lack
cause this more serious hurt?
Could this regret have been prevented?

Common sense intrudes. 

And when
would you have found
time for this?  And money? 
And energy?  You did not
have these things.  Let go.  Learn.  Move on. 
Stop hurting yourself more
over the hurt you may
or may not
have done yourself. 
Be at peace.
Live now. 
Go.

I try to convince myself not to expect the worst.

Maybe it's not torn cartilage or arthritis.  Maybe it is something to do with the natural structure and inflammation, and it can be fixed.  Maybe the flying pigs can fix it after they stop this sick feeling in my stomach which may be more related to allergies than stressing out about imaginary potential hip surgery it will be hard for me to afford.  Or not so imaginary tests involving needles in my hip and how debilitated I was from needles in my wrist.

Be at peace, dagnabbit.  Why won't you listen? 

Worrying won't help.  God is with you.  
You'll be fine no matter what happens.

Clutch towel. Don't panic.

Breathe in.  Breathe out. 

Hindsight is 20/20, and I want to punch it in the face

Once upon a time, I fell on the ice on a sidewalk.  It was next to a part of a building that was for rent, and the owners didn't want to pay to have the parking lot lights on.  It was a cartoon fall, one second walking cautiously, the next hitting my back and head on the sidewalk and looking up at my feet in a, "How did those get up there?" sort of way.  From the ground I could see that the whole untreated sidewalk was a single sheet of ice.  (Isn't that always how it works.) 

Emergency room, nothing broken, physical therapy, trouble getting the bones and muscles to realign correctly.  Pain increasing in the hip.  No money for more PT.  No time.  No energy.   

I decided not to sue.  I was in pain from several injuries, working full time, attending school part time, fighting with the Federal Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, increasingly bad insomnia from the pain and nerve activity, and the resulting really poor judgment. 

Today the doctor said scary words like cartilage tear and flattening and overhang and arthritis and tests and injecting dye into the hip.  Now that I'm contemplating an MRI (not very well covered by my insurance) and (please God no) possibly surgery and recovery (also not well-covered) and my third story apartment and the huge layoff my company will be having next month, I want to go back and force myself to sue the building owners for negligence.  Now that I have a better job and have graduated from school and given up on OWCP, I could probably handle it.  Back then, I just couldn't, even though I should have.  I simply didn't have the energy or time to do the thing I should have.

Retrospect sucks.  Like a bog.

Why having your own stories to tell can be scary

It's Homecoming Weekend, so some writing program alumni got together at a local pub.  I hardly had a problem with the smell of alcohol (I can't actually smell anything right now because of my allergies); I didn't get anxious about being around it at all.  I talked and listened to stories about finished novels and teaching and creepy store clerks who use your first name after seeing your credit card and try to hook you up with eligible members of both genders without feeling like I was going to throw up.  Yay, me! 

When I got home, two young men dressed in suits were walking slowly through the parking lot, and I got a tad nervous.  I sped up, so I wouldn't cross their paths, and then so did they, which freaked me out completely, so I sped up more and did my special only-open-the-doors-enough-to-get-through-and-then-let-them-shut-and-lock move, hoping they were there to pick someone up and would have to wait to get in, giving me time to flee up to my apartment.

No such luck.  They sped up more but still had to reopen the door with their key cards.  I could tell they were suddenly in a worrisome hurry, and I started bracing for a confrontation. 

I should have taken the stairs, no matter how much my feet hurt, but I knew I didn't want a chase up a stairwell, so I waited for the elevator.  I don't know if he was drunk or high, but one of the guys got way to close to me and started mashing the single elevator button, apparently so addled he didn't realize the reason the button stopped glowing was because the elevator had arrived. 

I wondered if I should let them get on, pretend to tie my shoe, wait for the door to close, and sprint/limp up the stairs, hoping they weren't getting out on my floor.

Then a marvelous thing happened.  The other guy with Mr. Under-the-Influence (UtI) actually pulled Mr. UtI further away from me.  When the elevator opened, he sort of manhandled Mr. UtI into the elevator and effectively trapped him on the other side of the elevator until I got off and limped as quickly as possible to my apartment where I locked the door with great enthusiasm, trying not to remember the way Mr. UtI had been trying so hard to reach past his companion, so he could touch me.   

I never saw any of this directly because I was Not Making Eye Contact with all my might, but I was impressed by what I saw out of the corner of my eye.  It was like a sheepdog herding sheep.  Maybe the good guy was a post position basketball player?  Nah, too small.  Maybe a wrestler?  Anyway . . .

To the guy who shielded me from his drunk friend tonight: my thanks.  Seriously.  (Thanks also to God and whatever guardian angels may or may not exist and have to work overtime to keep my mom from freaking out.)

To the bartender who mocked my my sadness that his bar did not serve hot chocolate or root beer: just saying.

Death of a Butterfly

At the state fair, they have an exhibit called the Butterfly House. From outside the building, through a window you can see row upon row of unborn butterflies attached to what look like towels. In this display, you can also see the butterflies that have just been born and are in various stages of drying their wings off so they can join their flying kin in the rest of the exhibit where they are free within the confines of the building, and people can interact with them like lawn furniture.

Looking at the newly hatched butterflies at first brought me joy. Some species I had never seen before.  The colors were so vibrant, the patterns so startling.  Entranced is the word I am looking for to describe me and all the kids looking at these stages of butterfly birth.

And then down in the very left-hand corner, I saw a dying baby butterfly. Somehow it had fallen too far forward and gotten its still-heavy-with-moisture wings trapped underneath the towel that lined the bottom of the display. It kept struggling to get a hold of the glass and pull itself out so its wings could dry straight, but for whatever reason, probably because most of its weight was in its crumpled up wings, all it could do was struggle, increasingly weakly between longer rests. No one could help it; I could see that from the way the display was constructed.  A little bad luck had doomed this newborn critter, and because of that and because it just wasn't strong enough, it was going to die there, trapped.

I had to walk away before I started crying beside all those happy children just because I noticed that one little butterfly stuck on its back like a turtle, dying instead of drying so it could fly away.