Black Clouds for the Birds

Why does being an adult make everything suck?

Everything is magnified to the 10th power and you just have to suck it up and take it because, well, that's just the way it is damnit and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.

You over think, over stress and over do everything in your life. You never have enough of what you need and always have too much of what you don't. Always off balance like 2 kids in a park on a see-saw, one fat one skinny.

We all know what a cake-walk my 2010 has thus far been (insert eye roll here), and let's just say that the past week has not made it easier.

After the 3 deaths I already had to deal with, and my father's birthday I thought I had enough grief to last me a long time. But then on the eve of my dad's birthday, my great aunt died. Not just any aunt. My dad's aunt. The one who took him in when he was 15 years old and left home. The one who's driveway he slept in his car before she made him come inside and took care of him when he was on the outs with my Papa.

Sad.

And so my father's birthday came and went, amid another New England snowstorm last week. Making a trip to his grave impossible in the frozen ground and powder covered everything. So much for an homage.

And then, what's this? I bleed. Not in the ever regular femalely routine way (sorry fella's for the over share), not in an oops I got a paper-cut way. In an oh man if this doesn't stop I need to call the doctor way. SO days pass, and instead of better it gets worse, more dominant. Ok, by now it's Thursday night and if it doesn't stop first thing tomorrow I am doctor bound. I bet you're shocked to know what didn't stop.

Friday morning and alone in a hospital waiting room. Not only plagued my some sort of mysterious intestinal bleeding, but a rampant onset of some virus. Throat hurts, coughing, swollen glands. Stellar.

I wait and wait. EKG's, Blood work, CT scans. IV's. Medical terms strewn at me hither and yon as I sit alone in a room, randomly kept company by a Law & Order marathon and the random blips of various text messages.

And just my luck a hot doctor with a finger up my ass.

So tests came back negative thus far for upper GI trauma like Colitis and Chrohn's Disease, but I have the joyful pleasure of looking forward to a colonoscopy to rule out Diverticulitis in the near future. Fun times.

So home again home again jiggity jig. An evening that was supposed to be filled with a Broadway show and dinner reservations replaced with recuperation and feeling all over miserable. And the decline begins. Chills, fever. Night sweats like a menopausal maniac. Coughing fits that make your throat feel as though it were lined with razor blades and a faucet where your nasal cavity once was.

A call to the courthouse and a bitter man yelling at your that a Sherriff will contact you about the court date you missed due to one of the previous funerals you had, since you are clearly now in some form of contempt and your former landlord is still a vindictive asshole.

A week or so away from your last day at work and you still don't know your fate. No jobs on the horizon, no interviews, no prospects. Just spam mail from the various websites on how to make your resume better and how to sell insurance. Cold calls for commission. No freakin thanks.

Your son's grandfather has an emergency triple bypass, YOUR grandfather isn't doing so hot. It's too much.

The past due balances getting higher and higher and the shut off dates getting closer. Impending silence at home with no TV or internet or electricity on the wire. Long lines in germ filled, non-English speaking filled rooms of people awaiting government assistance await you. Unemployment awaits you. More depression awaits you.

It all happens at once. All of it. People are dropping like flies, your grandfather is sick, your father is gone and can't save you, you're sick, you're losing your job, you're losing your mind.

It's life people say, it happens all the time. To who? Lots of people. Sure. But why over and over to me? Why repeated hardships? Failures? Losses? Why everything harder never easier? Why no silver linings just black clouds? If this is just life, you can keep it.

These black clouds are for the birds.