I’m having a bad day.
Some days are fine, some days are normal, and some days it all just fucking gets to me.
I found out today that a dear friend has stage 4 cancer and was given 4 – 8 weeks. Maybe 9 months with chemo. And he and his wife are wonderful, amazing people and they don’t deserve this at all and just, just..
FUCK.
And I offered what assistance I can offer, what I’ve learned about the bureaucracy of dying, and just..fuck, man. It’s been weird and wonderful to watch the sudden outpouring of love on them, see the support network spring up ‘out of nowhere’ that I knew was there all along because I’m on the outside of this. Aching because I know the inside and it’s super shitty and they don’t deserve this. Angry, so fucking ANGRY that this is happening and I am powerless to stop it. And I know that panic, and that scramble, and that wait wait wait while you know time is ticking. I didn’t deserve this. They definitely do not deserve this.
No one does. No one ever deserves to be told they’ll be dead in a year. Or soon. The roadmap to life is complicated and strange, and it’s unexpectedly horrifying to see the end of that journey, and count the mile markers on that road. And sometimes you ride in the car and the scenery is pretty and you space out and things are okay. And sometimes, like today, there are potholes and horrific accidents and you just want to pull the fuck over and breathe for a minute, but you can’t. The car keeps driving. Time keeps ticking.
And so sometimes, like today, you lock yourself in the bathroom at work and cry for a little bit. About your friends, but about you, too. About everything. And then on the way home, you buy all of the junk food and sit in front of your computer and eat everything bad for you and play Skyrim and try to tune it out for awhile. Tomorrow will be better. But today is a bad day.
I think bad days are an evil gift, because they give you permission to fall apart for a while. It’s like a valve release, or some days like a punctured balloon. Permission, a reason, an excuse to just completely lose your shit and release all of the FUCK THIS SHIT IT SUCKS SO BAD FUCK EVERYTHING WHY THE FUCK IS IT HAPPENING THIS IS SO FUCKING UNFAIR and embrace the grief and face it down and acknowledge it, and then put your big girl panties back on and live your life. Tomorrow. Until the next time. And the bad days are cathartic and good, and yeah. Necessary, maybe. But it sucks to be having one, feeling like you’re in a nightmare and it’s going to get so much worse. Knowing I’ll feel better tomorrow does not help me tonight, as I eat birthday cake Oreos and cry in my now-practically empty office in a house I don’t get to stay in while my digital persona steals from random barrels and kills skeevers and dragons. Pretending that the world can stop for a bit, committing yourself to losing a night to escapism because it was a bad day. As though it somehow makes up for it when all it does is cost me more precious time.
Just..bad day. Tomorrow will resume my usual dealing-with-grace and optimism and humor. But tonight it all just sucks so much ass. And while it’s okay, normal, expected to have days like this, it feels unnatural and awful and I don’t like BEING sad and angry and pessimistic. It’s not me. I hate this. I hate being emo, I hate that people I love are going through trauma, I hate that I don’t always have the strength and grace to smile. I hate that I can’t always find humor in the dark. Especially when it’s darkness around people I love. I hate this.
I hate bad days.