Good Grief
Despite everything currently being the goddamn worst, I'm still always just one warm hug away from blindsided T-bone we all dead. Never warranted, always absurd.
When the work nonsense subsides, home explodes. Once the house fire is put out, dead people return from the grave. Get them delivered back to the grave, idle mind existential crisis. Then work again.
Turns out, everything is a trigger.
My struggles are nothing in comparison to those who face unimaginable horrors daily. I'm not the children or families of the children my country blows up for sport-fucking greed. I'm not living on the streets, unable to feed myself or my family. I'm actually incredibly fortunate when all things are truly considered. So please don't assume I'm placing my grief above any other human legitimately struggling. I know it can be much worse, and when I think of those who have it worse, it makes me sad. Sad there's no government sponsored support for these people. And please don't get me started on the absolute lack of inmate release programs in this country. No wonder the prisons are full of repeat offenders. Even the weekend captives face life altering consequences they may never recover from. Get locked down for whatever, and guess what, you're guilty until proven innocent. You'll be told otherwise, but until the judge says otherwise, the world will see you as guilty. Imagine even just temporarily loosing your freedom, and everything associated with losing your freedom, for even a month let alone years or more. You're fucked. Now you likely have an employment gap because you lost your job, potentially homeless if you can't return to your domicile for whatever reason, and flat broke after bond and an attorney retainer. So what do? A crime, to make ends meet. Then a new offense, new arrest, wash (with the special soap in front of a Sheriff's deputy), rinse, spread the cheeks.
Remember how I was just saying everything's a trigger?
Just the other day, I replied to a work reform post from the Fediverse with a relevant situation to parallel the shared image (I'm on Lemmy and Mastadon, links at bottom of page). I work in higher education. Upon the last big promotion cycle, I was passed over for a Director position. This position was instead given to a less tenured person with only a high school education. No certs, just the best friend of the boss. Meanwhile, I've been with the university longer, three degrees, enrolled in a PhD program at the university where I work. Yet higher education allegedly doesn't value the higher education of their employees who earned their education from the university. Ab-fucking-surd.
It crosses my mind every time I think about work, am at work working, or when just considering my general importance to the world, which I can comfortably say is middling. It's debilitating. But I power through, and now with the power of spite, I will complete my PhD within 4 years so I can be the Doctor who reports to a high school diploma. That's right! Grab life's absurdities by the HARNS (iykyk), own them and make them even more fucking absurd! Eventually, time will stop, either because you had an aneurysm and died, or the time space continuum surrounding Fortune has collapsed upon itself, rendering all you know to being just a piss-poor fabrication of some old autobiography.
"Make it make sense." I hear myself shouting this in my head at times. Other times, out loud.
I caught (and released) a baby groundhog. Sent the photo to a child who once identified as my daughter (still legally, but what does that matter). You'd think I told her she was adopted or stolen from an orphanage. That we made her labor in the mines as a human toddler canary until she could beg for food with her words. No, just the photo of a baby groundhog and a brief caption about the excitement and cuteness thereof.
Somehow, my sunshine brings rain. My joy, pain. Kali Uchis ain't got shit on this.