My man is a little annoyed with me today. This is because I didn’t come to bed until after 3am last night. But, I couldn’t help it. I was making a mustachioed Italian plumber jump, thrust and pound with my hands and I just don’t stop until my nailbeds bleed.
What? I was playing Super Mario Bros. Wii, what’d you think I was doing?
Anyway, I had a lot on my mind and it helps me to relax and let my subconscious churn the gears and bring fresh ideas to the surface. I’ve been playing GTA IV but I’m stuck on a mission and hating Niko’s bike skills, and I already finished Scarface (again), The Godfather and BioShock (again). I’m almost to World 9 in Mario Wii, but I decided to start over and collect all the coins and find all the warps. So this is what kept me up until the wee hours. That and a general funk over things this week. It’s just been one of those weeks; it’s been grey and drizzly every day, the news is extra depressing what with Haiti and then the Dems bending over and taking it from anyone who wants to give it. I don’t know, man. You remember that woman I used to work with that I told y’all about; the one with the worst karma in the world? Well, I was talking to a colleague yesterday and got an update on the latest shit things to happen to her. Only now I’m starting to wonder how much of her “bad luck” is self induced. I’m not saying she’s to blame,……..well, yeah, I guess I am saying she could be to blame for some if it. Here’s the rundown of things that have happened to her in the last few years;
- morbidly obese (over 450lbs easy)
- 2 heart surgeries
- bad car accident resulting in chronic pain issues*
- bariatric surgery
- sister dies of terminal cancer
- son marries very young and fathers a child
- grandbaby dies of congenital heart defect
- son’s young marriage fails
- 2nd divorce from husband 10yrs younger
- mother has open heart surgery
- son becomes ill and dies
- gets mugged while walking at lakefront alone in the dark
- slips on ice and breaks ankle
- mother becomes ill again and requires surgery
- surviving son is hospitalized in car accident involving more than 5 people, 3 of which have died
- has possibly married again
*starts taking heavy doses of opioid narcotics, repeatedly misses work and angers clients/staff.
Okay, you see where I notated that she started swallowing pills after one of her accidents? In my opinion, this is where she started really losing her grasp on things and let the pills invade and infect her life. When I worked with her last year, she told me she was taking time released morphine. FUCKING MORPHINE. I have no earthly idea how she thinks she can effectively do her job (which involves a lot of client interaction) when she walks slower than most 90 year olds and is visibly doped up. Now, I know a thing or two about chronic pain, I live with it every motherfucking day and I have no options left except major cut-me-in-half surgery that carries a 6 month recovery time. So I’m well aware about what a chronic pain condition can do to one’s mind and soul. I also know that every single one of my doctors has prescribed me the same Schedule I drugs and I never fill the rx’s because they make me so sick I can’t function. But even if I could manage to lift my head after taking a pill, there is no way in hell I would be able to function and use my brain to steer my $2M client through a system implementation which their board of directors is monitoring like a hawk. What I’m saying is that there are other ways to manage pain.
So what I see is a woman who had a string of bad luck, became dependent on pain pills and because her thinking and reactions are quite impaired has contributed to even more bad things happening to her. Sometime in the last couple of years she also started dating a man who can best be described as a meth head. I’m not being ugly, I’m serious. I don’t care who you are, if you saw this man the first thought in your mind would be, “METH FACE”. I went to dinner once with her and MethFace where he told me he doesn’t eat vegetables because, “Vetchtuhbulls are whut foooooooo-duh eats.” She then proudly proclaimed that, “He has a tshirt that says that.” Then she leaned over and picked all the shredded carrots off his plate and cut all his meat into little pieces. This is a woman who I wanted to mentor me at one time.
I don’t really know what my point is here, maybe it’s that I no longer feel sorry for her. I believe she has had to deal with some terrible events in her personal life (as we all do) and unfortunately she has handicapped herself by succumbing to a prescription pain med addiction. I just don’t have it in me to feel sympathetic towards her because her actions are affecting my life by making work that much more difficult for me. I have to cover for her, a lot of people do. Sometimes we have to cover her absences to the client, sometimes we have to cover for her when she just doesn’t complete her work and lately her clients are not taking the excuses well – they are now complaining to other departments and I think we are going to lose them. If I can find a way to manage my clients through my pain, then so can she.
I’m not saying that her reliance on the pills is the cause for any of her family being ill, of course. I’m empathetic about the people she has lost. But to me, having that much of my life spin out of control would signal me to clamp down even harder onto reality and not let myself become drowned by the waves. But everyone is different and I can’t judge her for her choices.
Although I guess I just did.
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