When Fate Gives You the Finger
Give it the finger right back!
Three or so years ago, I began the long journey into a mental health crisis that also kicked my physical ass. I ended up losing my job and some of my will to live. I became an emotional basket case and had to seek counselling. I was placed on medication to help control the panic, anxiety, and depression. Yeah, true story, bro.
After several months, I began to feel a little better.
I started working out harder than I had in decades. I lost weight, was swimming 2000 plus meters a day. I was eating better, sleeping better, was weaning off of medications, and was a tan, lean(er), swimming machine in a too small Speedo. Life was getting better.
After about a year out of work, I finally found a job that I liked and was a perfect fit for my mental health state at the time. That job, and the people I have met since, have drastically changed what was a miserable outlook on life, to one where hope is peaking through the clouds.
It also happens to coincide with the time frame of when I decided to take control of my life, instead of letting my life control me.
I have always had the desire to write, but never the motivation or energy. I found it late last year and joined an online writing platform where I could share my musings with others, get feedback, and make online friends.
On January 1, 2020, I also decided it was time to end my marriage officially. Unofficially, it had been over for a long time, and it was killing me.
Once that decision was made and finalized with my wife, it felt as if the weight of the world was off my shoulders. For the first time in a long time, I felt a simple version of happiness and looked forward to the plans I began to make to reshape the rest of my life.
We began planning on selling the house, which entailed spending money to get it ready, as well as renting several storage units to put all our crap in storage so the house would look like no one lived there. Apparently that’s what people want these days.
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]” said Robert Burns as an apology to a mouse in his 1786 poem, To a Mouse.
Yep. Timing is everything, right.
February, The Covid struck. Housing markets stalled. No open houses, people were panicking about going outside(rightly so, it appears), jobs were lost, government budgets went haywire, Trump started economic wars with China and Europe, my swimming pool closed, my son’s school closed, etc.,.
But we didn’t let that stop us. We kept on working on our goals of selling the house and going our separate ways. Then God laughed.
There is another saying that is also a fair representation of my life for the last 3 years or so. It’s an old Yiddish saying, “Man plans and God laughs.” One Yiddish iteration looked like this: “Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht.” I don’t speak or read Yiddish, so I hope I didn’t just swear at my mother.
Yep. More shit happened. Probably due to genetics and stress, and maybe a little diet issue, I was diagnosed with a 95% blocked artery and had two stents implanted just 5 days before my 59th birthday. The doctor thanked me for listening to my body. I said, “Your welcome, and thank you for thanking me.”
Many people told me that, after their stents, they felt like “new” people. I didn’t. I have since learned the difference between many of them and me was I only felt symptoms when I exerted myself. It took me a while to finally realize I had a problem and go to the doctor.
Unfortunately, there were some complications, including being given the wrong dosage of a blood pressure medication that took my pulse down to a resting 37 beats a minute and made me feel like I was suffocating.
After 3 days of this waterboarding, I took a trip to the ER. The ER doc discovered the problem and correctly reduced the dosage. I am still suffering from some side effects, but feel like I am improving. Unfortunately, all this cock-a-doody brought back the mental health issues I thought I was prevailing against.
I have had many dark and eerie moods lately. Those of you who suffer similar mental health issues know that these dark thoughts and dreaded feelings of doom and panic aren’t simply overcome by taking deep breaths and thinking about puppies. Although I do admit that watching cat/cucumber videos helped a little.
No, I have had to work my way through them by wallowing in self-pity in my darkened room while cursing the fates for the timing of all of this. I mean, I was really looking forward to my first Tinder date.
But all that crap aside, I have been flipped off by better “beings” than Fate (no offense, Fate). I’m not ready to give up the ghost, yet. And I am still looking forward to a long life and some grand kids some day.
I will continue to be aspirational in my life’s narrative and will continue to yearn for the lost buffet of pizzas, donuts, BBQ, and red meat (I have decided to go back to coffee by learning to take it black instead with a lot of flavored creamer. . .yum.).
However, I will also be thankful that I am alive, still active, and for the salads that are giving me the best bowel movements I have had in a while. And, had I known, I would have eaten waaaay more salads than I have up until now.
As part of my research for this article, I found Rudyard Kipling and his poem If. I have not read much Kipling, but that is about to change. This poem, after reading it and several analyses of it, has become one of my current favorites, and I plan on reading more of him.
IF by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream — and not make dreams your master; If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
I have bolded my favorite lines.
Many of us who consider ourselves writers find words to be amazingly inspirational, strong, and emotionally powerful. We spend our precious time finding appropriate words and placing them in an order sometimes only we can make sense of, in the hopes that someone will find strength, hope, and inspiration in them. It is our small gift to the world.
And for those of us who are writers, putting those words “to paper” can be a catharsis for us, as well.
For me specifically, writing this article was a major effort. With the exception of two half-hearted attempts in mid-July and some comments on others’ stories, this is the first serious attempt at writing I have done in over three weeks. And it has awakened me. It has proven cathartic.
So, whether you call it Fate or Kismet, or just plain “life,” or whether you even believe in Fate, when it feels like Fate is giving you the finger, don’t apologize for making your plans. Hell no!
Flip Fate the bird right back, and keep making your plans. Get back in the game. Keep fighting the good fight. . .and other feel good clichés. (Forget what Stein on Writing says. . .keep the clichés!)
Because once you stop making plans and dreaming dreams, you’re dead anyway, so it won’t matter. (So sorry to end a story with the word “dead” in the last sentence.)
Mental health issues should be taken seriously, especially in these times. Do not be embarrassed or ashamed of needing help. Please reach out to a mental health professional if you are feeling the need. If you just want to share a story, please feel free to email me, and I will respond. If you write an article, please tag me so I can read it.
Chuck Roast tries to write Satire and Humor. Sometimes other stuff, too. This is some of that “other stuff,” with a modicum of humor. But one thing he likes is comments from readers to interact with. Please feel free to leave a comment, Or, if you write your own story about this topic, please tag me. I’d love to read them, and comment back to you. I can be reached at [email protected].
PS: If you enjoyed this story, here’s a subtle push towards my newsletter. When you sign up with your email, I’ll send you some original, never before published content, and some links to my Medium stuff. Thanks to Kristi Keller for the inspiration for the wording of this blurb.