.
..Totaled.
At least, that’s what the insurance adjuster told me when he went to look at our car at the body shop. On Wednesday morning I let Craig have the car to go to work. The sun wasn’t quite up yet, it was raining, and in an effort not to turn some stray cats into street art Craig swerved and ran into a set of concrete barriers that had recently been put up on a local side street. While waiting for the tow truck the supervisor of the union workers took a look at what had happened and shared with Craig that he told those guys they had to put markers (horses, reflectors, whatever) to signify that these dark grey barriers against a dark street with no lights would be visible. The good news was, Craig was around the corner from our house and he wasn’t badly hurt. Just sore from the impact of the airbag and the pressure from the seat-belt. He came home to call the tow truck, got some band-aids for his hand, and use the restroom before going back out to wait for the police and the tow-truck.
When the insurance contact called I wasn’t surprised when he told me the cost to repair the car was greater than the value of the car. After all, Craig hit those barriers head on and the front of the car is where they put all the important stuff like your engine and everything else you need for a car to run. So today, after the upper GI, my mom and sister went with me to go and clean out my auto mobile (insert Sixteen Candles quote here).
In the list of things I want to do right now with my spare (ha) time and our spare (hahhahahahah) cash, getting a new car falls just above getting a root canal. And I had a root canal and those things are about as painful as you can get in life. Since I haven’t been able to work much since Aleck, and since a lot of my work has come to a standstill we aren’t in the best of places for this ordeal. When we got the car at the end of 2008 I remember how happy I was that we got our car when we did, that my 1999 Forester died when it did, and not one moment later. It was perfect timing. I was in the middle of a huge job, about to collect some very nice paychecks, we had the cash. Had the other car which I used to call “Black Magic” made it her full 10 years which I was so hoping for, Craig and I wouldn’t have been able to afford a car. Work was totally dead for me, Craig couldn’t find a job, things were very bleak. Looking back this had been one of those crucial, everything happens for a reason, moments.
And I used to believe that, or work really hard to believe that. I mean, if things didn’t happen for a reason, then why should they happen at all? There has to be some kind of order to the universe, or else Craig and I are simply two of the unluckiest people in the world. Many people I know, and I had been one of them, subscribe to the idea that you get what you put out in this world. If you put out good vibes, an image and attitude of success, greet everyone with a smile good things will come your way. Work hard and do a great job, you’ll get rewarded with lots more work. Treat people well, with love and respect, and that’ll come back to you as well. So I’m sure you can imagine how 2010 simply destroyed all of that for me, and for us I’m sure. I still find myself trying to figure out what we’ve done to deserve all the misfortune that has come our way. A year that completely rocked my foundation, hit me deep both physically and emotionally. Clearly the universe was no longer to be trusted, clearly my body was no longer to be trusted, everything was now suspect.
Or is everything just random. The idea of getting what you put out gives us the false hope that we have some kind of control over our lives, our fates, our fortunes. People have said to me, “God has a way of giving you what you can handle”. Well, I could easily handle winning the lottery, Craig being on an amazing career path, and a life where my 9 week old doesn’t know more doctors than my 95 year old grandfather. To think that God is sitting up there deciding what kind of hand we are getting dealt is to imagine a God that I don’t want to know. Or to think that I somehow put out all of this negative energy that we’ve been getting back is to think that Craig and I must be really bad people. We must not treat others well, clearly we don’t work hard, or we’re just getting punished for that lip gloss I once shoplifted when I was a kid.
Now please don’t get me wrong, Aleck is truly a blessing. And I do thank god for him, for Craig, for my family and for my friends on a regular basis. But we’d really like a break. A moment where things just fall into place, where everything works out, where we feel a sense of normalcy, or even just a period of time where we can share what’s going on in our lives with other people without rendering them speechless. I mean, what do you say to us? And when we turn and ask how you are doing, are you afraid to tell us the good news in your lives? Or afraid to share your problems with us because they may seem small in comparison? I would hope that you would still share, both the good and the bad. It’s honestly nice to listen to someone else talk about what’s going on in their world, taking the focus off of us, letting us get lost in someone’s dating crisis or how difficult its been for them to pick out the granite for the kitchen in their new home. Or how great things are, how well work is going, how their kids are doing in school, how much they love life in their new dream home.
We all have our ups and downs. Craig and I like to say that without the downs, you don’t appreciate the ups. Without the insanity you don’t appreciate those brief moments of normalcy. If you were always happy you wouldn’t know what happy is, sad has to be there to give us a basis for comparison. Sometimes Craig says we are cursed, my sister says we are standing in a shitstorm with a dookie umbrella. Either way, we have to believe that things will get better, will get easier, in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I went to my dr’s (yes, MY doctor) for my post-pardum yesterday and they had me fill out a questionairre regarding my emotional well-being. That was fun. They had a list of statements that could describe the way you feel and then the options were 1. Not at all, 2. Several days, 3. Half the days, 4. All the time. One of the statements was about whether or not I felt like trying to kill myself or hurt myself in anyway. I circled somewhere between 1 and 2. There’s no way I couldn’t admit that it hasn’t crossed my mind, the way that the idea of making a good living at a strip club has crossed my mind, and with breast feeding I know I’ve at least got the rack for it right now.
At the end of the day, Craig keeps me sane. I think I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. The only thing that is easy in our life, the only thing that does feel anywhere near normal is our love for each other. He is my perfect partner, the other half of my team, my cheerleader, my home. Another couple who very often feels the way we do likes to say, “Lucky in love, unlucky in life”. And maybe we are, but I got to keep faith alive that it has to get easier, otherwise I could just be closer to choosing #2.
On another note, Aleck’s Upper GI exam was clear. He was a total champ, sucking that barium down like it was manah from heaven. I was freaked that he was going to be screaming in hunger all morning long but he was just great and didn’t really let it all out until they strapped him down to the table. The exam didn’t take that long and we were able to get to my sister’s place before I had to feed him. After all, it’s much more comfortable to nurse on her couch than in the waiting pavilion at Children’s. Next up we have his 2 month exam with his pediatrician on Wednesday (yes, at 10 weeks…don’t ask, its another post for another time).