You win

I hate life.

There I said it.

I have spent decades finding gratefulness for what little I had. No parents? oh, who needs parents anyway, I can totally fend for myself. Pain? Oh, at least I have a roof under my head and I have food on my belly. Being told that everything is in my head? Oh at least I have my books and a great imagination. I can always escape to better worlds in my mind when nobody is looking.

I have tried to find strength and peace in the beauty of the little things. The birds coming to my balcony. My cats. Later on, when I finally made it to Canada, the falling leaves, the snow. The squirrels and chipmunks. The groundhogs. The Rideau canal. Swing Dancing.

But the truth is my life has been crap since day one. I was born extreme premature and spent the first months of my life in an incubator. The doctors told my mother not to get too attached to me because I most likely wouldn’t make it. And yet I did. I am pretty sure some god(s) with a lot of time in their hands and a very twisted and sick sense of humour had something to do with that. Perhaps they even made bets on how long I was going to last after all the things they had in store for me.

I spent my the first two years of my life in and out of the hospital and after that in an out of the pediatrician’s office with recurrent ear and throat infections which are the cause of my bilateral hearing loss.

I had no friends, as it is so common for children from very dysfunctional family environments.

Nonetheless, I puttered along. Hating every minute of it.

Despite my life being a constant living nightmare and despite enduring great emotional pain, I graduated first of my class from high school.

In my 20s I managed to get my MD degree and to be recognized as a well-respected, promising young researcher with a bright future ahead of me. Even had a position at one of the country’s most coveted centres for molecular genetics and immunology research.

It all went down the drain, of course. But whatever. I would show life I could kick back too.

So in my thirties, I finally made it to Canada. Yay, me. I also started graduated school. Things were getting back on track. At last I was in the country of my dreams, doing what I always wanted to do. I was a graduate student at the Cellular & Molecular Medicine department of the University of Ottawa.

Then life dealt me another crushing hand. No graduate school for me, after all, due to health issues.

Fine. I may be on my knees but I still can crawl.

I re-invented myself* as a swing dancer and a social media person. That went reasonably well for a while. By the end of 2010, I even dared to say things was going great. Big mistake.

The gods got together to talk. “Look at her, she’s having too much fun. Things are going too well. We cannot allow that. We have to do something”

More health problems came. A big, scary surgery.

No matter, I got back on my feet, and back into my social media duties. I even managed to get back into dancing, although never at the competitive level I had before. But I did do some performances and even some teaching.

More godly meetings. A lot of head scratching. “What do we do now? She’s even got someone to love”

Wham. Another blow. Sorry, but you can’t dance anymore. Or work at all, for that matter. Oh, but look at the birdies, aren’t they cute?

Deep breath.

FINE. I’ll think about something else. What about crafts? I used to be pretty good at crafting. So good that it even helped pay for med school. Yeah, let’s do that.

Then, I took the second most difficult decision of my life**. I would leave Ottawa in order to be close to the fiance. Sadness and all, I got mostly everything sorted out. Moving truck was booked, storage facility was booked as well. Kitties got their papers from their vet so they could cross the border. Windsor, here we go. And then Lansing for the holidays.

Then, the most ridiculous, ludicrous, stupid series of events happened during the moving weekend. And they continue to happen. Even today, I am still receiving bad news.  Perhaps I will write the account when this is all over, although I am sure nobody will believe so many bad things can happen to any given individual in such a short period of time. That only happens in the movies, right?. IF I am alive when it is over, that is. Because right now, it’s showing no sign of stopping and I am at the end of my rope.

So, you win life. You win, despicable gods.

You broke my feet, brought me to my knees, cut my wings and took the wind out of my lungs.

You separated me from everything that I love.

I have nothing left.

Collect your money.

Footnotes

* With the help of a great person to whom I owe a lot but that is material for another post.

** The first one being coming to Canada first and then sponsoring my children as soon as I was allowed.