anarchist_nomad | When It Rains, It Pours (a.k.a. July in Review)

There are two things that I have often said. Neither should be true, but they both seem to be. They are:

#1) Bad things in my life tend to come all bunched together in waves.
#2) Really bad things in my life happen to the people around me, not directly to me.

The last period in my life stretched from September 2001 until March 2002. In that time, here are just some of the things that happened: My city was attacked by terrorists and, although no one I know was killed, several of my friends were in the thick of it (stepping over dead bodies in the street, for instance). My old experiment exploded, causing $30 million of damage and requiring years to fully recover (it hasn't yet). I suffered a renal colic attack (read: kidney stone) and needed surgery to destroy it. My father's house, which we built in the 1980s, was knocked down by the new owners. A war began, with the news reaching me right at a moment where I had let my guard down. A dear friend (only in his late 40s!) suffered a heart attack that nearly killed him and eventually required a transplant that changed his life.

That was a long bad period. Fortunately, there was a much longer lull between bad periods. Unfortunately, that lull ended a little less than a month ago.

In the span of three weeks, I have had to contend with the following challenges: Comrades bashed and beaten by police at Gay Pride. The death of the mother of my primary partner. The death of the cat that another partner lived with for sixteen years. The death of a guinea pig that a close friend had lived with for five years. A family member grappling with a severe anxiety disorder that has disrupted his life. A friend who has suffered from a nervous breakdown. And my air conditioner at home needs to be replaced.

As I said, bad things happen all at once. Also, since several of these problems have had wide repercussions, for a while the cracks in the dam were appearing faster than I could plug them. And, again, the worst thing that has happened to me directly was the air conditioner unit breaking -- a costly annoyance, but eminently fixable.

I said early on that I was not going to use this LJ for whining. Indeed, I find little use in complaining that the universe it not treating you fairly. It doesn't help anything -- when you are handed a problem, the thing to do is to fix it. So lately I have spent quite a bit of time fixing things to the best of my abilities. I mention all these things in aggregate here only for the purpose of chronicling.

Now I will tentatively venture to say that this bad time may be over. There has been nothing new that has gone wrong in about five days now. Given the fast and furious pace that the hits were coming at this month, that may be significant. I'm going to keep fingers crossed, keep picking up the pieces, and we'll see if life isn't about to get much better once again...