Let's vent! Your worst day!
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Dodged a bullet!
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I think I have a worst year. 2013 literally from January 1st until December 31st was a shit show lol. I went on a new year's day date which resulted in me falling on ice, getting a "bruised bone" injury (meaning I guess I just can't bend my knee for 9 months, but hey, no cast so that means I'll do it on accident a lot...) and then breaking up new year's eve with one of the worst relationships I have ever had (not the same guy tho).
Honestly the only other instance that comes to mind is when my most recent ex broke up with me via a lie he told the police, causing them bust into our home and force me out of the shower while I was ignorantly singing and soaping up for date night.
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I've never shared this openly outside of close friends, but in 2017 my band signed a 2-year contract with a management company out of California after months of negotiations and airplane trips to meet each other, etc. Formed an LLC, got our ducks in a row. after a gig, we signed the contract on the bar of House of Blues parish room in New Orleans. one of the greatest days of my life. all my hard work was yielding fruit and forward progress. We needed to buy a van to travel/save money on longer distance shows, start doing weekend tours down I-10, and build fans from Atlanta to Austin. I found this conversion van in really good shape out of Texarkana. Took out a loan from the bank to go buy it that fateful weekend. Drive up, get in, drive back. That was the goal.
I'm in the middle of the highest high I've felt when it came to a sense of success. the future is now and I'm here to follow my dreams. it's been weeks of tension, fasting, meditation, and determination... I didn't know it then, but I was in a manic spiral of hyper-enthusiasm.
It was a Friday. I wake up extra early to go see the loan officer at the bank and finalize the loan paperwork and processing fees. go to work at 9 am. Then my coworker was called into the conference room at 10 am and they kept him for 2 hours. they NEVER call those types of meetings. Was he getting fired? was he getting a raise? wtf? We always go to lunch together on Fridays. When asked at lunch what the meeting was about, he shrugged and said "They just wanted to assure me my position was good."
"ok... well when will they pull me in to tell me that?"
"Oh... probably after lunch."
"ok cool. should I be concerned?"
"I'm sure they'll talk to you one on one and tell you what's going on"
go to lunch. uncanny feeling. go back to the office. staring at this check from the bank on my desk. thinking about my weekend. one of my bosses was supposed to give me details on a video project I was editing. when asked about it he mumbled something, avoiding eye contact, and shuffled his feet into his office closing the door.
it clicked. oh shit... I'm getting fired.
I walked in... "hey boss, see this check and info packet full of signed paperwork? yeah, well, I just took a big step. Took a loan and gonna buy a van this weekend for the band to start doing some roadshows. pretty cool huh? so uhhh listen... do I need to take this check back to the bank? because if I do, I need to go do it before the bank closes and the processing fees kick in.
my boss just removes his glasses and starts sobbing. like shaking kind of sob. a very VERY awkward wtf moment for me as his subordinate. "we're so sorry, but we've been paying you out of pocket for months now. We're in the red, and we gotta cut you loose." (The other guy had years of seniority on me, even tho i think they like me more. lol)
That manic spiral of hyper-enthusiasm I mentioned earlier? Knowing i would have to go from chasing my dreams, on top of the world, to, in a flash, having to figure out how I'm supposed to make rent and groceries every month.
dude... it was a crash like I've never experienced before or ever since. that season of my life aged me. ruined me in many ways and dug a hole I could not get out of for years. not long after all this, my wife was away on a work trip, and I had a mental black out one night home alone while watching TV and woke up in my underwear of the neighbor's bushes, puking and sobbing and confused but not knowing why i was crying. I cracked like an egg. if it wasn't for my wife getting me some help in that season i dunno what.
That was the best/worst day and season of my life (so far haha).
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@TableTopProphet I am so sorry to hear this happened to you. What should have been a monumental occasion turned to ash... as someone who lives paycheck to paycheck like that, I get it. Its worse when you can't even count on the money coming in to break even. I theorize the less control a person feels they have over their own life, the more panicked they become, and often poor choices follow.
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I've almost never really enjoyed any job I've ever had. Tolerated would be more accurate. It's not for lack of work ethic, but most things I've had to do aren't interesting or fulfilling in any way. There was a couple of times where this wasn't the case. Along this line of was how my bad day translated into a bad year.
In this instance, I used to be an assistant manager at a Wizards of the Coast retail store. The pay was lousy, but I was in my wheelhouse on several levels. I got paid to run weekly dungeons and dragons games, was able to learn of many new games to play, and had the time off to routinely attend live action Vampire the Masquerade sessions. I also met a great young woman at the time. But none of it could last.
One afternoon, I was called in to the back office and told I was fired. They would not explain why, although I had some ideas. One of the managers was a jealous ex of that young woman I mentioned and by then, we were done and she was back with him. Never date co-workers, people. Coupling this was the fact they fired me on my birthday.
"What? We didn't know..." I pointed to the calendar directly next to them that indicated as such.
I fell into a deep depression for months following this. I had no meaningful job skills beyond retail and stock. No one wanted me. Unemployment wouldn't pay me anything since I was fired. I ran though all my savings during this time and they turned off my credit card. I did a moving job during this time to make ends meet and got stuck in a truck cab with a chain smoker. This resulted in me developing an acute throat infection that nearly had me asphyxiate several months later since I had no insurance or money to take care of it. And the emergency room visit from that wasn't entirely covered by charity care, which I later found out when they stuck me with an overdue medical bill of several hundred dollars because 'charity care doesn't cover doctors, only the ER visit'.
I was becoming increasingly fatalistic and was losing the will to live. I tried entering the national guard thinking I could catch a bullet in some conflict and spare my mother the idea any notion that I was ready to leave the world but I was rejected over the phone on grounds that I had bad knees which made getting up from a crouch difficult. They wouldn't hear otherwise. I had so little agency in life that I couldn't even elect to die on my own terms.
After all of this, I developed Cotard's Delusion for a week. Let me tell you, that was a surreal mind space to be in. I stopped eating, just drank water and wandered listlessly around town in the early hours looking for change in payphone booths. I found myself staring at the sky often, particularly at the sun, and feeling peaceful about it all. Then it just... ended.
All of this was a long long time ago and obviously, I've turned things around. But I still remember my longest year from having one really bad day.
I'd rather be creating!
My books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07S5PYV79
My Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19218824.Alexander_Salkin -
My god, that's crushing. I'm so glad you had a partner to rely on, but I think you must also have some incredible inner strength to pull through that. I'm so sorry you had the rug pulled out from you like that.
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Wow, I've never heard of Cotard's Delusion and it seems like such a scary place to be in. I'm so glad you were able to make it out. I worked retail for many years and the sense of replaceability still lingers with me. It's taken a lot of therapy for me to understand that my value isn't based on my productivity. Likewise, your value is so much greater than how productive you are.
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Sooooooo, most of my adult life has been spent in the military or as a first responder, so unfortunately I have been there for dozens of not hundreds of worse days. Whether it be in Iraq, as a paramedic or what I do now, your average day is often someone’s worse. That is why we are called after all. No one call 911 just to hang out.
Which is why I have chosen to tell my funniest worse day. It was two in the morning and I was sleeping in the back of my ambulance when the tone alert went off. My partner Mark woke with a loud snort as the blaring alert roused him back to life from a sleep apnea induced death. He was a heavy set man in his early twenties with the health of a man in his fifties. I love him dearly to this day.
I made my way through the small space between the patient compartment to the driver seat and snacked the computer to shut off the alarm. I read the details and swore.
“Mark, get the fuck up here. We got a jumper.”
“So?” Mark groaned, “let the cops talk him down for three hours and let him give up after a bottle of water and a chicken sandwich.”
“Let me clarify. He was a jumper. Now he is a … well whatever the past tense of jump is.”
Dead?
“No,” I said “or you know, why would we be called, right?”
“If you say so.”
So, in short here is what happened prior to our arrival. A guy we will call him bob, decided to try pcp. For those who don’t know, pcp is a fun little drug categorized by super human strength, auditory and visual hallucinations with a healthy dose of straight up psychosis. So bob, Bob does pcp and decides to go for a run on the highway. So highway patrol gets called and bob chooses to run away, leaping off the side of the highway and falling four stories to the ground below.
So, I get there and bob is well, Bob is dead. Bleeding from ears nose and mouth. Hips facing the wrong way. Dead.
Until I walk up to him, and he snarls at me while swiping at me with a clearly broken arm. So, I am a decently masculine guy. A combat veteran. Ran into a burning building and been shot at in the same day.
And after I get done scream like a girl i stabilize him and get him loaded on the gurney filled with drugs and to s hospital where they would ultimately save his life. The entire ride he bit, spit and clawed at me. At the end of the call I was covered in blood, road dirt and other questions substances. I sat in the ambulance after the report was done and looked out the window with a thousand yard stare. Mark chewed on a bag of potato chips .
“That was fucked.” Mark said through a mouthful.
“Yes. Yes it was.”
And then the tone alert sounded. A diabetic in need of a pbj. I was bloody, sore and filthy. I wanted to go home.
And I hit the alarm and went to the next call
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Dude, that's fucking metal.
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@mianngu it sounds metal until it 2 in the morning and your getting called because someone covered in poop want’s wrestle. Then your wondering what choices in life led you to being the 2am poo wrangler
