I was at an optimistic point not too far back where things appeared to be looking up in exciting ways. Then it seemed things just started slipping backwards. With the innumerable fiascoes and humiliations I have recently encountered, I started really examining the contents of my palm, and it seemed that what kept getting placed there was an all too familiar end of a proverbial stick: the short end.
I thought that a good way to deal with all this shit would be to, in proper self-deprecating fashion, rename it the 'erik' end of the stick. I could start seeing it humorously again, and maybe even, if I was diligent about it, friends and colleagues would adopt the expression so that we could all have a good, cathartic laugh about our daily stressors--anything from the mundanely irksome to the death-of-a-dream cosmic injustice. I had more than enough evidence to present to the Proverbial Re-imagining Committee: everything from travel experiences (layovers, delayed/missed flights, and being 'randomly' checked for every single connection including the now industry-standard removal of shoes to check for plastic explosives thanks to one daring Miami-bound passenger. Mark my words: in the very near future a terrorist will smuggle explosives aboard a plane in his rectal cavity, Medellin-traffic-school style, and when that happens, I will never fly again), to smile straining family get-togethers that led to mounds of renewed isolationist agenda as well as outright nightmares ( On Xmas eve grandma introduces the family to her new friend that looks exactly like her recently deceased husband, my grandfather, and I am the only one that seems to notice or begins crying uncontrollably. I wake and go to wash up for supper (not dinner in the Midwest, but supper) only to realize I am still dreaming. I wake up and go to wash another couple times before the dream really ends. I am still uncertain as to whether I am awake or not.), to awkward, tragically comic social interactions, romantic or otherwise, that I won't really go in to because I can already feel the reader growing nauseous, and these have historically been my most nauseating difficulties to address.
So, I was going to call the stick's short end officially, indisputably mine. Then my roommate Dave got robbed and carjacked at gunpoint while delivering pizzas last week. He's okay. His car was found a few days later. I will no longer be submitting my proposal to the PRC. My new campaign is for the decidedly ambiguous and unsatisfyingly wimpy anti-motto: I suppose things could be better/worse for everyone.