Beautiful, Terrible

A previous post was the first glitches I've ever mentioned. It was, however, worth noting because it was one I'd ruminated over the longest thus far. 

I suppose I have to bluntly recap. I'd told someone my ex-boyfriend should be dead, that I should not have a head injury, he should, that none of this was fair. And then I mentally checked out after essentially making that statement. 

I called my best friend Laura when I got home. I have a few best friends, but God help them if they ever mention another friend besides me. I'm mostly kidding. So, these are decades-long, long-distance friendships, Laura being the one I chose to reach out to regarding my so-called glitch. I'm calling this statement about Adam a glitch still, despite being still deeply upset half an hour later. 

While Laura truly is a remarkable friend and human being, nothing we discussed will ever exactly be put in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book, especially with my attempt at rehashing it. Fairly unabashedly, I repeated what happened. There was the "this is normal" talk. And then a "you're fairly outspoken and say some off-the-wall stuff normally, Mel" talk. And the "you are a good person" close. 

Except, almost comforted, I decided to double down, instead. 

With fresh tears, the new revelation was this: "But I meant it. And I mean it. Why should he be fine? He's the one who should be suffering. Not me."

And here's where things get a little difficult. I'm attempting to surmise someone else's private school of thought that they'd probably never assume I'd repeat. And I'll probably do it poorly. Let's let her off the hook if this doesn't come off as I wish it would. This is Laura's school of thought, according to me.

There are people who think about kicking a dog and never kick the dog. There are people who never think of kicking a dog and never kick the dog. Who does she admire more? The one who thinks yet does not act. 

Without using Laura's words any further but my own, I'll say that we discussed this, but I ended with my own conclusion. I wished my pain on someone I do not like. I know the idiom is, "I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy." Except I did. Maybe not my worst enemy, but admittedly someone I do not like. There's no "kick the dog" moment here. I'm not God. I don't get to choose whether it was me or someone I don't particularly care for who was driving on that road that day. 

My takeaway was that my friend was essentially saying, "Kiddo, you have a good track record of being a decent person. You wished bad on someone else. You're not okay right now. Don't be so hard on yourself." 

While I would make a pretty lousy God right now, I think Laura would make a pretty good one.

I close on why I only classify this, even this, as a glitch.

I'd wanted to write an entry a day since the accident, a goal I haven't even come close to achieving. I pulled out my laptop to make a quick note on something that had just happened before bed when I saw I'd made the post earlier. I only needed to see the title to remember. But here's either the beauty or the horror. Like every other glitch I never even had time to document, it had already slipped from memory. This is how so much goes. To only say there are emotional outbursts and short-term memory issues can't quite describe what happens. 

When I was fired from my job, I sobbed for about thirty seconds. I used a few choice words in the privacy of my home with only my mother to overhear them. And within half an hour, I knew I'd been fired, except that it didn't matter. That I'd processed it isn't exactly an accurate statement. It's not exactly that I always forget, either. But moments that should be profound, aren't. They slip into a sort of fog, sometimes unimportant, other times nonexistent. Again, a process beautiful or terrible, or beautiful and terrible.