A Realization

That graphic has been sitting in my downloads folder for weeks. When I originally ran across it, the message resonated, although at the time there was really nothing in my life it directly pointed to.

Oh, how things can change.

I realized this morning that emotionally I'm going through the same things with the loss of hour home as I did when I received my cancer diagnosis in 2003. It came out of nowhere and totally changed the direction of my—now our—lives. At first it was disbelief (although not totally), and then anger. Once a plan of action was in place, I felt somewhat better and was able to wrap my head around it, but not knowing where things were ultimately headed or the final outcome was still overwhelming at times.

The shock of the fire has for the most part worn off, but we're both dealing with the anger. As I mentioned in my last post, "Fuck James" has become our go-to phrase for pretty much everything at the moment and will unlikely remain so for many, many months as we begin to heal and rebuild our lives.

Right now it's a waiting game to see what the insurance company comes up with and how many of our items are actually returned from restoration. We've started looking at new digs (and actually applied at one place), but we're discovering that while places may be available, in the age of COVID it's not just a matter of walking into a leasing office, seeing a place and signing a lease. EVERYTHING is done by appointment, and so far only about half the places we've contacted have gotten back in touch with us. (This waiting period is akin to the time between my diagnosis and when I actually started treatment.)

Once we have secured a place, we can get out of the hotel, but what will we sleep on? What will we sit on? And since the leasing agents we've spoken to want us to move in sooner rather than later, this poses a real challenge.

Yes, if we secure a place we can go ahead and buy a few pieces of furniture in anticipation of reimbursement by insurance, and frankly I'd rather do that with my available credit than sending it down a black hole of continued life in this hotel, but until we actually sign a lease, nothing like that can move forward.

Additionally, we've been told we aren't going to be receiving any of our items from restoration until after the first of the year, so it's not just a few pieces of furniture we'll need to acquire to begin resettlement. It's bedding, towels, cooking utensils, dishes and silverware. All things we wouldn't have had to buy if it were not for the short-sighted "I can fix anything" mentality of our former landlord.

That's where the anger comes from.

Fuck James.

Our friend Cindy, who along with her husband, went through this herself many years ago and was not nearly as lucky as we were, tells me that eventually things will get better. She says that it will be fun to shop for new things once we have the insurance money in hand, and I tend to agree with her in that limited regard. But even buying new stuff promises to be a pain. I'm not looking forward to putting furniture together again. Or organizing a new house.  Or essentially having to move when we had no desire to move at all. Or any of the thousands of other things that will need to be done over the next six months.

Fuck James.

On the other hand, these are things I know we have to go through, as painful as they may be; the same attitude I had when the radiation treatments began ravaging my throat making eating even the softest of foods was unbearable at times. (One of the reasons god created Ensure, my doctors told me.)

Eventually, things did get better. I made it through the crucible and onto the other side. My throat healed. I received a clean bill of health from my doctors, and life went on. I didn't want to get cancer, but looking back on everything now, it was obvious that changes needed to be made in my life, in me, and that was the catalyst necessary to bring them about.

Hopefully the same will happen as Ben and I travel through this crucible. I think we both sensed that change was needed, but at the same time we needed a bitch slap from the universe to bring it about. Hopefully this journey—much like my cancer journey—will leave us better people when we emerge from the other side and years from now will ultimately allow us to look back on it and see it as—if not necessarily a good thing—at least a necessary one.