A Metaphor of My Life

Frequent, longtime readers of I’ll Think of Something have, more than likely, by now been able to figure out the one overarching theme to my life: I am an abject disaster. Seriously, my life is a mess. Eric Syndrome dominates every facet and I can’t escape its wrath. It is an affliction I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. The most irritating part of it all is that instead of something going seriously wrong I’m just constantly faced with these moments of unpleasantness that may slowly drive me insane. It’s like I have someone poking me in the back of the head continuously until the bore a hole through my skull when it would be much easier for someone to take a baseball bat to my head and put me out of my misery in an instant.

Let my take you through my morning, at that end of this you’re going to think to yourself, “well that was relatively innocuous, stop being such a baby.” What you need to keep in mind is that this wasn’t an aberration; this is an example of the type of thing that happens to me all the time. Anyway, I’ve been staying at a friend’s house for a few days, as a result of living out of a bag, and being absentminded, I find myself unprepared for certain situations. Last night I realized that I had forgotten contact solution. Luckily one of my hosts happened to wear contacts himself and was able to provide me with some, problem solved easily enough. What I failed to realize is that there are two kinds of contact solution. Jason’s brand of choice is the sort that requires an enzyme disc at the bottom of your case to neutralize the chemicals in the solution. Without said disc your eye immediately catches fire upon contact with the contact. At least that’s what it felt like while I was learning this lesson the hard way. My right eye teared up like I was watching Rudy sack the Georgia Tech quarterback while everyone chanted his name, and my eye was bloodshot. I looked like I’d been taking bong hits for three days straight; not a good office look. I frantically tried to remove the fire lens but when you’re going through an eye trauma apparently your body’s natural reaction is to blink furiously. That makes it difficult to remove a contact lens. Fortunately the severe pain went away after about 30-45 seconds. I thought that was the last of it. “That wasn’t so bad,” I thought to myself. I can deal with a few seconds of pain if that’s what it’s going to take to get my contacts in this morning, so I went for the left eye. My assessment was wrong. The pain didn’t just magically disappear in my right eye, what actually happened is that all the blinking popped right lens out of my eye and down the drain of the sink. I was able to figure that out by the fact that my left eye still hurts right now.

Ok so now I have a problem, I have a set of contact lenses that may have just made me legally blind, so I probably shouldn’t try and wear them. Normally this dilemma has a simple solution: I should just where my glasses to work. Um yeah. The thing about that is, remember a few days ago when my girlfriends car was broken into and a bunch of my belongings were stolen? One of those items happened to be my glasses. That plan is out the window. The shattered rear driver’s side window to be exact. On to plan B. I have two week disposable lenses, it’s not a problem to just pop in a new pair right? Oooh, one thing though. Remember that I’ve been homeless for the last two weeks and I don’t really have easy access to anything I own? That includes my contact lenses. Happily my stuff is at Matt’s house, which is in the same neighborhood. Even more happily he is awake when I call him and not heading to work for a little while. Unhappily I can’t drive over there because I have the vision of a fruit bat and would likely pull a Billy Joel and drive into someone’s living room. So I have to walk 2 miles, blindly over to Matt’s at 6:45 in the morning to get new pair of contacts. I have to cross some heavily trafficked roads and all I can barely see cars coming. Somehow I Mr. Magooed myself through traffic and made my way over to his house, but not before walking two blocks too far. Why did I walk two blocks too far? Because the street signs are just high enough on the poles that I can’t read them without glasses. My plan for the morning was to wake up at 6 and be at work by 6:45, thus allowing me to be home from work early enough to enjoy a relaxing afternoon. I didn’t get to work until 8:30, meaning I won’t get home until after 6. I hate my life sometimes.

I do however love the symmetry of it all. Everything comes full circle. You have an event that seems singular and final: some asshole breaks Leslie’s car window and steals my stuff (which is all utterly worthless and useless to them and yet has a very high value to me), a police report is filed, and the window is fixed. You think it’s over right, oh no friend, just when I need a pair of glasses the most this jumps up and bites me in the ass. Then my homelessness comes into play. Seemingly unrelated crappy events affecting other crappy events to make them even crappier, my life is an episode of Lost. Here’s the real kick in the junk of it all though: today is my Birthday. Happy f’ing birthday, at least the day can’t get any worse.