s02e15 - "good news"
you got good news today. you found out from your smartwatch as the dentist, halfway through a clean, told you to rinse. the subject line of the email had the words "(good news)" at the end. you instantly imagined the best case scenario and regardless of those two words in the subject, you prepared yourself for disappointment.
you skimmed. you skimmed again. you skimmed a third time and by the law of averages by this point you should fully comprehend the text. "we would like to offer you this role etc etc"
paying for the appointment your hands shook from the effort of clenching your fists while the instruments ground against your teeth, and you wondered earnestly if you were dreaming.
You shared the news with more people, but it didn't start to feel any more real. You went about your day at work with a particular vigor that you've been missing lately. You started to panic because you hadn't heard back from them again— would they just offer the role to somebody else? Your brain kept making excuses for why this can't be real.
why?
because you can't accept that a good thing could happen to you. not without a cost.
you haven't gotten good news like this in what feels like months now. maybe even a year, maybe even longer. something unexpected, some reward for hard work. you're used to celebrating other's successes. never your own.
before you got that email, you spent the morning thinking the same thing on a loop:
"I think I'll die soon. I think my body will just stop, like a wind-up toy left too long, and I'll die."
and you flipped through the years in your mind like pages in a book and thought,
"what a waste."
used to surviving. scraping by. not sure if you're even capable of living your own life.
your relationships always marked by some terminal condition, bringing you joy before turning malignant.
no wonder you're not used to good news. you haven't gotten much of it.