You Lose

Six months ago I had an incident with my car that caused me to miss several days of work. Absences are of course tracked and we are only alloted so many. No big deal. I wasn't at the point where I would get in trouble. Then I had my accident and missed a few days due to that.

I still wasn't in hot water yet. But I was very close. If I got too ill to come in or my car broke down or something it would have caused big problems (and the potential would exist for loosing my job). The situation caused an awful lot of anxiety. Needlessly I'm sure, but I still felt a big weight on my shoulders.

Meanwhile I'm trying to regain the confidence I lost in the accident. And little things kept happening - I dented my rental, the DMV threatened to revoke my licence if I didn't document that I was able to drive in spite of MS, the transmission on my car started acting up, I repeatedly overslept (but never actually ended up late)... I felt like there was some external entity trying to, if not outright steal my mobility, push me hard enough that I'd give up and surrender it.

After six months our absences 'fall off', and no longer are counted against us. Over half my absences fall off next week. I'm sitting in pretty good shape then, attendence-wise. I no longer feel like my job or my ability to get around easily is in jeopardy.

I don't really believe something out there was trying to reduce me to giving up. Proceeding as if there was gives me something to get angry at, though. It's hard to shake your fist at nothing. Much easier to vent at an imaginary personification of the situation. And, like now, you reach a point where it seems the floodwaters are receding and you can look the imaginary entity who has been playing that imaginary game square in the imaginary eye and say ...

you lose.