Hey there, it’s me, your favorite kicking can T.G. Ape. I know you know what’s going on with me down here, so there’s probably no point in a recap. Suffice it to say that it’s been pretty crappy, for a pretty long time, and by the way, yes, I have noticed.

I know – I know – that life was never designed to be fair, and that good guys don’t always win. But I thought – maybe I shouldn’t have – but I thought I was finally pulling myself together, finally getting close to being able to stand on my own two feet, after having to rely on other people for financial support for so long.  And then, ten months ago, this happened.  And all of my efforts since to try to hold together some semblance of an independent existence have been casually and callously thwarted.

I don’t understand why you keep taking opportunities away from me. I don’t understand why I keep getting knocked down. I don’t understand why, as soon as it looks like something good might be happening, and as soon as I start to think that something will work out for me, it all falls apart. I don’t know what you expect me to do in the face of all this. I don’t know why I have to suffer like this.

Of course, I’m talking about this shoulder business, but honestly, it started even before then. I tried career after career, pushing past obstacle after obstacle, but inevitably, the obstacles became so large and so numerous that I was forced to turn back. I tried to do the right things, but it doesn’t seem to have mattered. I tried to be a useful, happy person, but no sooner did I manage to find a little piece of happiness, you came along and took that away, too, like a bratty little kid slapping a plate of cake out of my hands on to the floor. Not because he wanted the cake; just because he didn’t want me to have it.

When do I get to have some cake? When will this relentless, soul-crushing ordeal end? I know you don’t punish people – I know that’s not how you do things – but it’s hard not to feel like I’m being punished. I had a decent life, plenty good enough, anyway, and now nearly all of it is gone. It’s hard not to worry that what little remains will be taken away from me, too, and then I will be truly destitute, with nowhere to go and no-one left to take care of me.

God, I’m so lonely, so desperately lonely. I was searching through my phone for people to call yesterday (until the touchscreen stopped working, and thank you for that, because I was really hoping to get to spend $250 I don’t have to get another phone) and I realized that most of the numbers in my phone are for people I don’t talk to any more, from a time when our lives were on similar tracks, until I was rudely bounced off of mine and into oblivion. They’re all still motoring along, succeeding in their lives, but not me.

My life came to an abrupt and unceremonious halt last October, almost ten months ago. No explanation, no veritable cause and effect relationship, no downward spiral that needed to be arrested – no reason at all. Or so it seems, because if there is one, which I am seriously starting to doubt, it’s not been revealed to me.

Well, I want to know. The only thing worse than dealing with everything that has happened to me is the uncertainty and unpredictability of it all. What’s next? What else are you going to take from me? Are you even going to let me finish my second college degree? Are you going to provide any opportunity at all for me to work? Are you going to give me some sort of social life at some point, more than the vanishingly few friends I have left, or, heaven forbid, a romantic partner? Or am I going to be alone forever, a pathetic, disabled, single woman, incapable of supporting herself, invisible to everyone else, unable to accumulate anything other than dust bunnies and cats?

Please, God, please tell me what I’m supposed to do. I can’t keep going like this. It’s going to be a year pretty soon, a whole year of my life stuck in the quicksand of this chronic injury, and you haven’t thrown me a single rope that hasn’t broken as soon as I grabbed a hold of it. You know that I can do what I’m told. I’m a good soldier. When is it my turn to be in your grace again? Because I can’t live the rest of my life like this. Some days, I don’t even know if I can handle another day of it.

Please, just tell me when this all is going to end. I don’t care if I don’t get back to the same physical capability I had before. I don’t care if I’m disabled and/or in pain for the rest of my life. I just need to know when you’re going to stem the tide of horrible things that keep happening so I can finally pull a life, or some semblance of it, back together and start progressing again.

I mean, you’re GOD, for heaven’s sake. If you can’t do something about all of this, then who or what can? Although I suppose you don’t want to tell me that, because then I’ll go over and pray to whatever that is, and ditch you and all of the sadism you’ve visited on me over the last several months.

Because I’m done. I am really and truly done, as of right now. It’s pretty clear that you haven’t done a f***ing thing for me and I’m over it. All you have been willing to do is to release me to the whims of whatever demon comes along that wants to take a swing at me, and probably just laughed and laughed the whole time. I am sick at being at the business end of your malevolence.  

I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for things to start going my way.  It’s my turn, goddamit.  Stop throwing fairy dust everywhere but here.  My needs are pretty simple, when it comes right down to it.  And I’m willing to work for good fortune. And even if I weren’t, it seems like the least you could do was give me a leg up.

Because if this is what your protection and care is like, then thanks, but no thanks. I’d be better off fending for myself, letting things happen at random, than continuing to roll snake eyes on the weighted dice you keep handing me. Because even you have to admit that if this were all truly random, the likelihood of this particular cascade is vanishingly small.

So it’s time you start holding up your end. Stop sitting on your hands up there and do something. Because I don’t feel like you’ve done anything for me, not one single thing that could come close to putting a dent in all of this suffering. I feel like you’ve abandoned me. And you haven’t given me a single reason to think otherwise at any time in the last ten months.

And if you can’t, or won’t, help me, then the least you can do is stop hindering me. Just go away. Leave me alone.

-TGA