How I ‘role’
In this season of being thankful, I’m just grateful that things aren’t worse. (Hey, I had to come up with something to be happy about!)
I seem to have developed a case of acid reflux because I’m so behind at work. I had a project delegated far beyond my realm, and I got it back and my brain has since atrophied. Which means, the time that was to have been saved is now being spent salvaging the errant project. And when will I have time for the other project? *pops antacids*
Because I blog when I’m under pressure, I keep thinking about “Grey’s Anatomy” from the other night, how Meredith noted that she was the one who told a woman her husband is going to die, so she’d better come to the scene of the accident to say goodbye to him.
But what struck her is that this is her role in that woman’s story — Meredith would always be the woman who delivered that terrible news to her.
And it makes you wonder who you are in people’s stories, and hopefully it makes them wonder what role they will always play in yours. Are you the friend who kicked someone’s ass when they needed it, the great love who happened along when someone had all but given up, the wrench thrown into an otherwise-working machine or the one who could only wake somebody up by walking away?
I try to forget things and people that didn’t matter. But at the year anniversary of losing my grandfather, I pray that the string of asshole Veterans Hospital doctors, especially the one whose negligence ultimately killed him, feel the ugliness and disappointment that I have for them every day because their role in his life was ending it and the role in my life was ruining it.
Kind of makes you wonder what YOUR impact in others’ lives has been/will be. Personally, I don’t think I have any reason to have someone refer back to me as the crazy one or the useless one, although who only knows what role I have been cast in. I think back on so many people in my past and I guess, for one or two, I just hope that I’m “the one who got away” whom they shouldn’t have let go.
Hell, I look into my present and future, and I hope that I won’t be the one who got away from them, that they are smart enough to figure it out before I lose patience and give up. Further, I hope I’m not left pining because there was something that I didn’t do, either.
The good news is that in different plays, we are cast in different roles. I read a really great article on “Your Jerk Boss is Her Favorite Uncle”, and while I’m lucky to have an awesome boss, it reminds you that the douchebags you deal with in day-to-day living are actually pretty special to someone out there somewhere.
Perhaps it is not that they are downright douchebags after all but, instead, are only capable of douchebaggery when it comes to you but they are the center of the universe to someone else.
Which means that the people who make me slam my head off of blunt objects might be good wives or boyfriends or parents. Just like they probably view me as a cranky perfectionist who makes their lives hell because I demand excellence, they probably don’t know that I’m the person who will hold up traffic because I see a person crossing the street and I won’t move till I know they’ve gotten across safely.
Do we ever really know when we were, in fact, the ones whose existence changed someone’s life for the better? Do any of us who have a list of people we would thank at the Academy Awards ever let them know that they are on that list? Or are we saving it for a time with fanfare, if we ever plan to let them know at all?
It’s sad how people will get on the horn with each other to tell them off because of how they feel they’ve been wronged, but a simple call to say that “You were the reason I improved myself in this way …” is so much harder to make.
I guess the hopeless romantic in me will always be waiting for the one who not only becomes a better version of themselves because of me, but who isn’t afraid to say it. Because not changing someone’s life for the better is a prospect I’m more afraid of facing than death itself.