Saturday, July 22, 2017

Silver Linings

As I sit here, watching Fight Club for the nine millionth time, a thought rings through my head. For whatever reason, Fight Club has always had a resonance for me that I never really understood. Very little about it has any direct connection to my life. But, I sit a little longer, and eventually the movie gets to the scene about Tyler's job as a projectionist. As the scene concludes, it occurs to me, "it's probably a good thing that I have the kind of epilepsy that's controllable by medicine."

I expressed this thought to my wife. Initially, she didn't see where I was going with the thought until I explained it to her.


Let me preface by saying: I've never particularly considered myself to be a nice person. Indeed, when a co-worker recently told me that one of the new hires was talking shit about my particularness for writing, I responded back to him that I'm not trying to win a popularity-contest. When it comes to work, I'm there to get shit done, and get it done well. If my standards annoy some people, so be it. Again, not seeing myself as being nice, I feel free to do things that don't align with being a "nice guy".


At any rate, the explanation. I point out to her that having medicinally-manageable epilepsy meant that I always sort of had to worry about retaining (financial) access to medicine and the specialists that prescribe them. Epilepsy medications can be ridiculously expensive (one medication I was on, at one point, was $1500/month). The easiest way to do so being to have the kind of employment that typically includes health insurance. Being hirable to those types of jobs generally means not being able to engage in the more anti-social thoughts that randomly enter my brain and rattle around.

Hearing that explanation, my wife laughed. But, she also agreed with the line of reasoning.