Because we live in time, there has to be a best and worst.
Today is the worst day of my life.
Worse than the last time I saw my father alive. Worse than the time I brought my oldest daughter to see him, knowing it was her last time, and having to explain through her tears on the plane ride home why grandpa had gotten so small and sick and that, yes, she would probably not see him again.
Worse than the day they misdiagnosed me as having hepetitis C and having less than a year to live, the nurse suggesting on the phone that I "get my affairs in order" while I sat at my desk in my office at work feeling my life had become science fiction. Worse than the day I was humiliated in front of my entire team of 100 engineers by being publically passed over for a promotion everyone, including me, had simply presumed I was getting.
My startup company officially died. It's the second time I have lost a company, but it gets no easier to have two and a half years work and dreams come to a halt. We had a luncheon planned for all of us who stayed till the bitter end, to pledge our eternal friendship to each other and to thank each other for all the loyalty. And someone decided to inform and invite all of the people who had previously left the company -- those who presumed we had no chance and so went to greener pastures while we stayed behind and struggled. Even one guy I had to fire for poor performance showed up to be present at our final hour. The most humiliating experience of my professional career. Why those people would do that is borne of a hatred we cultivate here in silicon valley. The desire to know we are right at the expense of others.
After two weeks of living through the holidays, keeping our dissolution a secret so as not to ruin the holiday plans of our employees, knowing that on this day I would have to return and inform everyone who had been loyal that our investors rewarded their loyalty by demanding their money back, and so there was no severance pay, no continuation of medical benefits, only severance -- and they had to sit through their pizza lunch staring at the people who had come to say, "I told you so." Thus they were rewarded for their loyalty and belief in their abilities, and the team's.
And I had to confront my dear spouse of 23 years with that, with everything, with the concept that my cardiologist has crammed into me -- continuing my life on its current path will most certainly lead to an early demise. That the therapist he suggested I see to work on my stress is prescribing I leave my marriage to save the life of my spouse as well as my own. So like my beloved, loyal employees whom I could not protect from the trivialities of the venture investors, her life was not spared the inevitable wrath of change.
Today I don't sleep, despite taking a double dosage of sleeping pills, wondering if I should go try double again. I've no desire to die, but I wonder if I can bring myself close enough to it to stop myself from dreaming. Even when I do sleep, I simply relive my day as my imagination would have had it.
The company died and a storm took out the power on my block. Dropped a couple trees on houses down the road. We went for 4 days without electricity, my kids sleeping at neighbors' homes because we had no heat. All the food in the refrigerator spoiled. Ice melted and leaking onto the hardwood floors. A microcosm of a hurricane we endured in 1996, when our home was spared damage by hurricane Fran, but lived in a house transformed into a cave by cessation of utility service. Water. Gas. Electricity. We had nowhere to go then. Downed trees blocked the roads. Nowhere to go living by candlelight for 4 days while all the physical components of my life came apart -- my garage door, broken so that without the power of the electric door lifter, it was impossible to open, and so I was grounded. My heating system, damaged by the power surges so it did not come on when the power came back. The V-belt in my car broken, disabling the vehicle so that when the garage did open the car would not run. The laptop computer I brought to the ice 4 times, giving up the ghost within hours of the new year while I was composing an e-mail to friends asking for their help.
I am in a hell of my own design. For surely, I am in this house, in this job, this town, in this marriage because of my own decisions.
Today I presume there is no getting "well". There is no getting better. Only more grief for everyone I love as I fail to bring home a paycheck. Fail to bring home all the love I should. Let this be a lesson to all of us.
Like they discovered in New Orleans, nobody can be trusted to survive a hurricane, even one you make yourself.