prompt: wait, title: don't wait up in misc. flash fiction

The good news is that your last nervous breakdown could be your very last nervous breakdown. The bad news is that there’s a couple of different ways that scenario could actually unfold, good or ill, depending on how you think your life’s supposed to go. The better news is that ultimately you get to decide how you think your life’s supposed to go, it is, you know. You get to decide.

The bad news is that no one’s ever going to pluck you out of the ether and give you the life that you thought that you deserved, not now at thirty-five or seventy or fifty. The good news is that it wasn’t happening when you were eighteen or twenty-two, either. It’s not that you are no longer clever or pretty enough for it to happen anymore, it’s that those kinds of things don’t happen to anyone outside of bad novels and even worse movies. It was never going to happen. The better news, however, is that even if you’d gotten what you thought you’d wanted, you’d either figure out that it’s not what you really what you wanted or (if you’re really crazy) figure out that you need even more than you’d imagined. Even if this world actually contained that kind of magic, you’d either end up completely lost or a walking sucking wound and either way is tragic. As to which would be the worse, only you get to decide for yourself.

But the man inside your three in the morning television set, he says “wait! don’t answer yet!”

The good news is that wherever you think you go when you die… heaven or hell or the dirt or wherever… all that will be left of you when you are gone is the good you have done for people and the bad you have done for people. The bad news is that wherever you think you go when you die… heaven or hell or the dirt or wherever… all that will be left of you when you are gone is the good you have done for people and the bad you have done for people. The better news is that you get to decide that one too. It won’t be the money or the things, it will be the balance of your actions lingering on those still inhabiting this rock, this plane, this brief and desperate fantasy.

The bad news is that you were sold a bill of goods about the narrative your life was supposed to follow and it didn’t happen. The good news is that everyone else bought into it too and it failed everyone who wasn’t born with money same as you, it wasn’t your fault, it was all a scam. The better news is that now you know and you can live your life on your own terms. The worst news, though, is now you know so you have less of an excuse if you don’t go out and create your own life meanings.