Close call in Vulnerability

I’m watching the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympic Games at the moment. It’s the replay, as I wasn’t getting up at 2:30am to watch it live. It’s actually pretty cool, despite the rain. I can’t help but laugh as I wonder how my city is going to compete with this in 2032. Paris has so many iconic landmarks. Brisbane has… none? LOL. Lordy. Maybe ours will get cancelled when people are like, “Where’s that??” :D
Anyway, still LA to go in 2028 before here.

I almost got taken out by a motorcycle yesterday. I’m still not exactly sure what happened. I was waiting to cross at the lights with a bunch of other people, when I heard this scraping sound of metal against the bitumen, sparks flying behind the bike as it spun across the intersection in front of my eyes, the rider spinning on the road behind it. There was a trail of fuel as well. The light had only just gone green, which is why I’m confused as to how it happened. There was one car in front of the bike. He must have just hit the throttle far too hard - that’s all I can think of. There is a police station right on that intersection corner, and the bike and rider stopped spinning right before they were about to hit the cop cars, which are all lined up outside the station on that street.
Thank GOD the bike didn’t hit and flip over the curb. It totally would have hit us, and probably me first, as I was closest to it. I was leaning against the traffic light box, so maybe it would have hit that first. It also blocked my view of what initially happened. I only saw the bike spinning and heard the scraping.
I could see other people waiting to cross the road outside the police station were checking on the guy to see if he was okay, and he seemed to be. I could see and smell fuel, so I crossed the road. I was the only one who did. Everyone else seemed to stand there in shock.
(edit: it only just occured to me now that they may have hung around to give witness statements. That didn’t even occur to me. My anxiety was like, ‘get away from the spilled fuel’)

That’s how numb I feel these days. I probably just had a near-death experience but was sort of like, “Oh well, he’s okay” and kept going on my way home. What was I gonna do? He seemed okay. His bike was probably a bit worse for wear, and he didn’t hit any cop cars. It’s not like he would have had to go far to make a statement :P
But anyway, all I could think of was how I’d changed my routine slightly that day. I’ve been collecting 10c cans for far too long and decided to offload some of them, but I don’t have a car, so I opted to go into the city to use a reverse vending machine and figure out how it worked, so I know how to next time. Then I went to the gym afterward, but realized my bag that I’d taken with the cans in it wouldn’t fit in the lockers at the gym, and I don’t trust anyone (especially in the Valley) so I went home. And because of that sequence of events, I was close to getting taken out by an out-of-control motorcyle :O
I mean, what sort of Jebus-shit is that?

So yeah, that was a bit of excitement! I could have died, and I don’t think I’m being dramatic, as the bike spun at high speed by about 2 meters in front of where I was standing. The rider could have died. Thankfully he had a helmet on, which is the law here, but it doesn’t stop the electric scooter riders, who never wear them. But anyway.

That wasn’t the only thing that happened yesterday. It wasn’t a great day. My dad got his results from his PET scan and his cancer has spread to a “bad part” of his spine, which is exactly what the doctors were trying to prevent. His scan four weeks ago was completely clear. Now it is there. So in the space of a month, things seemed to have become dire. Mum didn’t text until the evening because she said her head was spinning with all the infortmation the doctors were giving them. The latest is that the doctor wants dad to take part in trials here in Brisbane (which would mean a transfer from Toowoomba) as his case is so rare. 1 in 200,000 people have his type of cancer. So naturally, they want to study it.
And probably quickly.

This feels like another nail in the coffin to me. I can’t help my mind goes that way, but when the doctors and my mum are saying “not good”, yeah. I don’t know much more more the cancer spreading means for my dad’s lifespan, but it does seem to be a lot closer now. I need to somehow mentally prepare myself for that. Somehow. I’m already dealing with my own anxiety and Luke’s sudden death. Now I have one that I’m expecting on my mind.

I texted dad last night. I wasn’t expecting a reply, but he did. He just said that he is feeling better, but that his PET results aren’t good. The text feels like he is far more mentally strong than I am. But he is religious and I threw mine away, so me finding another way to be spiritual is probably going to be good for me. Then I can go all cult-y in my entries :P

Last updated July 27, 2024