Disaster is Coming

I like disasters. They get me excited. I am always exited at the beginning of a war. Usually the way I imagine it, all the pain and suffering doesn’t happen to me, it happens to other people. I watch, sitting down, while the images of others are projected onto a screen. I see them cry. I see the rubble. It can not be denied that the loss is terrible. And sometimes, in my dark heart, I wish that the disaster was happening to me.

I wish to experience a hurricane, a flood, an earthquake, a war or an economic depression. I wish for a catastrophic change in my life, something to get my adrenalin going, something that would cut me off at my knees, make me weep in despair, make me collapse in a heap on the floor. I want to be poor. I want to be desperate. I want to be horrified. Maybe I think that if I were in the middle of a disaster I would feel more alive. Am I less than fully alive right now? Yes. Give me the worst challenge of my life. Let me be tested and see whether or not I stay sane or go insane, whether or not I live or die.

Currently I am obsessed with the news that the country may be headed toward economic collapse. I follow the bankruptcies, and the fall, one after the other, of major financial institutions. I watch the decline of the stock market. I read the quotes of big men, men who have manipulated millions and billions of dollars, men who can see the future. I believe those who prophesize doom. It feels like every day draws me nearer to my doom.

In the last recession my husband saw his company let go half of their employees. Everyone who had been employed for less then five years was let go. My husband was second from the bottom of the list. In a recession things aren’t selling and people aren’t buying. Manufacturing slows and in order to stay profitable, manufacturing companies must shrink in size. Now my husband has been with his manufacturing company for a little over three years. Is that enough time to be considered valuable? Can his job only be done by him or can it be done by other people?

I fantasize about what it will be like when my husband looses his job and there are no more jobs to be found. I wonder what the cheapest food there is to eat. Rice and beans? Pasta? Tough or fatty meat? I have made my husband promise me that if he should lose his job we will go to the local soup kitchen every day to eat lunch. That would save us a lot of money. Of course I will have to buy bargain shampoo and house supplies at the dollar store, wear no more perfume, and buy all my pets the cheapest pet food. My dog has delicate intestines, she will probably develop loose stool or diarrhea. I will no longer be able to afford new contact lenses so I will feel ugly wearing old glasses. My husband and I will cut each other’s hair. Perhaps I shall merely allow mine to grow long. If our pants or shirts become faded and frayed we will buy no new ones. Only when something develops a hole will it be thrown out. We will no longer be able to afford new books so instead we will go to the library and see what they have there. We will reuse vacuum cleaner bags. We will reuse tea bags and perhaps run our coffee machine on the same grounds more than once.