Luck

She had had more than her share of bad luck. The end of a 30-year marriage that had her feeling like she'd wasted her whole adult life. The breast cancer. The multiple reconstruction surgeries. The fall that broke her shoulder.

It seemed like every time she started building back her life and her confidence some other trauma would come along with both guns blazing. Sometimes with actual guns. Nevertheless, she persisted.

The broken shoulder certainly did not feel like her luck was changing. But after three months, when her ortho switched her pain meds from opioids to gabapentin, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and thought, 'Have I lost weight??' A sidestep onto the bathroom scale confirmed that she had, in fact, lost 15 pounds. She even opened up the calculator on her phone to make sure she was doing the math correctly.

Now, she would never recommend the Opioid Diet to anyone, but thinking back on it, she realized that she had barely eaten anything for three whole months. The meds had her feeling like her entire digestive system had been filled with cement. Every few days she'd Door Dash something and eat half of it.

Her hair was growing out, from the super-short to a sharp bob that didn't quite reach her shoulders. And her hairdresser had done a fabulous job getting it back to her pretty natural color after her rash decision to bleach it all blonde. With the return to her old figure, without the extra menopause weight, she began to like how she looked again. (It had been a while.)

The weight loss felt lucky, but it didn't actually make her think her luck had changed. Until the unexpected checks started arriving.

The first two weren't exactly "unexpected." She had earned the payments, working nearly 40 hours at the polls on two election days two months in a row. Still, she took great joy in depositing them into her savings account.

But then came two in one day, totaling around $75 - one a pharmacy refund and one from a defunct insurance policy. She almost didn't open the pharmacy envelope because she thought it was a marketing piece. She hugged herself and danced around a bit at the unexpected windfall.

Winter came, with its welcome colder temperatures. She loved the cold. She'd always preferred fall and winter clothes. There's so many more options with layers - sweaters, scarves and coats. She'd spent the last year rebuilding her closets with new pieces that reflected her personal style. Putting together outfits had become a favorite way to express her creativity and identity, and she'd gotten really good at it. People at work (or the grocery store) regularly complimented her on her outfits or her hair color.

For Christmas she bought herself a soft cotton loungewear set - joggers and an oversized cardigan in a charcoal gray. She loved spending cold evenings and weekends in her cozy home with her dog, her cat and a heavy mug of hot tea. She had become the leading lady in her own film, and it was a warm and cozy Nancy Meyers flick.

She liked how she looked. And how she felt. And the world she'd created to live in.

When the third unexpected check showed up, she just sat at the kitchen table in shock. A large envelope from her insurance company stamped "Important information about your policy. Please open at once." She sighed. Already? She'd just cleared out her savings account paying her car insurance less than a month ago. Is that how they worked now? Sending the bill for the next one as soon as one was paid? Or maybe it wasn't even for her car. Maybe it was a premium for her life insurance, or homeowners, or flood insurance. The most shocking and frustrating adulting realization since she'd been on her own was that fully one-half of all that she earned was spent on some sort of insurance. What a racket. Such a scam.

'Might as well open it up and get it over with,' she thought. Get the payment on the calendar and figure out how to save the money between now and the due date.

Only it wasn't a bill. It was a check. A rather large check - four figures! She dropped into a kitchen chair as her mind began to race.

There was very little information included, other than a fragment of a sentence about a premium adjustment. 'Who should I call?' she thought. 'Who should I ask?'

Well, not State Farm, that's for sure. Fuck those dudes. If they were going to send her a check, she was going to deposit said check and good luck getting it back from her.

She looked closely at the check to try to determine if it was legitimate, searching for the kind of clues they tell you to look for on phishing emails. There was some sort of security mark on it, but who could say if it was real? I mean really - who has EVER gotten a CHECK from insurance??? Certainly not her.

So she googled, to see if there was some sort of statewide or nationwide refund the company had been required to pay. But nothing showed up.

So she deposited that sucker. Right into her savings account. Which had now more than built up what she used to pay her car insurance last month.

Her luck, it was changing.