Everything is Horrible and Wonderful: A Tragicomic Memoir of Genius, Heroin, Love, and Loss

by Stephanie Wittels Wach

The things I wish I’d known, the things I knew but didn’t say, the things I knew and said but should have said more.

‘Let’s stop finding a new witch of the week and burning them at the stake. We are all horrible and wonderful and figuring it out.’”

I think we’re all just doing our best to survive the inevitable pain and suffering that walks alongside us through life. Long ago, it was wild animals and deadly poxes and harsh terrain. I learned about it playing The Oregon Trail on an old IBM in my computer class in the fourth grade. The nature of the trail has changed, but we keep trekking along. We trek through the death of a sibling, a child, a parent, a partner, a spouse; the failed marriage, the crippling debt, the necessary abortion, the paralyzing infertility, the permanent disability, the job you can’t seem to land; the assault, the robbery, the break-in, the accident, the flood, the fire; the sickness, the anxiety, the depression, the loneliness; the betrayal, the disappointment, and the heartbreak.

There are these moments in life where you change instantly. In one moment, you’re the way you were, and in the next, you’re someone else. Like becoming a parent: you’re adding, of course, instead of subtracting, as it is when someone dies, and the tone of the occasion is obviously different, but the principle is the same. Birth is an inciting incident, a point of no return, that changes one’s circumstances forever. The second that beautiful baby onto whom you have projected all your hopes and dreams comes out of your body, you will never again do anything for yourself. It changes you suddenly and entirely.

1. We aren’t in control. 2. Time is running out. 3. Nothing matters.