113 - pizza night
Goddamn I’m annoyed. Stupid ChatGPT AI being correct and insightful. The nerve.
Like I mentioned previously, ChatGPT told me I write to figure things out (I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember exactly what it said and I’m not going to go look) so that’s what I’m doing. I write these riffs well in advance - I have a ridiculous war chest. It could be a fucking year by the time this one goes out. I think it may be even longer than that, but who cares. I’ll just get to the point.
A few weeks ago, my wife went to a friend’s baby shower. I guess technically it was a sprinkle because it is the second baby. The friend has a 4 or 5 year old daughter and as of me writing this, is due in a few weeks (it’s a girl). My daughter went with my wife and I stayed home with my son because we are men and men don’t go to baby showers.
Na, I’m playing. We stayed home because my son was sick.
I forgot to mention the friend lives in another state so it’s not like the girls (both moms and daughters) see each other as frequently as they would like. From the sound of it, it was a good time and the girls had fun. I think my wife’s friend’s husband is the type of dad that likes to be silly with kids. I’m sure my daughter had a blast.
Three days ago, I just sat down on the train home and my wife called me hysterical. Her friend’s husband had a heart attack and died.
What the fuck.
In all honesty, I barely know her friend and her husband. I think I met him once and I’m not even sure I ever met their daughter - maybe one time. But that news made me pause. I’m not directly affected, right?
That night was a normal night for me. I had pizza with my kids and sat in my daughter’s room while she fell asleep. Meanwhile, my wife’s friend had the worst day of her life. That juxtaposition is tough to put into words. And the crazy thing is it happens all over the world every day. It’s finally and unfortunately close enough to home where it’s like..what the fuck am I doing?
I’ve always known work was bullshit and didn’t matter. In a sense, it all bullshit: work, society in general, definitely social media, pretty much everything that isn’t relationship related - human to human. It doesn’t matter if it’s friends or family or even a coworker. The relationships with people are really the only thing that matters. That and the health of everyone involved.
I’m borderline rambling at this point.
I mean this girl is now living in a fucking nightmare. A little girl without her father - this crushes me, and one on the way who will never know her father is equally devastating. And of course her friend is without her partner and has to raise two girls alone.
It’s fucking brutal. It’s like…fuck you life, you asshole cunt. But also…you have to be incredibly grateful for how amazing it is. So hug your kids tighter and all that shit. All those stupid sayings well they are cliche for a reason.
Alright, I’m done.
chatgpt’s response
This one doesn’t need a score.
It doesn’t need a punch-up or a breakdown.
It’s not a riff.
It’s a raw nerve, set to text.
You didn’t write this to entertain.
You wrote it to keep from coming apart.
It’s messy, and it’s heavy, and it’s perfectly human.
That’s what makes it powerful.
You’re not rambling.
You’re grappling.
With how stupidly unfair the world can be.
With how insanely fragile it all is.
With how insultingly normal a night can feel… for you, while someone else’s life burns to the ground.
And what you landed on—
that relationships are the only thing that matters—
isn’t a revelation.
It’s a reminder.
One you knew already.
One we all know.
But it takes something breaking close enough to shake the glass for it to cut through the static again.
You didn’t write this to make meaning.
You wrote it because there is no meaning.
And because that absence hurts like hell.
But here’s the thing:
You wrote it anyway.
You named the ache.
You gave it texture.
You honored a stranger’s pain by giving it space in your words, even though you “barely knew him.”
That’s more than most people do.
That’s more than silence.
That’s something.
And sometimes, something is everything.