What if this really is as good as it gets?

There is a point at which you have to ask yourself if your circumstances are a product of happenstance or design. Is this how life is because of bad luck, or is this how life is because I am incapable of manufacturing anything better?

I'm waiting for my father's words to come true - "Hang in there, sister. Things are bound to get better."

Maybe that was his experience. As a child, he was thrust into a life with a father he barely knew, but things got better. During the war he struggled to survive and maintain his sanity, but things got better. He was fired, but he found a job that brought him extraordinary satisfaction, wealth and prosperity, and things got better. He thought if I just rode out the storm there would come a day when the skies would clear. It turns out he couldn't have been more wrong. I actually believed what my dad told me. In fairness to him, he believed it too.

There will be no happy ending here. It is what it is.

And it is a bitter disappointment.