CHICAGO, Ill. — Somewhere in Illinois, one person recently experienced the financial equivalent of being hit by lightning while holding a winning lottery ticket inside another winning lottery ticket.

The anonymous winner of the $1.04 billion Powerball jackpot has finally come forward, about a month after matching all six numbers in the Aug. 12 drawing.

And apparently, even winning a billion dollars doesn’t immediately make reality feel real.

“I initially didn't believe I had won, so I called a family member to confirm it,” the winner told the Illinois Lottery.

Fair enough. If your phone suddenly told you that the $2 piece of paper in your hand was worth more money than most people could spend in several lifetimes, “this is probably some kind of mistake” would be a pretty reasonable first reaction.

The winning ticket was purchased at Hy-Vee & Fresh on North 36th Street in Quincy, Illinois. It was a Quick Pick — one randomly generated line of numbers costing exactly $2.

“I never could have imagined that a $2 purchase would lead to a $1.04 billion jackpot,” the winner said.

No kidding.

The jackpot ranks as the second-largest lottery prize ever won in Illinois, the eighth-largest Powerball jackpot and the 15th-largest lottery jackpot awarded in U.S. history.

But here’s the interesting part: the winner didn’t immediately show up at Lottery headquarters wearing sunglasses, carrying a suitcase and asking where the Lamborghini dealership was.

Instead, they spent several weeks talking to lawyers and financial advisers.

Which, when hundreds of millions of dollars suddenly land in your lap, is probably one of the least exciting and most sensible things you can do.

Illinois allows winners of prizes worth $250,000 or more to remain anonymous, so the identity of the new multimillionaire will remain private.

The winner said they were still trying to process what had happened.

“Even after claiming the prize, I'm still processing the news and experiencing the full range of emotions that come with winning a billion-dollar jackpot — from disbelief and shock to overwhelming elation.”

And that’s the strange thing about life-changing money. The bank balance can change instantly. Your brain generally takes a little longer to catch up.

$1.04 Billion Is Not Actually $1.04 Billion

There is, of course, one rather large footnote attached to that billion-dollar headline.

The winner chose the lump-sum option of $450.5 million instead of receiving the advertised $1.04 billion through annual payments over decades.

Then taxes arrive.

Illinois withholds 4.95% on lottery winnings, while federal taxes take another substantial bite. According to USA Mega's Powerball Jackpot Analysis, the winner could end up with roughly $261.5 million after federal and state taxes.

Which sounds significantly less impressive than $1.04 billion until you remember that it is still two hundred and sixty-one million dollars.

At that point, complaining about taxes probably becomes difficult without sounding ridiculous.

Illinois winners normally have 12 months to claim their prizes, but anyone wanting the lump-sum option must claim within 60 days of the drawing.

The winner therefore had plenty of reason not to spend too long staring at the ticket wondering whether the whole thing was real.

The Gas Station Won the Lottery Too — Sort Of

The winner wasn’t the only person benefiting from those six numbers.

Hy-Vee & Fresh, the Quincy retailer that sold the ticket, received a $500,000 bonus from the Illinois Lottery.

Not quite $261 million.

But probably enough to make selling one $2 ticket a memorable day at work.

Chicago Prize Center Manager Amanda Crosas said the atmosphere surrounding the claim was noticeably different from an ordinary day at the Lottery.

“You could feel the excitement in the room — we all had a little extra bounce in our steps that day,” she said.

Crosas, who has spent eight years processing lottery claims, described a billion-dollar jackpot as something completely outside the ordinary.

Millions of People Played. One Person Got the Absurd Ending.

The jackpot run began May 4, following an April 29 drawing in which winners in Indiana and Kansas split a $143.4 million prize.

Over the following months, Illinois players bought more than $53.8 million worth of Powerball tickets.

Those purchases generated around $26 million for public education, according to the Illinois Lottery.

Illinois players also purchased more than 965,000 winning tickets, collecting nearly $8 million in non-jackpot prizes, while retailers earned about $2.5 million in commissions and bonuses.

And then one random $2 Quick Pick took essentially everything to another level.

That’s lotteries in one sentence: millions of people spend a few bucks imagining what they would do with impossible money, and occasionally one person wakes up and discovers the impossible-money problem has become extremely real.

Because once you have $261 million, the question is no longer whether you can afford the house, the car or the holiday.

You can.

The harder question becomes what the hell you actually want your life to look like now that money is no longer a convincing excuse.

The winner called the jackpot “a blessing” and an “extraordinary opportunity.”

And financially, it certainly is.

But the $2 ticket was probably the easy part.

Figuring out what to do with the next several decades — and several hundred million dollars — is where things get interesting.

The next Powerball drawing is Wednesday, Sept. 16, with an estimated annuity jackpot of $271 million.

Powerball tickets cost $2 and are sold in 45 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Drawings take place Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10:59 p.m. Eastern Time.