Well readers, things have changed quite drastically since my last post in January, where I brutally admitted that life had nearly thwarted me, but I was going to stay in the wild blender of it all just to see what it whipped up.*Let me note that it is easy to feel positive and gooey like this (or the tone of the rest of the post) in retrospect...like "Oh that suffering was so worth it for what I am blessed to have now...." like after the worst hike of your life, where you cussed the whole time but after are like "What a great hike!" after you chugged Gatorade and can gorge on pizza...but PLEASE believe when I was entrenched in that sticky sadness I was not adorable or grateful. I was secretly glaring at wedding invitations, foaming at the mouth really, and throwing very intense metaphorical darts at adorable couples holding hands and having Friday date-nights in flannel shirts and skinny jeans that fit appropriately. I did have brief moments where I would rise above, throw on a sports bra and hike, feeling wildly independent for about seventy-four minutes, wherein I would promptly plop back down onto the couch, light a cinnamon candle, and mock the douches on Million-dollar Matchmaker once again, while ignoring my phone and the outside world (there would usually be a bag of Munchies or chocolate milk involved in this scenario...depending on depression levels).
I remember my mom just holding me in December, like I was a Koala, whose bones might break if you squeezed it too tightly, thinking to herself, "This little wild little soul....will she make it or should I be concerned she likes Sylvia Plath so much?"
Now, I am happy to say, I am feeling like I am one of the luckiest young ladies alive. Sure, I don't have the riches of a Hilton sister (or, thankfully, any inappropriate adult films), or the writing success of mid-drift-disaster favorite Lena Dunham, but I have found myself in quite a joyous state just being all the little corners and edges of disheveled little me, who has decided she could be five pounds thinner if she stopped eating beer and Mexican food.....but what kind of life is that?
What is it, do you say, that has made me so incandescently happy? Well, it is perhaps hard to point at just one thing, but instead it is a myriad of things piled like a beautiful Lego tower above me that has made life oh-so-juicy.
First:
I got my new pup Amelia. Now, if you haven't owned a dog, my advice to you is WAIT AS LONG AS YOU CAN! That doesn't mean I don't love my sweet rescue girl, but goodness is it expensive and stressful to have this creature with big sad brown eyes biting her squeaky stuffed squirrel in a frenzy every time you get dressed. You know she's screaming inside DON'T LEAVE ME DON'T LEAVE ME! I mean, she is needy....in a way I'm sure some supermodels are, though Amelia eats twice a day....so more often than the models. All this being said, she is an absolute joy and I have decided she is my life partner so I will just have to mold my life accordingly. She spoons with me, greets me like I've been gone for a thousand years, and I can truly say I am her FAVORITE person in the WHOLE world. I don't think I can say that definitively about anyone else's feelings about me. It is still weird to me that when we're in public, she follows me like we have magnetic noses. One time, she even chewed through her leash and chose to stay by my side sweetly waiting for my slightly tipsy self to notice she was loose. So, as much as my bangs have shriveled from the stress of her, and her hairballs float around my house like tumbleweeds, she is one beautiful thing jumped out of my autumn of sadness last year right into my now-fur-coated lap. (Hey...at least we are both blonde so that hair matches?)
Second:
I moved into an adorable old house which is most definitely housing hundreds of rats beneath it, has a precarious deck that certainly is not up to code and may or not collapse like in Beethoven 2, and has no central heating or a/c, but oh it is just so adorable. After work, when the weather is nice, I sit out there after a long day and play fetch with Amelia, watch the sunset, and just think of how lovely it is to have a yard and space to call your own (even if it's rented). I have spent nearly all of my savings at Target buying accent items and rugs, but I do believe my house with E has become a central spot for gatherings, and with the famously trite outdoor lights and mint green furniture, I think we will have many beers there over the next year and probably more than one account of vomit under the deck, which will be found days later in a waft of stench from being baked in the afternoon Texas sun.
Third:
I finished grad school! After schlepping through nearly two years of perhaps the WORST graduate program in existence, where I learned basically nothing and accrued thousands of dollars in debt, I finally finished and hopefully did so while somewhat maintaining a kind demeanor...though it was hard not to turn to my cohort and not have my eyes roll back into my head. If we had one more teacher who said, "Wow, I feel like your cohort knows more about literacy than I do....." I was going to literally throw my textbook across our dank classroom just so it got some actual use. All I can say is, I hope no one really expects me to be any smarter or competent concerning the literacy needs of children after this program....because the only real thing I learned is that a Freebirds burrito was necessary for me to survive four hours of hell on a Tuesday night without losing my shit.
Four:
I got my head out of my arse and got on a plane. Then another plane, and another. I wiped my savings away and traveled my little heart out. I bought a Target journal, wrote about the smells, sights and terrible capri pants that men wear in Europe, and remembered just how blessed I am to have summers off, a job I love, stamps in my passport, and most of all friends and family whom I love and cherish. I got to feel small again, but not in a curled-up-in-the-fetal-position-red-eyes-small....but the hiking the Norwegian fjords as they eclipse you in beauty height and color and remind you are important but also just another story in a very, very long leather-bound book that may or may not every be read.
OK....what else am I forgetting? Oh yes....one very important thing that has knocked my socks right off, across the hardwood floor, and into the corner of the living room. We will talk of that another time.....
Enough sappiness...let me end with these two quotes by the oh-so-fabulous and raw Anne Lammot, whom I adore:
"Your
problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you
have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good
and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or
whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about
who you are."
"Joy is the best makeup."
