I bundled in my bed, still waiting for them to come and fix my furnace, when I was struck with an epiphany of sorts.
I mean here I am at seven in the am and I am thinking prolific thoughts.
At first, i wanted to blame it on the back pain. I mean, arthritis (Not to mention falling down the friggin stairs) when its roughtly 35 degrees outside and 50 degrees in is cause for aches and pains, but clear life changing thoughts? Me? Never!
Well, maybe.
Okay, I was out and about yesterday, lap top in hand, and trying to get some work done to try and finish one of the many books I keep starting. Adult ADHD anyone? While I was trying to come up with a new and inventive way to show shifter sex, one of my best frinds called and asked that I go out to lunch with her.
Okay, I agree. I think at this point a break would be good. I just expanded Unus form the 30,000 word short into a 60,000 word prequel, and added another chapter to Lunch, and am trying to finish Bacchus for Changeling, and something, anything for EC, and…. Okay. I need a break, The voices in my head are starting to sound like white noise.
So here we are, Trish, a new friend Latrice, and I, sitting in Ruby Tuesday’s discussing their diets of all things.Low carb this, fat free that, and getting the usual slinny jokes that goes along when I mention anything about diet and exercise. Lets face it, my idea of a balanced diet is a double stuffed oreo in one hand and a baby carrot drenched in French onion dip in the other while sipping on pineapple oj with a chocolate bar waiting in teh wings.]
But they look so depressed about it, I start talking, saying anything to make them happy, to ease their minds, to get a smile. And the more they don;t smile, the more depressed I get. SO I go thought the jokes that are fit for social acceptance and some that are not,( I got to tell you all that colored joke that some idiot racist told me and I reclaimed with much laughter and shocked faces), and then observations that are dead on about some people in the place, and finally I start on personal stories about the crap that has happened to me. And would you know my life’s misery is what made them laugh?
Depressing.
But they were finally smiling and looking happy and the more I got the skinny jokes, and the clumsy jokes, and the you were an idipt to try and talk to that person jokes, the more futile my life seemed.
I mean here I am, trying my best to pull myself out of a writers slump, trying to get my words out of my head and onto some paper, and I realize that my life can be summed up as one big joke.
Isn;t that a kick in the arse?
It was nothing that they said, its the same old jokes over and over. It was more of the realization that as much as I want to say its otherwise, I am not normal.
Then I stared thinking about all the things that led me up to this point, the arguments with publishers, the way I fizzled out when I missed my first deadline, the disappointment I see in myself when I can;t deliver like I could a few years ago, the people who told me to go and sit in the big kids table instead of expanding my potential writer-friend base, everytime someone has told me they hated me at sight but realized that they liked me after talking to me and left me wondering what vibes do I give off if people can hate me just by looking at me, oh there was that and a lot more going through my head and I swear for the first time in years, I wanted to cry.
And then I realized that I haven;t cired in years! Not when my Mom almost died, not when I lost my adopted baby nephew and couldn’t even go to his funeral for fear of breaking into a million pieces, not when my Dad got sick and they hid it from me, not when x box pulled out all the money form my back account and managed to get away with it even after lawyers were involved, not when i fell on my ass and broke my back, not when things didn;t quite turn out the way I expected them to or when some people slapped me int he face when I tired to be a friend, not even when they had to pull that basted dead tooth out of my head with minimal anesthesia cause I was already on meds for pain and pneumonia and loss of hearing.
So now they are at the salad bar and I am sitting at the table with a shell shocked look on my face. I don;t even remember them getting up. I am sitting there, thinking about the waste my life is and thought all of this my major stresser was because I couldn’t make my friends smile?
Then the most curious think happened.
A lady walked up to me and gave me a hug.
“You are trying to hard,” she said to me.”You can’t make sense of it if you dwell on it.”
Somebody tell me what the hell that means?
Dwelling on it is what you do to get to an answer! You turn it over, you examine it from every angle, you make notes to see where you went wrong and how you approach the next time, and…
You never really see the problems if you are picking apart what you could have done to prevent it. Sigh. I guess that would make me arrogant to a degree, thinking that everything is about me or my role in it.
I guess that means sometimes thigns just happen, no miracle, no fate, nothing you can do to change it…
I don’t know. But somehow her words made me want to cry.
And I said all of that to say that some woman whom I never met before almost moved my butt to tears over a few words to someone she will probably never see again.
And a day later, I am still thinking about what she said. My ass is still skinny and freezing while waiting for the furnace guy bundled under some blankets, my bank account is still empty, I am still looking at five stories on my computer screen with all the characters screaming in my head, my friends are still trying this low carb diet, my life still seems to be fodder for America’s Next Stand-Up Master or skits for comedy shows somewhere, and her words are still ringing in my head, making me want to reevaluate, well everything!
My conclusions are …
My life is a huge cosmic joke and I am fine with that as long as I can laugh with the universe.
Shit happens.
My friends and family are vastly importatn to me as is seeing to their well being. Mother complex maybe, but if I can make life a little bit better for someone, then I feel that I have done something that God intended us to do.
I am disorganized and need to get my act together much better than the minor improvements I have made.
I need to take my own advice and write something for fun everyday so that I will never forget that I came out laughing at my misfortunes and I will probably still be laughing when someone drops a house in on my head, so I had better learn to deal with the cosmic joke thing.
I will stop letting the words of those who hate me, those who feel that I have done them wrong without even telling me what I did in the first place, those who tell me to sit at the big kids table like I am not struggling like the rest of us, those who smile in my face and talk about me behind my back, those who dismiss me as a joke that my life can sometimes become, stop flooding my mind and making me question myself…and just go have a piece of cheese cake instead. Mmmm cheese cake.
I need to call my Mommy and Daddy more.
I will always be one pay check away from disaster, unless some long forgotten rich relative leaves me in their will when they kick off…and I really doubt that will happen, so don’t buy the Vivian Westwood Rocking Horse Shoes!!! No matter where you found them on Ebay and at what cost!!!
I will pull out ever erotic book cover, bit of research, photos of bondage and domination, and submission, whips, photo’s of drag queens I have made up, make-up, and wigs, and anything else fetish that I can find and lay it out so that the repair guy will get very uncomfortable and embarrassed and stare at Den in confusion, and hurry the hell up and fix my damn furnace! Subtle revenge is the best revenge!!!
I will write this woman’s words up and place then where i can see them daily.
I guess strangers can sometimes care and their words can have meanings that the never even contemplated. So I had better be careful what I say in the future.
If that ain’t power, then I don’t know what is.