Redemption
Hey. You made my day more than you know. I can't even describe how much that meant to me. But I can try. Here goes.
As I stayed up last night, I dreaded waking up today. I knew that the day was going to suck, and suck industriously. I put off sleeping because the longer I stayed up, the more time there would be before reaching the next day. I occupied myself with various tasks, but none of them kept me completely from having a blue tint. I did make some headway on a song project which involves some sadness that I started around Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was a day on which I felt disconnected from many things, and as a whole felt pretty nasty. I dreaded today, my birthday, because it was going to be a day off from work. This would have been a boon if there were any plans. But there were no plans. If my social interaction with friends were a pie, the number of interactions not initiated by me would represented be a single piece. I invite myself places, I invite people here. I drop in on folks. Nobody drops in on me or invites themselves here, and the number of times folks invite me to do something with them are few in number.
I foresaw yet another day off on which I stay home and entertain myself. Most random days off (where I haven't initiated a plan with someone) I would maybe work on a project, maybe watch something, maybe play a game, maybe work on budget or groceries or cleaning. And while there were productive things that were on my list for today, there was no eagerness to accomplish them.
I've never lived in the same town as friends before, and I anticipate times in the future where this will not be the case. So my motto for this year is "seize the day." Make the most of what opportunity exists at present. Make plans with people, enjoy their company. Don't sit alone when you'd rather be with the folks you enjoy being with. I think since I live with no family to worry about, my day to day concerns are simpler than most everyone else. While I relish the quiet and solitude of my apartment, the isolation drags. So it is logical that I, although not outgoing by nature, would be compelled to seek time with people more than they would do in return, even if there was a roughly equal mutual interest in friendship by all parties involved. I don't mind initiating so long as I know that other folks are mostly equally interested in my company as I am in theirs.
But between various things that have gone on in my mind, I have begun to grow somewhat sick of feeling like I'm trying too hard. I know that there are good reasons for why there is an imbalance of needs and energies and whatnot, and that's fine. That's life. But it being a day off of work, and my birthday, I knew that the logic would not overrule my feelings, especially since I think I've probably been depressed recently anyway (for reasons that are mostly unclear and won't be addressed presently regardless). I saw the choices: be alone all day, and wind up depressed from various factors including loneliness, or be alone for most of the day and then invite myself to someone else's house. Which, while it would be much superior to being so lonely, it would serve to produce a greater level of depression at the red bottom line in my social budget.
There's an old family birthday tradition: birthday cereal. Being a frugal family, we had certain cereals we would buy, and usually not the sweet kind with flashy colors. And if we did ever get anything like that, it would be devoured in short order. So the day before someone's birthday, they would be allowed to accompany my mother to the grocery store and select any box they desired. That box was not to be opened until their birthday, and only that person would be allowed to consume it. Well, I bought myself some birthday cereal of a sort which I don't usually get.
Upon waking this morning to my phone alarm, I rose and took care of some immediate concerns. I returned to bed and opened the laptop. Various Facebook wall postings with happy birthday messages. Which in the birthday greetings world are worth about a tenth of a cent each. The site tells you when your contacts birthdays are, and then you go type "happy birthday"? Not that I'm saying I'm ungrateful for at least that much effort, but come on... At any rate, the birthday cereal box sat unmolested in my living room. I had no interest in consuming any of it. It wasn't that I wasn't hungry. I just had no appetite. And anything sweet would have tasted unpleasant in my mouth, like a cookie that one has to hurt feelings and cause pain in order to obtain. It just tastes foul. Such was my feeling.
After bumming around some RSS feeds and reading the latest from the fail blog, I saw that it was about noon. Two things were on my list for today: going to the bank to get cash for the trip, and going to the post office to mail some cards and some other items. But those items and cards were not ready. Rosemary messaged me and talked for a bit, as Alessandra did. It took some of the edge of loneliness off of those moments, but only the edge. I strongly appreciate my friendship with Rosemary, as we serve as mutual shoulders for each other. Today she was mine.
One of the things which I wasn't thinking about too much was that since today was the nexus of a number of different causes of sadness, the nasty depression and loneliness were taking deeper roots. And they would be weeds along the side of my trip North, making it harder to enjoy. The trip was going to boost my long term mood - or at least not cause any damage to it.
As I wandered through the first few hours of my day, I pretended to wish for someone to come visit me through their own initiation, and today especially. I dreaded having to spend the day alone, or having to invite myself somewhere else - either option, as I said earlier, would only increase the levels of the negatives. I say that I pretended to wish because being the enlightened cynic that I am, I knew that hoping for something would do little to accomplish it, and un-met desires do not make a person happier. So I thought about wishing to see people, but I don't know if I could say that I allowed myself to actually concede that the likelihood of it occurring was anywhere greater than a few percent. And folks that know me know that I don't put huge stock into annual celebrations in some sorts of situations. To be fair, I am 21, and there wasn't a major hullabloo in the community over the birthdays of younger people, so it's not that I have extremely low expectations of people - it just didn't seem to me that birthdays were a big deal to my local friends. So even though it's a day off (which nobody really knew but me) and it's a birthday, how I could I honestly expect anything? Not logical. So I didn't. The only reason that I would even admit that it seemed even a few percent possible that anyone would do anything is because Sarah asked me what my hours were going to be for today. But that's not enough data for any conclusion, and frankly I simply didn't want to dwell on daydreams. Imagining people dropping in with foods and staying for a few hours, imagining real local hugs, imagining anything like that just leads to disappointment. I daydream of many things, and none of them happen. That's just how life works.
Well.
About quarter to three this afternoon, my phone rang. Could be a few different people. Probably Becca, my cousin, whom I will see during my trip North. She called when I was doing christmas cards and she offered to call back later. There was a tiny voice in me that said it might be someone wanting to get together. Maybe. You never know. I looked at the exterior screen on the phone. It listed some number that wasn't in my phone already, and it said Indiana. Probably one of those random weird calls that occasionally comes from unknown numbers. Usually some foreign voice says something, and I hang up. But it's worth answering, 'cause you never know.
"Come open your door." It was Victoria's voice. Of course. They lived in Indiana, and the other cell phones show up as Indiana. Hm. Open the door? I didn't know how to feel. I mean, I knew how to feel, I just didn't want to think one thing was happening (like someone coming over to visit) when they're only dropping off a box or something. So I went downstairs and opened the door to my apartment building. Nobody was on the porch as far as I could tell. I looked up the street, and saw something so incredibly... good.
Sarah, Hannah, Victoria, and Jolene were heading down the road toward my apartment. Upon closer inspection, I saw that each of them were wearing moustaches. This merited a facepalm. When I saw them outside the door to my place, I felt many things. But the biggest feeling of them all was exactly like the feeling one gets when one is a young child and one has very specific and strong desires for a particular toy, but doesn't really think that it's actually possible to get it. And then the kid, with disinterest, opens some box cleverly disguised in a funny shape. And when their eyes see what's in the box, a dimness in their heart blazes to vibrance, and it shows in their face.
I don't know what I looked like, but I made sure to express myself at least physically by hugging every one of them. Hugs are good for everyone. Earlier today, I wished for birthday hugs - the real kind that are not letters on a screen. And I got them. And I gave them. And I think that those five minutes were the most dramatic upward mood swing I've had in my rememberable life.
It did take a few minutes for me to get used to the fact that they had come, and come to see me on my birthday. I was somewhat unhappy at the mess in the apartment, but it took very little effort to stop caring about that.
There was chatting. There was the making of fudge. With five cooks, some details of the fudge-making were fudged a bit, overlooked, and done poorly. But the result was tasty, so who cares? The result was chocolate fudge with candy cane bits inside and on top. I'm going to bring most of it to my family. I was going to make the fudge alone if necessary, but I don't think it needs to be said that I enjoyed doing it with people.
I pulled out Munchkin for a minute, but after a moment of thinking about that, the consensus shifted to Texas Hold 'Em, which turned out to be a very fun alternative. A few folks needed a refresher (or first time lessons) so we went over some of the details for a bit. Then the game begun. For the first while, Victoria was dominating.
Hannah, in her sleepiness and inestimable wisdom, found herself with a rather good hand, or so it seemed to the rest of us. She raised the betting several times. After the fifth card, she decided that she had had enough of the low stakes, and declared that she was all in. The cards on the table were (in unflushable suits): J, 4, 10, 2, and Q. After the rest of us laid down our hands, and went over who had what, Victoria was so far winning with a pair of Queens. Hannah was the last to reveal her hand, and did so with a strong sense of confidence. "I have a straight! Queen, Jack, 10, ...OH SHIT!"
In her hand were a 3 and 4.
Although it felt like that had been here longer, they left after being here for over four hours. And after another round of hugging and their departure, I was not left with dregs and loneliness. Rather, the impact of their surprise visit had turned my day around so completely that the warmness in my heart remained for quite some time. And even when the excitement dimmed, I was still quite happy. In a calm sort of way, but happy nevertheless.
(And as an added bonus, my friend Jon called me this evening and we talked for almost an hour about old times, new times, and plans for getting together when we're both in Maine later this month. But mostly we talked about old times.)
So, in short, I expected today to suck, for various reasons. And it started out doing so. And then it turned into a magnificent heap of awesome. And this was your doing. I thank you for it.
As I stayed up last night, I dreaded waking up today. I knew that the day was going to suck, and suck industriously. I put off sleeping because the longer I stayed up, the more time there would be before reaching the next day. I occupied myself with various tasks, but none of them kept me completely from having a blue tint. I did make some headway on a song project which involves some sadness that I started around Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was a day on which I felt disconnected from many things, and as a whole felt pretty nasty. I dreaded today, my birthday, because it was going to be a day off from work. This would have been a boon if there were any plans. But there were no plans. If my social interaction with friends were a pie, the number of interactions not initiated by me would represented be a single piece. I invite myself places, I invite people here. I drop in on folks. Nobody drops in on me or invites themselves here, and the number of times folks invite me to do something with them are few in number.
I foresaw yet another day off on which I stay home and entertain myself. Most random days off (where I haven't initiated a plan with someone) I would maybe work on a project, maybe watch something, maybe play a game, maybe work on budget or groceries or cleaning. And while there were productive things that were on my list for today, there was no eagerness to accomplish them.
I've never lived in the same town as friends before, and I anticipate times in the future where this will not be the case. So my motto for this year is "seize the day." Make the most of what opportunity exists at present. Make plans with people, enjoy their company. Don't sit alone when you'd rather be with the folks you enjoy being with. I think since I live with no family to worry about, my day to day concerns are simpler than most everyone else. While I relish the quiet and solitude of my apartment, the isolation drags. So it is logical that I, although not outgoing by nature, would be compelled to seek time with people more than they would do in return, even if there was a roughly equal mutual interest in friendship by all parties involved. I don't mind initiating so long as I know that other folks are mostly equally interested in my company as I am in theirs.
But between various things that have gone on in my mind, I have begun to grow somewhat sick of feeling like I'm trying too hard. I know that there are good reasons for why there is an imbalance of needs and energies and whatnot, and that's fine. That's life. But it being a day off of work, and my birthday, I knew that the logic would not overrule my feelings, especially since I think I've probably been depressed recently anyway (for reasons that are mostly unclear and won't be addressed presently regardless). I saw the choices: be alone all day, and wind up depressed from various factors including loneliness, or be alone for most of the day and then invite myself to someone else's house. Which, while it would be much superior to being so lonely, it would serve to produce a greater level of depression at the red bottom line in my social budget.
There's an old family birthday tradition: birthday cereal. Being a frugal family, we had certain cereals we would buy, and usually not the sweet kind with flashy colors. And if we did ever get anything like that, it would be devoured in short order. So the day before someone's birthday, they would be allowed to accompany my mother to the grocery store and select any box they desired. That box was not to be opened until their birthday, and only that person would be allowed to consume it. Well, I bought myself some birthday cereal of a sort which I don't usually get.
Upon waking this morning to my phone alarm, I rose and took care of some immediate concerns. I returned to bed and opened the laptop. Various Facebook wall postings with happy birthday messages. Which in the birthday greetings world are worth about a tenth of a cent each. The site tells you when your contacts birthdays are, and then you go type "happy birthday"? Not that I'm saying I'm ungrateful for at least that much effort, but come on... At any rate, the birthday cereal box sat unmolested in my living room. I had no interest in consuming any of it. It wasn't that I wasn't hungry. I just had no appetite. And anything sweet would have tasted unpleasant in my mouth, like a cookie that one has to hurt feelings and cause pain in order to obtain. It just tastes foul. Such was my feeling.
After bumming around some RSS feeds and reading the latest from the fail blog, I saw that it was about noon. Two things were on my list for today: going to the bank to get cash for the trip, and going to the post office to mail some cards and some other items. But those items and cards were not ready. Rosemary messaged me and talked for a bit, as Alessandra did. It took some of the edge of loneliness off of those moments, but only the edge. I strongly appreciate my friendship with Rosemary, as we serve as mutual shoulders for each other. Today she was mine.
One of the things which I wasn't thinking about too much was that since today was the nexus of a number of different causes of sadness, the nasty depression and loneliness were taking deeper roots. And they would be weeds along the side of my trip North, making it harder to enjoy. The trip was going to boost my long term mood - or at least not cause any damage to it.
As I wandered through the first few hours of my day, I pretended to wish for someone to come visit me through their own initiation, and today especially. I dreaded having to spend the day alone, or having to invite myself somewhere else - either option, as I said earlier, would only increase the levels of the negatives. I say that I pretended to wish because being the enlightened cynic that I am, I knew that hoping for something would do little to accomplish it, and un-met desires do not make a person happier. So I thought about wishing to see people, but I don't know if I could say that I allowed myself to actually concede that the likelihood of it occurring was anywhere greater than a few percent. And folks that know me know that I don't put huge stock into annual celebrations in some sorts of situations. To be fair, I am 21, and there wasn't a major hullabloo in the community over the birthdays of younger people, so it's not that I have extremely low expectations of people - it just didn't seem to me that birthdays were a big deal to my local friends. So even though it's a day off (which nobody really knew but me) and it's a birthday, how I could I honestly expect anything? Not logical. So I didn't. The only reason that I would even admit that it seemed even a few percent possible that anyone would do anything is because Sarah asked me what my hours were going to be for today. But that's not enough data for any conclusion, and frankly I simply didn't want to dwell on daydreams. Imagining people dropping in with foods and staying for a few hours, imagining real local hugs, imagining anything like that just leads to disappointment. I daydream of many things, and none of them happen. That's just how life works.
Well.
About quarter to three this afternoon, my phone rang. Could be a few different people. Probably Becca, my cousin, whom I will see during my trip North. She called when I was doing christmas cards and she offered to call back later. There was a tiny voice in me that said it might be someone wanting to get together. Maybe. You never know. I looked at the exterior screen on the phone. It listed some number that wasn't in my phone already, and it said Indiana. Probably one of those random weird calls that occasionally comes from unknown numbers. Usually some foreign voice says something, and I hang up. But it's worth answering, 'cause you never know.
"Come open your door." It was Victoria's voice. Of course. They lived in Indiana, and the other cell phones show up as Indiana. Hm. Open the door? I didn't know how to feel. I mean, I knew how to feel, I just didn't want to think one thing was happening (like someone coming over to visit) when they're only dropping off a box or something. So I went downstairs and opened the door to my apartment building. Nobody was on the porch as far as I could tell. I looked up the street, and saw something so incredibly... good.
Sarah, Hannah, Victoria, and Jolene were heading down the road toward my apartment. Upon closer inspection, I saw that each of them were wearing moustaches. This merited a facepalm. When I saw them outside the door to my place, I felt many things. But the biggest feeling of them all was exactly like the feeling one gets when one is a young child and one has very specific and strong desires for a particular toy, but doesn't really think that it's actually possible to get it. And then the kid, with disinterest, opens some box cleverly disguised in a funny shape. And when their eyes see what's in the box, a dimness in their heart blazes to vibrance, and it shows in their face.
I don't know what I looked like, but I made sure to express myself at least physically by hugging every one of them. Hugs are good for everyone. Earlier today, I wished for birthday hugs - the real kind that are not letters on a screen. And I got them. And I gave them. And I think that those five minutes were the most dramatic upward mood swing I've had in my rememberable life.
It did take a few minutes for me to get used to the fact that they had come, and come to see me on my birthday. I was somewhat unhappy at the mess in the apartment, but it took very little effort to stop caring about that.
There was chatting. There was the making of fudge. With five cooks, some details of the fudge-making were fudged a bit, overlooked, and done poorly. But the result was tasty, so who cares? The result was chocolate fudge with candy cane bits inside and on top. I'm going to bring most of it to my family. I was going to make the fudge alone if necessary, but I don't think it needs to be said that I enjoyed doing it with people.
I pulled out Munchkin for a minute, but after a moment of thinking about that, the consensus shifted to Texas Hold 'Em, which turned out to be a very fun alternative. A few folks needed a refresher (or first time lessons) so we went over some of the details for a bit. Then the game begun. For the first while, Victoria was dominating.
Hannah, in her sleepiness and inestimable wisdom, found herself with a rather good hand, or so it seemed to the rest of us. She raised the betting several times. After the fifth card, she decided that she had had enough of the low stakes, and declared that she was all in. The cards on the table were (in unflushable suits): J, 4, 10, 2, and Q. After the rest of us laid down our hands, and went over who had what, Victoria was so far winning with a pair of Queens. Hannah was the last to reveal her hand, and did so with a strong sense of confidence. "I have a straight! Queen, Jack, 10, ...OH SHIT!"
In her hand were a 3 and 4.
Although it felt like that had been here longer, they left after being here for over four hours. And after another round of hugging and their departure, I was not left with dregs and loneliness. Rather, the impact of their surprise visit had turned my day around so completely that the warmness in my heart remained for quite some time. And even when the excitement dimmed, I was still quite happy. In a calm sort of way, but happy nevertheless.
(And as an added bonus, my friend Jon called me this evening and we talked for almost an hour about old times, new times, and plans for getting together when we're both in Maine later this month. But mostly we talked about old times.)
So, in short, I expected today to suck, for various reasons. And it started out doing so. And then it turned into a magnificent heap of awesome. And this was your doing. I thank you for it.