I tend to catastrophize. I call it going to the dark side, and I do it at mach speeds. If it rains, I expect a flood. If I hear a new noise in the house, I know it will explode. Things like that. I don’t want to do it, I don’t like that I do it, but it's just part of who I am. I don’t know if it’s innate or learned. I’m pretty sure it’s learned, this distrust, but I also know I’m a born realist. As I age and get a little more fed up with each passing day, I see my line between realism and pessimism getting fuzzier. Could be old eyes, though. (Optimistic?)
Words cannot express how much gratitude I feel about my new freelance gig. I took a year off from technical writing and am actually enjoying it again. I have always known that it suits me – this organizing other people’s words, this doing what nobody else wants to do, this fitting together of techie puzzle pieces – but this job came at a time when so many people have been laid off and is remote and 30 hours a week and just grand. The first two weeks started like that 8 seconds in bull riding – just GO and hang the hell on – but then last week, my third week, felt like the bull was over it and just sat down for me to get off. Of course, I just knew the project was over. On hold. Virus, you know. We’ll call you when we pick back up (which never happens). For two days, I was so sad. I’m typically fine in this job hand I’ve been dealt – always looking for my next contract, gig, job (I’ve recently learned that this suits me well, too), but this opportunity was just too good not to grieve for. The Program Manager scheduled a catch-up call, and I steeled myself for the news. But it was all fine. She had been busy on another project and thought she was a bottleneck, so we reworked the pipeline process and all was good again. It was never not good, but I took it there.
One thing I do now when I feel like things are hitting bottom, like I just can’t rise to the occasion again, I think back to two times in my life that never fail to turn my funk into “This is nothing. I did that”.
First is the memory of a particular, but typical, weeknight after The Devil Neighbors moved in and destroyed my lovely little home life in 2013. They moved in, but they lived outside. Homes were older and close together, and their driveway, where they liked to hang out, was the distance of a ruler from the side of my house. This night’s picture: the meth-addled mother holding her newborn, playing basketball, and talking on the phone, two relatively small children dancing in the driveway to music blaring from the detached garage that the father had converted into an outdoor funhouse, the father and another man playing pool and very much enjoying some sort of game on the mounted television in said garage– and all this? At 1:30 AM. The father posted this picture to his Facebook page when they went to the park for a picnic one day. (I kept an eye online for any party announcements, but every day was a party, really.) I had a full year of this, but for some reason, this one particular Tuesday night stands out as my rock bottom.
And second is the memory of the Halloween 2014 week I spent in a 9,000-year-old, Reynoldsburg, Ohio, LaQuinta Inn with nothing but my purse, my phone, and what I had on (which did not include a coat). I was asked to vacate the house I had shared with a human - I use the term loosely - at about 8 o’clock one night, and by ask I mean, “Get the fuck out”. My mother had done something similar to me when I was five, so I’ve always been a “leaver”. I must leave first, don’t ask me twice, I couldn’t care less, good riddance, you’re not the boss of me, etc. So, rather than wait around for the 2-day cooldown, I left. Childish, but I was a little mixed up at the time for reasons I would understand later. This picture: sitting in my car on a 40-degree day, steeling myself to walk across the Walmart parking lot in a t-shirt, sweatpants, and slippers to start my new life from a motel.
Those two images come swiftly now, and now, I’m grateful for both. They have given me a courage of sorts. A new level of self-reliance, of confidence. And even a laissez-faire. I still feel all the feels of defeat and dark sides, but I rally, because I know: I did that. This is nothing.
It has, however, had a darker side, too. The yin and yang, eh? Rock bottom moments affect one’s ability to find joy. I have zero motivation to connect, to try, to experience, to explore, to see. I often put my trust in good things ending horribly. I read a sweet book called Sarah, written by a lovely friend, Dannie Woodard. Sarah lost her husband back in the homestead and prairie days and had no choice but to return with her young son to the city, to her parents’ home, to begin anew. She thought she’d try to make a living from her sewing. Dannie wrote, “She had no more dreams, but she had a goal.” I also read this online recently: The currents of time have altered the path that lays before you. The ripples on the waters still move along the wind oblivious to the turmoil left in its wake. No longer will this path take you to the dreams you once thought would be yours.
I do still have a dream, but I’m old enough now to know it’s just that. I definitely have a goal or two or twenty. The paths have definitely changed and will continue to change for all of us, because we change. I want to remember how lucky I am to have had rock bottom moments that have given me inner security and strength, and that goals are enough, and that paths are negotiable and often liquid, and that I did that so this is nothing. I want to remember how to just have a nice day.