(Cross-posting to PTMYB and to Flickr, because I’m a cow that way.)
If you watch cartoons the way Lloyd and I watch cartoons, you have probably seen all of the old Tex Avery Droopy cartoons about 5,000 times. Thus you would be familiar with the theme of Droopy attempting to fight a bull/slay a dragon/win a competition to win the heart of a princess/starlet/some other beautiful girl, only to fail, repeatedly. In every cartoon, Droopy sits down, pulls a photograph of his lady love out of his coat pocket, cries, "Oh, my darling, I’m a failure," and bursts into sobs. As poor Droopy cries his heart out, the bull/dragon/nogoodnik peeks over his shoulder, pulls out a pencil and draws a mustache on the picture of the girl, laughing meanly as he does so. At that point, Droopy dries his tears, walks up to the villain, stares eyeball-to-eyeball and announces, "You know what? THAT MAKES ME MAD." Then he proceeds to beat the hapless villain senseless, swinging him back and forth by the tail, smacking him roundly and then throwing him off into the horizon. He gets the girl, of course.
Dear friends, it’s been a long, tedious 2007, pretty much a never-ending font of that moment when Droopy is convinced he has failed in his quest. It has been a year of disappointments, losses and heartbreaks, and each week has been worse than the one that preceded it. The few real moments of sweetness I was able to achieve vanished into a puff of recrimination, failure and hostility within days, if not hours. This past week, for reasons too numerous—and personal—to enumerate, has been a horror show, one in which I have not been able to sit still for fifteen minutes without bursting into tears, where the voices of more than three people at a time made my skin hurt (a real problem if you live in a city of eight million people), and where I could actually feel my own body compressing, curling in on itself, like a boiled shrimp. Riding the train into work yesterday, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the subway window, knitting a sock. My head was bent, my shoulders hunched to my ears, my shapeless black clothing doing me no favors. I looked ancient.
Today started pretty much as yesterday had: a series of slow, dreadful dreams; oversleeping to the point of missing the gym; dragging myself into the living room, hoping that the tv and the coffee and yesterday’s NY Times food section would provide even a little distraction from the terrible thoughts pinballing around my head; a commute into work that made my skin hurt again; a day full of LuthorCorp-based indignities, an urge to bolt for the door and run, run until I could find a car or a bus or anything that would get me as far away from my physical surroundings as possible—last time I checked, I was in Thermopolis, Wyoming—and only, only after I’d exhausted myself from running, would I call Lloyd and tell him to get his ass on a plane and run away with me. I had spent the previous week trying to sort out why I was on such a precipitous slide, alternating hours of frenetic talking with hours of Easter Island silence, back and forth with Lloyd, with Momerina, with Bunni, with my blogging pals, with my good friends at the office, with girlfriends and boyfriends online and IRL. I had talked and talked and talked, raged and wept and popped Excedrin and ranted about how I felt like I was catching a cold without actually catching a cold. I made the decision to postpone the LSAT until December, knowing that there was no way I could take this pinball brain into the test center, and then instantly hated myself for postponing. I had fallen asleep sitting up, laid awake listening to myself blink, went to work and stared at nothing for hours. Nothing helped.
At least I thought nothing helped. I suspect now that I was wrong, that all that talking and raging and Easter Island silence were pushing me toward something that I just couldn’t see. I don’t know. What I do know is that at 4:30 this afternoon, something snapped, or clicked, deep inside. I thought of every moment of pain, fear, sadness and dread that have been clanging in my head, and I heard a voice: "You know WHAT?"
This, dear friends, is officially It. No more tears. No more insecurity. No more terror. No more worrying that I am a horrible fraud, and that it’s only a matter of time before everyone discovers what a nematode I really am. No more use of words like "nematode" in self-description. No more crying over anything that happens at work. No more worrying if I could have effected a different outcome on circumstances outside my control. No more contorting to please people who will not be pleased. No more fat jokes. No more turning away from mirrors. No more wincing at my reflection anywhere. No more running away from cameras as if they were live grenades. No more apologizing for baking. No more apologizing for knitting. No more indifferent friendship. No more curling up, shrimplike, when I could be running my fingers through Lloyd’s hair. No more watching bad reality tv when I could be on the phone with my parents. No more missing birthdays. No more late Christmas cards. No more thinking about the old boyfriends who broke my heart when I should be running logic puzzles. No more sleeping in when I could be in the weight room or on the track or in the pool, swimming the silly little crawl that shouts out "First time swimming in 30 years," but still gets me from one end of the pool to another. No more shapeless black clothing. No more shrinking away when someone on the street makes a comment about my ass, as though it were my fault for existing. No more false cheer. No more lost bonuses. No more sloppy seconds. No more no more.
My beautiful friend Shauna is a walking sandwich board for the power of saying yes. There are better things to which to say yes than all of the above. This starts now. It’s high time that I got the girl. (So to speak. 