“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.” ~Bill Vaughan
I was in the middle of some long ass piece of wistful deep hearted writing about the last 10 years. About how I used to be 16 and now I’m 26 and holy shit that’s a mighty jump. It was going to be about how much has happened and the sheer balls and heartache and abject fear that went into it all. How everything happens for a reason and it would be tied up in a neat little bow with some lesson at the end. Something about how much I’ve learned and that while there were some absolutely horrific times where I honestly thought that death was imminent and the FEAR, the piss yourself fear, but despite all that, it wasn’t that bad.
In the end I scrapped all of that because we have all been down that road. You don’t need me to throw my two cents into the ring just fill up some dead air. You don’t need me saying that when things were bad they were really bad but when things were good, they were really good. I sound like some god damn therapist trying to psychoanalyze you and your relationship woes. It happened. Shit happened. And while I can easily recount terrorism and snipers and death and heartbreak; I can also tell you all about how so many things went according to plan, and then some, and I loved with a fierceness and was loved with a fierceness.
Nothing was perfect but is it ever? Things could always be better. I want to be better. And that’s all that really matters.
The Letter B
“Friends are relatives you make for yourself.” ~Eustache Deschamps
I know you didn’t ask but my weekend was wonderful. Alana turned Amazing Years Old and to celebrate her husband, Matthew, threw her a fete fit for her lovely self. Now I, being the misanthrope that we all know and try like hell to love, had misgivings about attending this party. Though Bill and his wife would be there for me to lean on along with Alana’s sister whose face lit up when she saw me and went in for that full body hug; I was still nervous. I can’t help it and I’ve finally succumbed to an overwhelming, heart racing, palm sweating, reaction to social situations. Especially situations where I’m surrounded, like sardines in a can, by people I’ve only recently met. It’s like, “Hello, I’m Heather. I know we just met but I’m going to stick my elbow into your slice of birthday cake.That cool?”
But God. Those people down there. And I knew – KNEW – this would happen, but they were all so nice and wonderful. We talked kids and jobs and the difference between Upstate and Downstate. They were the type of people that you wanted to spend Saturday nights with drinking prosecco, talking politics, art, pop culture. Anything. I couldn’t help but think today even that I want a dinner party with everything in miniature and hugging a friend of a friend. That was how the night ended. The hostess, Emily, wrapped her arms around my waist and told me how glad she was that I came and that she finally got to meet me and I hugged Alana’s dad and high-fived her Uncle Dan (Dan who is married to Jill) and that night, it really was one of those nights that keep you buoy you when you think that things are so so bad.
Now may I be narcissistic for a second? For Alana’s birthday her husband had her friends and family and Katie Couric leave blog entries of sentimental things about The Birthday Girl. I taped mine right before I left for the party so I didn’t say everything I wanted to say. The truth is that I love that lady. So perhaps I throw the word ‘love’ around a lot. Perhaps you just don’t notice. But I do love her. She is one of those people that make the Internet good and a happier place to share and be. It’s something I don’t say enough to so many people who prove what the Internet really is: not some scary bad place full of evil people who want to kidnap you but maybe, just maybe, the Internet has some gems. And when you find these gems who get you in a way that so many never did and never will…well… it makes life that much sweeter.