Hang in there, baby! 1.24.05

That phrase about if you only have a hammer, then everything is a nail? Well, that�s a poster that belongs on your high school guidance counselor�s wall, but check out my personal banner for the week: If all you have is irrational negativity, then everything is scary. This weekend, I succeeded in completely spooking myself. Boo!

True, my weekend involved a great deal of goopily sublime cuddling. This is not to be overlooked. However, in no particular order it also incorporated: a phone call from my best girl in CA in tears over the untimely demise of her relationship; a drunk, drunk, drunk phone call from one of my oldest friends bemoaning the nasty underside of life; a phone call from a good pal distraught about how he cheated on his girlfriend this past weekend (with whom he�s been trying desperately to salvage a relationship for the past several months. huh.); a self-deprecating crisis involving my leetle sister�s bridesmaid dress choice and a heinous bridal shop salesgirl; and the building frustration that things can really suck despite your finest efforts, despite your own personal niceness, despite your best intentions, and despite your wish that they really wouldn�t. And then I just got really scared.

Luckily, I think I got yanked off that ledge in the nick of time. A negative roll like that never results in anything but a total trainwreck of emotion, fear, frustration, anger�you name it. Hearing S. relive his long-past pinings for some sweet young thing he dated once�an innocuous observation to be sure, yet in the present circumstances that was when the ledge became something I could peer past the edge of�you know, gee the people look like ants down there�in other words, perilously close to plunging. And then, just like that, I got yanked back. Into what I like to think of as reality: Betrayal is always a risk; You never know what people will pull; You never know how you are going to react to some crappy situation; You never know if things will turn some corner and overwhelm you with a gratuitous, utterly and fantastically soothing sense of feeling like you�re doing the right thing. All the phone calls, my friends detailing their recent devastations, the lousy feelings of earlier in the day exacerbating my pessimistic conclusions�they�re real. But so is the fact that you never know. You just never know. Optimism definitely requires less of an effort right now. It looks like a quick n�easy shortcut to feeling fine, so I�ll take it.