I have always been a generally happy and optimistic person. When I was a child, I was nearly annoyingly so according to my younger sister who recently told me, "The only reason I was grumpy so often is because you were so damn happy."
All that changed this year when my world turned upside down. For the first time in my life, I saw no light at the end of the tunnel. I listened to my friends who told me "you'll get through this," but I had no trust in their confidence. I smiled and thought to myself how wrong they all were.
Every day I woke up and put one foot in front of the other. I only did exactly what I felt I could handle, and did not push myself. For months and months. I bailed on friends at the last minute, ignored birthdays and holidays, and didn't return phone calls. They all sat beside me, told me that they understood and that they'd wait for me to come back. They told me that I was normal, and that I wasn't a freak for the things I said and did.
Except for my friends and family, to whom I clung for dear life, everything else I knew was up in the air.
Probably the most honest advice I got during the autumn was "It will be awful until it's not." I didn't understand the information when it was spoken -- a time when I was grasping for anything to hold on to. Knowing that things will be awful "until they're not" is nothing really firm that I can do anything about. And for a Virgo like me who likes a specific time and date on things, it wasn't the easiest thing to hear.
And through it all I learned to ask very specifically for what I needed. "I know I can get a shuttle, but I really need a ride to the airport." "I really need to you just check on me every once in a while." "I need to go out to dinner with someone tonight." "I need you to listen to me and not think I'm crazy." "I need you to go with me to the farmers' market."
I learned that standing in the middle of my apartment and saying out loud to the room, "I really need someone to call me right now," didn't work and that I had to actually pick up the phone and ask for friends to hold my hand. I had to learn to be weak in front of people -- something that I'm not always good at. I had to be ok with being vulnerable.
And eventually, I stopped my panic. I stopped worrying when I'd be "getting over this" and decided "not today". And I made a couple of important decisions. The first was that, as much as I wanted to flee the city immediately -- say good-bye to the town where nearly five of my seven years here were spent with J -- I would stay put. I would allow myself to leave as much as I needed to, and that resulted in many many flights to Southern California to see my family -- sometimes for weeks on end. But I wasn't quite ready to say good-bye to San Francisco. I feel more settled into a community here than I ever have in my life, and I don't feel like my journey here is done yet.
Secondly I decided that, even if I was in the exact same place in a year: single and still confused about my life, that I would be ok. And that it wouldn't be the end of the world. In that decision, I gave myself permission to relax -- relax about my need to constantly move forward, and to just be. To do whatever it was that I needed to do to heal and regroup.
I decided to take a trip. I decided to stay in my apartment for the moment. And I managed to step back and get some perspective. Magically, things got better. They were awful and then they weren't.
Like a good recipe, it was a lot of purposeful ingredients put together combined with a dash of this and a pinch of that which helped turn me around. And I literally feel like I was reborn. I'm back to defaulting to happiness, and it's the most amazing feeling. I have to catch myself from saying to a line up of strangers at the local coffee joint, "I'm happy -- do you understand what a miracle that is?"
And to laugh till the dawn of the day
And when they ask why I act so strange I'll reply
I'm just happy, so happy this way.
-- Judith Owen, Happy This Way
