Be Brave Project: Day 14: Cry Me a River, Elusive D. (or, The Lameish and the Sameish)

OK, well. This whole apartment thing has me somewhat distracted from my Be Brave Project mission, and from getting enough done on that essay for Self, though I did read some back issues and do some edits to make the thing more specific as to times and dates, etc.

What I'm really suffering from, as opposed to apartment worries or the usual grim knowledge that my mother is in Chicago pouring vodka onto her acute cirrhosis, is a thoroughly unattractive case of Self-Pity. I'm told (and I believe 'em, for they know) by AA that Self-Pity and Resentments are the hallmarks of the alcoholic character--and brother, I'm all hallmarked up!

Yesterday was feeling horribly hormonal, to the point where I thought it was probably good that I wasn't operating a vehicle: If I had been and anyone cut me off or even looked at me funny, I'd have felt compelled to repeatedly ram their car into a brick wall until it was a bloody mash of steel and bone, the entire time gently weeping at the other driver's selfishness and dark, dark soul.

So, you'll see, I was a little under the weather.

Looking around my apartment all I could see were things I don't want to wrap, to pack, to move. Furniture that might--would--get broken. Walking to the subway I felt fat, poor, unappreciated and under-utilized. . .sitting in the meeting I looked at all the women near me who were hoisting enormous rocks around on their wedding fingers, who have tanned limbs and expensive coiffures, who-I strongly suspected--have never bought a $1 bag of "old new potatoes" from the shopping cart outside of Fairway (I actually made some delicious potato egg and chive salad).

So, when I raised my hand in the meeting I said all this, minus the wedding-band envy and the potato salad info (though really, it was delicious). I bitched about not being able to afford to keep my shabby-ass apartment, about my mother's drinking and my father's violent lack of balance, about how I felt I was the "universe's bitch". So there, I felt, when I had finished.

And over the next ten minutes two other women spoke: One, aged 38, who had waited to find a man to have a child with and then discovered that she's going through premature menopause and can't get pregnant. Even with IVF there's only a 3% chance. The second woman who spoke was Jackie: In her 40's, single, apple-cheeked with short wavy hair that stands up on end, a struggling country music singer and songwriter, she's also fighting breast cancer and will be the only person currently in chemo who's undertaking the Tour de Pink, a 200 mile bicycle ride benefiting the Young Survival Coalition. But what Jackie wanted to talk about was just accepting the universe. Just deciding to take the leap and wait to see what unfolds. . .because she thinks to do otherwise would make her nothing more than "a dog chasing its tail."

I was utterly gobsmacked and humbled.

And I decided to stop with the lame bitching, about the same damned ancient things that bothered me enough to provoke me to drink in the first place. There's a vast, intricate, marvelous, admittedly frightening world out there and I want to stare and stare and stare at the same problems. Ludicrous and lame.