Without going into unnecessary detail, the past several weeks have been a fucking shitstack. Painful doctor’s appointments (everything’s fine), aforementioned relationship reassessments, an ugly legal situation with a family member. Cake icing: the other day, I thought the frisky mambo my dog was doing in his sleep was just a new and charming quirk. Nope. Fleas. Hundreds of them, blood-swollen and voracious, a plague in my bed. Cue the horror movie soundtrack and smash cut to me, naked in the bathtub scrubbing one profoundly unhappy dog with people shampoo (because that was all we had). One flea pill, one dog bath, three human showers and five loads of laundry later, crisis averted.
If only everything in life was so easily resolved.
In my last post, I had a confessional moment about a bad day I had last week. A couple of close friends, people I truly adore, reached out with words of comfort and wisdom. So valuable. Equally valuable was an ongoing e-mail exchange with a writer I haven’t met yet, who shared a little bit about her own struggles—a moment of intimacy I’m so grateful for.
I clipped my Facebook and Twitter accounts last month, mostly because I was spending entirely too much time worrying about who liked me or what everyone else was doing without me. Social media is a hamster wheel of comparison and envy I just don’t have the constitution for, at least not right now. It’s freed up a lot of brain space, which is great/scary, but the added benefit is that I no longer have access to the fuzzy, distant connection with my friends and acquaintances that keeps me from reaching out to them in a more personal way.
I’ve sent and received more phone calls and emails over the past month than I have in the previous six. And they’re so much more meaningful, so much more direct than reading “Just got back from an idyllic trip to Croatia” or “So, this happened: [insert humblebrag or adorably self-deprecating incident recap here].” Which is fine and all, but there’s something about knowing a tiny bit about what’s going on in someone’s life—through social media, I mean—that creates inertia in me, that ramps up my already sizeable unwillingness to reach out and make a more personal connection. Personal relationships are already fraught and difficult for me. The last thing on the fucking planet I need is something that makes me feel less inclined to be connected.
And, re: connecting, I’m in Santa Barbara right now, finally putting a face to a writer penpal I’ve been conversing with for over a year. It’s weird, and sometimes awkward, and mostly kind of awesome. He and his wife—I’ll call them John Gregory and Joan because they are, indeed, a whip smart and very amusing writer couple—have been remarkably kind and gracious to me, plying me with dinners, cocktails, a comfy townhome to stay in.
I’m still feeling battered, bruised, sad. But today there will be a fried egg sandwich at Renaud’s, a slow walk on the beach under a perfectly overcast sky. Later, I’ll go to their house, pet the soft ears of their adorably liver-nosed Jack Russell, maybe another visit to the bookstore.
Someone asked on another blog recently if it was about the journey or the destination.
Today’s it’s the journey.
