Small Comforts

It's nice to know that when life starts to crumble--a guy turns into an asshole, your jeans don't fit right, and work is a mess--there are people out there to pick you back up, dust you off, and remind you that life doesn't suck. I guess that's the only upside to being down in the dumps--the reminders of how lucky you really are. Today my buddy g-lo presented me with the new Iron and Wine ep, complete with a lovely note: "because he's dumb and because I want to see you smile and because I'm your friend and because I love you!" How awesome is that? And how totally blessed am I? Then there's islegavia, who spent the whole weekend with me (well, most of it, anyway) cheering me up when she's coming off a lousy man experience herself. And random blind-date guy who called me from out of nowhere on Sunday because he wanted to let me know he was thinking about me.

A bad guy experience is kind of like having your car broken into. Maybe you're in the middle of the best day of your life, you got a raise or aced a test or whatever. And you go strolling out to your car, all happy and excited and smiley, and then you see the busted window or jacked-up lock and a few dangling wires where your cd player used to be. And you feel robbed, violated, wronged, and your great day--even though you still have the raise, still have the good grade--suddenly turns to crap. Same thing with guys. You're going along in life surrounded by pretty good things, and then some butthead decides to blow you off because of the way you look, or because somebody better came along...and suddenly your whole life seems to fall apart around you, even though nothing else has really changed. Yesterday you felt pretty, today you feel like a big, ugly nothing. Yesterday you knew your place in the world, and today you're knocked so far off-kilter that you can't even remember what month it is. And you forget about your blessings, which are still there. They're just harder to see through the haze of bitterness, regret, and disappointment that you're surrounded by at the moment.

Sorry for the not-so-creative extended metaphor. But I'm happy to say that my haze has cleared a little for the moment. And a thanks to all of the great people and things in my life...the buddies who won't let me stay down for long, my fellow bloggers who always manage to make me laugh, smile, and think, my mom and the random care packages she sends (yesterday's was complete with Peeps, pistachios, and a dog biscuit that she said was a gift from Bruiser, the family Mastif, who's lovely mug appears above). At least when you feel low, there's the consolation that there's noplace to go but up.
-pg