This morning I woke up feeling angry and annoyed and like I hating everything.  I had a shitty dream where my parents were divorced, and it felt so bad and so real that I woke up thinking about how shitty it must be for kids to go through that, and how shitty it is that half of the country goes through that, and how shitty everything is.  I growled at my phone when my mother text messaged me, and played my very best version of the shitty, hard to please, bitchy and needy lady friend on the phone when Kurt called.  I sat by the window, staring into my coffee and thought about breaking a glass. Of having a cigarette, even though I know that will make me feel worse. Of all the things I will never be able to do. Of all the things that I am missing out on just by being me, here, now.  

Then my room mate came out of her bedroom and we talked about how annoyed I am with my life and how shitty it feels.  She laughed and said, “Just remember, you will not always feel like that.”  

I stared into my coffee and ran that one through my head for a bit.  Underneath all the shitty thoughts and rumbling frustration, I found the back beat undertone that ran on repeat, “you should have really valued that last vestige of happiness, because you will  now be consumed by this drudgery forever!”  Jo broke that one for me, just by reminding me of something we all know very well:  Emotions last for only a fraction of how long we think they will.  I know this theoretically, I read the study, I have felt them flit through my body at lightening speed, but when I am stuck with a set of them that settles in deeply into the creek of my hips, it takes so much to look ahead of myself.  So much faith and age and experience and hope to remember that its not always going to be like this.  But I ran the thought experiment, and it felt true, and I looked up from my coffee and the clouds parted a little.  I felt a little bit lighter. 

I think this is so hard because I go through transitions with a total and complete lack of grace.  This morning’s transition happened on a minute scale, but there big ones happening every day, and I know I will take to them like a mongoose moving something heavy, or a rhino trying to tiptoe.  In my equally uncoordinated youth, my gymnastics teacher would always yell at us to look ahead while walking on the balance beam.  I always thought that was balls-out crazy (because it is), but it’s hard to look ahead and not find something else to be afraid of.  The pommel horse was after the balance beam and there was a good chance I would vault my way straight into a wall.

I don’t feel annoyed with my life right now, perhaps this is from a combination of breakfast, coffee, positive human contact and a day ahead filled with nesting chores. It’s always good to remember that it’s not always going to be like this.  Now I just need to make it out of the house with my laundry cart without vaulting myself into a wall.