So I’m sitting here waiting for bad news. Not bad news like I didn’t get a job I auditioned for or this thing I was hoping to happen isn’t happening but bad news like actual bad news involving a loved one, the details of which I can’t say here because it’s not my news to share. It’s not definite bad news, and the scope of the news isn’t yet clear, but basically I’m just hanging out near the phone holding myself in a sort of suspended animation waiting to find out if the shape of my life is going to be altered significantly or just a little bit. And I suppose there are some people for whom the shape of their life is much more inviolate and who are so steadfast in pursuing their whatever or so selfish or focused that very little could rock them. I’m not one of them, at least not lately, and everything feels all wishy washy and porous and permeable and earlier today, before I was even aware that I’d be waiting for bad news, back when I was in high self-centered narcissist woe-is-me mode I was saying that for all I know my problem is that I’m trying to chase my dreams and maybe I just need to put my energy elsewhere and if I’m meant to do this or that it’ll come find me. For example, I said, I could move to Iceland and whatever’s meant to be will still happen regardless, even in Iceland. Clearly I’ve never been to Iceland.
But all that is beside the point. The point is that I’m sitting here waiting for bad news and yet I know already I’m not going to get any news until tomorrow and then also midweek. I’m confused about the two dates for bad news but frankly nothing’s coming in tonight.
When first I’d gotten wind of the potential bad news I was numb. “Call me when it sinks in,” said my sister, which is how I realized I was numb. Then I was a little hungry and then I was filled with an urge to vacuum. An insatiable vacuuming urge, the kind that had me vacuuming my apartment while carrying my phone around so I could still get the news over the noise. “OCD much?” asked a friend. “I wish I were more OCD,” I said. “Then I’d have a cleaner apartment!” Then I began realizing that my plans for the evening: to come home and work/write, very clearly were no longer going to happen and I began trying to figure out how I was going to fill my time. I could read and watch Betheny’s Getting Married, which I DVR’d, but I think I’d rather get drunk and hook up with a stranger, which is an urge I haven’t felt in so long it’s like experiencing a flashback. Because I went through some reckless years—years of acting out, if you will–and I’m safely and firmly on this side of all that so it’s near foreign to me to feel the old urges coming back, faint as they may be. I realize I’m probably losing people here but there’s something about the specter or the receiving of bad news that makes you feel like you get a freebie because what the hell does it matter anyway and you may as well do something that feels good or distracts you for the moment.
“When you’re sad you want to do something nice for yourself,” said a friend, “Like eating a sundae.”
“Yeah but you know what’s even nicer to yourself?” I asked.
“Being thin?” she said.
“Well, I was going to say dieting but yes, that’s what I mean,” I explained. “But you know what’s even nicer than that? Food.”
And by the way, food is not a euphemism for sex in the above. We were actually talking about food. But it’s the same thing essentially. You want to do something that feels good in the moment and yet the truly kind thing for yourself is to not indulge in momentary pleasures which are ultimately self-destructive. (I’m not saying sex is self-destructive but there’s a kind of reckless indiscriminate harlotry which many women engage in in their early 20s which feels empowering for about half a minute and pretty much always leaves you worse off than before.)
So I asked my sister to remind me why the whole getting drunk and hooking up with strangers thing is bad and she said she suspects it’s better to actually feel your feelings as opposed to try to run away from them. I think she’s probably right, and once she put it that way I realized that there was no way I could live with dirty tile grout so I’m actually typing this from the floor of my shower. Not really, but only because I don’t have wifi in there.
Anyway, if you made it this far, thank you for reading this. I will be fine and in a sense I’m not acting out because I’m too lazy to rustle up some bad influences. I don’t know if that’s maturity or fatigue. Either way it’s better than the alternative, I suppose.
And completely unrelated tomorrow is the final week of the TV Theme Song Tournament which I’m helping judge on Fox Sports News so tune in at noon ET to have your mind blown. (Watch twitter for the link to listen/watch!)
