I know that’s a HUGE no no.  But today, the world just got too heavy for the dam, and I had to close my door for a few mintues to release the floods.  It was more like a generous drip, but only with some major effort. 

I get so mad at myself during times like these and I want to figure out everything instantly so I can fix it.  But, as my friend Diane said (I will have to devote an entire post or two about her at some point), sometimes you just have a bad day.  Period.  There’s nothing wrong, nothing to “fix.”  I’m trying to be ok with that but it’s hard.  Naturally we think bad days are, um, bad.  They feel unnatural and we fight them.  But I guess without the bad days we wouldn’t really know the good ones.

I’m sure a lot led to this one:  Not-so-pleasant words with my father this weekend.  My first (difficult) visit to a domestic violence shelter where I am now volunteering.  Feeling screwed by the guys who change my oil and the guys who do my investing.  Needing to clean my car and do my taxes (which I never did because Dutch actually liked doing those things for me . . . Mind you, I don’t even have my W-2s in yet but the task is looming overhead.)  The final trigger was finding a note in my wallet from the only guy I dated since Dutch.  I’ll call him T.  I know I started dating T way too soon after Dutch, but well, he made me feel like a princess (ding ding ding, I thought I had finally made it to happiness!) and I believed that he could “save” me.  He said the sweetest words, for which I am a huge sucker, and this note was no exception.  

That’s when I had to close the door. 

And the thought that kept coming up in my mind (and in the pit of my stomach) was: “How can someone (dutch and T) love me so much at one point and now not be in my life at all?  When did I stop being that girl to him and starting being this one?” 

I’m actually crying again as I type this – I say this not so you feel sorry (lord, there are so many more important things about which to feel compassion…and I should be happy that I’m not the victim of domestic violence or genocide instead of merely a broken heart) but so you know that it’s real for me.  I’m reading this book right now, Man’s Serach for Meaning (thank you Jeff) about a concentration camp survivor and clinical psychologist.  There’s a passage in there that makes me feel less guilty about suffering so much from what what seems like such a little life event compared to what others experience:  “A man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas.  If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber.  Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little.” 

….so I like to think I’m not just weak or compulsive about my broken heart, but rather, the nature of suffering is to fill every nook and cranny of my being…thus the tears over a note….  

 Anyhow, thank god for girlfriends.  Several of them today reminded me that, sure, although there is some responsibilty that I need to take for failed relationships, I don’t need to take it all.   Maybe, just maybe, I didn’t go from being that girl – the one deserving of princess treatment — to this girl – the one who is incapable of being loved…. Maybe he was the one who changed….    Or maybe he wasn’t who I thought he was to begin with.  I’m not so sure.   

In the end, I was able to chalk up today as just being a not-so-great day.  That’s all.  And, in reality, after going to the first sportsmonster cornhole match of the season and having a great time with quality people, I’m not sure the day is in the “bad” category after all.  I think it was just a day.