28 May 2008

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

As the saying goes, what a difference a year makes!

Well, no. The saying is actually, what a difference a day makes, but if one day makes such a big difference, just imagine the difference 365 of them make! Assuming that the differences are cumulative, a year would have 365 times the differences of a single day. Of course, you'd have to allow for the possibility that differences may become undone over the course of the year, like if you painted your bedroom red and lived with it for a week before asking yourself, "What the hell was I thinking?!" so you got some nice eggshell white and repainted it the original color. That's two differences, but they cancel each other out, so it's like zero times the difference. So I guess what I'm saying is, it's entirely possible that after having bumped into the Dalai Lama - literally - my life continued on in a big vicious year-long circle and ended up right back where it started, with me loathing all of you (as an extension of my own damned self) while sitting over a cup of coffee in a coffeeshop in Madison, ogling girls in green skirts and knee socks and wanting to kill myself because my life would never go anywhere.

But that's not what happened.

First of all, gas is too damned expensive and my car is too much a gas guzzler for me to be driving an hour each way to and from Madison just so I can get a goddamn cup of coffee. And those old arguments about a gallon of milk being more expensive than a gallon of gas just don't work anymore. As far as I know, milk now costs less than gas, but even if it didn't, I'm lactose intolerant and my car won't run on milk, so the cost of milk does not concern me. Although I do like cheese. But that's neither here nor there.

So, what happened in the past year, then?

When I was living in Dallas and generally hating life, I consoled myself with the fact that soon I would be returning to Wisconsin, and the life I loved before I was banished for crimes against humanity. (I assume that's why I was sent to live in Texas, anyway. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I had no idea genocide was frowned upon. Oops. My bad.) Eventually I grew accustomed to life in Texas and even began to embrace it, knowing fully well that all it takes for my company to relocate me is for me to love where I am. That's probably just a coincidence. Yeah. Probably.

I knew that when I moved back to Wisconsin I would have to spend a year or two working and living in a small town dead centered on the border between Wisconsin and Illinois. If Wisconsin were a human torso, this town would be the asshole. That didn't matter, though, because my company was looking to build a brand new facility in southeastern wisconsin, so after a couple of years living in the Balloon Knot of Wisconsin I would be able to return to Milwaukee and the happiness I once knew. The exact location of the State-of-the-Art new building was still up in the air - not literally, of course, although the way they keep talking about this structure you'd think it was going to be built on a cloud - but regardless, southeastern Wisconsin is not that big, and with my home in Milwaukee on the shores of beautiful Lake Michigan I'd have an easy commute. In the meantime, I was in the company of good people, banking on my future happiness.

Unfortunately, that bank broke. When they announced that the new building was not going to be built near beautiful Milwaukee after all, but rather right here in the Puckered Chocolate Starfish of Wisconsin, it felt like I had been suckerpunched in the gut. I went numb. The blood drained from my face. Death walked past the conference room door and gave a demure little wave and mimed, "Call me?" I was devastated.

And so I roamed the earth, an empty hull, completely devoid of any feeling except an intense desire for the world to come to a screeching halt. I was dead inside.

This didn't mean I didn't still have to go about my usual day-to-day routine. It just meant I did so like an automaton. A clockwork man. A soulless hell-demon.

And so it went, for months. At work, I did my job. At home, I stared at the ceiling. I was burned out. I desperately needed a vacation... a real vacation; the kind where you go away from home and do things for no reason and then come back home all refreshed and reinvigorated and ready to take the bull by the horns and do whatever it is one does while grasping a couple of bull horns still attached to a probably very angry bull. (I envision a lot of panicked crying and pants-peeing, but maybe that's just me.)

Unfortunately, I found myself unable to take the time off. It wasn't that I didn't have the time, or that my boss would have objected, it was just that I felt like I had too much going on at work that needed my attention. Now, I'm not saying I'm the glue that holds the universe together or anything - although I am, but whenever I start talking like that my shrink accuses me of having a narcissistic personality disorder with moderate schizotypal tendencies - but there was a lot going on at work and I just wasn't in a good mental space. Maybe if I had a real shrink instead of this imaginary one that's constantly bad-mouthing me to all my imaginary friends, I'd have been better prepared to deal with this let-down.

I stewed in my own juices like this for months. Swirling all around me was a black hole of depression and angst and misery. Plants withered in my presence. I had to avoid old people and babies because their immune systems couldn't handle the full force of my Wall of Negativity. All I could think of was taking a vacation. I didn't even want to visit my family until I had taken a vacation, because I was in such a miserable black mood I figured I would just alienate them, and then I would truly die alone. It was hell.

I was not only faced with the question of when I would be able to go on vacation, though. I was also up against where. In this respect, I allowed a little light to shine into my life as I made big plans to go to various places, and then stood pathetically by and watched helplessly as these plans turned to dust in my hands. Nothing was coming together. And so, finally, with only a couple of months left in the year, I decided to just say, "Fuck it," and visit our neighbors in the Great White North. Or, more accurately, the Great White Northwest. I went to Vancouver.

And Vancouver, despite the fact that it was late October (because, yes, the first vacation I took in 2007 was in October) and the rainy season, was beautiful. I flew into Seattle (because it was cheaper) and drove to Vancouver, where I stayed in a delightful hotel right in the heart of the downtown area which made for a good home base. Each morning I would take out my guidebook and maps and chart my course for the day, and then I walked and walked and walked all over creation, seeing the things there were to see and doing the things there were to do.

Two days into the trip I thought to myself, "I am so alone."

Seriously. I suddenly wondered why the hell I had even bothered to take this vacation, wasting perfectly good money just to hang out by myself and eat delicious sushi and drink excellent coffee and enjoy the cool fresh Autumn air and take in the festive sights, all of which would have been EIGHT THOUSAND TIMES BETTER (an approximation) if I had not been so completely and devastatingly alone. Life seemed so pointless.

And yet I managed to carry on, stiff upper lip and all that rot, poring over the guidebooks and maps and trying to see all there was to see. By the end of the 9 days, I felt better about things, but I was still a bit empty inside, all echoey and vacant and somewhat miserable.

Fortunately, it was the end of the year, and shortly after my vacation I flew home to see the family for Thanksgiving. All around me the world was festive, but I was still feeling like a sorrowful wretch. I hoped I'd be able to at least fake a little happiness so as not to leave the family worried about my increasingly deteriorating mental state, but I didn't know if I were up to the challenge.

And as it turned out, perhaps I could have skipped the vacation in Vancouver, because as soon as I was with my family, a veil lifted and my heart opened up - figuratively, because an exploding heart will actually kill a person - and I was suddenly happy and at peace. I guess I underestimated the power of family. They drove my evil spirits into a herd of swine and chased them off a cliff (again, not literally), something my vacation in Vancouver failed to accomplish.

So there it was - the official start of the holiday season, and I was filled with the holy spirit and ready to get on with life with my new positive outlook and spread the joy of the season and all that bullshit. Hooray!

And this is where things took a freakish turn.

Every year, my company has its holiday party in early December, often right on the heels of Thanksgiving. I hadn't actually planned to go to the party last year because when the invitations came out I was imbued with evil spirits that were saying things like, "A party is no way to celebrate Christmas! Burn down a church, instead!" And, as my imaginary shrink is quick to point out, I was just feeling a bit antisocial and not up to actually making nice with the people. So I was ready to toss the invite.

As I pondered throwing the damned thing out, I received an email from a girl who works in one of our other locations far, far away, telling me that she was going to be visiting the Rusty Sheriff's Badge of Wisconsin for work, and was given permission to stay for the holiday party... but that she only wanted to go if people she liked were going. So, was I going?

I remember reading this and instantly being transported to another plane of existence, because ever since I first met this girl way back in March of last year, I thought she was all that and a bag of chips and, because I am basically a 14-year old girl, I started to wonder, "Does she like me? Does she like me like me? How can she like me? I'm about 3,000 years old, and she's 12. She's gorgeous, and I'm a lumbering troll. This is crazy. She cannot possibly like me. I'm imagining it." But I told her I would go to the party, anyway, because why the hell not? The party was in Milwaukee at the Art Museum, so at least it would bring me back to Milwaukee for a night. Plus, free booze.

To make a long story short, I went. It was a great party.

And six months later, I am still madly in love.

But that, my friends, is a tale for another time.

The Last Five:
I heard it on the radio - 27 July 2008
Happiness is... - 26 July 2008
Do bears shit in the woods? - 21 July 2008
Politics schmoliticks - 14 July 2008
words and pictures - 14 July 2008

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