today was a bummer. started as a bummer only because the prospect of spending nine hours in a dingy grocery store always sounds terrible to me. finished a downer of a book during my breaks which made me appreciate how delicate life was (for the first time in the day). it's called The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing and is fiction, not at all about what the title claims. humanity is frail. vague blanket statement.
my bagger was J--. J-- is, and has always been just a really nice guy. he knows my name even though today was the first time we'd ever been a bagger/checker pair, he always says hi and bye to me and asks me how i am. nice fellow, he even bought me a coffee today. a couple hours before our shift ended, he asked if i was going east. i said 'i could be' because i sensed that he might need a ride and i thought that would be a good samaritan thing to do. i had my misgivings, of course, driving a 40-something-year-old man to a sketchy part of town...but he is a genuine man. so i obliged. during the day, he had mentioned his son, a three-year-old, who he unfortunately didn't get to see on Christmas, but i didn't pry, i just listened. on the car ride home, he told me about how sad he was not to see his son, and the heartbreaking story of why.
the child's mom died in the same bed with her son and J-- of a heart attack in the middle of the night. J-- didn't discover his dead wife until morning, the child was taken away and put into foster care. J-- sees his son regularly and sends money and gifts to him. they talk on the phone. i want to know what part of this story i'm missing--why he can't see his son. and how is life so cruel to this man? is it just a really, really unfortunate series of events that led him into this situation? is it neglect to take care of himself? is it the court system? karma? i don't know. i was just shocked and horrified. life is finite, delicate and senseless.
from dropping off J--, i went to my apartment, my home. i went to go pack up my 1.5 years of growth to take it back to my dad's house. to pack it all away, to dust proof it, to sort it, to store it. seeing my empty room was sobering. it was really hard because that apartment is really the first single 'home' i've had since i was two. i've always had two houses, my mom's and my dad's, as i think i've blogged about before. the apartment was different, it was mine, it was singular, it was home. packing it all up was hard. i imagine i probably had the experience that some kids get on their first day of college, or maybe when they move out of the house they grew up in. they get uprooted. for someone who never really 'rooted' in any single dwelling, it was hard. it was impossibly difficult. i had a nice little last sob in my bare-walled room, after seeing all the remnants of courses i'd taken, soured relationships, and goals that fell by the wayside...
the next dose of this depressing philosophical day came in the form of a letter i sent to myself at 15. if i could go back and tell myself to please write something useful i would. i was such a shit! the more i read or learn about myself at 15-16, the more i just wish i would've stopped whining and realized that my life was fantastic. i was an intolerant, little cavetcher who didn't deserve the friends i had. oh, man was i conniving. my hollow letter consisted of how much i couldn't stand two really important people in my life. it babbled about how my boyfriend was a loser. my poor, poor, boyfriend. you know that song by the postal service that so perfectly describes my life? "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" forever reminds me why that fits so well. i look back on my mistakes and think, of course! if only i wasn't so blind. "i am finally seeing, that i was the one worth leaving" (for the umpteenth time now)
not only did this letter prove to me that relationships are meant for mature, older people, but it showed me my true colors. it showed me that the rose colored glasses i tend to look at my past in are tainted by this ugly, unimpressive ex-self who has somehow contributed to this present self, who is molding future self. a self that demeaned others and could only see the world through her own eyes. but even moreso than that, it showed me how much i have changed for the better. how much more tolerant i am. how much more understanding and what huge lessons i've learned, strides i've made from talking about how stupid someone is or how ugly their clothes are (don't get me wrong, i still do it, but i'd like to think my attitude is more along the lines of, "i love them, faults and all" rather than "you have faults, fix them, you're gross")
anyway, the final blow was dealt by a crappy movie with Shaina. nothing could be more awful than a depressing plotline in a poorly executed film. One Day had potential, it did. Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway (with an abhorrent British accent, but we'll look beyond that) 'acted' out the depressing and predictable lives of two lovers on the same day over a span of 20 years. they pulled out all the stops, SPOILER ALERT getting run over by buses, bastard children, cheating spouses, dramatic music...it was a trainwreck. but some ideas stuck out: being made to think about cancer for the second time in a day, cancer of someone close or of yourself. drug/alcohol addiction. death of a romance. death of a relative. marriage of an ex-romance. they all seem terrible, but i seem to get fixated on that last one. no matter how happy you are with someone, (or without, to be fair) couldn't it be true that a little piece of you shutters at the thought of that? shutters to think of the person you loved with someone else...? maybe i'm just the over-analytical jealous type.
well, tomorrow, despite the dreary wisconsin december, will be better. it can only be better.
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