Originally posted on January 19, 2009 - Monday
Current mood: sick
Category: Life
I know already,
this week will be a test of ‘true grit’, of which I like to think I have in
abundance. The antibiotics my doctor prescribed for me make me almost as sick as
the ailment they’re prescribed to cure. One of the side
effects of the medicine is loss of appetite and upset stomach but you have to
take it with food. My doctor is a
thorough chick and seems to like me, so I won’t take it personally. In addition
to that, I can’t mix alcohol with the medicine or else I’ll get violently ill.
For that reason, the occasional glass of wine to help me relax is completely out
of the question this week. Since I already knew the week-long debilitating
antibiotic ‘cure’ would be challenging, sis & I also decided to go back on
our diet (she says it a nutritional lifestyle change, not a diet). Might
as well pile all the misery on at once. After partying
Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, I could hardly get out of bed Sunday. It didn’t
help that my laptop was acting a fool either. But Tyra Banks and an
‘America’s Next Top Model’ marathon made the under-the-weather, no
laptop-having Sunday much more palatable. As we all know, everything’s better
with Tyra. My present
sickly state is most likely a mix of weather changes, sinuses, exhaustion and
strong antibiotics but whatever the underlying reason, it felt/feels like
someone stuck a plastic straw in my ear and is continuously blowing air into my
head. I’m definitely
not feeling fabulous but I’ve been much worse. By next Monday, I should be
healthier and slimmer, two of my very favorite ways to be. It’s hard to be
in a good mood when you don’t feel too hot. To keep things interesting though,
I’ll take it all as a welcome, personal challenge. I have to say,
I’m most curious about how I’ll handle road rage this week. That’s one of my
more prominent character flaws that hasn’t mellowed with age, but I’m still
trying. Sometimes I
think about how absolutely singular everyone’s life experience is. I mean, you
never know what someone else is going through or how close to ‘the edge’ someone
is, do you? Thinking about that overwhelms me at times. I try to hurry up and
get those frightening thoughts out of mind otherwise I’ll have to start
collecting SSI checks for agoraphobia. I don’t mind
sharing one seemingly insignificant experience I had last year that was
absolutely cathartic. You know that I
get to work super early in the morning. As huge as our building is, there are
probably less than a half dozen people on my floor when I start work. There’s
this one older lady on my floor that starts work around the same time as I do. I
always run into her in the break room when I’m making my breakfast or putting my
lunch in the break room fridge at the start of the day. I (still) don’t
know her name but I think she’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever ‘met’. And
you can tell it’s genuine sweetness too, not fake sweetness. For weeks,
perhaps months, I’d shared pleasant small talk with her in the mornings. I
usually hate that kind of stuff (small talk) but I actually look forward to
seeing her in the early AM. She’s always so cheerful and I’m NOT a morning
person at all. Anyway, one
afternoon while talking with a close co-worker friend in the atrium of our
building, she (the sweet lady) walks by, presumably using the atrium as a
shortcut. The sweet lady says hi to me and stops to talk to my friend. My friend
asked her how her son was doing and the sweet lady insinuated that she felt
confident he’d be doing better soon and thanked her for asking about him. I sat
quietly, since it wasn’t any of my business and I didn’t know her like that. She
leaves and my friend starts telling me about how her son was on a road trip to
see his in-laws with his wife and kids. While on the road, they were in a
terrible car accident that killed his wife and left him in a coma. The doctors
were saying that if he came out of the coma, he might have permanent
brain damage and may have to learn how to do basic things again. His kids
weren't seriously injured and were in the care of the in-laws (in another state)
but they weren’t sure what to do with them at the time. My friend goes on to
tell me that she’d been out for a few days to see her son but when she returned,
she was the same sweet person she was before she left, despite everything she
must have been worried about. It was then that I realized that many of the
quick, friendly talks I’d shared with her, were after this tragic thing
happened to her son. Even with all that going on, she was still as pleasant and
sweet as she could be. It made me feel really stupid for being nasty to people
when I had a bad day that was created by something small, like menstrual cramps
or a ridiculous argument. It taught me
that no matter what else was going on in my life, I needed to make an extra
effort to be kind, even when I didn’t feel like it. It also taught me that you
never truly know what a person is going through. We are often tested with
challenges that show what we’re really made of, though we may dismiss it as
simple bad luck. It made me see just how important it is to respect life and
people when it’s easier to just be mad about it all. Whatever it is that I’m
going through that’s putting me in a bad mood, could be multiplied by a thousand
compared to what the next person may be going through, even someone you see
everyday. A little lightheadedness and self-induced hunger (from a dumb diet)
seems miniscule in comparison. As an aside, I
know for certain that my resolve is being tested this week. This afternoon after
deciding to write this entry, I discovered that someone had stolen the lunch
(out of the break room fridge) that my wonderful sis lovingly prepared for me.
I’d gone to the
fridge several times today to do a thorough search. Still, nothing. Worst part
was, there are only certain, portion-measured foods I can eat this week, so
going out for a quick bite would be futile. Just after coming to terms with
being hungry today and promising myself to not get upset about it, I go back to
the fridge for one last pass and find that my lunch was indeed there. Somebody
had moved it to the back of the fridge. (I knew it was a test) It’s gonna be
shaky but I’m confident that I’ll get through this week just fine. I’ll just
keep reminding myself that it could always be worse and it often is for others,
so I need to try to be calm and in control of myself. If I can just
apply that theory to my road rage problem, I’ll (probably) survive this week
carb and bullet free.
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