In college, I got into the habit of calling my dad every time I had one of these episodes. My dad is the most rational and level person I've ever known, and in my times of intense despair (allow me the hyperbole), his voice of reason was just about the only thing in the world that could calm me. I remember one particular day in college, maybe freshman or sophomore year, in which I was having a meltdown over who-knows-what, and I think my dad had had enough of my melodrama. Probably a mix of frustration with me and the sincere desire that his nearly-adult daughter learn to deal with stress more healthfully. In any case, I was blubbering away about why my life was over, I was having such a bad day, why couldn't he understand why I was a worthless pile of blah, blah, blah... He let me weep my way through my morose monologue, and when I finally shut my mouth, he proceeded to tell me something I've kept locked away in my "Important Daily Reminders" box since. He said to me, "Em, you're not having a bad day. You have never in your entire life had a bad day. You don't know what a bad day is, and I hope you'll never know what it is. You have a consistent and safe roof over your head, you have plenty of clothes to keep your warm, and you always have enough to eat. If you have all of that, then it's not a bad day."
Since that moment, I've never allowed myself to think or verbalize that I've had a bad day. Some days aren't pleasant; some days are extremely unpleasant, but in my 25 years, I've never had a bad day.
Last night was extremely unpleasant. But let's back up slightly...
Most of yesterday was a really good day. We were scheduled for our second session of bed bug extermination yesterday morning (let's take a moment to remember that Ben and I have been living out of TRASH BAGS for the past two weeks). A different lady came to do the extermination, and we think she actually did a far more thorough job than the first guy two weeks ago. At the end of her work, she set off two smoke bombs in the living room and bedroom, so we were herded out of the apartment to let the chemicals do their dirty work. If two weeks ago was bed bug D-Day, yesterday was bed bug Hiroshima. For the rest of the morning, Ben and I stopped at my university so I could pick up my new student ID card, and then we made our way over to his university so I could get lunch with him and his colleagues. In the afternoon, I had plans to go to Parc de la Tête d'Or with my friend Emily. Emily is a rad chick - and I think she would approve of that description since she's from California. We had a delightful time in the park; Parc de la Tête d'Or is actually a real life excerpt from Wonderland.
(Enjoy the pics, this post is about to take a turn for the dark and twisty...)
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| Doing my best dinosaur impression |
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| Emily in nature |
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| Yes, this is a real place |
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| Grand piano hanging out in a gazebo, nbd |
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| And this random guy practicing kicking... |
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| This fence was made to be jumped |
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| Inspecting the forbidden house |
After play time in the park, I picked up the adorable kids I babysit from their school and allowed them to climb all over me for two hours until their mom came home. First time I've ever given anyone a piggy-back ride... I headed home, where Ben was waiting for me in our smoke-filled apartment so we could rewash all our linens post-extermination.
This is where my night started to go downhill. Quick shout out to Ben and his endless patient patience because I'm a terribly disagreeable person when I've reached my stress breaking point. Washing ones linens starts out innocently enough, but when you're stuck in a dingy laundromat until 9pm on a Thursday night when you've already been up for 15 hours because someone had to come at 8am to spray chemicals all over your apartment to get rid of bed bugs and it's been raining all day and the only shoes I have right now are sandals that are impossible to walk in when it's wet and we come home to find that our mattress is still soaked in chemicals so we're going to have to sleep on the pull-out couch again in slightly still-damp sheets and the entire apartment is coated in a layer of questionable toxic smoke debris and the food in the fridge may or may not be edible, so should we throw it out and waste money? should we just eat it? and oh my god, I don't want to go to a four-hour class on Friday morning because MY SOUL IS SO EXHAUSTED. Essentially, my state of being becomes an irritable run-on sentence when I'm stressed.
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| Burning my finger Wednesday night didn't help with any emotional warm fuzzies |
I wearily surrendered to the pull-out couch and was hit with a cold wave of panic as I realized my life had literally just taken a giant step back in time by three weeks. Or so it felt at 11:30pm at a moment I couldn't even remember my own name for lack of reasoning. I stared up at the ceiling and had this sinking feeling that we hadn't made any progress since we moved here three weeks ago. Three weeks, big deal, right? At this moment, three weeks makes ALL the difference. Three weeks ago, we had just moved into an empty apartment, discovered the bed bugs, were sleeping on the couch like guests in our own home, and I still didn't know if I could register for classes or not. My life at the time felt like a big fat question mark, and I was eager for nothing more than to be settled and established in a routine. When I know my situation is going to be unsettled, I do everything I can to mentally prepare myself. I attempt to visualize the situation, I try to come to terms with the inevitable uneasy emotions of inner turmoil and unrest. I had not prepared any of that for the purpose of dealing with the angst of last night - I didn't think I would have to! I was caught unawares by my own situation; and when I stared up from that pull-out couch last night, it seemed to me that someone had painted, in big mocking block letters, the word: DEFEAT.
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| My "no good, very bad day" face |
I felt utterly defeated last night. The mental fortitude required to exist in a foreign land is at times just beyond my flailing grasp. In that moment, my strength failed me, and I felt like a small petulant child waiting for her mommy to come put her down for nappy time. Virtually every act of my day requires mental vigilance. My French has improved greatly with classes, but in real life, no one articulates, no one repeats the question more slowly and with easier vocabulary. Going about my normal day in France is as exhausting as running a marathon in America. And in the words of Starbucks-clutching, iPhone-toting 16-year-old girls everywhere, I COULDN'T EVEN last night.
It was as close as I'll allow myself to get to a bad day. Fortunately, I have my dad's words of wisdom stamped on the front doors of my mind, so I know that despite the run-on sentence of trauma that symbolizes last night, everything will be ok. And just like that, the sun is shining today (at long last! All it does is rain in Lyon!), and I just had a huge heaping bowl of mac 'n' cheese, courtesy of my Aunt Kathy. Deep breaths, everyone.
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| Om nom nom nom nom nom |
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