I've been trucking away. Moved into a new beautiful little rabbit hole in Bolton Hill, begun decorating it in a way that (in the words of our lord and savior, Marie Kondo) sparks joy, brought home a beautiful little cat named Sarah Winchester, started editing a friend's sustainable living blog. My life is moving in a wonderful direction. Oh, and I still have my fantastic hot-ass, fat-assed boi friend.
But I'm tired. That's something I feel like people don't tell you about adulthood. I mean they typically tell you it sucks and it's hard so I guess I should've assumed that's just par for the course. But adults are always out doing something. They're fixing up their home, or working on a side project, or out drinking with friends. And when you ask them what they've been up to they always say "oh, nothing really." And my adult friends will say "I'm never really doing much. I get off work, go home and eat something and pass out on the couch watching The Office, then wake up at three in the morning religiously to decide if I want to move to bed or just sweat out that full bag of hot fries here on the couch."
So yep. That's adulthood. Just a big ol' bag of contradictory decisions and actions. We spend all of our time at jobs that take too much out of us to afford to live in apartments or homes that we really only use to binge Netflix and whatever embarrassingly unhealthy food we feel like eating that night.
I keep pushing- my energy and credit card bill, to check off the ever running list of things I feel I need to be an adult.
Randall and I recently bought a bed frame. A beautiful, black metal bed frame from Facebook Marketplace. We'd been living on a sunken mattress living on the floor for the past many months. So when we brought the bed frame home and set up shop (without a box spring, mind you) I cried. We'd progressed even further in the game of life. Of course we later broke part of the frame since our weight was so unevenly displaced on the bed, and ultimately needed to solve this new issue. But we had done a thing!
And that's adulthood. Struggling without realizing, succeeding! and then eventually discovering that new level-up just unlocked a whole other slew of problems to solve. But it's that little resolve, that little reprieve, that little accomplishment that reminds you why you're always pushing. And I want to rewind a little and focus on that whole "struggling without realizing" thing that I brought up.
You can feel that something hurts, physically, emotionally, mentally or fiscally and you can't really identify it. But you just keep running anyway.
"How're you today?" A coworker asks daily.
"Eh. Good. I'm here." or "Good!" or "Not bad!"
When Randy and I were sleeping on the mattress on the floor we obviously knew we wanted to get a bed frame, and we knew it was damaging our necks and our backs (and Khia stay out of here). But yet we were fine with it. We were happy to be sleeping on a mattress at all. So buying a bed frame was kind of like... Okay just indulge me here a moment while I go into a deep, poorly thought-out metaphor.
It's like those Easter egg hunts you did as a kid. You're there with your big head and little body, running around the space that the lady that smelled like potpourri told you was the hunting ground. And you're looking for whatever eggs you can. You see other kids running over each other hoping to catch a glimpse of something colorful and glossy. There's one little bitch who looks too old to be there, with a basket full of unopened eggs who's pushing other kids out of the way to get the easy eggs. Another poor little bub runs and trips over his own sorry feet and skins up his knee on the blacktop and starts wailing. It's like a pastel battle field. You find a couple eggs with some stoopid stuff inside. A few of those icky gumdrop candies in one of them. One egg with a quarter in it (which is kinda cool because you can use it later when your mom goes to the mall to get a one of those little plastic aliens). Another egg with a single jack in it (what are you going to do with one jack? Who even plays jacks anymore? It's 1998, not 1801.) So as you start to give up hope on finding anything worthwhile you wander off into the brush at the edge of the church yard to maybe go look for some bugs or a cool stick or something. And then there. In the long yellow grass you see it. A yellow egg with a star on it. And you crack it open and oh god. It's that twenty dollar bill potpourri lady told your mom was out there somewhere.
You think of all the glorious things you can buy with it. And when your dad finally takes you to the Walmart that smells like gasoline and cheese, you see that one toy that you didn't even realize you needed. And you play with that toy and love it until you're bored of it and want something new.
That's the bed frame for me. Right now I have it and love it and honest to god, stare at it every morning for a couple of minutes before I go to work. It's exactly what I wanted and needed in the moment. I worked hard and aimlessly, got paid, and bought it. It makes me so happy. And not just because it's pretty, but because right when I wasn't thinking about needing it, I found it online. And it so suddenly brought me so much unexpected joy and an odd sense of bliss.
Everyone's right that adulthood kind of sucks and is hard. You're thinking about crap all the time- what's my credit card bill looking like right now? do I have enough stuff in my fridge (that's not just queso and beer) to make a real dinner? what time do I have to be in at work tomorrow? where are we going out for drinks on Friday? do I really want to go out and be around people or stay at home with my cat?
But it's those little aha!s. Those little successes that really do it. They're the little bursts of unexpected happiness and bliss that keep us moving and loving our lives. They make us realize just how lucky we are, just how far we've come. I'm tired, and sometimes feel a little lost, but sooner or later there'll be another yellow egg with a gold star on it that I'll manage to find.
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