Recently, there was a big
hullabaloo that mostly existed in my head. No, that’s not true. It started in
my head, but then it took over my entire day. It started with a text from
someone named Jenny.
My first thought was, hmmm, I don’t know a Jenny. And that was
that. If only that had remained that. A few hours later, while I was reading
comments on another blog, a blog I much admire, it hit me. It had to be her. I
had received an invitation from an amazing writer to meet on Skype to talk a bit. Perhaps the missing
apostrophe should have been a clue, but when you go from dismissal to euphoria
in .3 seconds you tend to overlook the details.
I’ve recently started blogging
myself, and I’ve been following her, because I have a lot to learn, also she’s
funny, socially conscious, and other good crap. I’ve been reading her posts
religiously and I’ve left some comments that may or may not have been witty,
and in that instant, it became clear that she was so overcome by my budding
efforts that she couldn’t waste a moment in reaching out to me, to discuss my
soon to skyrocket writing career. Of course a second later I was equally
convinced that this was ridiculous, it was all in my head and it couldn’t
possibly be her. That’s the feeling I should have gone with.
But
no, I thought. She liked some comment I made. Or else she wants to berate
me for writing mean things about my cat. I know she likes cats because she
writes about hers sometimes. Only she writes nice things about hers, because
apparently they never pee on her stuff; or on her person. So I’ll have to make
her understand that although I say mean things about my cat, I never do mean
things to my cat, even though she has peed on my head while I slept. Twice. Two
times. Yep. And still I feed her. Because I’m stupid.
So, I’m shaking, and I’m running
around, and I get my sister on the phone because I just cannot do anything, I
can’t even Skype because I don’t have Skype, so there’s the whole business of
downloading that to deal with (which was really an effort, and in the process I
allowed the download of like twenty random programs or whatever they’re called)
so I had to have help. In defense of my stability, the first thing I said to my
sister was, “I’m probably imagining this. It couldn’t be real.” But I didn’t
feel like I was imagining it. I felt pee-my-pants-happy. Which I did not
actually do. So maybe technically I wasn’t. Can you be pee-your-pants-happy if
you don’t pee your pants? Yes. If you don’t have to pee.
While I was failing miserably to
download Skype, I reverse 411’d the number the text came from, and it was
indeed a Texas number which was evidence.
The text was sent by Jenny from Texas. There can’t be more than one. I’m
not a crazy person at all.
So finally Skype is working. I’ve created
a profile, entered Jenny’s contact info, and fumbled with the keyboard until
finally, the person who has asked so kindly to speak with me is revealed. But it’s
not her. So now I’m crushed and bursting with humiliation, because I’ve dragged
my sister into this which makes her a witness. But wait! Maybe the picture was
taken when she was a teenager, or on Halloween, or on a day when she just
really wanted to show off her boobs. But no. Still not her.
My poor sister is still on the phone,
and I imagine her writhing with empathetic embarrassment, because really, how
much of a fucking moron can a person be? I’m instantly and severely depressed.
I manage to get off the phone so I can cry, and have some xanax and a beer, because
somehow I’m out of liquor. It’s a bad day to be out of liquor, but my shame
won’t allow me to venture out to the store where I sense the whole world is
waiting to mock me for my hope and stupidity. Clearly, I should go to bed
before I do anything else humiliating and anyway, it’s almost 3:30 in the
afternoon and I can’t take anymore.
I realize that the whole thing is
ludicrous. I will never be a writer. No one whose work I admire is ever going
to admire mine back. Everyone who has ever complimented my writing either lacks
taste or lies, either out of pity or pathology. I will never accomplish anything
that I want to accomplish. And all I’m really doing by blogging is rendering
myself unemployable.
I finish my beer, the one I cracked
open while I was frantically trying to install Skype. I start uninstalling all
the useless programs that I had inadvertently piggyback downloaded in my
earlier fucking flurry of emotion. I was feeling good about figuring out how to
uninstall all this crap by myself, because technology is evil, but that day it
was my bitch. Until I accidentally uninstalled something I needed. Now
everything on my screen is too big and the stuff on the edges isn’t there; it
looks like it would if you pressed your nose directly against a book and tried
to read it. FYI, you need your graphics drive.
Of course, I had another beer. I
kept going back and forth between wanting to sink forever into misery and
feeling a little ok, maybe even slightly amused. My sister posted a cute thing
on Facebook about how 90% of kids get all their awesomeness from their aunt.
That’s me. And my friend texted to make plans for us to spend the next leap
year at Disneyworld. So my day clawed its way a little further out of the
toilet.
So much so that I was able to
consider the idea that it wasn’t so stupid. I mean, it was really stupid, incredibly stupid, almost brilliantly stupid, but
maybe that’s good. Because maybe, even though it didn’t work out this time, it
will eventually. Even though it isn’t true right this second, now I know that I
believe it could be true someday, even someday soon. And that’s heartening,
because as much as I hear that one must believe great things are possible, I am
not naturally an optimist. And as stupid as it was, I believed.
And believing? Being that idiotically
hopeful? That’s kid shit. It’s awesome. Like when you were little and you just
knew you were going to grow up to be an astronaut/rock star/firefighter/veterinarian,
before you got to the point where you started ruling things out. Can’t be an astronaut if you get sick on
the teacups at Disneyland. Can’t be a vet if the sight of an animal bleeding
makes you want to cry. Can’t be a rockstar if you’re tone deaf. Yeah,
there’s some wiggle room there. And I could still be a firefighter. As far as I
know.
But for those twenty minutes, I was
not ruling anything out. In spite of the lingering embarrassment, it was a
really good twenty minutes. So good for me. Kind of. In an unfulfilled,
humiliating way.
P.S. To Jenny who sends enticing
Skype related texts with no regard for the consequences: I’m not that happy with
you. Lose my number.
P.P.S. To Jenny the hilarious and
socially conscious
Bloggess: I’m not dangerous. I just get excited sometimes.