I have been a Debbie Downer of the highest degree as of late. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest and, if technology allowed it, which I am sure it will one day, Scott would immediately chime in here to confirm what a royal PITA I have been.

"I love you," he said earlier,"but I'm not gonna lie." There really was no need for him to finish what it was that he wasn't going to lie about. I mean, for Pete's sake, I started crying at the Windy City Roller Derby game last night. Crying. At roller derby. Who does that, I ask you?

The long and the short of it is that I have been suffering from a mild bout of Life Is Changin' depression, the kind that falls on only a certain kind of person, the kind of person (me) who can take a day, sprinkled with sunshine, and turn it into a shit sandwich. All of the change, of which there has been plenty, has been of the Good variety, and yet somehow my inability to process said change has turned me cantankerous and moody. I wake up, and immediate start worrying, fretting and tallying all of the ways in which I am unhappy. I stress, I whine, I generally leave the world an unhappier place.

I suppose it's a positive that I recognize all on my own what a total PITA I've been, before something terribly ugly happened, but it doesn't excuse the behavior. After all, what sort of ungrateful person looks for the negative in a situation that 1) finds her in a wonderful new job that allows her all sorts of personal freedom, 2) begins sharing her life, day in, day out, with a great person and 3) finalizes all of her plans for a wedding just around the corner?

I know stress in these situations is normal, but at some point you have to just say "Oh what the hell" and quit feeling sorry for yourself. Or myself, as the case is right now. I'm not bringing the stress any closer to resolution by fighting with it, and myself, and I'm only making life miserable.

Today Scott and I went to the beach and after about 40 minutes went into the water. Within about 10 minutes he picked me up in his arms and swung me around and around so fast that I started to cackle and laugh so loudly, and so hard, that I forgot to care if anyone was watching the spectacle. It was the first time I'd really enjoyed myself in weeks.

We walked back onto the beach, after another ten minutes of spinning me around and dunking my head into the water, and laughing, and I noticed all of the sun bouncing off of the water. I thought about the ride to Moody's for burgers and beers that we were about to make, and how lucky we are - how lucky I am - that I found someone to share all of this with, no matter how scared I am, no matter how much of a PITA I can be.

I'm better right now, which is more than I can say for things these past two weeks. I have no good ending for this post, no way to sum it all up, except to say that it's been a rough time around these parts, and I'm no longer taking that for granted.

Posted by Erin at 06:40 PM | filed under: Odds and ends

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