Tomorrow Will Be Kinder

It's not usually my style to post about my sadness on Facebook or Twitter.  It makes me feel weird to be comforted by the internet, and I wonder if there isn't something unhealthy about going to the masses for solace instead of to specific people for support and emotional stability.

But today started out so bad, I didn't stop myself.

Yes.  My Facebook is in German.  "Furchtbar" translates to "horrible," in case you were ignorant of that.

I did edit myself soon after, though.

"Feeling horrible" sounded overdramatic to me.

Why did it feel like a Monday?  Well, I didn't work yesterday, and I do work today, so that may have been part of it, but it wasn't all of it.

After about an hour of wakefulness, it already felt like the Universe had a case of the Mondays and was taking it out on me.  All week, my pipes have been playing Wack-a-mole with me: one would freeze, but the other two would still be willing to trickle into use, then the frozen one would unfreeze, but one of the working ones would go out, then only the hot water came out so that any shower I attempted to take threatened 3rd-degree burns and washing dishes would have sufficed as a medieval punishment for stealing.  Then this morning, all of the pipes decided they were done trying.  I left all the working ones dripping last night, but to no avail.  This morning, no water.  

After cursing a bit about that, I then logged into my Amazon account to check on some stuff I ordered that suspiciously hadn't come yet (I bought a 6-year-old PS3 and some games with Christmas money) and learned to my horror that, due to my nostalgic reticence to delete my old Grand Rapids address from my Amazon account, I had actually shipped said orders to said address.  I don't know anyone at that address anymore.

Then, after freaking out a bit about that, my computer told me that, Surprise!  There are about 300 updates you need to install, and if you don't do it now, you're hard drive will become corrupt and you will personally self-destruct.  (Okay, yes, that last bit was my brain's artistic additions, but they all looked like important updates and I was scared of not performing them immediately, due to some recent changes with my computer) Oh, and, these updates are so big, intimidating, and fundamental to your computer's survival that you're going to need to restart in order to complete them.  This task will take approximately two hours and you will not be able to use your computer at all during that time.

If you've been following my blog for the past six months or so, you might have noticed the progressively downward-spiraling trajectory that I've been on.  Starting with my graduation and gradually descending deeper and deeper into a crippling sadness, frustration, and feeling of crushing hopelessness, the latter half of 2013 did not go well for me overall.

If you've been following my blog for the past one month, you should have noticed that I have determined that 2014 should be much better than 2013, if for no other reason than I say it will be, dang it.  I made New Year's resolutions to that end, I stopped going on Tumblr, I began consciously eating more healthily and limiting the number of Netflix hours I spent in a week.  I even made a Super Spreadsheet about how I do want to spend my time and what I want to accomplish this month and every month to follow.  I worked hard to make sure that 2014 at least started off much better than 2013 ended.

And then this day hit.

It may sound stupid, because all of these problems that I've had are very "first world" and fixable, but my first instinct was to crawl back into bed with my puppy, call my mom, and sleep for a while.  For the past six months, the problems have been "first world," "fixable," "easily handled," problems, but there have been so many that I've stopped being able to see them in that perspective.  It got to the point where I wanted to shut the world out and just sleep for a while, hoping that someone else would take care of the problems while I ignored them.

That, of course, is not realistic.  But that, my friends, is depression.

Since I was still wearing my jammy jams, I felt no shame wrapping Fudge and me back up in my blanket.  But when I called my mom, it went to voicemail.  So I lay there for a bit, thinking about how terrible this day was turning out to be, mourning the loss of the morning of fun wedding planning that required a computer and candle making that required running water and Assassin's Creed playing that required that ill-shipped PS3.

What?  This is exactly what I look like when I'm sad and in bed.

But then, a miracle happened.

I remembered that, since I had started to hoard water in various vessels elsewhere in my apartment (my two electric kettles, my nalgene, some pots on my stove) Fudge and I aren't going to dehydrate today.  I remembered also, praise God, my toilet is a beast that could probably get water from the surface of Mars.  I had already used the toilet once, and I had already had some tea and filled Fudge's dish, but these little blessings had fallen from my mind after the other issues had piled on.

I remembered that I have angelic friends who still live in GR and have professed on several occasions that they are willing to do anything for me, including go to a complete stranger's house and retrieve packages that aren't theirs.  I had already texted those people and called my old leasing company to have them warn the new tenants, but in my increased sadness and frustration, I had forgotten about that.

So I got out of bed, I called my current landlord to tell them about the pipes.  I cleaned up the apartment a little in case the maintenance people came around.  I started my computer's updates.  I lit some pre-made candles.  I had breakfast.  I played with my dog.  I surfed the web on my phone.

I got some perspective.  My problems did not end my day.

2014 is already so much better than 2013.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow.