Yesterday a friend of mine e-mailed me. He was having a downer of a day because he was waiting for a check that didn’t arrive, and his Internet was out (can’t that make us all feel totally abandoned?). I’m posting my response to him below. It was a strange story / analogy that came to me. This is one of those e-mails you hesitate to send because you fear it makes you come off as . . . weird. But after I sent it I felt no self-consciousness (which always seems to increase once you hit send), and thus I post it here, too. A heads-up: I write fairly informally on this blog, but this e-mail is very informal (and it includes obscene language):

from Samara O’Shea
to [Redacted]
date Tue, May 19, 2009 at 2:27 PM
subject Re: Oh Yeah

I don’t mean to get all Eckhart Tolle on your ass, but don’t let these things determine your mood.

I’m about to tell you a random story and then you’ll know what a real whack job I am. Ah well, it was going to come out sooner or later. . .

There was a Fashion Bug in Gibbstown, NJ where my mother used to take me shopping. I HATED going. We only went on Sundays, (and there’s always something about Sunday afternoon / evening that makes you want to kill yourself especially when you’re in Jr. High). It was a dreadful experience because my mother and I would fight (she’d hold up clothes that I hated and she’d take it personally when I told her I hated them). Plus I hated the way I looked, walked . . . I was all wrong. I was a young teenager. You know how that goes.

Anyway, in recent years, anytime I feel bad, I imagine myself in the parking lot of this fucking Fashion Bug—the parking lot itself is gross and the experience standing in front of me is the 7th circle of Hell—and I tell myself that I’m not allowed to leave until I find happiness. I challenge myself to find happiness (or at least hope) in a place where it does not exist, which means I have to find it inside myself. I know that if I can find a way to love myself and be happy in this godforsaken parking lot then I can find it anywhere. Then I will have the ability to give reassurance to myself when no one and no thing are willing to give it to me.

So aspire to have a good afternoon anyway—with no money and no Internet.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 7:28 am and is filed under Random Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.