I think I have finally beaten my sickness. More snot than ever is coming out of my nose, and it’s coming out in great gobs, which means that my body is getting rid of the evil that once plagued it.
Things always come in waves for me, however. One minute I think I’m on top of the world, the next minute I realize my life sucks and I have very few friends. This, of course, is an exaggeration, but this is how I tend to think when things aren’t going well for me. The trick is to live in the moment.
Take what happened outside just now, for instance. I was so happy to have made it to school in a record amount of time, feeling more invigorated than ever by the dense Seattle air coursing through my lungs and filling every single blood cell in my body with rich, Puget Sound oxygen. I felt so good. And then I dropped my U-lock on my big toe.
If you’ve never picked up a U-lock before, they weigh about 4 lbs and feel like they’re made out of solid uranium. I was unlocking it, holding onto only the fat part where you put the key in, when the U part came unlocked and fell about three feet onto my big toe. After yelping for several seconds and huffing not unlike a frightened wildebeest, I finally sucked up my pride and finished locking my bike.
So this is why I tend to think that things come in waves for me.
But what a pessimistic way to view the world. I’m like George Costanza, in Seinfeld, afraid of any kind of success because I secretly fear that God doesn’t want me to be happy and will strike me down as soon as I achieve any kind of happiness or well-being. This, I know, is not the case. When things are going well, they’re going well. When things are going bad, they’re going bad. Because things are going well does not mean they’re doomed to go bad at any moment.
One might say I have an attitude problem.
But right now, sittiing in Odegaard about to listen to Radio Canada in French and think about how this summer I’m going to be lounging at an outdoor cafe in Quebec whispering sweet nothings into the ear of some unsuspecting Quebecois girl, I can only think that things are going to go well. I can only expect things to go truly well, because what other thing is it healthy to suspect.
So maybe this makes me a raging optimist. It’s always 50-50.