There was a time when I could look out my office window and see the Hollywood Hills rising in the background. I’d sit and stare and feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Not a day would go by when I didn’t appreciate that view.
The same can be said for my relationship, really. I’d wake up every morning and feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Not a day would go by when I didn’t appreciate that view.
After leaving an empty bed to spend half an hour in minus-twenty degree conditions with a rubber mallet, attempting to pound my way into my iced-over car, I’d say my view has changed just a bit. The only thing I could think was, “Where did I go wrong?”
A woman I know would likely say this is all a result of the negative energy I put into the atmosphere. She’s a rather devout believer in the “laws of attraction” – a pseudo science I personally consider about as effective as exorcisms performed over the radio, but which really falls under the heading of “whatever works for you.”
She generally believes that the energy a person puts out attracts like energy: basically, think happy thoughts and you’ll get the same back. By that formula, I’m lucky a piano didn’t fall on my head this morning.
My biggest gripe with the “happy thoughts plan” is that it doesn’t take into account the utter randomness of the universe. All the positive affirmations in the world can’t control chaos, which is the only explanation I accept as to why unfortunate things happen.
With such a dismal opinion of the universe, perhaps I’ve earned my current lot. I have done some rather rotten things in my life that I feel absolutely no regret or remorse over. And considering my over-inflated sense of importance, a deliberate karmic smack down may not be implausible.
There’s no sense in apologizing for myself, seeing as how if presented with similar situations, I suspect I’d take the exact course I did in the past. However, perhaps the universe will cut me some slack if I come clean on a few things. If the powers that may or may not be are reading this, I am hereby taking full responsibility for the following actions:
1) Mailing a dead scorpion to a girl who talked smack about me. I started writing for rock magazines when I was a sophomore in high school. At that age, it was crucial that record labels take me serious in order to score good interviews. One little girl, jealous that I was going to spend time with her favorite band, actually called a record label to report my real age and say I was fucking the band. Fortunately, she only reached an intern, who called me later to laugh about the whole thing. I couldn’t let her get away with it, though. It seemed pointless to confront her, she’d only deny it and probably do more damage afterwards, so I took a more subtle approach. Bill, my family’s pet scorpion, conveniently kicked the bucket (from completely natural causes) the day before. My mother, who has her own curious devious streak, passed the crunchy corpse over to me with no questions. I placed him on a bed of cotton in a Tiffany’s box, wrapped it with a bow, and mailed him off. No note, no return address, no explanation. I let the rumor circulate that I practiced voodoo, and later heard the girl was convinced I had placed a curse on her. The curse doesn’t seem to have taken; I recently discovered she’s a hotshot photographer (who also sells stories to tabloids on the side).
2) Packing up all my belongings (and, to be honest, most of the furniture), moving out on a boyfriend while he was out of town, and ending our relationship via email. If I had thought that doing any of those things in person would have been appropriate or safe, I would have. But considering the guy, who once punched a hole in a wall when I accidentally ordered him the wrong meal from a Chinese take-out place, I believed my best course of action to be staying as far out of his way as possible. He must have stayed positive through it all, I guess, because now, while my eyes freeze over every time tears crop up when I’m feeling lonely and walking outside, this guy is currently married, raising a family, and posting happy pictures on the internet. Not one of them has icicles in their eyes.
Neither of these two situations has any direct or logical bearing on my life in the past three years, although subscribers to the happy thoughts plan might argue that they represent a history of negative emotion that resonates in my present.
Honestly, I don’t know what’s more disturbing: knowing that I could be paying for my shitty attitude for the rest of my life, or accepting that there’s no order in the universe and little sense to be made of much of anything.
I want my good view back.
(PS: I leave for Disney World in three days. If I don’t come back a renewed person, y’all have my permission to hit me with a baseball bat. Or get me drunk. Or both.)
UPDATE: I’m 10 hours away from leaving for Disney, and my OCD tendencies are running rampant like a monkey on crack. I need drugs. Just something light to curb this mildly hysterical edge. It’s not easy being a freak.
