tuckova: how do you like what you have?

So, where were we? Oh, yes, my tragic sleeplessness. Well that seems to be over now YAY. It is funny how when I'm in a happy moment I am usually able to name it and enjoy it even though I am aware of its transitory soap bubble status, but when I'm unhappy it takes me a long time to figure out where it comes from, and in the meantime it's always what if it lasts forever this time? And then of course the moment it's over I'm like, oh yeah well of course. Of course I couldn't sleep; I was in a burning building.

Fortunately I have outstanding self-preservation and thus continue to go through the motions of removing myself from said burning building even when it all seems so hopeless, because some clever part of me knows that if I run, I will eventually be standing outside with all what's really important, what I have that I love, and we will have sooty faces maybe but we won't be dead or anything.

And you know, I don't mean possessions, but the people I love who really make it possible... no, that make it necessary to run. Because I am surrounded by expanding circles of awesomeness, and from the people I interact with daily to the people I only talk to a couple times a year, I am so extraordinarily lucky that I can only bear to think about it very rarely or my heart would explode. I live with an amazing pair of guys, I have friends that I see regularly, friends I see annually, and friends I've never met, and yet I know that each of these people has my back. There are couches around the world that I could distressed damsel-esquely collapse on, and those people who would hand me tissue and tell me jokes, and I know this is true not least because it is unquestionable that I would do the same for them. Gertrude Stein asked, "How do you like what you have?" and I have to say I like it really, really well. I have friends who will help me sift through my shit and laugh about it. I have people who know how to distract me from my own stabby moments by discussing stab binding. I have a sister I can call at 3 in the morning who will remind me that you cannot go wrong re-reading your favorite childhood books. And there I was, curled on the couch an hour later sniffling because Taran couldn't make pottery the way he wanted, and he had to move on... I felt nevertheless finally as right as... no, more right than rain.

I just mean to say: I know I am really lucky. I know I am so unbelievably blessed to have the life I have, to have so many people making that life rich and wonderful. I know that the moments of bliss, like the moments of despair, are just shifts in the wind, and that a good gust of laughter can blow away even the acrid smell of smoke from a building I didn't have to stay in, and the rest of the neighborhood is intact, because it's filled with good people. I'm counting you.