I am a crumpled heap on the floor.
My nose is runny. No one can get me a Kleenex, no one can get me anything.
I am alone in a town in which I know not a single solitary person. Hellooooooo…(helloooo helllooooo hellooo)… I have no one to call for help, no family nearby, no friends.
I.
AM.
ALONE.
What have I done? Have I really dismantled my life to a complete void? I raise my head and look around me at the barren apartment, a ghost town relic of yesteryear in a 100 year old building. It’s pretty. Yeahh, pretty empty, ha. I don’t have shit. And I’m POSITIVE I should have taken the other apartment I checked out. This one has no neighbors, how will I ever meet anyone? Will my daughter and I be safe? Am I just a hermit now? This was stupid. I have just removed myself from all of my social life support. Beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. If I die, it will take a week before anyone knows I’m gone. I’m that random Jane Doe they only find because of the smell. I’m not sure who would even find me.
I am in full panic-attack mode, and there is no stopping the what-if train today. Whooot whooot! All abooooard! Here’s your list of destinations today:
What if I can’t find enough clients?
What if I can’t pay my bills?
What if I can’t take care of my daughter?
What if I don’t make any friends?
What if I just made the worst mistake in my life?
What if I just ruined everything?
And many, many more.
Including I am 100% positive I should have taken the other apartment.
I’m a loser. A fuckup. A horrible person. An infidel. A disappointment.
MONICA WHAT HAVE YOU DONE??!
And all of these negative thoughts swirl my brain farther and farther down the drain of depression, like these kind of thoughts always do, and just about the time I’m rounding the final cycle before I disappear down for the last time, my phone rings…
My beloved.
And we sure ain’t talking Prepdude. It’s my wonderful daughter. I wipe my face and answer.
“H…hello?” I’m trying to act like I haven’t totally crashed my mental grocery cart into a ditch, contents sprawling, eggs a broken Humpty Dumpty disaster on the pavement, but, well, it’s pretty obvious.
“Okay, Mom… what’s wrong?”
Shit. She’s onto me. I lose it.
“I…thi…ink I took…the wro…wroonng place. I should have ta-taken the other one!! That waa-as the riggght o-onne!” I sob. Pathetic.
Her response, practical and laser-focused like I’ll never be:
“Mom. If you had taken the other apartment, you’d be sitting on the floor there crying about how you should have taken this one.”
Well, damn.
Sage advice from a wizened 16 year old smacks me in the face, and I realize I’m just having a very human, very common response to drastic change. Second Guessing syndrome. Buyer’s remorse. Whatever. I made a choice, and it’s not right, or wrong, it’s simply a decision, and the usual little demons that come out when you try to change something are out doing their little Hades-dance around my head chanting you. were. wrong…YOU. WERE. WRONG!! though by now, I have changed so much of the everything about my life that I’m getting used to seeing their little critical faces dance by, their little ugly features twisted in disgust at my latest faux pas. Every day I wake up, they are at it again, and now it’s just like an old piece of furniture. I’m used to them. I just get up and do it anyway. Fuck ’em.
Which is a good thing, because I have some serious work to do. I start a business in Big Suburb, but it’s incredibly not busy, considering I’m starting with zero clients. I wind up driving back to Tiny Town three times a week to work at my old business, to make ends meet. I put 50,000 miles on my car that first year. I would have been better off just getting my CDL and driving a truck. But noooo, I insist on having this vision of creating an awesome life, but right now it is so undeveloped it just looks like an ugly larval mess. Haa, gross. Good thing this isn’t illustrated.
In the midst of this, and shortly after I move in to my spartan setting, Prepdude’s good friend has a wedding, and I am invited to the shower. She and her fiancee both have amazing jobs and do very well, they are combining two households into one, each already having their own house to sell. I check their registry. Oh, this is rich. I’m looking at crystal 300$ bowls for the lucky couple, and I don’t even have silverware yet. You know what? Here’s a question for you.
Why in chantilly lace hell do bridal showers still exist?
An archaic leftover from the 16th century (YES it backdates that far, I mean, I figured it was a relic but didn’t realize it would turn out to be practically prehistoric), the bridal shower was to be a starter set for the lucky (but are they?) couple in cases when the father of the bride hated the guy she was marrying and refused to provide a dowry. Yep, the whole tradition started because Dad thought your boyfriend’s kind of a dick. Then Hallmark kicked the whole shitshow up to Godzilla proportions, and made it so he could breathe fire directly into your wallet and burn up your funds in the name of family obligation. I mean, you HAVE to do it, right?? It is considered rude and gauche, (well, at least rude, since I don’t really know what gauche means) not to comply and provide some overpriced bauble or at least a healthy check, FOR WHAT EXACTLY?? You are buying a gift for the wedding. So, what the hell is this for? So you can waste an afternoon chatting with women you don’t know, playing games you don’t like, watching someone open gifts you didn’t want to buy? Isn’t it enough to go to the wedding??
Let’s get rid of this bullshit and replace it with a Divorce Shower.
NO ONE needs a fucking bridal shower. You are combining two incomes, quit pretending you need shit. You don’t.
You know who DOES need shit? The newly divorced! Dammit, THAT’s when you need the toaster. And a bed. And silverware. And towels. And pots, and pans,… aaaaand everything you just lost in the damn divorce. You just lost your house and half your income. Also, whatever it took to pay the lawyer, whatever maintenance, child support, etc you now have to fork over. You are getting, at best, half of every table, chair, power strip, Christmas decoration, napkin and roll of toilet paper.
So. I say we should get rid of bridal showers and replace them with divorce showers. At least half of y’all getting married are going to need them anyway. I guarantee you the parties would be wayyy more fun and entertaining, and Divorce Shower cake? Hell yeah, that’s when you need the extra calories, not when you’re trying to get your ass to wedge into your overdecorated white gown. That’s my plan, and if some of you business types who are better at this than I would like to write up a proposal to present to the Gods Who Control What Society Is Obligated To Do, that would be just peachy.
I return from said bullshit shower, kick off my weathered pumps, and rest for a minute on my floor. I really need to get some furniture.
A message is flashing on my phone.
My brother.
Uh oh.
Worship Leader Gone Wild 