3 posts tagged “life”

I got into my first accident today.

It wasn't a huge accident by any means. I took my eyes off the road for one moment to retrieve a stew bowl (covered only by a thin layer of aluminum foil) and hit a mailbox.

It was over in a minute. My mirror folded in, the glass popped out.

I pulled over down a side street, breathless and on the verge of tears. Stepped out of the car, Vanessa Mae still blaring her concerto popped the cracked mirror into its damaged holder.

I turned around and stopped at the mailbox. I only got paid Friday but used almost all of my pay on bills--I'm surviving off less than $100 until I get paid in another two Fridays. I was worried. I could barely afford to eat, let alone fix someone's mailbox. But nevertheless, I pulled into his driveway, stepped out, and greeted the owner, who was examining his damaged mailbox.

"I was the one who hit your mailbox," I said. "I pulled over down Marcia to pop my mirror back in and--I'll pay for your mailbox. I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it," he reassures me. "I can fix it. Thank you for coming back."

"Are you sure. I live right down there," I gesture to the street. "And when I'm not at work, I'm parked out there. If you need anything, please let me know."

He shoos me off, telling me time and time again that he can fix it, and I head off to work to deliver food to a co-worker, still a little shaken.

When I return home, I check ebay for a replacement mirror. $20 to fix the mirror, including shipping.

I'll be eating ramen and leftover spaghetti for the next two weeks, but I don't mind.

The neighbor across the street is rather eccentric--eccentric in a way you're certain only belongs in television. Everyone in the neighborhood calls her "The Moss Lady", because she has a backyard that's overgrown with flora and small ponds of water. I had caught her real name only once and immediately forgot it, so henceforth, I'll refer to my eccentric neighbor as "the Moss Lady".

Until her dog died about a month ago, the Moss Lady carried the little furball everywhere she went. When she went to check the mail, it went with her. When she walked outside to gossip with the neighbors, it went with her. And at one point, in perfect nosy neighbor fashion, I caught her peering over her car with a pair of binoculars, spying on someone in the neighborhood--and the dog was with her, curled under her free arm. Once, she confided to me, she caught signals from the other neighbors' baby monitors through her own that she kept for her own ailing mother, but was unable to detect whose signal she was picking up.

Just earlier in the week, I caught her washing her car; everyone in the neighborhood does it at one point or another during the summer. Sometimes, the kids will help out, dressed in bathing suits, anxious to squirt each other with the hose. Moss Lady does it in her bathing suit, too, but not with a hose.

She does it in the rain.

Whenever it rains, the Moss Lady pulls out the soap and the rag and starts scrubbing the silver Lincoln.

I swear, if I ever finish this novel, Moss Lady's going to have a cameo.

Whenever any of my friends is looking/feeling down, I ask, "What would make you happy?"

They answer, and then I (usually) counter with another question: "How can you achieve that?"

Today, I found myself asking me the same questions, only to find that I didn't have any answers.

Yesterday, I cried for the first time in a long time; I don't usually cry--and when I do, it's usually at novels or comic books or good movies. I had no idea why I was crying or what I could do to make myself feel better.

So I asked myself, "What would make me happy?"

And I realized that I didn't have any answers.

I don't even know what will make me happy anymore.

Sure, I know what will make me happy in the short-term. Video games, good books, time well-spent with good friends: the same things that make most other people happy. But in the long term, I'm not entirely sure what I can do to make myself happy. Sure, there's writing, but writers can't live off of book money alone.

I'm so afraid of being miserable in a terrible relationship or being unhappy at a 9-5 cubicle job. Or worse--working fast food or retail with a bunch of other saps who are as discontent as I am. I don't want to be unhappy with life the way that so many of my friends are.

I'm approaching my fourth year of college and I have absolutely no idea what else I want to do with my life. I've got one more year to figure out what I'm going to do and I'm even more clueless than I was my freshman year.

I'm not even entirely sure I'm on the right path.