I began fretting over happiness just after my boyfriend broke up with me near Thanksgiving and my Grandfather died on Christmas Day.  2005 began with a bang!

I’d been living and working with my grandparents which gave me time, as I’d wanted, to be with them before their passing.  Also,  there was a sort of a quid pro quo in which I was able to pursue the arts without fear while I helped them keep doctor’s appointments and such.  They gave me whatever time I wanted away from the store to take the train to New York where I worked in an improv group and also fell into an Off-Broadway play.  I was a paid actress in Detroit, but now I was a professional actress in New York City.  

The only thing bothering me was that my boyfriend, a Detroit musician, wasn’t following me.  He failed to launch from Detroit and I started threatening him.  Many successful and hot Italian guys live along the rail line to NYC and I was wondering what I was waiting for. When I set off to visit my beau, a series of calamities caused this stranger of nearly nine months to break my heart.

Then my grandpa had a heart attack.

My grandmother and I lamented our losses and, for better or worse, I left her sitting alone in her chair to get my man back.  I still feel guilty about that.  I thought I was too young to sit with her and grieve.  There was no way we’d help each other that way.

Whether or not I should’ve given up my comfortable life and upward climb to artistic success for this man will never be seen.  We’re married now.

In trying to squash the agonizing sorrow swelling like a tumor in my gut, I sought solace in psychics, books, audiobooks, God, prayer, and several showers a day.  The more I searched for relief the more desperate I grew.  Why was I being punished?  What had I done so wrong?  

In fact, the affirmations I’d chanted to myself with an obsessive compulsive quality seemed to pull me further in disappointment.  Clearly, they worked.  People joyfully pointed to the success of their positive attitudes in turning their lives around, but I simply grew more sharply aware of my failure.  Then, one day, I gave up being happy. Gave up trying to become, well, a better person.  

Granted, my attempts weren’t over, but I took a little vacation from the striving that brought so much strife and I found a moment of contentment.  Could this absurd idea that I deserve more be what’s defeating my spirit?  Well, duh!  I’d like to spit on the toes of those selling happiness.  Well, not really, but the idea makes me giggle.  

We’ll prepare for loogie launching tomorrow.