M*therf*cking M*nday.

I’m back in the normal NYC hustle and bustle after five blissful days of vacation. It’s alright, I suppose. I seem to have retained some of the peaceful equanimity I picked up in DC, and I certainly had a mind-expanding spiritual experience. Mind-expanding spiritual experiences should accompany EVERY vacation or you really haven’t gotten your money’s worth, in my opinion. Trust.

But before there was Paid Time Off there was the impending Nervous Breakdown. I’ve been as forthright and honest as I could be about the fact that the last few months for me were holy shit storms of stress and aggravation (almost entirely work-related). Well, last week, just when I was convinced it was as bad as it could possibly get, it got worse.

Mondays are rarely awesome, but some Mondays set a tone for the week so outrageously horrible, that you find yourself praying for a quick and merciful death in lieu of the work week you find yourself facing. I had that very Monday. The day started with typical client complaints because I was trying to schedule inconvenient but necessary construction into their occupied space. So I gave up trying to get my workers where they needed to go and then my bosses RIPPED ME NEW ASSHOLES for not aggressively scheduling my work fast enough. It was raining and cold and I dressed for sunshine. I was four days off sugar and trying not to drink coffee, so I couldn’t really articulate my standard quick responses, and it was noticed. And commented on, frequently. I ended up just grinding the work day out. I absolutely could not wait to get home so I skipped the AA meeting, and went straight for the subway. I got off at my stop, and started trudging home with my head down against the rain when some Asshole in a beat up Toyota decided to bounce me off his windshield.

I got hit by a fucking car? WHAT?!?!? Did that really happen? Am I alive? Am I hurt? No, I’m…..what the fuck am I feeling right now………oh that’s right, ANNOYED.

The cops came, the firemen came, the ambulance came, and 40 minutes later I was allowed to continue walking home in the rain. The Asshole never got a ticket, but I was extremely lucky to have not been killed, so I let it be. I had only been home, shaking, for a few hours when I got a mildy poisonous text message from a newly sober girl who I had agreed to collaborate with on a recovery book. She had arranged for us to meet with a literary agent the next day (that meeting was set weeks ago) but decided to cancel the meeting, using my car accident as an excuse, until we could “get on the same page”. I used the cancellation of the meeting as an excuse to liberate myself from a book proposal that was just not sitting right in my conscience.

The long and short of it is, I had seduced myself with dreams of book related fame and glory (and an escape from construction). And she was such a talented writer in her own right, that it was hard not to get excited about the idea of what we could create together. But something kept needling me in the dark hours of the night, and the more I ignored it, the more signs of strain started popping up in our burgeoning partnership. At that moment, it became pretty undeniable. I'm in no position to be telling other sober women how to live happy, useful lives. I'm certainly in no position to be collecting money off of my proposed "solutions". I am still, obviously, trudging away to learn how to do that for myself. I know that I have books in me, but that's going to happen in Divine Time, not according to a schedule I try to force on myself.

I sat on the edge of my bed and tried to tally up my day. Gnarly, shitty work day, and I would rather carve out my eyeballs than go back. Fantasy book deal completely SHUT DOWN by me, no less. And hit by a car. If my karma is now bad enough for me to be getting hit by cars, what kind of a realistic life expectancy can I have in NYC? Maybe 6 months? A year? How does one go about spiritually rebounding from an experience like this?

I took Tuesday off, and thank everything that is Holy and True, I had scheduled a vacation for that Thursday. Wednesday was spent at work showing off my bruises and contemplating the deeper meaning of what had just happened. Was my HP telling me to LITERALLY check myself before I wrecked myself? My soul’s radar may not be the strongest, but it is there. And past experience has revealed to me, that when everything in my life goes fucking BOOM at the same time, it’s because I’ve strayed too far from Divine Will for me. My course is always in need of correction at that time, and this time around I suppose, the Holy Powers That Be decided a car/body collision was the only way to snap me out of my workaholic trance.

So I decided to surrender, yet again, to God’s Will. I prayed all day, I prayed all night, and the next day, and the day after that, for him to show me what exactly he had in mind for me. I promised to take his guidance seriously this time, and set aside my own ambitions and agendas.

Ask and ye shall receive, no? I got the divine instructions, over the next five days of my vacation. Jesus, I was really getting ready to sell myself short there. And that, kids, is the moral of my story. My meager mortal plans for myself are nowhere near as fitting, amazing, and BIG as the plans of my higher power. If I stick with my will, I end up with fuckall. I surrender to The Only Will that Really Matters Because He Always Wins Anyways, I get the power and the glory and the kingdom. Forever and ever, man.

Who knew?

Ingenue