Tuesday, August 19, 2008

I know it don't come in a shot glass..

I worry. A lot. Sometimes I am the embodiment of mama except that I am not anyone's mama. Worrying has caused me fights, cost me friends, and it has at time left me with the lingering feeling that if perhaps i worried about myself more and less about my loved ones I would be a much happier person.

Ignorance is bliss.

In a life that tends to throw you with people like you, I have been blessed (or cursed) with a group of friends as diverse in every sense of the word as anyone can dream of. I have friends who are scientists, artist, computer geeks, lawyers, musicians, bankers, creatives...you name a profession and I probably know someone who dabbles in that field. The same holds true for their values. I have friends who have never so much as smoked a cigarette and some others that would probably smoke the carpet if only it didn't burn so quickly.

But when we are together, they all come together and the world makes sense because ultimately they are all the same. We are all the same.

This past year though, while I've been busy with a thousand and one existential crises, things have been changing. People have been changing. It might be possible that life has been getting too hard or that maybe quirky traits have become problems. The fact of the matter is that if one person ends up in rehab or one person ends up in a hospital ward or one person ends up dead, you have to wonder what went wrong.

If several people end up in that situation, you have a problem on your hands and you have to stop and wonder: what does that say about you?

So what does that say about me?

On any given day I can look at ANYONE in the eye and tell them that I am okay. But this is a test of faith and character. Am I okay? A lot of the people who are going through different things are people who are quite close to me. I have to be honest and say that 50% of the time, I didn't think they had a problem.

But 50% is not that much now that I think about it.

What makes me different? Am I different? If so, why?

As I sit here sipping a glass of wine, I ask myself "should I be drinking this?" But I don't know if not drinking it is the answer... or if there is an answer. I just hope, and hope is a strong word, that I don't end up part of this new order of things...part of the group who talks about rehabs and hospitals like it was a time at a spa. Like the detox is some kind of facial and that therapy is some kind of exclusive party only a few can join.

"Yes I've been black
but when I come back
you'll know know know"
-Amy Winehouse. Rehab.


1 comment:

Bracuta said...

I know I'm one of the lawyers, but am I one of the computer geeks as well?
;-)