postscript to peanut butter

let me read it to you…

It’s funny how things are lost. The losing part seems to happen in secret, a prelude to the realization that something has gone missing.

My job for instance. I didn’t exactly lose it, I gave it up. But because I hadn’t given much thought to what I might do next, it felt like a loss. It felt sudden, even though, in reality, it was gradual. Gradual is such a nice word for it. Maybe it was more insidious like how a heart attack is preceded by years of plaque buttering the arteries. Or possibly surprising is the right word, like how you just start getting to the soul of things when your therapist says, “Time’s up.” It’s surprising when you realize it’s just business and you have to go home now.

I knew it was the right decision. Nonetheless, I sat in my underwear on the kitchen floor eating peanut butter out the jar wondering if I would ever work again. I wondered if I ever COULD, feeling as one does after a breakup….sort of ruined for all others. What have I done? Who will ever want me?

That same day, a crew of workers was tearing the roof from my house and preparing to accept a ten thousand dollar check with my signature on it. It was clear that I needed to put some pants on, put the peanut butter away and start assembling a plan.

And that’s how resilience happens. Also in secret, as a postscript to realizing that missing thing is not ever coming back.

There’s a kind of reckoning with the reality that whether you choose to suffer or not suffer, the world keeps turning. You’re entitled to your feelings about it, you have time to grieve, but you still have to share that time with eating and showering and opening the mail and feeding the cat.

Somehow, you have to muster the courage to pour the cat food into the bowl every day. And that very simple act feels like a fucking miracle, a noteworthy accomplishment you write two paragraphs about in your journal. Which leads you to write another paragraph about another small miracle like how you got out of bed a little earlier or became reacquainted with dental floss.

This doesn’t at all seem like progress or recovery. And yet, the breadcrumbs of miracles is what leads you along. That’s the way with miracles – when you pick one up, you see the next one just ahead.