Everything’s All Right Up Here

Two items of emotional significance happened to me in the past week: I forgot an anniversary, and I got a song back. And the emotion I’m feeling now because of those two things? Happiness. Sheer and utter happiness.

Last year, on the morning of Tuesday, November 20th, two days before Thanksgiving, I found out something so horrible that a little part of me died — a little part that had to do with faith and hope and my perception of the universe. My already bruised heart shattered into tiny little pieces, and I had neither the energy nor the desire to pick them up again.

Like magic, my friends emerged from the woodwork with velvet-lined baskets and Crazy Glue in hand. They patched me up and refilled my heart with a different kind of love, a better kind of love, a higher quality octane than the bathtub moonshine shit I’d been subsisting on for years. I went through confession, detox, reeducation, reevaluation, and reemergence — a process that swallowed six of the quietest months of my life.

And when I did come out of my cocoon, I had to learn how to walk all over again. Luckily, I had some of the most important people in my life there waiting for me, helping me step out and move on. Luckily. Oh, yes. I am a lucky girl. I stood on an Oregon beach on a clear blue morning and screamed as much to the world. 

I am not a different person as a result of what happened, but I am a stronger person. I am a woman coming to terms with her own fabulousness. And I thank my friends every single day for being exactly who and what I needed them to be, when I needed them.  "That’s what friends do," they reminded me.

Yesterday, I was speaking to a friend and realized that November 20th had come and gone, and I hadn’t even noticed. Which is exactly what I had wished for: that the day would come, and that I would not mark its passing. 

It’s nice to get what you wish for.

This past January, when I saw the Foo Fighters in concert, my wish was for them to leave one song in particular off their set list — and they did. If smells are the number one vehicle for memory recall, songs have got to be a very close second, and I wasn’t ready to deal with those particular memories just yet. Happily, Dave Grohl sang every song I wanted to hear, a few more songs I needed to hear, and I left the crumbling concert hall on cloud nine.

The song they skipped? "Next Year." (I love this video.)

I’m working on my annual Happy Holidays CD (I anticipate a Street Date of December 1st, for those folks eager to get it in their hot little hands), and after hearing version 2.0 for the umpteenth time, I switched iTunes back to Shuffle. "Next Year" was playing before I realized it. Once I did I smiled and lip-synched the words all the way through. The song was on the 2006 Holiday CD. It’s a good song. Hearing it again was like welcoming home an old friend who had been gone for so long you wondered if they even remembered you. I was happy to find that song on my doorstep, and I invited it in. Because that’s what friends do.