Bad Day, Sad Day

Today I am writing from home because I woke up and knew I wasn't going to be able to handle the day. I was responsible...I emailed in sick and have been checking my emails all day. But it's one of those days where even Ella's hilarious self isn't cheering me up.

Why do you feel this way?, you ask. Well, looking back I think it's several reasons. The number 1 reason is that one of my best friends is leaving tomorrow for an amazing journey. She'll be gone until the end of March. I don't think words can express how happy I am for her. Life has been mean to her and she deserves this trip. This journey is also the manifestation of turning tragedy to triumph. It isn't my story, so I won't elaborate.

With all that said, I am profoundly blue that she is leaving. I cry every time I think about it...yup, I'm crying right now. I am going to miss her so much. I know that this is touching on some of my own abandonment issues and that's why I am feeling her absence so strongly, but knowing that doesn't make it hurt any less. We have been friends for over a third of our lives...and good friends at that. That's a long time when you're only 31 and went to eight different schools before college. We've been the kind of friends that wrote letters to each other when we lived in different cities. The kind of friends that have seen every single apartment we've lived in...in those different cities. The kind of friends that have difficult, tear-filled conversations when there is something amiss in our relationship. The kind of friends who know what "fish rubbings" is.

Everyone who knows this woman knows that there is one other woman in her life that is as close to her as a sister...maybe even closer. For that reason, I hesitated calling her my best friend for years. Didn't we girls learn in 8th grade that best friends are only best friends if it's reciprocal? But recently I decided that I love this woman so much that I don't care whether I'm her best friend. She has cared for me in ways no one else can and I trust her in ways I trust very few people. She makes me laugh so hard that I have to stop walking and double over. So she's one of my best friends, damn it! And I won't get to see her for quite a while for us...we usually talk several times a week. And I'm sad.

Yeah, there are some other peripheral things that are causing my blue state: the latent sexism that lives at my job, the fact that Ex's marriage to Her was absolutely confirmed to me yesterday, the messiness of my apartment. But I really think that I am just going to miss my friend.

P.S. The painting above is by an Iraqi artist named Wisam Rady. Look him up...his story is interesting.