Driving to Africa

This morning I sat at my kitchen table and debated the many ways to legally inject coffee into my veins while internally punishing myself for thinking it was a brilliant idea to defend a former contestant on The Bachelor last night. I like to call these moments, 'driving to Africa,' because they are either so awful or so embarrassing, that if there was a way to get into your car and just drive to Africa, you would.

Coffee in hand, I proceeded to do what I do every morning: I checked CNN and then hit refresh on my Facebook newsfeed.  I am not actually that embarrassed to admit this morning ritual.  When I was working eighty hour plus weeks, I spent most mornings slamming a sugarless Red Bull and completing the rounds of returning calls. One and half years later, I find myself at home with a five month old and some eight hundred miles away from my former employment.  It’s silly, but Facebook occasionally makes me feel like I’m not so far away from my former life, especially after being cooped up in the house for three days because my kid is teething and I can’t be bothered to brush my hair or change out of my pajamas.

When I hit refresh, a posting from one of my exes hit the top of my newsfeed. Recently engaged, I can honestly offer that I am very thrilled for him.  We didn’t have the best breakup, but he’s a wonderful person and it seems (from what I can glean from Facebook) that his wife-to-be is a lovely girl: alls well that ends well kind of thing.  Clicking on his page revealed a few posts from his fiancé (am I a stalker?  It sure would seem that way) about how excited she was about the completion of their pre-marital counseling.  It made me smile. I remember those days.

Which brings me to a deep, and dark admission: I really, really love it when people are genuinely happy. 

(Note, unless said happiness is derived from hurting people because that is not cool. I’m looking at you, kid who I lent a pencil to in the fourth grade and you broke it in front of my face and laughed.  Also, killers. Your happiness sucks).

One of my biggest pet peeves is the ‘build them up to bring them down’ kind of culture.  Don’t get me wrong, anyone that knows me knows I’m guilty of laughing at sarcastic comments of the ‘what the heck is s/he wearing variety,’ hell, I’m guilty of making those comments. But in what can feel like an exceedingly depressing state of affairs in this country, I love to see those little bits of happiness poke through.  Life goes on. People get married.  People get promoted at work. Babies are born. And for a lucky few, your favored sports team heads to the World Series, The National Championship or the Super Bowl (what does that feel like, by the way?)

Perhaps it is because my husband’s job takes him out to the field for a week at a time, and those nights when he comes home ‘early’ most prime-time television is already over and Lucy has long been in bed, but reading about my exes excitement at his upcoming wedding made me appreciate and miss my own husband that much more.

There is probably nothing more true that the statement, ‘marriage is hard work.’ It is. It is really hard work.  In fact, it seems inaccurate and inclusive to limit this solely to marriage, so let’s say, ‘relationships of any kid are hard work.’  But, like anything worth doing, it is also so incredibly rewarding.  Matt and I have always joked that we see two paths, one that is paved with shiny yellow bricks, and the other one that is paved with hot coal, flanked by poison ivy and lined by dark and impenetrable woods and we say, ‘you know, I bet those coals aren’t that hot.’

 In efforts to be cheerful, many military spouses will say that deployments and the time spent apart makes the marriage that much stronger.  ‘You don’t get sick of him! You get to miss him!’   In all fairness, I’d like to hand it to the overly cheerful military wives of this world who have spun painfully missing someone into a positive thing. Good for you.  Remind me again, what is it that you’re on? I kid. I kid. (We’ll talk later).

I digress.

Missing my husband for a week is a heck of a lot better than missing him for seven months to a year, but it does help me reflect on how lucky I am so that the whole, ‘missing him’ thing can’t be all wrong.  Which is how I felt when I saw the postings of two crazy in love individuals and thought, you know what? It would be easy to bring them down and say, ‘Enjoy it now, it doesn’t last,’ but that’s just simply not true. 

There’s too much of that going on in this world, I think.  One can’t read the comments section of any major news outlet and not find a bevy of really, really unhappy people.  In fact, if one spent a day simply reading the comments sections of most articles, an image would form of the general state of unhappiness in this country so that it seemed like all of the US was holding a gun to its head and a bottle of whiskey in the other saying, ‘well, it’s been a nice run.’ 

As a note: if anyone who is reading this is one of those online posters that insists on commenting on every online article with something like, ‘Save yourselves, this country is really going to hell and there’s nothing we can do about it!!!!!!!!’ Just stop.  Seriously, stop. You’re totally annoying. I bet the whole of people in the US during the Civil War weren’t sitting there going, ‘Hot Damn! This is awesome! This country is doing swimmingly!’ (Those crazy picnickers that sat on battlefields excluded).  The point is, like any relationship worth fighting for, it does not behoove one to maniacally and continually suggest jumping ship.

I read a survey once that said something like, ‘according to Facebook, 90% of the world’s status’ reflect positive emotions.’  OK, I’m totally making that figure up, but I remember it was really, really high.  Higher than I expected, actually.  Which makes me think, wouldn’t it be fantastic if instead of concentrating on all the bad in the world, we could all- just for a bit- concentrate on all the good?

Pollyanna? Yes. But if the old adage is misery loves company, then can’t there be an equal and opposite adage? Like, misery loves company, but on the other side of the room, happiness has grabbed the mic and is blasting out a rendition of ‘Don’t Stop Believin’?  That metaphor/comparison may not have really worked, but well, you get what I’m saying.

 ‘There will be times when you briefly consider burning down the house, getting in the car, and driving to Africa,’ I want to say to the happy couple, ‘but then there will be times when you look at that person and think to yourself, ‘how in the hell did I get so lucky?’’

Well, hopefully you will remember that.  If both partners truly do love and respect one another. And you’re not Kim Kardashian.

That’s not to say that my husband and I haven’t had our arguments. Our house doesn’t manufacture rainbows or anything.  We are both, by nature, passionate and dramatic individuals. Once, I read an interview in one of the myriad women’s magazines (after a while, the titles blend together) of Penelope Cruz. In it she laughed about the passionate arguments she’d had with some Latin lover that involved her smashing plates on the floor and watching the pieces shatter and dance around the tile. She made it sound almost delightful, like performance art.

There was a time when my husband innocently tried to call me jealous in regards to one of his work colleagues.  ‘JEALOUS?!’ I had erupted, much to his shock, ‘I AM NOT JEALOUS!’ Though it would seem that I was indeed jealous after inciting this type of reaction.  In reality, I was mostly incensed that at time when he attempted to playfully insult me, he had chosen an adjective that couldn’t be further from the truth.  Something about that really ticked me off.  And worse, he actually truly believed that my reaction to his story was because I was jealous, (and not, as was the truth, a reaction to the sandwich I was eating).

‘CALL ME FINANCIALLY IRRESPONSIBLE! OR AN OVERREACTOR! OR LIVES IN FANTASY-LAND OR HATES IT WHEN THE PAPER CASING THAT SURROUNDS STRAWS GETS WETS AND LOOKS LIKE A BLIND WORM (all of which may be my more negative characteristics) BUT JEALOUS IS NOT ONE OF THEM! My husband responded with shock and he raised his voice, ‘Now hold on here, why is it wrong to be jealous? You’re jealous!’

Occasionally my mind betrays me, and the devil on my shoulder wins. In eyeshot, I saw a plate. Recalling Penelope’s dramatic inclinations, I quickly grabbed it with my hands.  In the corner of my eye I could see my husband’s grow to roughly the size of that plate. ‘I AM NOT JEALOUS!’ I shouted and promptly smashed the plate on the floor.

In that moment, I caught my reflection in the mirror.  Unfortunately, I did not resemble Penelope Cruz.  If I were to suggest I looked like any actress, it was probably be much closer to Charlize Theron's heart-breaking portrayal of serial killer Eileen Wournos in ‘Monster’.  My hair was wild (and not the sexy kind, but in the Medusa way), my nose was running and mascara was smeared across my eyelids so that the upper portion of my face looked decorated with the kind of designs worn by wild Banshees before battle.

We both stood there for a moment as I stifled the urge to laugh. My husband’s face froze in the type of look generally reserved in children the first time they see a tiger in the zoo. Eventually, he walked to the corner and found the broom and dustpan and began sweeping it up.

‘It was only $3.00 or something,’ I helpfully offered.

‘That’s really not the point,’ he said.

That was one of those drive to Africa moments.  I don’t care how perfect your marriage or relationship is, you will have them. And you will even consider boarding a rickety plane that you’re pretty sure will crash in the Sahara Desert and even that sounds better than standing in the room with someone who is as angry with you as you are with them. Especially when you know you’re right.

Usually, as it is the custom however, those moments pass and fill themselves with happier ones.  And you can admit that smashing a plate on the floor in an imagined feat of glory was not romantic and passionate, but really, really stupid. 

For those moments of goofiness, I am grateful for something as silly as Facebook. Why? Because I like reading good news more than bad news.

I suppose there’s irony in my post; I like Facebook, but chastise online comment sections.  Maybe because there’s less anonymity in Facebook.  Maybe because it’s a lot tougher to look (or write) people in the face and really say, ‘you’re a jerk and this country is going to hell’ when there’s an image of you attached to it completely plastered and holding a lampshade at your best friend’s wedding.

In the end, I didn’t actually comment on his page, because let’s be honest, that would be really creepy.  I’m sure his fiancé would say, ‘who is this girl commenting on my happy marriage post?’ And he’d have to say something like, ‘that’s my ex or, that’s this girl I passed on the street once who always dyed her hair really stupid colors,’ and she’d say, ‘wow, that’s incredibly weird,’ and frankly, she’d be right.  

But in those moments of sharing (even externally) in others happiness, I myself am selfishly transported to recall my own happiness.  I can’t promise I won’t want to drive to Africa again, or that I even won’t have one of those moments today, but at the very least I know at some point I will sit down at the computer and re-watch that episode of The Bachelor I thought it was such a good idea to defend against those unhappy posters last night and think, ‘Ben really needs to cut his hair.’

Oh, and ‘I’m grateful for the happiness that surrounds me.’