The Week That Wasn't

The lamp. 

The lamp was the first thing I saw when my eyes opened Monday morning. I was hoping it wasn't Monday morning. I was hoping it was, say, Wednesday and I'd slept through Monday and Tuesday. But it was Monday. It's not Monday's fault that it comes after Sunday. It's just that this particular Monday came after that Sunday. 

I don't really remember a lot about Monday. But I do firmly believe that there's an Everybody Loves Raymond episode to cover almost any situation in life and, in this case, it would be the episode during which Robert and Amy get married. 

I won't bore you with a recap of the entire episode. If you want to watch it click here. Suffice it to say that the ceremony didn't go well and during the reception Ray gives a great speech trying to smooth everything over. The long and the short of it is that our brains work like a filtering device and the further you are from a situation the more positively you remember it.

Monday I was not far enough removed from the situation, and now my brain has edited Monday out.

I was off on Tuesday so I lay on the couch. I took three separate naps in a 10-hour span. During the parts that I was awake I avoided anything that might possibly address the situation. That meant no sports, no news, no late night talk shows...basically I could only watch things that had already aired on TV at least 24 hours prior to me waking up and seeing the lamp. 

Enter TBS. 

What once provided me with lasting childhood memories of Braves baseball was now my escape from sports of any kind. I ended up binge-watching New Girl. I'd never seen an episode and now I'm almost a full season in (no spoilers, please). It doesn't get much more non-sports than that, except for the fact that one roommate once played pro basketball in Latvia.

That night I put my "no sports" pact with myself on hiatus long enough to watch Georgia try to salvage its gut-punch of a season against Florida. 

Back to TBS.

By Wednesday the scene in my apartment was pretty dire. The blurry green image in the picture below is a pack of provolone. When I woke up that morning that was the only food remaining in my fridge, and I'm pretty sure its expiration date had long passed. 

I decided to leave my apartment for the first time since the situation presented itself. Not only did I go outside, I went for a 2.5-mile run. Turns out, you can't outrun a situation. It will catch you when you stop. 

I also went back to work, which turned out to be somewhat therapeutic. You never know how well your co-workers actually know you until a situation presents itself. In this instance, no one spoke to me or made eye contact for the first five hours I was there. 

They know me pretty darn well. 

I came home that night to the movie Uptown Girls on TV. Don't know it? Neither did I. But I watched the last hour because I was pretty sure it was safe. Not a bad flick, actually. Then a few more episodes of New Girl on Netflix. No chill, just bed.

The only good thing about Thursday is that it was both my Tuesday and my Friday at work. After a few more episodes of New Girl it was actually Friday and I'd been looking forward to this particular Friday for a few months. That's because this particular Friday I was seeing Bon Jovi live for the first time in more than a decade. I've loved Bon Jovi since, let's see, fifth grade?

Unfortunately this concert was at Philips Arena. Philips Arena is next to another arena, and that arena that used to represent such joy now represents the situation that gives me night terrors. So I did what they do to horses to keep them from getting spooked: I blocked my vision from the offending spectacle.

Yes, by Friday I was a frightened horse.

Then a funny thing happened. I found out that it's almost impossible to have a negative thought in your head while 20,000 people are singing "Livin' On  A Prayer" in unison at the top of their lungs.

Then another thing happened. A wonderful visit with my family on Saturday presented an opportunity to acknowledge the situation verbally for the first time since it presented itself.

Then yet another thing happened. An impromptu visit with some very close friends on Sunday, who are also very close to the situation, allowed me to finally talk through some things with people who know exactly where I'm coming from. I didn't know it at first, but it was the first time they had addressed the situation as well.

Does that mean I'm all better now? Of course not. But it's a start. 

So here we are, a week later.

In the end, the one thing I keep coming back to about this week is the closing line in Uptown Girls: "Every story has an end. But in life every ending is just a new beginning."

I need that to be true, because the situation that presented itself last Sunday night didn't just ruin Sunday night. It ruined about five months of wonderful memories that will now be tainted the way a wonderful relationship can be by a bad breakup. 

I've been through my share of breakups over the years and I've learned one thing: Like Raymond said, the further you are from the situation the better you feel.

In a month I will leave for my annual trip to Braves Spring Training. Hopefully by then I'll be ready to be disappointed all over again. 

Or maybe I'll just buy a new lamp.