Worst. Day. Ever.

[grammargirl]

So the suckage of yesterday was so severe that I didn't even trust myself to write about it until I'd had a good night's sleep to put things in perspective a little bit. You ever have one of those days where it's like the God you don't really believe in is punishing you for some sin you don't remember committing? Yesterday was kind of like that, in a one-day-you'll-look-back-at-this-and-laugh kind of way.


I woke up yesterday, posted my semi-optimistic LJ entry, and puttered around a bit in preparation for getting dressed and doing laundry and whatnot. At some point, I dragged my laundry basket back into my room (we'd piled pretty much everything in the living room to get it out of the path of water) so I could hang up the laundry I did a few days ago and make room for the clothes that were victims of the Great Flood of Thursday night. I glanced over, idly surveying my floor... and realized that the flood had suddenly gotten much worse. There was standing water in spots here and there, and a giant puddle in the middle of my floor. That kind of freaked me out, especially since I'd woken up thinking that things had improved a little overnight, so I called the landlord and told him, politely, that the problem had gotten considerably worse and could he please send someone over as soon as possible? In the meantime I called my mommy, purveyor of all knowledge in situations like this, to update her on the situation and ask if she thought it would do much good to try to mop up a little of the standing water before the landlord got here. Mid-conversation I noticed my journals and flipped the fuck out.

There's a gap of about a foot or so between my bookshelf and dresser which I'd been using to house my journals because there wasn't enough room on my bookshelf. Because as of Thursday night the water line hadn't been anywhere near that corner, and because the journals are kind of out of sight and out of mind (they're kinda hidden in their little nook, and I never really look at them--I have them here more for the knowledge that I have them than because I ever really read through them), I didn't notice and move them out of the way in time.

Time came to a screeching halt. In a daze, I pulled the journals from their hiding place and piled them on my bed, tears running down my face as I surveyed the damage. My poor mother was talking this whole time, trying to get me to calm down enough to tell her what had happened.

My first NELP journal, swollen with letters and maps and the moisture from hauling it up and down two mountains, is still mostly legible, though a few letters from friends are smeared beyond recognition and my journal group leader's comments, written in blue fountain pen, have bled everywhere. The journal I kept for my sophomore creative writing class is really damaged at the beginning, but for the last half of the semester I mostly typed entries on the computer and then pasted them in, so all that stuff is pretty much readable.

The one that really hurt, though, was the journal I kept in 11th-12th grade. The damage wasn't as bad as it could have been--I wrote in a variety of different pens, so the legibility kind of varies, though there are places I wrote in fountain pen where it's impossible to tell that anything was written there at all. The thing is, there's so much in that journal. I took it with me on my second trip across the country in 11th grade; I had it with me in France and wrote in it right after the car accident that should have killed me. I wrote the first draft of the poem that won me a $5000 scholarship and an internship at a publishing company in that journal.

So I gathered up these tattered remnants of my past and hung them on my drying rack next to the dehumidifyer, and I let my mom calm me down a little. Once she was off the phone I sensed the coming onslaught and had the presence of mind to call work and let them know what the situation was and that I'd probably be coming in late. I sat on the couch for a while, hugging my teddy bear and surveying the damage, and suddenly there were tears streaming down my face again and then I was balled up on the couch, sobbing hysterically, crying harder than I've cried since I came to college. I realized at some point, when rational thought had returned somewhat, that the tears were for more than just my lost journals. I cried because of my dependence on the past, becuase my writing used to mean so much more to me than it does now, because I have less than three weeks to finish my thesis and I'm terrified, because I'm lonely and scared about life post-graduation, because this has been a horribly stressful semester in a horribly stressful year and I'm not sure how much more I can take. I cried until my face was bright red and covered in snot and I could barely breathe anymore, and then I calmed down and sat up and called Aubrey to tell her that the flood had gotten worse, some of my journals were wrecked and I was freaking out, and could she please come home soon?

So she did, and she helped me laugh about it because she's good at that. I called work to tell them that I wouldn't be coming in for my shift that day, and Aubrey went to get Jimmy John's while I waited for the guy to come dry out our rooms. He showed up midway through lunch, sucked out what he could with his water vacuum thingy, and set us up with a hy00ge dehumidifyer and a couple of hardcore fans. Five minutes after he left, the circuit breaker decided that it didn't like us running quite so many electrical devices at once, and the lights in half of the apartment went out. Laughing a little hysterically (because, really, what else could we do at that point?), we called our landlord, found the circuit box, and, after some fiddling around, managed to get the lights back on.

Shortly thereafter, Aubrey left for work and I set out to wash the laundry that had gotten drenched in the flood. East Quad, I found out belatedly, had the water turned off yesterday for some reason, so I drove to the semi-sketchy laundromat on Packard instead. The place closes at 8 and I didn't get there until 6:45, but I figured I'd be okay as long as I dried everything on high (which I don't usually do) so it would be done quicker. Because I was in a rush I didn't bother sorting through the clothes and turning them right side out--just tossed them in the washer and then the dryer. The dryer finished at 7:55--perfect timing. Imagine my surprise, however, when I discovered that every single piece of clothing was covered in spots of what looked like either shit or chocolate. Turns out that a wayward hershey kiss survived the washer (I always use cold water) and melted like hell in the high heat of the dryer. I just stood there for a few minutes, numb. Then, for the fourth or fifth time that day, I did what I always do in a crisis: I called my mommy.

That appears, thank God, to be the end of the Flood Curse. I mostly spent last night watching television or playing Mario Kart--not only was I so exhausted and upset at that point that I wouldn't have been able to get any thesis work done if my life depended on it, but I was half worried that, with my current luck, I'd open up the document and the circuit breaker would go again and fry my computer or something. Aubs and I slept in late today, as we do every Saturday, and when I woke up my floor was dry. We made breakfast (fried eggs, toast, and sausage) and then had a pre-treating party with the stuff I'd picked up on my way back from the Laundromat Trip From Hell last night (mommy recommended this stuff called Zout, and I also grabbed a clorox bleach pen for white stuff). Our landlord stopped by to make sure we were doing okay, and we guilted him into letting us resign the lease for next year at the same rate we're paying now. We're pretty sure we're going to be able to get a free month's rent out of the deal. Aubs and I went back to the laundromat today and rewashed our chocolate-covered clothes, and the Zout managed to fix just about everything. My journals are still badly damaged, but the process of reading through them today reminded me that I really can write, that even though my LJ does not always live up to my standards, I do have interesting things to say. I lamented to penguinboi last night and to Aubrey today that writing used to be so important to me; I used to write like it meant something, like it really mattered. While I love LJ for the friends I've made, for the ability to go back and find out when this event happened or how much I freaked out about that paper, I don't think I ever reach the emotional intensity I found in my old journals. Aubs suggested that I start a paper journal, and I think I might just do that once my thesis is over with and I can think again. I'll tell you one thing, though-- I sure as hell won't be leaving it on the floor.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It seems just a little silly to be upset because something used to mean more to you than it does now. Changing priorities, values, and methods of expressing yourself, well, that's pretty much the definition of getting older, maturing. It can be scary to confront the ways in which we have changed, especially when we didn't even realize we were changing at all. Suddenly we wake up one morning and realize that we no longer care about the people and we used to love the most, but instead, there are whole new people and things to care about. That's the way it goes. The best we can do is just try to look towards the future,even if it is scary. (And yes, graduating from college is awful damn scary, but what's the worst that could happen, really?) And remember, the journals are really just a bunch of words. You're still you.

Now get back to work on your thesis, you damn lazy bum.