Sunday, March 23, 2008

liz lemon makes me feel better about my life

So I had this revelatory moment the other week right? I "found my bliss", decided to focus on the positive, etc., etc. hippie-babble. Annd I'm trying, honestly. But well, as my life as chosen to do lately, it keeps hitting me over the head with the bad. I don't want this blog to become a laundry list of things I feel sorry for myself about, that's not entertaining to anyone, least of all myself. But for honesty's sake and because I think it will make it better to put this all into writing, in the week or so since I wrote my "epiphany of wonderful" blog the following has happened. My brother called me and told me that my cat, Elmer, died. In recent years Elmer has become far more my mother's cat than mine. He wasn't very young but not particularly old and I don't really know the details other than it happened suddenly and unexpectedly. Despite the fact that he's my mom's pride and joy, it's not a good feeling when one of your pets dies, whether he sleeps on your bed at night or not. He was actually my Christmas present, about nine or ten years ago I guess. I wanted a dog sooo badly, had asked for one at every available opportunity, but my parents refused, and Elmer was the compromise. I, being the very devious, ten or eleven year old that I was, found out about Elmer by sneaking into my mom's closet to look for Christmas presents. There was a folder from the adoption shelter with a picture of him inside, a cute little gray fur-ball. And torture of all tortures, I had to put the folder back and pretend I knew nothing. I don't remember how long I had to wait but it must have killed me, despite the fact that I told any non family member I could about my future kitten. So Christmas day comes around, and there's nothing under the tree that looks like it could remotely hold a kitten, unless my parents were shockingly unaware that animals needed air. So I open a package with a kitten guide book in it, and hopefully I was a good enough actor that my parents thought it was a surprise. Because of our annual Christmas party with hordes of family, my parents wanted to wait to get him until things settled down the next day. So after killing myself waiting before Christmas, I have to wait one more day. We finally went to the shelter the next day, and as soon as we walk in there comes wee, little Elmer, right up to us. It was one of those places where the kittens run around the office, and if I'm remembering right Elmer was wearing a red bow in anticipation of our arrival, but even if that's not true I knew right away he was mine. Now I'm not a cat person, per se. Maybe it's why Elmer eventually attached himself to my mom. But I did love him, for all of his neurotic ways. And I'll miss him when I go home. But most of all it breaks my heart for my mom, because I know how much she loved him, how he slept on her bed every night, which was a comfort because of how much traveling my dad does. It's one of the weirder aspects of growing up that I've noticed, how we start worrying about our parents for the first time, not in the worry sense when you're little and you're afraid something bad will happen to them and change your life, but in the worry sense when you're not living with them anymore and it makes you hurt to think of these one time pillars of stability in your life, as being human and vulnerable and sad. So anyway, the only reason my cat dying hasn't even seemed that bad is because a week ago my aunt's boyfriend passed. In most conversation I would refer to him as my uncle because he's been a part of our family for so long, and he truly was a part of our family. Now I know my loss is absolutely nothing compared to my aunt and cousins and his immediate family, but it still hurts and makes me really sad. I don't want to get into it any further other than to say he will be truly missed.

So anyway, that's been my week. And today I spent Easter Sunday in my room doing the mountain of school work and reading I have piled up. So basically, yes I feel sorry for myself because I've had a really hard week, on top of a pretty hard semester, and I'm just waiting for good things to start replacing all of the bad ones. And I know that day will come, hopefully sooner than later, but it still sucks in the meantime. So anyways, to refer to the title of this blog, this is what I do when I feel awful and sad like I've felt these last few days. I put in my first season DVDs of 30 Rock, and every time it makes me feel better. Obviously it makes me laugh and that helps, but there is something about Tina Fey's Liz Lemon that always makes me feel like I'll be okay. And no I'm not crazy. I realize this is a television show, and thus fictional, but I've never bought into the idea that tv is just meaningless entertainment. You can watch a sad movie or show and feel empathy or compassion that you might otherwise not have felt. Or you can watch a funny one when you're going through something tough and get some comfort. And I feel like we all have a show or a character that we just get, and relate to, and can watch over and over again on DVD to cheer ourselves up with. And I relate to and am cheered up by Liz Lemon. Her life seems to be a constant mess. She's awkward and dorky and watches Designing Women in the middle of the night. We both agree that going home and eating a block of cheese and watching that show about midgets makes everything better. And when my life is feeling like the mess it has been lately, I know that it's not just me. We're all trying and bumbling and going through bad stuff. We're all a little bit Liz Lemon (and yes I realize how cheesy that sounds but I honestly don't care). So after a good ten hours of school work, I'm going to go take my tired, messy self to bed, eat a Caburry Cream Egg and watch 30 Rock. If any of you ever feel crappy, I suggest you try it.

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