A Cosmic Dope Slap

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day in a mood that you could only describe as mopey. Severely, irrevocably, and annoyingly mopey.

My knee decided to impersonate the joint of a 90 year old, which limited my running abilities. The weekend had zoomed past, leaving me staring at the formal Sunday dinner with a mixture of exasperation and “don’t wanna go to school blues”. I’d just wrapped up the ending of my second novel, which should have elated me but instead had left me feeling empty, unworthy, and apathetic about knocking out the dreaded query letter.

I sound like a right whiny bitch, don’t I? You could only imagine how I was acting. That Peter, recently returned and exhausted after a week photographing deepest, darkest Cork, didn’t drown me in a roadside puddle is a testament to his unconditional love.

I moped through a visit to our friends’ house in the afternoon, a quick grocery shopping trip, and the aforementioned Sunday dinner. Peter suggested a trip to the local video store, so I went along for the walk., but the shop had nothing that really interested us. When we got home, Peter had to pull our car into the driveway.

He got into the driver’s seat and, just for funsies, I decided to get into the back seat behind him. Climbing into the back seat, I whacked the side of my face against the top of the door frame. It was a one in a million shot – a combination of how I was bending my body into the car and some fractional movement of the car door. As I rubbed my throbbing cheek, I saw this for what it was – a giant dope slap. A cosmic “I’ll give you something to cry about”.

Even though my face smarted and my eyes were tearing up, I had to laugh. Perversely, it was exactly what I needed. I left my mopey face in the back seat and spent the evening happily working away on my newest project - Subjective Voice. In the words of a philosopher from my father’s generation:

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometime
You just might find, you get what you need.