What decomposes us to tears will crumble us to laughter

Too many all nighters recently.
It's amazing to see the instability of emotions
under pressure and lack of sleep.

In the middle of my tears in front of the woman in her cubicle at the bank,
I was laughing in my head. Overdrafting on cups of coffee, things from last Thursday
assumed to have already been paid for... it's a hard idea to process, thinking you're paying 2 bucks for a regular cup of coffee when you're actually paying two dollars plus thirty three additional dollars in overdraft fees. Now take that and add ten more times of overdrafting.

It wasn't like I hadn't been checking my account, I had simply been checking it from a small device that didn't show me the number of pending transfers from Thursday on the front page.
In my six or so years of banking with Regions, I have never known any pending transfers to take so long to be accepted. Or perhaps it has never been an issue because I've always had at least a hundred dollars. At any rate, the overdraft was just a minute detail. Actually, it was all pretty miniscule, but at the time none of it felt that way.

That's what I get for trying to run on three hours of sleep.
Or it could be what I get for never knowing exactly what I'm going to do in design until the night I do it.
Or it could be that I spent too much time focusing on design and not enough time studying for my art history test... which forced me to stay up and study, because though it was last minute, I am a student who cares about her future.

Needless to say, I was a basket case yesterday. I actually began laughing during critique when I found out he really didn't like my piece because it didn't really meet the standards of what the project was supposed to accomplish. After that I took a deep breath, walked to the bathroom, and cried for a minute. I didn't care that he didn't like it, although it didn't help. The thought running through my head was,

"I just spent all day yesterday trying to compose this thing, I changed my mind so many times and I probably should have just stuck with the idea he and I had talked about. Now, because I doubted myself, I just got a C on this project and now I'm going to fail my test... all running on three hours of sleep."

I can't say the day was all bad. I have had worse days, by far... I also know people who have had worse days than I will ever have. And then there's those people on that fml webpage, which have me topped by far.

I cried a few times that day. Once in the bathroom of the art building, once in the bathroom on the phone with my mom at the loft, and once in front of the lady at the bank. Also, I think once in front of my friend Sarah the Barista. She saw me that morning... I couldn't even fake a smile for her, she told me she wanted to talk when it was all said and done. So I came around that afternoon after the bank and we walked to the side of the shop for her to smoke and me to talk. She's beautifully authoritative and patient in this regard, that she genuinely wanted to help me, to hear me out... I think that she's a very wonderful person, in all her passion about life and about love. She believes what she believes, she's a strong woman who is in the middle of succeeding. Sometimes, in the middle of our success, we get the feeling like we've failed.

There seems to be a pattern of what we think success should look like. According to the stereotype, Sarah is not completely successful. She confessed to me she has overdrafted a few times in the past year, in the past few years. She's addicted to Star Wars, cigarettes, and coffee. According to Sarah's stereotype for herself, she does not feel successful. But what Sarah does not grasp, is that the amount of responsibility and the work load and the pressure and the... well, everything Sarah has had to undertake in her life in her past and on a daily basis, Sarah is extremely successful. I don't think there's a single person that knows Sarah that doesn't look at her with admiration. Some people may abuse her love, some people may take it for granted, but my friend Sarah is a fighter... a warrior and a worrier all wrapped into one. She constantly reminds me, and herself, that she is the beloved of God, and she is. If I ever had any doubts about the existence of God in my life, or if I didn't believe in God, I feel like I would believe that God existed, if only for Sarah... that He came about just to love her, maybe. Because that's how real and raw and romantic her love for God is. It's personal, and that's attractive.

That's what everyone wants, no matter who they are... real, raw, romantic, attractive love. That's what lonely people drool over, run after. In all honesty, somewhere deep down inside of us at the blackest holes of the humanity inside each one of us we're probably all those drooling, running, lonely people.


Okay, so we talked. We got things into perspective. I read, had a wonderful dinner with friends, had a little ice cream, and went to bed early. So it wasn't really so bad afterall. The afternoon for my day, post-bank breakdown, was really nice.

Today's been pretty nice, too. I'm in the process of getting everything done I said I was going to do. Its been rainy, but it has been really calm. I've been reading on the transit, and I've also taken the initiative to bring an umbrella with me lately amidst the rainy weather. Both have proved to be beneficial and enjoyable.

Well, enough blogging... back to laundry.