Just stop it

I complain a lot about my life. I complain about the dumbest things too. Little menial tasks that I have to get done, or someone that is annoying me, or being bored. I guess I noticed this especially at the beginning of this past summer because I instituted a New Sarah, No Complaints policy. And I told my boss/burgeoning good friend about the policy so she would keep me honest. And oh did she. In many moments when I retreated to my former complainy self, Janey said Sarah! What happened to no complaining? Don't be annoying!

So where's my Janey now? This is the real world Sarah. You're not a student anymore. You're not a kid. You're even all out of exciting birthdays. So buck up and stop complaining. And don't do it simply because you have no one to police you. Do it because you realize the futility in complaining. Because you see the unattractive person it makes you into. Because you feel the inevitable vacancy it leaves you with.

Rediscover Ecuador, Sarah. Before you drown in America.

So I'm going to go get bagels today, maybe some coffee. Read the Sunday paper. And then later maybe I'll go to a movie, if I want to. Because silently complaining to myself alone in the apartment while Cory is actually being a normal, social person isn't going to leave me, him, or the universe with any better feelings. And I think Janey would be happy about that.

I was walking down the pebbled street during the night's final farewell to the day's trials and grating routines, just at that point when whispers morph back into whistles, and starlight disappears into floodlight, when I saw him. The man I did not know would turn into my new lighthouse. The only thing that would get me through the next 7 months, beaconing me through the long hours of pain, increduality, and unknowing. He was just standing there, lit unperfectly by the sputtering streetlight, the picture of fatigue and weariness. But who knew all of life's answers, all of the things that can really bring a person to their knees and force them into much-needed self-reflection, self-confrontation, could be wrapped up in one defeated, unpretty package? I didn't look, didn't even give a second glance to the future of my self.

What a pity.