SNAFU

The journey begun stalled quickly. I can’t help but see the parallels with my life in general. What an auspicious beginning too. I got in my car this morning. Cranked it up easily. Backed up about thirty feet, just far enough to get half-way out of my driveway and on to the blacktop county road I live by. I thought to myself here we go, and my car died. I don’t know whether to scream or cry.
As of ten forty-one, I am still sitting in my car, which is slightly in the road and mostly in my driveway trying to turn the engine over once in a while. I tried telling my car calmly that if she won’t help me get somewhere else that gas she likes to drink so much will be but a fading memory. She doesn’t seem to care. I guess she likes Nacogdoches and wants to stay. Or maybe she’s simply just as tired and worn out as I. In an effort to keep from being caught up in the self-pity trap I made a gratitude list.

What’s a gratitude list? It’s a stupid, cheesy idea that when frustrated or depressed one should write out the things in their life one is (or should be) grateful for. I know it sounds like some bogus new age positive thinking self-deluding fertilizer. But for some strange reason it quite often seems to work for me, so I did one. Top of the list? Sitting somewhat in my driveway and not dead on the road half-way to Dallas, which was to be my first destination. I wish I could say it helped. Then again, maybe it did. I do not want to seek chemical escape, I simply want to curl into the fetal position and cry or hit something. Danger Will Robinson, Danger! Dalyn is angry…and has been. God grant me the serenity to not beat the pulp out of inanimate objects or to take my huge frustrations with life out on those people and things that inadvertently add a straw to my already broken back as though they placed the entire pile there.