Caterwauling

Just had a long conversation with Shan. I’ll spare the details and give the quick summary of what we both discovered.

Friendship is hard. My fifth-grade teacher once told us that, if you can look back on your life and identify two good friends, we should consider ourselves to be damn lucky. Almost 20 years later, I still hold those words close to me. I’ve had dozens upon dozens of friends, and each have served a purpose in my life in some way. Some were people to lean on for support, some were drinking buddies, some were there solely to keep my spirits up during a crazy period in my life, and some … well, I was the one there for them, serving whatever purpose they needed me for.

But I’ve found in Shan an honest-to-goodness, bona-fide, there-through-the-good-and-bad kind of friend that I don’t know that I’ve ever had the good fortune to have in my life. We can be businesslike, personal, goofy, sad, ecstatic and serious together, oftentimes all in the same sitting. 🙂 She often compares friendship to a bank account — everyone has to make deposits equally and withdraw equally, or the account goes bankrupt. It reminds me of the lesson I learned (in a previous entry) from watching “Married by America.” You really can’t do all the work or all the depositing, then have little or nothing left for yourself when it’s your time to dip into the well for some support. In that case, it shouldn’t have been a joint account in the first place.

I’ve had so many friends come and go in my life. I used to have dozens of people to call whenever I needed anything, but I’ve never had one person to call when I need everything. And now I do. And while I love everyone who has touched my life in some way, I’ve never really had a *best friend* before, not like this. Before I go into sappiness and sweetness and violins and shit, I’ll quit while I’m ahead. 🙂 But I won’t quit before saying that I love having Shan in my life. We’re equals. We have a lot of similar experiences and points of view, and when one person’s having a difficult time, the other one always comes in to save the day — whether with advice, ice cream, sympathy or simply a shoulder to cry on. I’d take a bullet for her, if I needed to. And I don’t doubt for a second that she’d do that for me. She loves me when I’m fiesty and fiery and moving 100 miles an hour on adrenaline, and she’s there when whatever is going on in my life has damn near paralyzed me with fear or sadness or temporary insanity. Fair weather friends, we are not. The bank account is always full-to-overflowing, and I can’t imagine who I would be without her.

She says I’m a lot different now than when I met her, and I had to explain that we met during one of the roughest times of my life. Everything was so out of control then. I had no money, no hope, no real authority at work, and no satisfaction with my living situation. I was unhappy everywhere I went, and I had no resources to get me out of that funk. Now, I’m making a little more money, I’m happier at home, and if I really want to get away from everything, I can actually afford to go out and have a good time, to lift my spirits. This is the Dawn I used to be. I’m not out of control anymore — I have regained my mastery of my own fate. I suppose it was always somewhat within my control, but I suppose I have relearned my old way of coping, which was to make change when things were going wrong. I can and have made a lot of progress during the past four months, and I’ve done it on my own terms. I can walk away and not look back with guilt. I can appreciate situations for what they’re worth, and I can either use them to my advantage or learn the lesson from the situation and move forward without any doubts. I can, in fact, survive, and I will. I’ll just do it now with the love and support of a truly wonderful friend, and that is what is really helping me to be the person I used to be.

That’s not to say that broken relationships can’t be mended. I just don’t have to wait around for things to fix themselves, nor do I have to get frustrated and just fix everything myself. Granted, I still have a lot of things I want and need to do to further ensure my happiness, but right now, things really aren’t that bad. Not bad at all. And that is the best feeling in the world.

… sucks.

OK, so I took a chance on a new writer (who worked for free!) who wrote about a pseudo-controversial topic that I thought was interesting enough to be front-page news. I received two requests for reprints, 18 requests for Word document copies of the article and received numerous letters to the editor in favor of the article. I received two negative letters (not uncommon), but then the executive director got the call from hell that got me pulled into his office.

He was cool about it, but it turns out that one of the sources quoted in the article allegedly promotes pedophilia on his website. (eeek!) How fucking disastrous! It’s only part of the problem, but that’s not to say the chick who called isn’t a quack either (she left no phone # but gave us a dozen sources to call to rebut his article). That would be fine, but I’m running a follow-up installment to his article in this issue, too, so the shitstorm isn’t half over. I know the article was kind of self-serving for the guy who wrote it, but I ensured that he quoted one of our division leaders, who endorsed the topic, so I figured it was palatable for my audience.

Ergh. If today weren’t deadline day, I’d write the rebuttal piece myself. Maybe I’ll 86 one of the stories I haven’t started typing in yet and see what I can do. Fuck around! But hey, at least people are reading this shit, right? 🙂

Another day at the Veggie Patch. *sigh* And the following people give whole new meaning to, “It’s like talking to a fern.” …

Stupid Human Tricks #101

E-mail from a guy in our mailroom today (copied and pasted as-is):

“Sent we are closing at 3pm Friday, can everyone have there mail ready for pick up by 1pm and there will be no out going ups tomorrow.”

Stupid Human Tricks #102

In chatting with Programme Directeur the other day, he asked if he could get a *prescription* to my publication. Honey, everyone here is on SOME sort of prescription! Narrow it down a bit, will ya?

This is the same guy who told us he felt “vehiminently” about the work he does. Or, more memorably, after we received some funding (courtesy of moi), he asked us to join him in “commiserating the occasion.”