Highest highs and Lowest lows

Emotion is a funny and capricious thing. Just when you think you have it figured out, it turns the tables on you. I've been riding a high of good feeling - even joy - for over a week now. A number of very positive things have happened, and I don't doubt that mom and dad had a hand it these things. One of these things is that I have signed a contract on a new apartment on the Upper East Side - finally, that Manhattan apartment I've always wanted. There are many stages of the process to go, but I feel cautiously optomistic that it will all work out. The other thing is pretty big, but I don't want to discuss it just yet for fear of jinxing anything.

These positive things have made me feel true joy, something I would not have thought possible two months ago, just before my mother's death. But, something happened in those last days - my mother gave me the greatest gift she ever could - the belief that I would feel joy, and live a happy life. That belief, and the inner strength she taught me my whole life, has made these two months bearable. In fact, it is very easy for me to respond that I'm OK when people ask me how I'm doing. Of course, the incredulous responses I get from some people ("Really?") make me want to ask, "Would you rather I were a babbling mess?" I know people mean well, but do they really have to assume I'm a basket case?

Now I'll grant you, the good feeling I have experienced lately has sometimes made me wonder if I'm actually simply nestled in a warm little cocoon of denial, but I know I'm not. I am fully aware of the loss - I just don't intend to dishonor my mother, and everything she believed I was capable of, by falling apart. She taught me better than that - it's stiff upper lip all the way (I totally should have been British).

Of course, then there's days like today, when I sit surfing the internet (scary place sometimes!), feeling inexplicably depressed. At least that's what I told myself - "Why are you depressed? Nothing happened!" Then, I feel like knocking myself upside the head - of course I feel depressed! My mother and best friend died less than two months ago, I just burned a bunch of her private papers (per her request), and I'm collecting many of her things for donation to my school's Nicaragua project. All of these things are naturally depressing things. Nothing inexplicable about it. Now, the old me would have downed a can of coke (I just had a glass), and eaten a sandwich or something (my size 12 Calvins can attest to how much of that I've done over the last 3 years). Instead, I bundled up, went out into the freezing downpour (another reason to be depressed - wettest March in history in NY!), and walked for 45 minutes. Even though it wasn't as carefree as my walks have been over the last week, the exercise, coupled with  bit of Hair Band rock on the i-pod actually did the trick, and I came home not depressed.

I guess the thing I have to remember is that there will be days like this - you don't just get over something like this and move on. Having good days is good, but having bad days is not bad.