I've had a lot of time for reflection lately.
I got a new job and it made me happier (which I didn't think would happen). When I leave for those few hours ever day, I get on the bus alone. I ride around listening to Regina Spektor on my ipod. And then I hang out with some happy little children before going home to spend the evening with my little family. Gone just long enough to miss them, and no longer. It's the happiest I have been in years. Considerably happier than when I was bar tending, or waitressing, or getting drunk and coming home alone.
It can get easy - especially when you have social anxiety coupled with clinical depression - to shut yourself away and never put yourself out there because it scares you. And as happy as I would be to just spend the rest of my life at home with my baby, I realize now that eventually the little light would have gone out. The little light that awesome people have inside of them. Yeah, I just called myself awesome. Get over it. I am.
I think the most miserable thing about working in bars would have to be that anybody who hangs out in bars enough for a bar tender or waitress to know personal details about them, is just pathetic. Hear me out - I enjoy being a regular at a cute little wine bar as much as the next gal, but never alone and never for more than a couple of drinks. Bar flies are lacking in the things that fuel my very spirit: inspiration and beauty. My few days of intense reflection have resulted in an epiphany: I need to be surrounded by people with a little light within. Hence the children at the after-school program. Kids always have a little light.
So if there is anything I want for Carter, it is for him to nourish his soul. To keep inspiration close at hand and to never shut himself away from beautiful things just because there is so much ugly in the world - and there is SO much ugly in the world. But a glass of wine over funny stories shared with a missed friend, or an unexpected phone call from across the country from someone you love, that good stuff is worth treading through life's disgustinghatesludge for.
