Good days and bad days

Honestly, I am a very lucky person. I had a peaceful, perfectly idyllic childhood in the country with my still-married parents, my brother, a chocolate lab named Echo and, even, the stereotypical station wagon.

I did well in school, and played sports and participated in every extra-curricular I could while working average part-time jobs. I went to university to study what I loved, and then somehow managed to find a job doing it.

These days, I talk to my parents at least once a week. I love living in Toronto. I love my job, even on those days when, after editing seriously depressing stories or, god forbid, reading the comments section, my faith in humanity has taken a little bit of a beating.  I love my apartment in the sky, and my excellent, and ever-entertaining, groups of friends, who make sure that my social calendar is never lacking.

Really, I'd call it a pretty charmed existence. And most days, I am dance-in-the-kitchen kind of happy about life in general. I feel like I am not only in a good place, but I'm where I'm supposed to be.

Then there are the bad days. They sneak up on me when I've taken on a bit too much, or have had too little sleep or too little exercise. The times when I lose the strength to find my way out of my own head, and let myself get sucked into that dark place where I let the weight of my mistakes, and the drama of the past year, drag me down.

These times have become rare. Quite frankly, my well-stocked purse - eye makeup, lipgloss, measuring tape, wallet, contact case and solution, business cards, pens, notebook, camera, cellphone, usb key and, up until this weekend - removed due to accidental stabbing - two forks - normally weighs more on me than that baggage.

But, unfortunately, last week was full of those heavy moments. So much so that I struggled to even put it into words. It started with me taking on too much work - because, after years of scrimping and saving and begging for freelance pieces and extra shifts, I still haven't wrapped my head around actually having a full-time job or, craziness, being able to actually say no to an assignment.

Compound that with a lot of commitments, both professionally and personally - celebrity tree decorating, anyone?, friends needing emotional support for various reasons, a lingering cold, house guests and an impending visit from my mother, and it was a recipe for a time bomb waiting to go off. Well, if time bombs put on flannel PJs, cracked a bottle of wine and a bag of chocolate chips and sobbed on their sofa while editing a profile piece.

The breaking blow, of course, came when forced to interact with my ex. After months of zero contact,  all it took was a brief - albeit frustrating and ultimately expensive - email exchange to make me feel helpless and stupid and utterly overwhelmed all over again.

I handled the issue within five minutes - I'm efficient like that - but the frustration lingered. I'd thought I was done with cleaning up those messes.

Realistically, I know that my mistakes will always be with me - they make me who I am, good and bad, quirks, neuroses and all, and most of the time that's a weight that I can bear. And when it's not, I need to find ways to remind myself of everything I have to be grateful for. Because I'd much rather focus on the dance-in-the-kitchen happy bits than the despairing ones.