Don't Get Any Big Ideas

Today I was a bit down. It was a carry over from last night's sombre mood, but it left me grim about the mouth and with no spring in my step. I had no desire to get out of bed, resulting in me being about an hour late for work when I actually got up. I made myself even later by stopping in to see My Gentleman Caller, and he lightened my miserable mood a little by being his lovely self, holding my hand and saying typical guy statements, and although he did walk me to work, he made us walk the long way, thus making me later.
After about twenty minutes I'd left work again, and I was sleepwalking around for the most part, thinking too much and not feeling much at all.

You know when you have something on your face, and you're self concious enough about it, but then someone else says something about it and it just shatters your frail confidence? Like, for example, you have a pimple or a bruise or a scar, and you think you've pretty well hidden it, or maybe it's not as noticeable as you think, but then your friend says, "Geez, dude, you better be hooking into that Clearasil, stat." And you're sooo bummed out.
Well, the other day I had a pretty gnarly asthma attack, and I have this habit of biting my bottom lip during an attack. Basically, I bit through my lip, and it bled and bled, and now there's this slightly rank looking sore on it. Yeah. Gross, right? But I was like, ohhh, it's not so bad, I mean it's not like I have herpes.

So in my sombre mood, I was sitting on a bench talking to my Gentlemen Caller, when he states quite bluntly "I'd kiss you, but I don't want to catch whatever you've got." Being slightly mortified, my only response was to punch him in the stomach effectively winding him, and sit grumpily on the bench while he grovelled. "I bit through my lip, jerkface." I say defensively.

Even though my crankiness was still very much in place, and I was feeling hideously ugly and unwanted, that conversation changed my mood a fair bit. Like I was looking at the world through crap-covered glasses, while some people have real problems. I had someone who wanted to fix my mood, and while I had to 'settle' for hugs, the intentions were there.

I guess in the end its easy to let yourself wallow, because sadness is surrender. What's hard though is letting people catch you in their own way- people aren't going to sugarcoat things or coddle you or fulfill your big ideas of how you should be treated, but if you're lucky, and you keep your mind open, you can find someone who'll catch you and make you stronger than before.