A Whole New Bitch
Can a bitter bitch change her stripes?
It’s 3pm on a Sunday, and I’m sitting in a brewery in northern Tucson enjoying potentially one of the best draft beers I’ve ever had. It’s called a Meridian Hive Blackberry, and it even came in a chilled glass (insert orgasm here). I’ve been here for a week and in that week I’ve spent at least four sunsets wandering among the saguaros, and the incredibly dense forest of cacti has gone from almost bursting bud to full blown bouquet. I’ve never seen a prettier sunset than the Arizona desert on a cloudy day. Even my skin looks glowy and vivacious in comparison to my surly and despondent personality.
I’m sipping my beer as slowly as humanly possible as much as one can when they’re going to die of dehydration. The bartender, a Mexican version of Carlton from Fresh Prince, is hovering in the well trying to play hide-the-beer-key with the waitresses. The service is just absolutely awful, but the beer selection is excellent and the pork sliders are supposed to be to die for. My beer is now teetering on empty, and he’s actively playing the don’t make eye contact with me game. I slam the last remnants of pink effervescent deliciousness before making a direct line of sight not to his eyes but through his fucking head.
Usually it’d be somewhere around my second drink or fifteen minutes in an establishment with sub par service before my crazy started to peak. But not today. Maybe it’s the golden brown glow on my skin. Maybe its the wildly perfect weather that’s almost too hot but then there’s that breeze. Maybe it’s my outlook on my whole new life that’s descending upon my old shrill, calculated, and merciless self and replacing that person with a more relaxed, unconcerned, life-loving, and zesty bitch. Maybe the things that used to bother me, like direct eye contact, stupid questions, and 5% tippers, are now mere annoyances of the past. Maybe I’m becoming a whole new person to go along with my whole new life.
Lately I’ve been trying to step back and look at everything that’s happened to me in the last year as a whole. Not the loss of a home or my place in life. Not the deaths of my beloved pets or the fact that I said goodbye to the places we spent their whole lives together. I’ve even been mourning the things that never were: the loves lost, the promises unfulfilled, the things that could have been but just weren’t. I’ve been evaluating everything I’ve lost lately, including my sense of self, rather than looking at everything I’ve gained. Life on the road, although it seems exciting and free, can also be extremely alientating and lonely. You have nothing but time to think, all day and all fucking night. Mix in a couple Modelos and that only compounds those complex feelings.
But as this second beer pours down my throat, and I dry these stupid fucking tears away with my crusty ass bev nap, I have to reflect on some of the amazing things that those losses have produced. So far I’ve seen some of the most magnificent landscapes that words cannot describe and pictures could never capture. I’ve laid under the Milky Way during a new moon. I’ve hiked to the tip of a mountain and walked through the salt of the lowest place on Earth. I’ve gotten to learn new things and trust myself in ways I never thought possible. I have no schedule and no time restrictions. I have the most amazing opportunity to spend the last years of my dog’s life with her, day in and day out, without ever having to say I’ll be back soon.
I may have “lost” everything I ever knew, but it has subsequently given me the ability to create and mould an entirely new life, with new responsibilities, new problems, and new blessings. To say that I’m lucky would be an understatement and maybe today I don’t care about all the trivial and flippant things that used to make me fucking crazy because today I’m just one lucky bitch.
Oh my God, this bitch just spilled ketchup on my jeans, and I’m about to throw my fries across the fucking bar.
I don’t know. Maybe enlightenment is bullshit.
#STAYBITTER