Stuart Smalley Pep Talk

"Well I'll meet you at the bottom, if there really is one,

They alway told me when you hit it you would know it.

But I've been falling so long it's like gravity is gone-

And I'm just floating"

-"Gravity's Gone"

The Drive-By Truckers

Sigh.

I'm tired of being miserable.

Lord knows, my life fell apart awhile ago, and I've been making a break for the surface ever since, with no guarantee that the surface was really there.

On paper, I am a total loser. Unemployed, dumped, living with my grandmother, and, according to those nifty height/weight charts, morbidly obese.

But I've had this feeling for the last few weeks, that maybe, and pretty soon actually, something was coming. That I was finally going to bust out of this funk and do something great and dare I say...useful. No, I don't know what it is yet. Perhaps it is a delusion, but at least the delusion is mine.

Do I love living with Granny? No. The one thing that I wanted most in life was my own place. I still don't have it. Yes, that's misery-making. But when I feel down, I remember what I used to tell myself on the most miserable days working my miserable, useless job.

"This isn't the rest of your life".

This will not be the rest of my life.

A very wise drunk once said to me, "Kim, you can not blame the accident of your birth into a lower middle class family in Buffalo, New York for what has gone wrong in your life. You weren't born into an upper class family of Jewish intellectuals in New York City. Your Mom wasn't a famous actress, so you could have connections. Your Dad wasn't useless European royalty, so you could swan about gardens all day and never have to worry about money. You can't change the past. You can change the future. You have problems? So does everyone else. They give you these," he said flexing his arm muscles. "They make you strong".

Now, I have never been a happy-go-lucky person. My mother once said, "You were a perfectly happy child until I sent you to Catholic school. I don't know what those nuns did to you." So it's not like I am making a base change in my personality. But there will be no more blame. There is no evil force keeping me down. Bad luck? I laugh in its' face. I put myself here. I'm going to get myself out.