Why I Am Happy

--Robert Langellier

Monday night was a late one. I didn’t get down until 1:51 am, which is late because I have an 8 am class every morning of the week that I have never missed. Just before I switched off the light, I informed my roommate Dylan of my plans to end my Iron Man streak. I did. I slept in the next morning, apparently putting a refreshing end to what had so far been a short, shitty week. Until, that is, I found out the next day we’d had a quiz that morning, one of four so far. The highest potential grade I could now have was a 75%, raised slightly by the few compositions I’d gotten 80s on.

It’s really weird how one little event can become a nutshell for your week. I keep coming back to that one absence as the turning point of it. The kind of turning point where a downward slope becomes an even more downward slope. In fairness, I didn’t really have that bad of a week. It was just a typical downer period where your happy hormones are under temporary maintenance and you focus on the bad things and the stress builds and every day is cloudy and you can’t wait for another turning point to reset your footing on life.

Besides that stupid French quiz, I had a huge journalism test to worry about all week, with no study guides or knowledge of any readings or lectures to go off of. There’s been the frustration of a creeping dry skin problem on my face that refuses to moisturize quietly. It had been months since I’d seen anyone from home. I had a three-day internship lined up for the paper I work for that would consume a couple weeknights. College was beginning to get to me. The one thing I had to look forward was a magical Halloween weekend ahead visiting old friends at the University of Illinois. But life would not have it that way.

I discovered Wednesday morning that my internship was slated until Friday at 5 pm. My ride to Champaign, Illinois was leaving at noon. Noooooooooooooo, right?

It’s really weird how one little event can make you hate everything forever. I keep coming back to that discovery as the moment I decided that the life of the next person I saw was going to end. If I wasn’t going to Champaign for the weekend, someone was going to die, be it my roommate, my RA, or more likely my journalism and French grades. As soon as I reached into Dylan’s chest with my bare hand to rip his beating heart out, my newspaper editor emailed me, saying that my hours on Friday were cancelled. I could leave! Sorry, Dylan.

It’s really weird how one little event can make the sidewalks feel like pillows. I keep coming back to that email as the one that probably saved Dylan’s life.

It’s really weird how a week that was somehow more horrible than the horrible things that happened in it can spin upon itself and right itself. My weekend was as magical as magical can be. I bonded with Sunday (Classic) Brian, rebonded with Monday Nick and Wednesday Eliot, and ran into tons of old friends, some entirely by chance. Hell, the weekend’s not even over. I’m going out again tonight.

At the moment, though, I’m still on the ride back to Mizzou from the whirlwind of Ghosts of Friendships Past. I’m reflecting on how happy I was to see everyone I’ve missed so much. Or how excited my younger brother was to talk to me when I stopped at home on Friday. All my brother and I do is fight. Or how every day I was away from Mizzou I got texts from my new friends telling me how they missed me. Or how I have a very lovely ladyfriend in Springfield who I was lucky enough to see this afternoon. Her eyes are hazel. Or how this cop we’re passing pulled over that guy, and not us. All of these things would have applied to my life on Wednesday, when I was on Cloud 2, or any other time lately. Except maybe the cop. But nothing like them was on my mind on Wednesday.

It’s really weird how life is often more of a cliché than I ever expect it to be, as much as I sometimes want to fight it. I’ve never had anything against clichés, but I usually wish there’s more to life than some little quotable phrase – “Count your blessings.” Sometimes, though, when you focus on the bad things and the stress builds and every day is cloudy and you can’t wait for another turning point to reset your footing on life, it’s pretty comforting to have it a little more simple.