[I can has happy.]

And yes, I'm well aware - "I can has" anything is right up there with fake moustaches, bromance references, man-scarves, and all kinds of douchebaggery shit that is _so_ last season/year/lifetime - but really, there's no other way to put it. It's bliss. It's luminous. Pure and unadulterated happy.

There have been all these times that I've been posting about being free and happy, and how it was all Angela Chase hands-off-the-handlebars time, and references to how I never would have asked for things to get this good because I didn't know it could be like this - but I am here now to tell you (yes, you) that Life Is Rad and I Am Happy. All the time, mostly. As much as I can be without the aid of any mind-altering substances. And it's the kind of Happy that I've never been privy to before. It's like how Kristin talked about, when she was living here and I was in the recruit-ee stage, going, "You know, sometimes I'm just going down the street and I realize that I'm like, smiling. All the time."

I'm smiling.

All the time. Kind of like this:

So, the job is rocking and rolling. It's getting on ten weeks plus and I think I'm on to the sea-legs stage... there was a lot of crying and throwing up to start with. But case in point, the same thing that happened last week happened today, and it was fine. (Last week I almost started smoking over it.) Sleeping helps. Eating regular food helps. Scooters helps - a lot, to the point where I'm trying to figure out how to rationalize getting one.

And there's all this funny stuff happening too, stuff that I call "science project time." During SPT I observe my actions and kind of take some mental notes, and think I should be writing them down, and then I don't write them down, but when the actions come up again, the notes just kind of appear on instant recall. Take, for instance, the fact that I am now Remembering To Do Things, as opposed to Forgetting To Do Things. RIght? I know. I'd be on the way out of the apartment and realize that there was something I wanted to bring, or forgot to do before I left, and I'd pretty much start flogging myself in the middle of the sidewalk, and I'd keep going to work or wherever I was going, telling myself what an asshole I was for not ____________. Now, when the same things happen, I'm all, hey brain! Thanks for firing that extra neuron or whatever! And I go back and get it, or decide it's not important, or whatever the case may be. Isn't that weird? No? Well, I'm sure most people learn how to do this stuff when they're, I don't know, five, or whatever. But still.

The other one is that when I go to get pissed off or set out to have a bad day or decide that something is hard or that I can't do it or something, a part of my mind goes, "You know what? Maybe it's nothing. Why do you want to get all jacked up about that?" And so I fake say to myself, "Hey self, maybe nothing is wrong." And ten minutes later I either believe it or have forgotten about it - but even six months ago everything I touched was embedded with clawmarks. Deep, bleeding clawmarks, all hurting and everything felt like tearing my skin off all the time and it was just awful. And now? Nothing.

For this girl, these things are huge.

Huge.

Could life have really been like this the whole time, and I just didn't notice? Is that even remotely possible? My dad read that book "Conversations with God" (wherein said God was really the dude writing the book, who finally admitted it years later, after book sales and paid multi-thousand person talks and online communities of people backing him up - awesome, right?) and he would talk about some of the shit "God" said, which I suppose would be applicable on a bunch of levels, no matter who delivered it - but Cheesebag McLiar book or not, it spawned conversations about needing to experience not having something to get to the joys of having it: being cold to really know warm, being alone to appreciate togetherness, and on and on. Point is, maybe I wouldn't even know how rad all of this stuff was if I wasn't so familiar with how not rad things had been. Was. Were. Fuck.

Already, it's too much thinking - like spending all of this time on self-analysis really is waxing poetic and it's just unnecessary and wasteful. I think that when I need to be thinking about shit and looking at whatever is giving me a splinter at any given moment, it will be just that - like a splinter, I mean. Necessary to address, with disregard to timing or convenience. I mean, you don't sit around figuring out why you don't have splinters and what shit would be like if you did, right? It's just like, not there.

(In Brian Krakow voice, really. Ha.)

Really. Is this me? Has some alien life form taking over my existence, skipping down the sidewalk, going, "Look! I've got nothing to worry about!" even when there's still real-life shit going on? Is this perspective maybe, or some level of internal or external forgiveness? It really doesn't matter now (because there's no splinter), does it? No.

I've got nothing to worry about.

Except love (strikethrough - lust) & rockets (or fireworks) & moving for the twentieth time in sixteen years (and that's pretty close to accurate).

*Victoria