Last night, I wrapped a fluffy robe around myself and sank back into the pillows of my hotel room bed. I’ll do the same tonight. I still don’t have a home, but tomorrow I may. The management company has been working with me and though we may not invite each other to any Christmas parties anytime soon, I think we’re going to find a solution soon.
As I looked at company’s available properties that could potentially work until I leave D.C., I thought about luck. Many well-intentioned folk commented yesterday that I “couldn’t catch a break” or said that “bad luck is following you!” I am in no way criticizing these comments; every single person meant the absolute best and I’m mentally bear hugging everyone, here. But I disagree about the bad luck part.
Well, mostly. Renting an apartment with rat infestation and a bunch of other problems that seemed to be problems before I moved in is pretty bad luck. But I had to think hard what other events people were citing as such. The breakup wasn’t bad luck; it was a breakup. Heartbreaking and deeply disappointing, of course. But I don’t think falling in love and then needing to step back and go, “Hang on, is this right, right now, like this” is a stroke of bad luck. It’s just the way love goes, sometimes, and we heal and scar and do it again, usually.
And intensely disliking living in New York City wasn’t bad luck; I just didn’t like living there. And remember, I knew New York. I anticipated loving it there, and tried to, but it didn’t take. Now, if I had closed my eyes, plunked my finger down on a map and said, “Ah-HA! That’s it. I’m moving to Reno!” and once in Reno I drove my car into a cactus, got shingles, lost all my money in pinochle and got married to a dude that turned out to be a convict on the lam, that would be lousy luck. But taking a chance and then being honest about the dead-end of the chance, I don’t see it as bad luck so much as Stuff That Happens To A Person. Does this make sense?
Losing my Kindle could count as bad luck, but I should’ve been paying attention.
Today was really hard. It’s pouring rain and I have to walk to my hotel; I came back to the house to get a few more things. But I maintain am a wildly lucky person and have always considered myself as such. The mere fact I was born in America in the latter half of the 20th century is a lot that is far luckier than the vast majority of the billions of humans on this planet. That I have brains to figure this apartment thing out as an independent woman with decent credit and a cell phone, that I have a roof over my head at all is pretty good. I absolutely adore Washington, DC. The architecture, the sky over the city, the fact that I live in the same county the Lincoln Memorial are all reasons to be crazy happy. And it’s not New York. Man, I really hated it there.
My housing situation is beyond lousy and okay, a little on the unlucky side. But I will have a roof over my head and that is never to be taken for granted. Heck, with all the luck I have in my life, perhaps it was time to balance those scales.
I can take it.
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