I don’t know how it happened, but I think I’ve become Catholic.
For over three weeks, my home has sat abandoned, uninhabited, and uninhabitable 130 miles away. On Saturday, my car broke down in Baton Rouge, an hour from my current home. Later that day, I lost my keys somewhere in New Orleans, and they never resurfaced. Last night, the piece de resistance: I decided to borrow my host’s bike and trek to the gym, thinking that a good workout would clear my head a bit. It did, but just as I was heading back, my front tire blew out, forcing me to schlep the bike the three miles to the house.
So as I was walking home down Lafayette’s busy main drag, pushing the bike with one hand, holding my duffel bag with the other, sweating in the 90+ degree heat and goddess-knows-how-much humidity, I was really, really tempted to complain. But then, just as I was about to scream out “Why hast thou forsaken me?” or something similarly drama-queeny, I thought, “No, dumbass, you have no right to bitch about anything. You still have a home, a job, your partner, your pets. There are hundreds of thousands of people who fared far, far, far worse than you. Now just shut the hell up and deal.”
Basically, I guilted myself into submission. Sounds pretty Catholic to me, don’t you think? My Southern Baptist daddy is gonna have a conniption fit.
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