Wherein I Emerge

Ever since I got back from New Orleans, I've felt off. Not super sad or super angry or super anything, really. Just off. By which I mean that for the last eight days, I have been a world class moper. I mean really. I would probably win awards.

This week of sulking and feeling supremely-embarrassingly-sorry for myself makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE, because people. The last eight days...they had all the makings of a rocking beginning to summer. Let's review:

I arrived home safely on Saturday the 13th to a husband whom I adore and two dogs who greeted me with enough love to power a small country (or melt my heart, whatever). Friends and family came out from the woodwork via facebook wall posts, emails, text messages, tweets, and phone calls to wish me a happy 24th birthday on the 15th, and my grad school friends helped me celebrate with dinner on the 16th (plus 24 just sounds so much nicer than 23, doesn't it? I'm an even numbered sort of gal. Read: I am OCD). I worked a lot during the week, but it was nothing stressful (And hurrah! Money!). I received my second positive evaluation from the spring semester, which was so thrilling that I actually called my mother and read her my professors' comments (also, yes. I am that vain. And that thirteen years old.). The lovely Liz came to visit me on Friday, and we had a fantastic (and long overdue) visit through the weekend.

So, RIGHT?? There you have it. All the ingredients for a picture perfect beginning to summer. When I look at this list, I just want to grab myself by the shoulders and say, "Holy mother of Pearl. Mary Frances. GET OVER YOURSELF. YESTERDAY, IF AT ALL POSSIBLE."

I can immediately identify a few triggers to my WEEK OF WOE. Some of them are trivial and ridiculous (because, hello, I am Mary Frances, and I am AWESOME at fixating on the trivial and ridiculous); for example, the weather. That's right APRIL JUNE, I am talking to you. Sixty degrees and rainy does not a summer make. And some of them are much bigger. After spending a week repairing houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina--eye-opening work that had an immediate, BIG PICTURE OF THE WORLD purpose--it was a struggle to return home to my life of itsy bitsy details. Now, don't get me wrong--I love my itsy bitsy details. I mean really. I've devoted an entire blog to the celebration of those itsy bitsy quotidian details. But when I juxtapose "rebuilding someone's home" with "reading Greek to prepare for my exam," "putting away socks," or "sweeping up dog hair," it's hard not to have some sort of existential crisis.

But then again, maybe an existential crisis every now and then isn't such a bad thing. I've thought a lot about my future-specifically, about what I want to do after I complete my Master's in May-I've thought a lot about service, and a lot about God. It was a pretty cliché existential crisis. Let's be honest.

But at the end of the day-or, perhaps, at the end of this week-existential crisis or not, I'm still here. Tear ducts have been totally desiccated, and I have eaten a LOT of Iwanttofeelsorryformyself ice cream, but still. I'm still here. Preston, Callie, and Ness are still here, making me laugh and lifting me up. And it's still summer. There's still plenty of time for magic to happen. Here we go.