Sometimes you have a bad day. On that bad day you wake up to realize your phone is dead. Not the battery, but your entire phone. The phone that has over 26,000 photos and videos and is your link to the past. The phone that held the last correspondence from your ex-boyfriend whom you still love but know you can’t be with right now. The phone that has every password, and note, and joke, and photo you’ve taken in the past two years. You cry in an Apple store and a smoothie store and on the street in Williamsburg because you know it’s just a phone but it feels like your memories are fading quicker the older you get and your phone was your way to remember. Then you realize that every backup you’ve ever done is gone and you cry a little more in an Apple store. Ezra, the Apple employee with a southern twang, tries to make you feel better but he’s mentioned lunch more than a few times and seems to be counting the minutes until his break. It’s a bad day.
Sometimes you have a bad vacation. You spend months planning a trip with five girls whom you love dearly but occasionally want to strangle. It’s not that they’re bad people – in fact it’s the opposite. They’re all wonderful people with strong personalities and a very specific view of what a 6 day vacation should entail. You plan and you prep and you buy tickets and book excursions and one week out your best friend finds out she can’t come. You’re sad but realize she’s making the best choice for her career so you buy bathing suits and coverups and spend the entire night before packing. In fact, you spend so much time packing that you sleep through 14 alarms and miss your flight to Mexico. An angel named Nia at Jet Blue saves the day and gets you on the next flight out. You miss the first round of tacos and tequila but still see the sunset on a beach in Tulum. You spend a day in the sun and burn your back to a crisp and your lips on a habanero seed. You spend a morning exploring ancient ruins and accidentally flashing a street full of Mexican men when a bee flies into your shirt and stings your right tit. You’re mortified but make up for it with more tacos and a dip in the clear blue waters of a local cenote. You’re floating and bobbing and before you know it you’ve swallowed mouthfuls of the town’s drinking water but it’s ok. You feel so happy. The happiness subsides the next morning when you kick off 24 painful hours regurgitating Mexico. You throw up in a toilet and in a bag and on yourself in the shower because your friend is stuck in the bathroom with the same death plague and all you can think about is that scene in Bridesmaids. It takes 14 and a half hours to eat one cracker and you’ve never wanted to be at home in your bed in Brooklyn more in your entire life. Your flight back to New York is delayed four hours and you spend all four hours drinking Gatorade and calculating how many hours of sleep you’ll get that night if the plane ever takes off. It’s a bad vacation.
Sometimes you have a bad day at work. You spent the weekend crying over the break-up with the ex that you still love and decide to throw yourself into your job as a distraction. You send emails and make calls and plan photo shoots and laugh when you’re supposed to. You put on a happy face even though all you can think about is how you’re back at square one and you miss his voice and the thought of ever dating again makes you dry heave in the bathroom. You make it through Monday and only cry at home when you pull on his sweatshirt and find the lighter he bought when he visited. You let out a cry so long and sad that at the end you actually laugh at how ridiculous it sounded. You go to work on Tuesday and are pulled aside by a coworker who you thought was a friend. She tells you you seem distracted and distant and people are talking and she’s not sure you can do your job. The bluntness of her words and pure shock of her accusation stops you dead in your tracks and when you try to speak only tears and sobs come out and even though you know you can do your job, this is not helping your case. It’s a bad day at work.
But then sometimes you have a good day. It’s mid October but the sun in shining and New York feels and tastes and smells like summer. You wake up early and spend an hour sweating at your new gym with your new trainer who makes you feel like maybe you can actually lose that weight you’ve been carrying around for 10 years. You wander and window shop and people watch and notice things about Brooklyn you’ve never noticed before. You realize you can’t remember if it’s Tuesday or Wednesday and it feels weird but exciting and you revel in it. You eat a lobster roll at 11 am because you can. You realize how lucky you are that while you’re not working for the first time in 17 months, your decision to go freelance has provided you with enough money to spend full October days working out and eating lobster rolls and wandering and writing which is the thing that makes you the happiest. Sometimes you have a bad day and that, my friend, is what makes those good days that much sweeter.
The Struggle 