Untitled

When I was 19 and a sophomore in college, I had a meltdown over a guy. Looking back later with the wisdom of many years and self-help articles, I came to realize that I was having a meltdown over a lot of other things. The guy -- who, at the time, I believed was the primary reason for my meltdown -- was, to be honest, probably pretty close to the bottom of a long list of reasons. Like my rapidly-declining academic standing, the fact that I'd gone from being a "really smart" high school student to a worse-than-mediocre college student, and not really having a clue how to fix that problem. Or the problem of being nearly 20, supposedly an adult, and not knowing what I was doing in college in the first place.

Grade school was all about getting into the "right" high school; high school was all about getting into college. All of that made sense, and I had succeeded into getting into a college that was supposed to be good at getting people into other things. I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to get into next. I felt, of course, as if all of my friends were completely focused, driven, and entirely sure of themselves, and would surely find it ridiculous that an almost-20-year-old could be almost half-way through college and not know what she wanted to be when she grew up. Some of my friends, who much later admitted to being equally clueless, will probably laugh when they read this.

When I was 28, I started to have a meltdown over another guy. Armed with the wisdom of several more years and self-help articles, a six-pack of beer, and a pack of cigarettes, I was determined to put a stop to it. This time, I couldn't even pretend that the meltdown had all that much to do with the guy, because we'd only dated for about three weeks. Even I couldn't squeeze that much melodrama out of the demise of a barely-existent relationship. But there was the problem of my rapidly-growing dislike for my brand-new job, my roommate's decision to move out, and my realization that everything that I'd been excited about three weeks earlier -- new job, new guy, newly-cleaned bedroom -- had been turned upside down. I was nearly 30 (though I never would have said that out loud), supposedly an adult, and still didn't have a clue what I was doing.

I flirted briefly with the idea of heading out to stay with Dad in Colorado while I "made a fresh start." My logic: I had made some ridiculously bad job choices out of the need to have an income. Any income. If I crashed with Dad, I could work part-time while I did a real "career" search. Then I'd get my own place, and hopefully get over the shock of living in a place where people exercised more in a week than I did in a year, despite the fact that there might be snow on the ground from Halloween to Memorial Day.

So I called up Dad and pitched my idea to him. He listened in his quiet, attentive, Dad-like way, and then he asked me if I still had "that cat." With a sinking feeling that I knew where the conversation was going, I told him that, yes, I did. "OK," he replied. "As soon as you find him a new home, let me know, and we'll talk about whether you should move out here." I protested, with a growing sense of desperation, that one doesn't just give away an $800 alleycat. Especially when I hadn't even finished paying off his surgery yet. "I know," Dad told me. "You're an adult, and you have a responsibility to provide a good home for that cat. My place isn't a good home."

"You're telling me I can't come," I accused him.

"You're my daughter and you're always welcome," he answered. "I'm just telling you that you can't bring that cat. If you'd like to visit, I'll buy you a plane ticket."

I did fly out, and made a big show of looking at apartment listings and job listings and talking about how it wouldn't be all that bad of a place to start over. My last night in Colorado, there was a frost warning, despite the fact that it was technically still summer. I gave up all pretenses at that point, got back on the plane, and went home to that cat. I found a new roommate, finally got around to that "career search," and paid off the alleycat repair bills. Somewhere along the line, I fell in love. But that's another story.

So why have I chosen to draft this particular chapter of my largely-unwritten memoir right now, when I finally have a clue what I'm doing and absolutely no excuse to be thinking about meltdowns? A random encounter got me reminiscing, and, actually, I did start with a title in mind. Just can't quite make it all make sense just yet, but I'm hoping that I'll have a chance to see where it might go. And then I'll write about that, too.