The last few days have felt surprising good. My friend Brandon feels it too. Usually, we come home and I say, “How was work?”
He says, “Shitty. How was yours?”
I say, “Shitty.”
“Sweet.”
Then I smoke cigarettes and we watch Arrested Development for the rest of the night and try to forget about life.
Brandon says “I’m pretty sure my girlfriend is cheating on me, except I don’t have a girlfriend. With how good I feel that is.”
That’s how good we feel. Like our girlfriends are cheating on us. Like our bank accounts are being robbed right now and we have no idea. Like our lives are about to be snatched from us. Tomorrow. Tonight even. Like a murderer is about to break into our house and assault us both. There is no way we can feel this good. This secure. This confident about life. It is just not possible. It is infeasible. Unbelievable. Ridiculousness in all its forms. Because usually we feel like killing ourselves. And now we don’t. And we are not quite sure what to do with it. This happiness. We are sure that tomorrow we will wake up and it will be gone. That we will be depressed. Miserable again.
But for now. We are enjoying this. Savoring it. Rolling it around in our mouths like lollipops. Sucking out every last drop. Filling our mouths with what normal people feel everyday. In our heads it is summer and we are on the beach and the breeze is on our faces. We are far, far away from the cold, drizzle, misery of Portland in the winter. We are superheroes. We are legends. We are invincible. We are not sure what to do with ourselves. We feel motivated, inspired, energetic, lively, all the things we used to envy of others. We are unstoppable. Surely no one can stop us. Brandon decides to do some dishes. He actually feels like doing dishes! I decide to write. We cannot waste this inspiration. I am going to write the next Great American Novel. Right now, in the next three hours. That’s how good we feel, and that’s also how quick this could be taken from us. We could conquer the world with this amount of feeling. We could start with Canada. Then move into Greenland and across the Atlantic, taking Iceland and then onto Great Britain. After we take Europe, we divide into two forces, I take mine south to Africa, and Brandon takes his over into Eastern Europe and then to Russia and eventually we will meet in Asia.
I wonder if this is how normal people feel, without medication. I wonder if they always feel this positive, this optimistic about life. If so then I am jealous, very jealous. I could kill with jealousy. You at least. And then some others. For the first time in three months Brandon and I are excited to live. Who knows what has caused this or how long it will last. We are doing our best not to think about it. We could jinx it. We are savoring it, living it. For some reason forgetful of all the things that used to drive us mad, that used to plague our thoughts and fill our heads with grey, give us boils and send tiny yellow frogs jumping around in our living room. We are sucking it in deep, like marijuana and letting it transform our thoughts. We are being. That’s all we are doing. Being. We are fucking being. And it is good.
