Vegan Cheese IS Boring

Must've been the cold meds talking last night. I'll never speak of it again, I promise.

I probably should have been asleep by now, considering the fact that I had to get up early to return the rental and pick up my fixed-up car. I'm sorry the body shop guy cut his finger when the bulb in my brake light broke as he worked on it, but I am happy, happy, happy to have my car back. Even if they messed up the interior trunk release so I have to be rough to use it. (Plus I found a $20 bill in between the gear shifter and the passenger seat and nobody at the shop claimed it. Yes!) Behind that wheel is where I belong.

It's funny, after looking at that bashed-in back end every day for over three weeks, now I'm doing double-takes when I go to my car and behold a nice shiny new bumper and straightened-out trunk. (I used that experience as an analogy when I helped my mom buy new makeup for the first time in years after work today; it is weird when makeup actually works for you and makes you look nicer.)

One thing is missing, though. Not long after I'd bought the car, and I'd started going out with the person with whom I had longest relationship (and worst breakup), the group I ran with started using the catch phrase, "It's all good." At one point, I found a sticker bearing that catch phrase at the drug store, and slapped it on the bumper. We all loved it.

Until there wasn't any more love. He broke up with me; the group chose sides. When someone else (very popular, rich, perceived to be oh-so-holy) from the group coupled up with him shortly thereafter, the group pretty much went one way and I went another. I spent a long time looking at that bumper sticker and thinking how much I wanted to tear off that lying piece of paper. It's not all good. I'm not sure things are ever going to be good again.

It took a long time, longer than anyone expected (they didn't understand that they had experienced the same thing at a younger age than me, and had tons of distance from it), but I crawled out of the hole. . . a hole that still threatens to suck me down once more, from time to time, but I consider myself pretty much above it and not interested in going back down. I moved to a new place, tried new things, enrolled in grad school, got a promotion at work, even took some chances in dating that didn't really pan out but at least taught me a few things. But the sticker, which had not weathered very well at all, remained. I had been waiting for the weather to get warmer, like it's just starting to now, so I could attack the crazed mess with a bottle of Avon's Skin-So-Soft.

Then, the accident happened. Instead of taking off the sticker, repairs took off the whole bumper. I've been given a nice new clean bumper and--forgive the cliche--the end of an era. Sure, I'm tempted to defile it with a sticker for my yoga studio, but I think I'm going to just let it be.

From now on, when I look at that shiny clean blue bumper, I will think of all the new possibilities coming my way, and let that hope fill my heart.

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