Cold Hard Truthiness

This month I’ve been thinking a lot about perspective. There are an infinite number of ways I could characterize my life in Portland in February 2016. Here are just two of them:

Version 1:

I spend 40 hours a week (plus 7.5-10 hours of soul-crushing commute time) at an office job that is by turns choosing-a-cat-food-brand boring and mildly hectic. I say “mildly hectic” because even at its most frenetic, the job could not be called exciting or intellectually stimulating in any way.

My brother/roommate/go-to pool playing buddy is having a magical month-long sojourn in Europe, leaving me mostly alone in our apartment. There’s a stranger staying in his room, who I have stilted conversations with only when he comes home before I’m in bed for the night. This is rare since I go to bed early, because of the aforementioned soul-crushing commute.

One of my best friends just moved across the country to pursue an exciting job opportunity as well as a charming lady love. I miss meeting him for impromptu, emotional, honest, whiskey-fueled discussions. Three more of my closest friends are moving to different states within the next six months. I’ve been spending a majority of my free time alone this month.

I’m in love with a boy who recently left for a 2-year stint in Southeast Asia. He is nobly helping youth in an underdeveloped country while I file expense reports at my office job. We text everyday and talk on the phone for about an hour once a week. He has approximately 25 and a half more months of being noble and very far away. I'm ticking off the days.

It is February in Portland, meaning that the joy and excitement of the holidays are over and now there is nothing but chilly temperatures, gray skies, and relentless, drizzling rain until mid July. I’ve been staying inside in my pajamas a lot with little desire to run or bike or see friends or do anything that does not involve cuddling up on the couch to watch The Bachelor and Bachelor parody shows with my cat on my lap.

Also, I got a cat. I am a 30-year-old woman who watches The Bachelor and Bachelor parody shows alone with her cat.

Version 2:

Miraculously, unbelievably I am currently employed at the top sports apparel company in the world. The position pays me a generous wage, includes excellent health benefits, encourages career growth (should I choose to pursue it), allows me the freedom to jog around the many campus running trails during my lunch hour, and includes a deep discount on sweet kicks (of which I have already bought seven pairs). At this job I am surrounded by happy, confident, ambitious, encouraging people. I often get free food.

My friends and family, the people who are dearest to me in my life are bold, adventurous, and big-hearted. They pursue travel, authenticity, and a life that serves others. They make me feel loved even from far away. For the first time in six years, I am finally in a place financially where I can afford to travel internationally, and right at the same time I have found a man I want to travel with and a tropical destination thrown as an added bonus. Within six months I will have paid off all of the credit card debt of my reckless youth, and saved enough money for a trip to Thailand to visit this man who I cannot wait to see again and eat lots and lots of noodles. So many noodles will be eaten.

The weather in Portland has turned cozy and with many of my close friends away, I have an entire apartment to myself with no distractions and lots of uninterrupted creative time. I have gotten more writing done in the past 29 days than I have in months, maybe years. I am making progress on a project that is dear to my heart and has been a long time in the making. It feels wonderful.

I got a cat. She wakes me up in the morning by licking my face while she purrs. In return for giving her one single scoop of dry food every morning and cleaning her litter box once a week, she looks at me as if I am the most wonderful human being ever to live on the planet.

The question is, which of these two versions of events is true?

Ok, but which one is, like, truer?

Which is the truest though?!

Historically, I have not been one for positive thinking. I once tweeted that my superpower is a complete immunity to inspirational quotes. If this were me in high school, I wouldn't even have been able to come up with a happy version of events. Everything was terrible in my view. For most of my life I have held the idea, consciously or unconsciously, that the truth is the most important thing, and the truth is gritty, hard, dark. It’s why we have that saying, “The cold hard truth.” Duh.

But what if I let myself believe that some things are simply subjective and do not hold one single truth, but many truths of our own choosing? What if I concede that seeing the positive perspective does not automatically equal being in denial, but simply choosing joy? The truth often includes happy, uplifting events. It’s the reason we have phrases like the “bright side” and “silver lining.” Duh.

If I concede that neither version of my life is more true than the other, then the question becomes which story will I choose to make mine? This February has been an exercise in embracing the happy/true story instead of the cynical/true story so that when I look back at this time, I will remember it as a month where I worked hard, turned solitude into creativity, patiently planned a great adventure, learned to be responsible with my money, and made space in my life to take care of another living thing besides myself. And got a whole lot of cuddles in return.