Last night, I rode my bike home from work in the velvety dusk and watched a magenta sunset streak the sky. There was a slight chill in the soft air, a slant to the light that meant my favorite season was coming soon. And I realized I was happy.



Then I remembered I was on drugs. Lots of them.



But no matter. I’ve learned to accept those moments of happiness, drug-enabled or not, and let them wash over me without trying to hold on too hard. Because they don’t stick around.



Not an hour later, in fact, I was desperately throwing clothes, sleeping bags, and other assorted luggage around my apartment, looking for my wallet (never found); so I would have my driver’s license to bring to the tow lot to which my NEW car had been towed this weekend while I was camping on the Olympic Peninsula.



Unable to find my wallet, I then had to search desperately for some other form of ID. When I realized they wouldn’t take a check with anything but a driver’s license, I tore through all the mail piled on my hall table to find the new credit card that luckily, had not yet been assimilated into the now-lost wallet, and that would let me pay the exorbitant towing fee.



Anyway.



It’s hard to shake the idea that happiness is something that’s just around the corner, instead of something that comes to you at odd moments. You think:



When I write a book, and they turn it into a movie, and I get to hang around the set chatting up Jake Gyllenhaal and Johnny Depp, I’ll be happy. When I finally trust Indie Rock Dad, I’ll be happy. When I get married, I’ll be happy.



You don’t think, When I’m riding my bike home on a Monday night, and there’s a beautiful sunset, I’m going to be happy.



Sometimes, if you’re especially lucky, you get a series of happy moments in row. Usually this happens when you’re in love, which means the karmic payback is that later on, you’ll get many miserable moments in a row, but still – you can’t think that way (though, of course I do). My life has been like that lately. Lucky.



So lucky, in fact, that I’ve hardly even noticed the fact that GalPal #1 has appropriated South African Boy, he of the sculpted torso, whom I was keeping in reserve for myself.



So lucky that I have photo after photo of me smiling somewhere in the Cascades, surrounded by peaks and lakes and sunshine, with the arm of a heartbreakingly lovely boy around me. One who says he loves me, even.



It can’t last. Something bad will happen. Remember Loser? Remember how much he claimed to love you, remember how much you trusted him, and then remember (how can you forget?) how he turned on a dime and treated you like the most lowly piece of garbage until all your trust and love was destroyed?



Right. It can’t last. Nothing lasts. As Sly but Philosophical Russian Boy is famous for saying, “We all gonna die sometime.”



All I can do is try to enjoy this beauty while it lasts.



And, of course, remember to take my meds.