One Thousand Days (or: I Killed a Baby Bunny)

One Thousand Days began, well, about a thousand days ago. It began with an inkling of misbehavior and quickly became more than a dash of misbehavior. The dash turned promptly into dashed hopes and has been murkily churning away in and out of dash-iness for, well, approximately One Thousand Days.

Confused? Exactly.

Confession:  I engaged in a Bad Relationship.  And when I say engaged in, I mean indulged in and fought against and wished for and cried over.  I (and he) wasn't honest, wasn't good, wasn't connected, really, and definitely wasn't behaving well.  In general.  Now...don't make me repeat all that again.  I'd rather not think about it, thank you very much.

The Thing That Pushed Me Over The Edge.
There were many missteps in those One Thousand Days (tawdry little details), but the climax (or anti-climax) of the situation began in July of ’09 (the end of the Naughty…oh you know) with a cataclysmic change occurring in my career with the downturn of our stinking economy.

Oh yes, there were other intermittent crises during the One Thousand Days. And there were attempts to rectify, ignore, beat my fists against, figure out, change and alter many things. For instance, during those terrible One Thousand Days, I became an almost Vegan and ate no sugar for a year. And I lost 70 pounds and regained 40…ok, 50. And I spent six months truly believing that “I would rather be happy than right.” Which was wonderful, and is another blog entirely. All attempts to make something else happen.  Something other than a Bad Relationship, other than behaving badly, other than disconnection.

But it hadn't been One Thousand Days yet.

The Thing That Put Me Back on Track. 
 And then, somewhere in July, just as I had been laid off, just when I was fed up to my eyeballs with behaving badly in a bad relationship, something amazing happened.  I killed a baby bunny. Yes. You heard me. My darling friend had a crisis, with nobody to support her but me. Her cat DIDN’T kill, but seriously maimed, the cutest little brown baby bunny you’ve ever seen, and I finished it off with a shovel. Twice. While my friend muttered through tears and held her fingers in her ears. That’s what you do for your friends.

I surprised myself, actually.  I would never normally kill a baby bunny (who would?).  Normally, I'd be a blithering snotty mess, just thinking about doing something so horrible.  I'd do a lot of bad things (I hope we've established that I feel remorse), but not that...but...I did it...for her. That’s not behaving badly. That’s being selfless in a way that I hardly ever am.  Selfless in a way that I should be more often.  Selfless in a way that drove me to engage my higher self.  Selfless in way that made me reconsider Things...

And then it occurred to me. I began toying with the idea that if I had behaved badly for almost One Thousand Days, shouldn’t I behave well for One Thousand Days in order to make up for the badness? And if I were going to do this, wouldn’t blogging make sense?

“Yes,” said Julia.

“A great way to work through your anger,” she softly urged in her councilor voice.

“Yeah, but nobody wants to hear your whining, so you’d better make it about doing something REALLY important for a thousand days.” Holly carped in her crispest Besty-Knows-Best voice.

“And you can’t decide that it’s important without running it by me first,” she decided.

Mercedes thought it was a great idea.

So did Heather.

Emily said that she’d been thinking about blogging too.

So here goes.

Day one of One Thousand Days: I finally blocked the email, I deleted the contact on Facebook, I blocked the phone number, have admitted that The Bad Relationship has been a folly and now…Now for my first simple act of importance. I forgive myself. That’s right Holly, I didn’t check with you, but I’m doing it anyway. I forgive myself for behaving badly and vow to do something quietly or grandly remarkable for each of the following One Thousand Days.

That is all, for Day One. 999 to go.