Fill in Your Own Happening

I went back to my desk, sat down, stared at my computer for a moment, and then smiled.  It's funny how life programs you, I tried to hold back that smile, but it came bursting through anyway.  The news was just to good, to exquisite to hold in the smile that beamed from my chest.  It radiated through my body and out my fingers and toes until I was sure that someone walking by might think I had a lantern that glowed inside of my cubical.  It seemed to bounce off the sound absorbing gray walls, off the picture of me catching a very small fish, through the handle of my coffee mug, and back into me again.

Had I known happiness before this?  I couldn't be sure.  I didn't remember it if I had.  It seemed that bad times stuck in my head better than good, and things hadn't been good in a while.  After I lost my last job, and my wife left me I went through what some might call a bit of a rough patch, if I were being totally honest, I'd say I went through 35 whiskey bottles, 83 cases of beer, 41 plates, 17 doors, and 7 women whose last names I don't remember (or possibly never knew), all in about three months.  It was alcohol, destruction, and sex for those months that acted as very small band-aids on very serious lacerations.  At the end of it I realized what had happened.  I realized the mistakes I made and I sobered up.  That's about when I got this job.

I've really only been working here a short while, but after getting news like that, it might be my favorite job ever, just because I received the news while in this building.  I knew my luck would turn around.  I knew that if I started living right, if I started sobering up and going back to church that God would smile on me, and surely he did. 

After a while I stopped trying to hide my smile.  I was happy, damnnit.  Happier than I'd been in a long while, and it was due, and I wasn't about to try and hide it.  It was a good day, the start of many good days.