Circling the Drain

My normal morning shower took on an unordinary significance with a quickness when the typewriter charm on my necklace fell off the chain, circled the drain and then went down it before I could do so much as a thing.

I heard a subtle but simultaneously deafening ping as it landed on the glazed porcelain tiles, looked down in just enough time to see it disappear.

“Well, I really hope that’s not going to be a sign for something,” I thought, knowing there was no way I was going to get it back, even though I did squat down, nude, in a baseball catcher’s position, to try and fish it out, but to no avail. I muttered some curse words and then shifted my position to a full-on shower sit, trying my best to not start the day with a good old fashioned Shower Cry, but I did so without success. I had immediately begun to spiral about how it had spiraled for a second then went away forever, and that I was fully helpless to change the outcome. For one thing, it’s difficult sometimes when you have to say goodbye to something that holds sentimental value—and even more so when your brain has come to firmly believe it’s a talisman that brings you some semblance of good luck. 

Forget for a moment the fact that I haven’t used a typewriter since the early 90s. It was more about symbolism.

After a while I shut the shower down, stepped out and toweled off. The tears had ceased but the fear had not. I couldn’t shake the notion that this could be some kind of negative harbinger connected to the writing I’m lucky enough to do to pay the bills and as personal projects that help pass the time I spend alone when I can think of nothing I’d rather do than stare at a computer screen.

I figured I’d fake my way through the day the best I could, waiting for the bad things to come, but then decided to take on a different tack: i’d try to compensate for the loss of the sterling silver charm by ramping up other rituals I’d taken on through the years—the types of things that I tried to hide from others because there is a very fine line between being slightly superstitious and fully dependent on ways of doing things that tell others you might have at least a touch of OCD. And it can be difficult to know the difference, especially in your own mind.

“Hell,” I thought. “Maybe I’ll even throw in some new ones, see what kind of luck I can uncover.” 

When things change, especially when you didn’t want them to or it was catalyzed by something you firmly believe is out of your control, sometimes you have to shake things up—especially when doing so might be a way to help quell your encroaching anxiety.

Superstition is strange and also powerful if you let it be, which so many of us do. When you find yourself in the throes of it, you don’t want to—or can’t bring yourself to—neglect it even for a moment because when you do that seems to be when the worst things happen. Even if you tell yourself it’s not completely real, you don’t want to tempt fate or whatever substitute for fate you choose to believe in by eschewing the rather easy-to-maintain rituals you’ve set in place for yourself that bring you some sort of comfort. 

I started things out by setting an alarm on my phone so I wouldn’t miss when the clock hit 11:11, so I could make a selfish wish that my losing the charm wouldn’t make me lose a step—that my writing and creativity wouldn’t suffer from what seemed like an omen. 

I put my pants on both legs simultaneously instead of one leg at a time—which is actually possible but not something that’s going to look extremely graceful.

After making my bed, I kissed each of the three stuffed animals that I’ve had for much more of my life than I haven’t and who each serve as a symbol of good luck in different pillars of my life. 

I tied my right shoe first.

I tightened up the two rope bracelets I always wear on my right wrist then buckled my watch two times. 

I fondled the remaining charms on my necklace, one of a book with a cover that says “A True Story” and another is a medallion that asks St. Dymphna, the Patron Saint of stress, anxiety and mental health, to pray for us all. This despite the fact I’m not a god-fearing person—though being such would probably make as much if not more sense than hinging my bets on what’s going to happen or not happen that day by smooching stuffed animals to get it started. I say i don’t believe in much, but maybe that’s a lie.

All this in an attempt to guard myself from catastrophe and to try to will something positive into occurring—by trying to control things you think have influence on the things you absolutely cannot really control.

After I finished all this, I started to worry about the notion that if you’re not careful, superstition can take over your life—making you miss out on the things that really matter while you’re in at the absolute mercy of severe worry. 

And not much good or bad happened that day. Things were mostly status quo.

So the next morning I went with a different approach. I figured if I put a full stop to my superstitious behavior for just one day, I could see what would or would not happen, come what may. And if nothing horrible came to pass, I’d start to think (which is probably healthy) that what I’d been doing for years had been for naught—but in a positive way. I could leave it all behind if I was able to convince myself that what I’d applied so much meaning to actually meant nothing—that I could more than make it in the world without relying on something I was trying to convince myself was complete nonsense. 

At the end of the day, it all worked out. Again, the day passed without much to report.

My girlfriend and I happened to exchange Christmas gifts that night, and she’d found me a new charm—this one a laptop, which was more fitting to the way I work. I’m doing my best to pretend I don’t believe it’ll bring me good fortune, but you never know what’s going to work.

Sometimes when it comes to luck, you have to make your own.

Though I do take my necklace off when I shower now.

You never really know, do you?