There is a picture out there in the world of your’s truly wearing a pink sequined turtleneck under a fluffy pink fur coat. I’m wearing purple vinyl pants and I weigh about two pounds of pre-coke bloat weight and honey, I look fabulous. This was standard bar going attire and looking like Barbie’s more sparkly brother was kind of my image. There’s also a picture out there somewhere of me dressed in a tiger stripped halter top and a Farrah wig but I digress. The point is in the mid-1990s I had the look down and the cute friends and the sass to get me in for free. Like much of my sanity, these photos are lost for good. But fabulous has come back to me. Even if it isn’t covered in sequins these days.
Websters defines “fabulous” like this:
1. a : resembling or suggesting a fable : of an incredible, astonishing, or exaggerated nature <fabulous wealth>
b : wonderful, marvelous <had a fabulous time>
2: told in or based on fable
Definition 1.a struck me as particularly powerful. “Suggesting a fable like a fantasy.” It’s telling that chasing fabulous was something I did for so long when by this definition I was chasing a fable. Fascinating! The word gets more humorous when you consider that most famous fables have some sort of a lesson or moral. As I’ve mentioned maybe 60 zillion times, my life has been one big moral or learning experience or just a record breakingly long After School Special. In short, the dictionary called me out for being a delusional mess who’d rather live in a fable than reality. Guilty. (Sidebar-When I looked up ‘fabulous’ on dictionary.com, there was an ad for ‘The Five Signs of Mental Illness’ next to the definition. Wonder if one them was “pursuing fablousness”?)
Still, not all fabulous is bad, right? Google defines it as “extraordinary” and “amazingly good.” That’s how my life feels now. Living in fables and repeating the same mistakes like some sitcom character are things I try to avoid today. I have my moments of delusion naturally but on the whole I’m a lot less crazy than I used to be. The really insane thing is this: even though I spent years acting fabulous and telling people I was fabulous, I didn’t feel fabulous. I felt like shit. I wanted to kill myself. I could not possibly see a way my life could ever improve. But darn it, I was hellbent on convincing you that I was okay. Once the cat (who was actually a big drunk rabid tiger) was out of the bag, however, I couldn’t fool anyone. I wasn’t fabulous. I was fucked up and everyone knew it. And right here was when the long road back to fabulous started.
Now in 2012, my world is fabulous. It’s not of the Farrah wig wearing or pink sequined variety, though. My fabulous is more of a 1b. You know “wonderful”, “marvelous.” It’s wonderful that I can spend a weekend with my parents and not have to sneak down to the bar. It’s marvelous that I can tell the truth about when I don’t feel so great. What’s more is that there are now pictures of yours truly looking happy and not bloated and with people he loves. But for reals, if you find those other photos can you mail them to me? They’d be fabulous Facebook photos.
Sean Paul Mahoney Peer Solutions 