Last week, a good friend who truly loves me and only wants the best for me, sent a text to see how things are in my life. I told him that I was currently in a tough spot because I had been hired by a new restaurant that was supposed to open in November and that it had been postponed several times now, every two weeks or so. I told him that the first few postponements unfazed me but this, fifth one, had left me depressed.

“This too shall pass,” he texted back. No doubt thinking of something that would make me feel better, hopeful. I started to write something, didn’t know what to say, although I was plagued by very dark thoughts like, “Oh, wow, someone should have gotten that message to Anthony Bourdain or Kate Spade. Someone should put that one on a coffee mug and hand a bunch of them out to the people living in tents on skid row. You solved it, the universal dilemma, THIS TOO SHALL FUCKING PASS.”

Of course, I didn’t respond with that. I don’t have a mean bone in my body. (snicker, snicker) I did not, in fact, respond at all. I typed a few words, deleted, typed , deleted, sighed and gave up.

It has been my experience that when you feel like whatever it is you are going through will never pass, it’s really challenging to take in and absorb the hope that it can turn out just fine, or maybe even better than you expected or maybe downright fabulous.

Especially if you are in the middle of a losing streak, which I am. Restaurants not opening when they should be. Weather not complying for me on side gigs I pick up from time to time. Even this government shut down has affected me.

I don’t want to come across as a guy that uses mojo in his vernacular but, I don’t know how else to explain that I have no confidence, no swagger, no game, no MOJO.

Because I am underemployed and because I am hungrily seeking sustenance to partake of to make me feel like a human of worth again, I have been reading more and spending more time at the libraries. Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, LAPL. You already know this, but our libraries are full of complicated, sensitive over thinkers. My people really. I take in the broken spirits who sit at desks, their bodies’ scents informing the extending area. The backpacks filled and overflowing with creased, greasy, tattered, unorganized papers and books. They talk to themselves, they laugh or correct themselves. They sometimes shame themselves or others for a wrong turn. Sometimes with a learned patience but other times, with unchecked anger. We have way too much in common and it depresses me. How can I feel hope that my current burden will pass when the folks I am most connected to are Los Angeles’s unluckiest inhabitants?

I am not oblivious to the fact that pain that begets pain. That people drink or do drugs to ease the pain of a horrible childhood or a violent attack or a parental betrayal or an adult failure, like staying 20 years at a low level job and then finding out a 20 year old was doing your job and getting paid more.

I am going to divulge something that most of my best friends know. I have been taking Ambien almost every night for the last year. It was a dependency that was building before my dad died and it has only increased. I don’t take Ambien when I drink so I drink less. I drink hardly at all. Alcohol impedes my sleep but Ambien blesses it. There is nothing I want more than to have a good night’s sleep. To have sweet dreams. Dreams where my dad is still alive and taking care of my mom. Dreams where I am working and enjoying my job. Dreams were I am in New York, discovering a street I never knew was there.

My mother, up until last week, asked me every day, when this training for this new restaurant was going to start. I didn’t know what to say. I had hoped for November and then I hoped for early December and then late December and then early January and now, I don’t know what to hope for. I asked her to stop asking, that it depressed me even more. That these postponements have made me feel like even more of a failure.

Among my bright spots is Eric who constantly says, “We will make it through.” I want to snap at him, but I don’t. (Much.) But, some people, some things, just do not make it through. Something bad happens, then something worse, then something worse, maybe a moment of hope, then bad again and then it really ends bad. Granted, I know it does not always go that way, but it can. For some, it has.

My other little bright spots are my Ricky and Millie. Especially Millie who was given a terminal diagnosis nearly a year ago. And knock wood, every day since has attacked life as if she knew she was going to win. Attacked the day, convinced the universe is on her side. Maybe the universe, when Millie flairs her teeth and snarls, reacts to her the same way her brother and fathers do. With an amused respect and not a little bit of terror.

I do not talk of Millie without emphasizing that we are taking this day by day, grateful for every good moment.

Maybe I need to actually follow Millie’s example. Pee in the bed? Who cares? Has to start wearing a doggie diaper? She’s become an exotic, topless (but not bottomless) bathing beauty on the French Riviera. She is the favored focus of all three of us, Eric, Ricky and myself. She is the last we kiss at night, the first we greet in the morning. We do not talk about her diagnosis in front of her, we don’t want her to absorb our worry. But it is not unusual for us to stare sadly into her eyes. Oh, how we will miss you, we think. Sometimes Eric’s tears melt into her coat. Mine too. And she just stares back. What is she saying? I love you? Maybe. Ricky could take better photos if he just smized more? Likely. Snap out of it? Possible.

Who am I kidding, I know. With a wisdom only the most self-actualized creatures ever understand, she’s telling me, “We will make it through,” and then, “This too shall pass.”

And it’s impossible for me to look into those cunning, intuitive eyes and not say, “You’re right, Millie. Always.”