Maybe this is karma. Perhaps the universe finally banded together and chose to strike back, so sick and tired it was of your brazen and far-reaching selfishness.
The fault? Yours.
The fallout? Ours.
That bubbling cauldron of foul-smelling hatred? I’ll carry it today – and I’ll try not to spill.
Where do you go from here? Me? I’m grieving the death of someone who’s very much still alive, someone I thought I loved with my entire heart. A reconciliation does not seem likely because – maybe finally – I’ve simply had enough. Look: we all tell lies. More often, we all tell quarter-truths. But this goes farther; this is about nothing but a blazing pit of betrayal that hasn’t even fully caught up to you yet. I will not be beside you when it finally does.
I posted a picture of myself on Twitter yesterday and not thirty seconds later I received a text from a friend asking me if doing so had been intentional. His inquiry struck me as fair. The picture was of me in a bikini and that’s not the kind of image I usually toss up on social media so it can be consumed and then potentially criticized by the masses. Still, I found myself yesterday in a rather what-the-fuck kind of mood, one caused by what I’d guess was a fizzy concoction of the glorious dry heat, the festiveness of a holiday that’s all about freedom, and just how much I like my yellow bikini, all of which were mathematically even in an invisible equation that apparently yielded both joy and the briefest ability to feel brazen.
What I didn’t know was that my picture did not appear on his feed like it had on mine, where my smile was in the center of the frame and you could see just a hint of skin that eventually revealed itself to be cleavage. No, he sent me a picture of how I looked on his screen and the picture was a clear shot of my tits, barely covered by some thin yellow fabric that no longer struck me as so pretty. When I looked at his text, even my focus didn’t go to trying to decipher what exact shade of yellow it was that I was wearing. And when you find yourself staring stunned at a close-up image of your own tits – the ones you see each and every day at least three times and thereby become rather immune to the sight of them – you begin to wonder at just how bold you’re willing to be. Or at least I did. Sure, I knew full well when I posted it that my chest was on display in the picture, but all of a sudden – seeing it through somebody else’s line of vision – I got freaked out for real.
“Should I take it down?” I asked him after sending him a shot showing him how the picture had appeared on my phone, how it seemed just a cute selfie and not like an advertisement for my own anonymous online escort service.
“I’m sick of everybody’s problems when I cannot do a single thing to solve them.” I said this sentence to my mother the other day and I was met with a beat of absolute silence, though I swear I could also hear the rhythmic throb of a horrified subtext in the blankness that followed.
“You can’t say that,” she finally responded, an extra breath or two of surprise folded into the disappointment that coated her words like butter turned sour.
“I most certainly can say that,” I said immediately – and the forcefulness of my words quieted us both.
This isn’t who I was, but this might just be who I am now.
Things to do today:
1. Run final exams through scantron machine.
2. Learn how to use scantron machine.
3. Contemplate contacting the NYS Department of Education to inform them that I never once gave a multiple-choice test before they decided to (again) change the academic standards and I’m relatively certain that bullshit exams measure absolutely nothing besides the ability to memorize trivia.
4. Check in with a student (or six, just to be sure) to confirm that this year’s senior prank will not involve mice.
5. If the prank will involve mice, write a letter of resignation immediately because I can deal with rising heat and the conflagration of senioritis and colleagues who never ever shut up – but I will not deal with rodents or vermin of any kind because I've got limits.
Things to do today:
1. Get Patrick and Beth to sign my yearbook during lunch.
2. Go to the tailor after school with my mom to make sure my dress was taken in enough that my nipples will not be mistaken for accessories on prom night.
3. Buy more Aussie sprunch spray.
4. Tell Mr. Gavriluk how much he’s meant to me and that I appreciate how he read all my poetry and then offered me insightful comments and didn't once tell me that any of the pain I wrote about in a non-rhyming kind of verse was at all pathetic – even though we both know it kind of is.
5. Kill the guy who broke my heart – or just avoid having to see him because plotting a death takes energy and I have exactly none on this strange day in June.
I used to sit in the passenger seat of my father’s tan car, stare hard at the blur of forest green woods just outside my window as we drove by them, and wonder if there were any dead bodies hidden back there. I was always somewhat certain that at least a few had to be buried underneath makeshift heaps of brown leaves that had turned a little bit grey from the rain.
I would walk across the docks in the harbor town where I grew up, the planks of old wood bending and creaking beneath the sneakers I used to wear then. I’d gaze out into the distance by squinting my eyes against the rainbow-colored glares of the sun. Far off, I could see glinting flecks of light that looked like silver sparkles dancing on the water’s surface that I knew were caused by the sun but I couldn’t help wondering if perhaps a mermaid had formed them herself when she took a break from brushing her long hair while reclining on a rock.
I went to sleep every night only after bracketing my body with stuffed animals. Cookie Monster slept on one side of me while my bear, Mr. Gerber, reclined on the other. I felt safer somehow if I wasn’t alone in my bed. I guess I still do.
I moved into my sorority house as a junior in college right after I’d spent part of the summer going on a true crime reading spree. Despite a rather overactive imagination that might have caused my parents great concern back in my toddler years, I grew up into a person who was able to talk myself out of getting too freaked out by the scary stories I enjoyed consuming for entertainment. But the tales about Ted Bundy freaked me out entirely because I just knew I was the kind of person who would have stopped to help carry some books if a nice-looking guy appeared to be struggling with them and I also knew that’s how Bundy got some of his victims. Lose that lining of naiveté you’ve still got surrounding your heart and your mind like Tupperware, I told myself once as the Bundy story kept me awake well into the early morning and I pulled my Cookie Monster closer. I finally managed to get over that fear. I just promised myself I would never stop to help some random person ever again and sure, I’ve struggled with such a proclamation, but I’ve comforted my tortured soul by explaining to it that at least it wasn’t being tortured in some psychopath’s basement.
It was only yesterday when one of my students arrived for class looking like he’d just suffered an emotional punch to the face by someone who had never allowed a gym membership to lapse. As usual, he was the second student to arrive, but this time everything was different. He usually drops off his stuff on his desk, collects the handouts needed for the day, and then heads back into the hallway so he can coo and cuddle with his girlfriend before the bell rings. Then they all but dramatically scream, “Fare thee well!” at one another and reluctantly part ways for the next thirty-eight minutes.
I never say anything to kids who are making out in the hallway. I sort of just avert my eyes so I won’t see tongues flying about because I’m pretty certain that kind of image would scar me. And I rarely to never ask students about how their romantic relationships are going because I used to have this odd and rather terrible habit of inquiring about the status of things on the very day one of them was broken up with by the other via text. I’ve never said a word to this particular student about his girlfriend before and I don’t even know her name, but the absolute light that shines from his eyes when she is anywhere in his line of vision is obvious. As an adult who knows how rare it is for high school love to last forever, I wish I could hold a hand up in front of my face the way I did the first time I saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre because I just know the certain carnage that lies ahead.
While my favorite things to read are either books that can be filed under categories like Historical Nonfiction or articles about how this entire society is either going to be saved by a cronut or destroyed by a Kardashian, I’m still always open to the literary suggestions of others and I often shill out some suggestions as well. It’s funny, though: I feel legitimately guilty if I recommend a book or an article to a friend and the end result is that the person doesn’t enjoy it or get why it maybe meant so much to me. I understand that reading causes reactions and reactions are subjective, but there’s still almost this tangible feeling of failure when it’s revealed that no, your best friend did not enjoy the book Prep and now she really can’t understand why you’re dragging her to a book signing of the author’s follow-up and staring at that author like she’s fucking Elvis. You forgive this friend, of course. After all, she’s the person you stole Easy Riders, Raging Bulls from all those many years ago and you smile every single time you open your pilfered copy and see the one sentence that she underlined in the entire book was a quote by Joan Didion.
How’s the weight loss going? I texted this question to a friend the other night. He had to gain many pounds for an acting role that is now complete.
Only twenty to go, he answered. I’ve been boxing.
You should remake Raging Bull, I responded – and then, just as I pressed send, I had this horrible thudding feeling settle inside of me because nobody should ever remake Raging Bull and what if my text somehow put the entire travesty into motion simply because I’d foolishly introduced those vibes into the universe? What if Jonah Hill's eventual starring role in Raging Bull 2 is all my fault?
I used to have this rather disturbing habit of dreaming about ex-boyfriends while lying beside current ones. The dreams were sometimes a little bit sexual, but more uncomfortable than nightly dream-state visions of my legs wrapped around the waist of someone from my past was the undeniable fact that the dreams were always rather pleasant. On those dark evenings as I slumbered beside someone I really cared for, my psyche seemed to want to entertain all of those yesterdays – and only concentrate on the joy of those former lifetimes.
I never told the unsuspecting men over coffee and egg whites the next morning about what exactly had raced through my mind the night before. To do so seemed cruel to them – and patently unfair to me. It wasn’t like I’d wanted those dreams to happen. But I’d look up and see someone smile as he handed me a steaming cup of coffee and I’d feel a tightness in the corners of my mouth when I’d smile back because I knew I was hiding something and my thoughts would begin to race as I’d try to analyze myself right there on the spot to figure out why that other guy had made a starring role in my dream and what it could all mean and then I’d feel a drop happen in my stomach that would stop me short for just a second because I’d know right then and there that this current man probably had some dreams as well and they couldn’t possibly have all included me.
Last night, however, I did not dream about another man. Last night I dreamed about McDonald’s French Fries. I was able to recall, even after I woke up and took a shower, just how yellow they were and how they tasted just the perfect amount of salty and I knew, even in my dream, that it was a little strange that they were being served out of a navy blue paper container instead of the conventional red one. I think the navy part must have come into play because I picked out what I’d be wearing for work right before I went to sleep last night and I chose a flippy navy-colored dress and I looked at it hanging on the hook on the back of my door right before I closed my eyes for the night.
I haven’t had a McDonald’s French Fry in a very long time, though I’ll happily wager that I could probably find a petrified piece of one should I ever decide to clean out my car. Like Twinkies, cockroaches, and Vicki Gunvalson, my guess is that McDonald’s French Fries will be part of the collection of relics left behind once we all sufficiently destroy this civilization. I take only a bit of comfort in the idea that future explorers will surely deduce that we ate an enormous amount of crap in our time here on Earth, but I also hope they’ll realize that the stuff was yummy as hell. In fact, I pray a distant future scholar will one day write a full dissertation comparing all things Hostess to the lure of those Sirens that Odysseus had to combat. I also pray it’ll be titled The Last Temptation of the Hostess Snoball.
STEP 1: REMOVE ALL REMINDERS FROM YOUR HOME
Quickly, take down those pictures from where you stuck them in the top corner of your mirror, the ones you glance at as you snap your bra closed first thing in the morning. Your faces, pushed together in the way you’d only stand beside someone with whom you’ve developed a legitimate closeness, will remind you too powerfully of a hope you cannot allow yourself to harbor anymore. And the pictures that were carefully placed inside of ornately jeweled frames, the ones you’d trimmed unevenly because you’ve still not mastered the art of the cutting with scissors? Those need to be yanked free and must no longer decorate your coffee table or that black thing you bought that West Elm calls a “console.” It’s okay that, to this day, there are still three empty frames that sit in one of your desk drawers, a glaring reminder that once images glowed happily from beneath some glass but now there’s just some emptiness. But remember: it’s not just photographs that will stir up longings or cause you to feel nothing but fragile in that way that you hate. No, there’s other shit cluttering up your home, stuff that’s barricading up your mind with useless remnants from the past. These tangible items will corrode your heart bit by bit in a way that will feel like the sting of acid must as it runs through your veins. The stuffed animal he won at a fair, the one you named? He needs to be carted off to the nearest dumpster immediately. Colorful magnets that live on the front of your refrigerator that were purchased on a happier day than today need to be buried under trash like empty pill bottles and dyed corks of red wine because, if you can’t see them anymore, maybe you can convince yourself they never existed in the first place. And those dried flowers, the ones he gave you on that first night? Well, those need to be destroyed. Besides, daisies aren’t your favorite flower anymore. You like pink peonies now.
STEP 2: WHATEVER YOU DO, REFRAIN FROM LOOKING IN THE MIRROR
The person whose reflection you see glaring back at you is someone you won’t even recognize. There is hollowness in her eyes, a deadness in her smile. Her pallor will have turned a truly unflattering shade of grey and the dimples in her cheeks won’t be nearly as pronounced as they usually are. Those dimples – usually your favorite physical feature – will no longer indent in a manner you think of as charming. No, it will just look like you’ve got two holes pounded into the centers of your cheeks and you’ll notice them immediately on the rare moments you do find yourself settling into a bland grin. Just face the fact that looking at yourself will only give you painful ideas that maybe the reason it didn’t work out is because he was drawn to girls who don’t appear lost and instead behave like an Orthodox Jew might during Shiva: cover the mirror – all of the mirrors – so you have no need to be reminded of the dead.
Life throws you curveballs, my dear.
This is a sentence someone I’ve known for a very long time whispered into my ear late last night and the whisperer of this nugget of truth knows precisely what she’s talking about. She’s dealing with her own screwy pitches right about now – we all are – and I felt in her hug and her whisper a bolt of blatant empathy that I found rather comforting. Maybe others might have felt put on the spot by what she said or become offended by being included in her mass of a mess, but I took only kindness and compassion away from her words. Sometimes, I guess, it’s hard to know exactly how you’re supposed to feel or which action you should be taking. Sometimes it’s difficult to delineate when you should just sit still and do absolutely nothing at all. Sometimes it’s really hard to sit still, even while the world around you is spinning and you feel like you’re losing your grip on everything, including gravity.
The thing about life and family and a lifetime spent with family is that it changes – and I’m okay with that, I suppose, as long as the changes can be tracked. Far too logical for my own good, I’m weirded out by shocks and surprises, the ones caused when there’s been little or no preamble to a massive and seismic shift in the family unit. I know it’s a real flaw of mine that I look to find the linear genesis of the journey that got us all here rather than just hopping on the bumpy trip right then and there and allowing myself to be careened forward. No, I look backwards – and it makes me feel dizzy every time.
