Blue Fever: Act II

We ran before we could crawl. We ran a lot back then, back and forth to different houses, different days, different rules and different parents. No one talked except for the kids and we were screaming we were screaming so loud but no one listened and we swallowed feelings and learned how to hide emotions and unlearned how to use voices while the adults yelled at us and communicated to each other through court documents. 

I grew up and out of that and had 100 golden weekends of swimming and laughing and exploring and learning and drawing and turning my parents into grandparents and running around finding new adventures. I couldn't afford them then and I paid for it later. I thought I slowed down in my mid-20s but I was just caught up in someone else's running. I was running interference between other adults who were only communicating through court documents. But I had 100 golden weekends. I taught the kids how to swim and kept the house when they left. 

I paid for that later, too. 

There's a mosquito in my room. I like her today but I don't want to share her. I'm hoping my bug bites and anxious scratches won't give me away. He jumps in the shower so he doesn't smell like her. He's wearing jeans in the summer. We are both lying. No one is comfortable. We never got comfortable. 

So I'm running. I'm running again. This house has eaten me alive in ways my anxiety never could, from the inside out starting from childhood. I learned to swim in this pool. I taught two kids to swim in this pool. I inhaled too many chlorinated memories over the years and it's toxic now because I never knew chlorine could be so poisonous so I wish I never swam those extra laps at 3 AM when I was just trying to regulate my own nervous system by jumping in the icy December waters. I've stopped calling them my kids. They were never my kids. 

"The difference between medicine and poison is the dose."  

Who am I if not what this house made me? The people I ask that of tell me that I will still be the same granddaughter and game night hostess and writer and creator and lover and employee and friend and mother and everything I have always been even when I leave this house. And I get that we can never go home but why aren't we talking about the fact that we can never really escape it either? Fucked up foundations are hard to repair and nearly impossible to unlearn so I run and I run and I run but I usually wake up in this house like it's Groundhog Day. You'll still be you, they tell me and I reconfigure my face into a smile the way I've reconfigured the living room furniture six times because I don't have the heart to tell them I don't want to be that person anymore. 

Because that's not a person. That's a collection of trauma responses. 

I'm not a person, I'm a job title who builds ships in a bottle. My cup is half empty but I'm pouring full throttle. I'm feeling dangerously low and high on that feeling again, I thrive in the empty spaces and the survival races and in seeing the faces of those I love beam with delight no matter what mine looks like. Give me the chaos and the R&D and the envisioning phase. Call me back for implementation and install but lets not pretend I'll stick around after your go-live date. I'll launch you and leave you. You knew what this was. I was hired for this. I was chosen for this. I was born and consequently made for this after years of running whatever was broken around me. Give me half a chance and twice the pressure. I am begging. I am tired. I am tired of begging. 

Thank god we never got to the point where we were communicating through court documents. 

It's cold here now, I live in a hotel room and the nightmares are back. This isn't a hotel room it's my new house but I'd be more comfortable at a fucking Marriott. This is the last time I'll move that sewing machine table. It's too heavy and I don't know how to sew anyway I don't even know why I wanted it in the first place. I don't have emotional permanence so maybe that's why I keep so much furniture and so many blankets and so many glasses that I stole from bars just to remember just to try to remember I thought I was getting good at remembering and I was doing okay I remember I remember the 17th of November even though we never really celebrated it.  

"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo." 

What a mess we made, there are boxes everywhere and hangers in trash bags and loose ends on all the blankets and here it is, here it is again this feeling that I was on my best behavior and it just wasn't enough and I was scared and all I remember now is running and I am running and jesus christ I forgot how much I love running I have so much good much music to run to now and people to call who love my marathons and I don't think for one second about those people who I can't ever call again because they knew what this was and I'm crying in the rain and I'm crying on the bench and I want grandma to know how I saved us all but I really didn't save anyone and I wasn't the one who refurbished the bench but the bench is here because no matter how far you run wherever you go there you are. 

"Do I dare
Disturb the universe?"

I met a girl once and she was beautiful--she was loveable--she was funny and bright and smart in a weird way like how when the sunset has colors you don't expect and she grieved deeply because she loved so much and so hard and she danced under the moon and measured her life in coffee spoons and she wasn't concerned with how she was perceived she just kind of moved in and out of scene and in and out of focus and showed up at the best times like some manic pixie dream girl Mary Poppins and pulled magic tricks out of her bag but the bag wasn't a bag it was baggage that she used to help dig other people out of despair and she liked eyeshadow and had a favorite perfume and I really miss her, I want to be her again. 

I wish she didn't look so good in your shirt. I wish I didn't have to give his back.  

Fuck pretty much all of this. I have never been so lost and so confused and yet still so sure that I am on the right path. I wonder how the people I love are doing I have checked on Sister an annoying amount because I need her to be okay so I can be okay and that is not fair because we may never be okay I think we are just getting used to running and losing and unlearning. 

I turned myself into an emotional IV drip for other people and I am pretty empty my loves but I'll keep going keep trying keep pouring from an empty cup I can do this I can run this I can unlearn this I can remember. Soon I will threaten to pull my own plug out of the wall they built their house on--enjoy the standoff enjoy the silence enjoy the ride enjoy it, my gift to you. 

Sometimes my biggest asset is how much of a liability I can be. 

"That is not it at all 
That is not what I meant, at all." 

I'm blending my T.S. Elliot poems again. I like when I get this way. I love this mania. I was so depressed for so long. There was a mosquito in my room. I was so anxious I was so sad I was so worried and I was projecting oh god how we projected. I am too many things in too many different directions and I can't wait to feel things again. I am allowed to feel. 

This is the way the game ends
This is the way the blog ends
This is the way thirteen years of my life ends
Not with a blush but a whisper. 

Blue Fever: Act I

There's a mosquito in our room. 

Well, the room. I guess it isn't ours and maybe that's some of the problem. But it's here, buzzing around an otherwise silent landscape of cotton peaks and valleys as I adjust and readjust and try to get comfortable. I know I'm not falling asleep any time soon but maybe I can get comfortable. There's a patch of light trickling in from the other room and every so often I can see the mosquito zipping back and forth between us. I never remember to turn off the light in the room where the bar is and I think it's because I'm half-heartedly trying to get caught mid-cocktail-party-for-one. He is unaffected, both by the mosquito and by the amount of whiskey that routinely disappears overnight. If you can sleep through one, you can sleep through the other. Maybe it's no surprise everyone is asleep--this much be exhausting to watch.   

There's a mosquito in the room. The maddening part is not the buzzing that has become siren-like in the last hour, but the steady whispers underneath the shrill battle cry. I swear I can hear her talking to me. Of course it's a her. It's always a woman. And I can tell because she bites. The bite doesn't hurt so much but the poison is itchy. My veins are full of it by now, I'm sure. I can feel the heat of it surging in my bloodstream as my heart rate sprints to catch up with my racing thoughts. I could leave the room or at least watch TV to drown her out but no--tonight I think I'll listen. I'll even give her a megaphone. What does she need? What do you need, baby?

I wonder how she got in here. I always close the screen door behind me when I retreat to the back porch. I haven't gone out the front door in days. Maybe it was just the right timing. We must have done some beautifully coordinated dance, if it were visible, some extravagant choreography where I managed to get outside with coffee, cigarettes and phone all in hand and the weight of the world on my shoulders all while remembering to close the door and there she was, staying out of sight and out of mind with a singular goal of coming after me later. Maybe I just let my guard down--phone, coffee, cigarettes AND the weight of the world is a lot to juggle. 

Maybe she was here before me. 

Maybe she got here first and I'm the third wheel. 

Either way, there is a mosquito in the room. Would it be different if it were our room? How is this not waking him up? Between my endless and utterly futile attempts to settle down and settle in and her incessant fucking whispering, how is this not a bigger problem for both of us? Why am I the only one being ambushed? Is he just used to mosquitos? Better at them?

I can see the iceberg tip of his shoulder jutting out from our sea of blankets. I Titanic my way into his sharp edges for a snuggle, burying my face between his shoulder blades and tucking my knees behind his. I know it won't last long but I do this most nights when I need a hug; I just motherfucking take one, and he kind of likes it. But it gets too hot or too needy or too something and at the first sign of his discomfort I bail back to my side. Women and mosquitos first. We leave him be. 

On the old mattress there was a dip where I slept, carved out from someone else who jumped ship. I used to try to fit my knees where I thought hers went--it never really worked out. But the new mattress, our mattress, doesn't have that. And I'd like to write something nice about blank slates, but not tonight. Tonight The Mosquito has granted me an audience, and I can't be late. She's whispering. Well then, tell me your secrets. Fuck, tell me his. 

I am back in the room with the bar. Thank god I left that light on. Oh, maybe that's the real reason I do this... last call is when I say it is. When the mosquito lets me sleep. But now it's diet Dr. Pepper and whichever bottle I can reach first. Tastes like college. Tastes like home. Tastes like here. 

Are you still coming? Am I still home?

I write myself a note on the mirror. I can't wait to talk about this and I have to remember whatever this is. I'll write it here in an eyeliner I know I can't cry away. And I'll see it. And I'll know. I'm dancing around living room now. It's quiet here. My cheeks are red and I can't see into the room. I lost my glasses. I lost the mosquito. I'm writing in my head. I always am. I'm singing out loud. I usually am not. I am acting so silly now but we'll have a conversation and that will be better. I'll get better. It gets better. 

Sometimes the conversations are more important than the actions and sometimes they just... aren't. I'm back in the room. I'm out of diet Dr. Pepper. I'm tired of drinking out of the bottle. I lost my favorite glass. I erased the note on the mirror. I am embarrassed about it. I won't remember.

There are mosquitos in our room. Too many. I hope they start with my eyeballs so I don't have to watch what I'm doing to myself. 

I stretch my arms up and get them over the blanket cocoon I've swaddled myself in--I hope they go after the tattoo I am sick of looking at while they're at it. One by one I feel the mosquitoes settling in a way that I simply cannot. They sink into me and I feed into them, which invites more and more. Oh, I left the kitchen light on too. That's new. The siren-whispers are a melody now. I know this song. Fuck, I left the speaker outside. Oh well. I think this could work out. I think I can do this. It's a chorus. Ouch. They are whispering questions. In a round. Sounds pretty at first but it gets painfully repetitively. 

Why did you... Who do you think... Where did you even... How could you have... What were you... When were you last... Why didn't you... 

It's not the bite that stings, it's the poison that itches. 

It's a symphony now, a swarm. It's a cloud of tiny wings and shouted whispers of every mistake I've ever made. It's the first time I realized as a child that I wasn't invited to someone's birthday party. It's crying the entire flight from Liverpool to Chicago. It's the trail of drunken tears I left across Tampa when someone I didn't even really respect betrayed me. It's the way I can tell when I don't have someone's full attention and my insides turn into the queasy stomach I developed when I was eight years old. It's every time I had to to get on a plane when my work there wasn't even close to done. It's not having the patience sometimes. It's digging into an old notebook to be disgusted by who I was and what I was writing not but six months ago. It's that same notebook which has "be kind" written on the outside but on the inside screams "this is who you really are." It's every time I remember that I used to fight hurricanes and now the slightest summer shower ruins my trip to the grocery store and I don't leave the house for three more days. It's every last goodbye that I didn't know would be the last one. It's every book I never read, it's every bar conversation I faked my way through, it's every time I drank too much and listened to Brand New just so I could cry and try to feel something. It's that I still like Brand New. It's all the times I said maybe when I should have said no. It's the dreams I still have. It's the ambition and drive I forgot how to have. It's the dishes in the sink. It's the makeup I forgot to take off. It's wondering why they love me but being afraid to ask. Because the answer is that they really don't, because I had that chance and tossed it from the car window on the side of I-75 somewhere like the ashes of a cigarette that I didn't really want in the first place. Because of course I did. Because no one could ever love me. Not this me, not the one whispering with mosquitos at night, opening all the doors and windows and inviting all their mosquito friends. I don't even like her. It's guilt. It's shame. It's imposter syndrome. It's wanting to be seen but not wanting to be found out. It's anxiety. And it's here for me. But it's also here for me. It is so here for me.

There's a mosquito in the room. There has been a mosquito in every room, every hotel room, every his-hers-and-ours room, every space I can remember and probably the ones I don't. She's done whispering, so I think I can sleep soon. 

My sisters will ask. My Bestie will check because he knows that the day after I get a lot of mosquito bites I'm not necessarily sore but I am tender. I'll hide a few bites to keep just for myself. In a time where I am so concerned about infection rates and viral outbreaks, it's nice to have a sickness that is mine and mine alone. An invisible illness. Something I can scratch at again and again when no one is looking and not have to worry about it spreading. 

There's a mosquito in our room. I wonder if she's as tired as I am, especially on nights when I fight her so hard. I can't help but feel bad for her. 

I wonder what eats her alive at night. 

Home is where the (follow your) heart is.

I know it only takes about three minutes for the sun in India to consume your entire body and soul, but I choose to wait outside the hotel anyway. Ram ji won't be late--he never is. This is my third trip to Jaipur and my third hotel in this city, but it's mostly the same as the other ones. Everything is always marble and someone is always cleaning it. It's like they don't want me to know I'm in a dusty desert. Walls around the hotel are covered in Bougenvilla that reminds me of my grandmother every time I look at it, and they do a pretty good job of blocking out what's around me. There's new construction in the lot next door and just looking at the bamboo scaffolding that stretches eight shaky stories high makes my stomach turn.

I hear him before I see him. The engine revs and then he brakes suddenly so that the tires of the company car screech on the freshly-swept marble driveway. Ram sees me sitting on the marble steps next to security (no matter which hotel I'm at, he knows where to look for me). We make eye contact and I can see him giggle as I let out a laugh that echoes off the marble surrounding me. I grab my bag and sprint to the car before the hotel doorman can open the car door for me. The staff at The Lalit doesn't know me yet, and I don't feel like breaking them in because I'm moving to the Marriott in four days anyway, but Ram ji knows better than to try to open the door for me anymore. It took over 30 hours all said and done for me to get to the hotel, about 45 minutes to put my suitcase down and shower, and in 10 minutes I'll be in the office again. I'm home.

Follow your heart. I say "follow your heart" so much at work that people make fun of me about it. It started as a sarcastic response to people not following directions. Oh, the report is wrong? Well, follow your heart, I guess. But it morphed into meaning "you choose, you be in charge this time. I don't need to explain this to you. There's no right or wrong answer. Just follow your heart.

I celebrated my birthday a little early while I was in India. They bought me a heart-shaped cake.

Hospitality in India makes "southern hospitality" look like garbage. "Guests are gods" is a frequent saying that I hear and while it makes me feel icky, I try to let strangers and friends alike take care of me in a way that is sweet but entirely excessive. I can't drive. I can't speak the language. I'm not allowed to go anywhere by myself. I can't order a simple beer at the hotel bar without having it brought to me on a tray for no reason and presented with great pomp and circumstance, but you know what I can do? I can keep housekeeping out of my room. And they hate it. They catch me in the hallway and ask if everything is okay (it is) if I need more towels (I don't) or if I need my minibar restocked (I do, but I just need one day where I have to go get my own bottled water from downstairs, so no, thank you.) The constant aim to please is nice but the complete lack of independence is suffocating. And one time the housekeeper cleaned out my hairbrush and I still don't know how I feel about that, to be honest.

I threw the bartenders for a huge loop the second time I stayed in Jaipur. I cleared our empty glasses from the table and brought them inside while I was getting another round and they panicked. I tried explaining that I used to bartend and it's no big deal, but they tried explaining that it's their job and they are happy to serve and I don't think we got anywhere, really. I made my Indian Coworkers-Turned-Brothers explain in Hindi that I don't want a glass with my bottled beer, I don't need the over the top service, I just want to have a few drinks with friends and relax. It went okay. Two days later I was at the same hotel with the same staff and I ordered the same single beer and he brought it to me with a glass but sheepishly said, "Boss is watching, ma'am. I must bring glass but please don't use if you don't want to."

Unlearning things is hard, I get it. Especially for a bartender.

Two more days after that, I was sitting outside on the patio (mind you this was back in January, so not heatstroke weather yet, but still warm) and I watched this couple totally berate my favorite Baby Bartender because the champagne glasses weren't chilled enough. Listen, I don't care how hard you chill glasses, they have about 45 seconds OUTSIDE in INDIA before they are melting off the edge of the table, Dali style. But this guy didn't seem to get that. And he was rude to the bartender (not cool) and then was a complete dick and lied about the bartender being rude when the manager came over. I. Lost. My. Shit. Between my limited Hindi and the manager's broken English, I think we both understood that The Couple were awful people and Baby Bartender was "reprimanded" for appearances but let's all calm down and not lose our shit over hot champagne flutes.

Four months later I was back at the same hotel with the same staff and I ordered the same beer and The Manager proudly brought it to me WITHOUT a glass and smiled. "The way you like. We remember." And I was home.

We can learn. We can unlearn. We can remember.

Neither one of my parents live in a house where I was raised anymore, but I somehow live in the house I "grew up" in. It's the only house I've ever known for my whole life. It was Grandma's. Then it was Grandad's. Now it is Uncle's, but for a little while longer, it is mine. It is the place that I made a home for two sweet little boys and all that's left of them are a hole in a wall from doorknob during an intense game of hide-and-seek and one orange hula hoop. I've painted and repainted rooms. I've moved furniture and housed different kinds of orphans. And it's weird to live in a place that is home and used to be my home and very shortly will never be home again. But when I get here after long work trips or fun trips or fun work trips, it is nice to be home. (For about three days, and then I get antsy.)

Germany was the coldest. We'd just come from India, and snow fell onto my messy airplane hair as we walked into the hotel. My dad always tells this funny story about being stationed in Germany and how the windows open out and not up, so I was able to tell my Bestie who loves the cold how to let the snow into his hotel room and I swear to God I've never felt so useful.

Germany was the coldest for other reasons, darker reasons. I've tried to write about them since they happened, failing miserably each time. Here's the gist: I desperately wanted to visit a WWII concentration camp memorial site. I had NO FUCKING CLUE how traumatic it would be, but I knew I wanted to go. Bestie obliged. I think we both felt a duty to go, an obligation to the past but also an acknowledgment of our present, a window of what happens when we forget that those who look or sound or love differently than us are still human beings despite our differences.

For as long as we could, we walked around Neuengamme on the self-guided tour and Bestie watched as my empathy shattered into a thousand teardrops. He stood on the second story of the "welcome center" as I knelt on the first floor staring and weeping at the banners of names that stretched from floor to ceiling and grew exponentially as the years of the war waged on. We looked at the Book of the Dead. We saw the kilns where clay was baked into bricks and the carts that carried those bricks to the banks of the Elbe river. We read about how those kilns and carts later held only bodies.

Bestie is without a doubt one of the closest people to me and I swear to God or whatever semblance of a higher power that I felt no presence of that day, I have never been so far away from someone right goddamn next to me. We looked at each other occasionally, pointing out placards or ducking around a crumbled stone wall to reveal some new monument to tragedy. We walked and read and cried and whispered. I stared at the water for a long time. The wind was creepy. There was no one there but us. We drove through a thriving neighborhood to get there. We traveled so far to get there.

We can learn. We can unlearn. We can remember. 

Bestie and I often tell the fun story of driving down the autobahn at 200+ km/hr in a BMW i8 (it's a funny story how we even got that car, actually) when we talk about Germany. And I think we both try to tell our Neuengamme stories in ways that we have found words for. But I think it's important to note how both of those stories happened on the same day, and maybe that's why we drove so fucking fast--to get away from that horrible place. We just wanted to go home.

I called Lover that night from across the world, although I don't know if he was Lover proper at that time (what is time?) but I remember wanting the warmth of his voice above all else. Try as he might, it took me months to warm back up again.

I think Austin, TX was the hottest. I abandoned makeup that weekend because we walked everywhere and it just melted off my face. There were too many mosh pits and crowded sidewalks and steamy bars for me to give a damn what my face looked like. And the only person whose opinion I gave any fucks about was with me and like I said, he gave negative fucks. I remember (vaguely) seeing this fun graffiti saying "the only magic I still believe in is love." Okay, I don't remember seeing it all, but drunk me was so struck by it that even she snapped a fuzzy picture of it. I go back to that picture, that trip, all the time. It was home. 

We can remember. 

I think Huntsville has always been the warmest. In the darkest months of my entire life I was given shelter from the bitter cold of loss and grief and rejection. Did I want the blankets? Nope, I walked around in shorts and sports bras, just to prove to myself how strong I was. Or maybe I just wanted to be numb. But I was given coffee and whiskey and honest to god conversation, all the best things to warm a broken soul. I was given an India-esque hospitality without a colonial right to it, a German nod to history without any backstory necessary and a familiarity that I haven't felt since the orange hula hoop mattered. I was given bars or the absence of them; the presence of others or the solitude of the backyard; the freedom to wander and the absolute luxury to be lost. I wouldn't hear it for months, and I wouldn't believe it for longer, but I was loved there. I was given the freedom, the chance and the choice to be me again. I wasted a lot of time being someone else.

We can unlearn. 

Follow your heart. Home is where the heart is. I guess that's why my house has always been the coldest. My heart hasn't been here in years. So many versions of my heart have shattered into pieces on the tile floor I remember Grandma being so excited about getting. This is where she died. I was here when Ro died. This is where someone I thought I loved tried to kill me. I am watching Sister die. She is going through her own renaissance, for sure, and I envy it because I don't think I have it in me again. Not here, anyway. I am dying again. I am dying here again. I don't know if the next place I end up will be hot or cold. Or if I will be receptive to any temperature at all. It's a choice, I guess. But I am scared. 

And when I get this way, I try to remember. I try to unlearn. Because we can learn. And I know the next place has you. And for longer than I know how to admit, you have always been home. I am trying to follow my heart but take my head with me. 

I can learn. 

Are you still coming? Am I still home?