Problems (20 page)

Ogden called me to tell me he got a job in Oregon. I didn't know what to do with this. I cried for three straight days. I got high
and watched
Frasier
episodes and cried into the sofa. I felt like a little kid.

“You're not supposed to go. You're supposed to stay here with me.”

“Right, I know. But the extras in your life have their own lives.”

“You weren't an extra.”

“That's sweet of you to say.”

“More like a guest star that made recurring appearances.”

“Maya, I'll still be here for you. I'm pretty sure they have computers and e-mails in Oregon. I'm pretty they also have cell—”

“Stop! Please, don't. I need you. Please don't leave me. I'm not ready.”

“I got bought out of my job, and I can't seem to get things going. I need structure. I need, you know, a life. Don't you want that for me? I'll be a better friend.”

“No, you won't. You'll go away. Everyone always goes away.”

“We'll be buddies forever, I promise.”

“What if something really bad happens? What if I get sick?”

“I'll fly back. I promise. If anything bad happens, I will come back for you.”

“What if you don't? What if you just go away?”

“I won't. Please stop crying. Please. This doesn't change anything. You will always have me, okay?”

What mattered and what didn't? Did it matter that my apartment was messy? Did it matter that I messed up school when I never really wanted to be a teacher?

Amy said on the phone, “You just need one thing to fall into place in life, and then everything can be gangbusters, you know? You could go to an interview for a job and end up getting it and then meet some dude at work and boom: you are normal. You see how you could easily get stuck and turn into one of those boring people just waiting around to die.”

When the boring has become thrilling, you know you have wandered far off the path.

Sometimes you think,
Was I trying to make myself as fucked-up as possible so no man would ever want me?
Sure, be a junkie and hide away so men can't even find you. Hook up with dudes for money, make more secrets, so if you do find a man, you can think,
If I ever tell him those things, he won't love me anymore
. You wonder,
When did I confuse hedonism with lousy old self-destruction?

It is an art to make yourself so unlovable.

“There's something wrong with me,” you tell Jimmy.

“What are you talking about?”

“It's this feeling I have.”

“You are so fucking hot. The first time I saw you all I thought was,
That girl is fucking hot
.”

Sometimes men know exactly what to say.

It's easy to see how people can get lost forever, how they disappear down a hole of their own making. You are spitting distance from a lot of dead-ends: jail,
OD
'ing, rehab, staring at a television for the rest of your life. Waking up to start all over again, every single day: hook up, money, drugs. Every day a lifetime. Every lifetime filthy and depressing.

“We can still get discovered, you know?” Elizabeth says. “We're still young.”

“Are we?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Amy says, “I don't think you'll
OD
. I do worry about that, but what I really worry about is that you won't do anything for the next twenty years.”

You stop, just to see what it feels like. Also because you ran out of money. But you don't want money. You want to try life on again. You want to see how things feel and how things work without being high. You are like a little kid the night before school starts. You lie awake in the dark sneezing and coughing, waiting for morning, wondering what life has in store for you.

This over-the-top sensationalized garbage. You are a genius, but there aren't any synonyms for
I
. Let's try this: me, me, me. Roll your eyes. Congratulations, you're a disaster. Happy birthday. No one cares. Cut your arms and flash your pussy. As soon as you actually have something to be sad about, no one will be there, because you'll be an old woman, and nobody thinks it's cute when old women are disasters. You will avoid eyes. You will say you're sorry without looking up. Sorry for being late. Sorry for not calling the exterminator. Sorry for all of it. Sit at the bar at Starbucks. When did they start playing Iron and Wine? You came in here to drink a sugary caffeinated drink and lose yourself in a fluffy magazine, not to have an honest moment of reflection in a generic corporate coffee chain. Cut your nails. Buy a belt. Brush your hair. Sit up straight. Change your e-mail address. Stop trying to be precious with references to obscure song lyrics. Change your voicemail message to the preset. Show the world you can be normal for five seconds. Look at a tree and try not to imagine you're in a movie with a woman looking at a tree. Try not to think as you chain-smoke, pacing around on the phone, that you might look like a movie star. Tell a joke. Fake a smile. Everybody likes it when you tell a joke and fake a smile because they can see you're at least trying. And that's the main thing: to be trying.

* * *

I go out with some dudes from OkCupid. One guy comes over and does blow with me, and when he fucks me, he also licks his fingertips
and rubs his nipples. It is the most unattractive thing I've ever seen a man do. Another guy I clicked with, and I am sure we'll hook up, but he disappears on me; when I confront him later, he tells me that I weird him out. “You asked me to go the dog park, like, on the first date. That's something couples do. Like, you just came on way too strong.” Another guy, an older man who seems incredible and reminds me of Ogden so much that when we hold hands, I feel like he's the man I'm maybe supposed to be with. He dumps me, too. Says it's because of our age difference, but I don't believe him.

One is a young rich kid who is lonely and awkward and at first seems so sweet and kind, but he has this thing where he drinks to last longer in bed, and every time he gets drunk, he repeats himself one million times, like a fucking recording. One night I borrow two hundred bucks from him just to see if I can.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm not ready.

* * *

I e-mail Ogden and give him updates. Sometimes we talk on the phone, but it always feels like I'm forcing him to talk to me, so I stop. It's unclear how things are going for him in Oregon. I don't know or want to know if he has a new woman. Weirdly, now that we aren't fucking, he is much better at sharing, like, telling me about his house, his job, wanting to start a band. Maybe it is easier for him to share stuff with me because I no longer matter. All I ever wanted was for Ogden to care about me more than was good for him. “Hi, Maya, how can I interest you in your own life today?”

Ogden says I should rent my living room for money. My apartment is perfect for sharing. The living room and the bedroom are on opposite sides of the apartment. The bathroom and kitchen are in the middle. It's like two studios connected.

I can't believe the shit I find while looking at other ads on craigslist for rooms to rent: no smoking, extremely clean, no visitors. Some specify the renter must work a regular nine-to-five job. Who pays a grand a month to not even be allowed to have a friend over?

In my own ad I write, “I don't care what you do so long as I'm not interrogated by the police at some point over a crime you've committed; you have to smoke or be smoker-friendly; I don't care what you do or who you have over, but drama isn't allowed, and I don't want to be bothered.”

Ryan is the type of person who finds it extremely funny if when you answer the door at three o'clock, and he asks if you've just woken up, you say, “Yes.” He moves in on a Saturday. I allot the extra money for a new phone. I will not spend the money on dope.

Taking Douglass to the corner to get a cab is a lot more emotional than I thought it would be. I feel bad for him. I try to remember that I'm doing this for him too. Having him run to get dope every other minute probably didn't help him get straight either. Tears fill my eyes as the cab pulls away. It starts to rain. I stand there like it's a movie. I know there will be moments when I will wish I had let things stay the way they were, but things are going to be different.

Life isn't short. Life is long. That's why you have to do something.

I'm living with a person who has his shit together, and I go back to school. I never make the decision to clean up but change happens in these small ways. Maybe I will still call Douglass or the dealer to get dope, and all the rent money will go up my nose, but I don't think so; somehow I am weirdly ready. I want to do my homework and stay clean. There are times I am up all night in my apartment, writing furiously, and still I am okay. I'm alone, and I'm okay.

And I think about those women on Facebook who are always posting pictures of themselves with husbands or children, and I think how for so long, that's what I had wanted. But anyone can find others to hide behind. Being alone, figuring out how to make the hours go, satiating your own wrestling human heart, means you never have to hide or be numb again.

Beauty or meaning is not intrinsic to suffering. But if you can take the suffering and find the parts that are funny or profound, you can curate your world into something that might be entertaining for someone else for a while. Eventually, maybe, that time will have been useful. More useful than, like, working in a bank.

You will find yourself awake at three in the morning, wondering where all this energy comes from. You will find yourself counting change over and over, not knowing what you want or if you want anything at all. You will find yourself doubled over in the bathroom praying to the bathroom god to make the pain stop. You will find yourself staring at your cell phone, alternating between real fear and scary excitement knowing someone out there will contact you. You will find yourself in a familiar world, one you remember with a nostalgia that feels jarring and confusing. You don't know how to fill the hours. You will find yourself with a sudden and disturbing interest in cleaning, in looking underneath and behind every piece of furniture at least one hundred times in two days. If you find a bag, it doesn't really count, like how you don't have to feel guilty when you are on a diet and someone hands you a free brownie. You will find yourself in the rain without an umbrella. You'll find yourself wondering when it was that you lost track of the world. You will find yourself outside buildings trying to bum a cigarette. The world is cold to strangers. You will find yourself not having anywhere to go but not wanting to go home. You will hear “take care of yourself” with a new profound sense of meaning. You will find
yourself wanting sex but not knowing how to even look at a man without blushing. You will wish you could just sleep: the only real relief from this world. You used to never want to sleep. You will sigh after you masturbate, because it felt like being high for a few seconds. You will think,
I am not done with dope. I want some right fucking now
. But fear and dread will arise; if you go back, you may not come back. Through the bus window, you will watch a man in beaten, weathered clothes look for bottles in a heap of trash bags, and you will be moved to tears. You will make yourself promise over and over you won't use again. You are not used to shitting so many times a day. You will find yourself on the phone with your mother, crying like an infant. You will find yourself wishing you could be like all those girls at the bar who seem so easy and fun. You will find yourself feeling like another species. You will find yourself wondering how on Earth people meet other people. It feels like a trick you no longer know how to perform. You will find yourself walking forever, wanting to exhaust yourself so sleep will come heavy when your head hits the pillow. You will get a dog. Small pleasures will show themselves here and there in between the periods of drudgery. You will want to shut the door firmly on the world, leave the madness forever, get high and listen to jazz and be okay.

This really isn't funny anymore. As you grow up, the world becomes smaller; only a few friends can help guide you. Only a few who are still patient with you. You will cling to them like a child clings to her mother's skirt. You won't ever want to go home. You will be home all the time. You will be bored. You will find that your room has morphed into a cell. Picture a time-lapse camera filming the window through winter to spring, and you are asleep with the laptop playing; you are sitting on the edge of the bed; you are pacing with the phone; you are curled up in a fetal position crying, and this is how the days will pass. You will close your eyes and open them, and the ceiling will be right where it was the day before. Sometimes you will take comfort in the predictability of
this life. But mostly you will be an anxious little kid stuck inside forever, wanting to go out and play.

You did this yourself. Way to go, kid.

Everyone talks constantly about how cold it is. Ryan says it should rain this weekend. You look forward to having his company. Just to sit in his clean room and watch a movie. Instead of looking forward to a bag of dope, you are looking forward to two wondrous hours of oblivion. You don't hang out very often because he works all day, and you are asleep most of the day. But when he is home you feel content. He tells you about his life. His job is boring, but he likes it. He met a girl, and they made out. You are an eager listener. You try to not come off as desperate. You remember what it felt like to have a whole life, and you remember what it felt like to encounter people who didn't; you remember how you could almost smell their loneliness. You don't know how, but you will have a life again. You will go to work and come home and have friends to call. You will have boyfriends. A skeptical part of you doesn't really believe any of this. Nothing tells you the dread and sadness and emptiness will ever end. Still you have to wake up and get out of bed. You have to believe it won't go on like this forever. You are stronger than before, and the next time life bestows any charms on you, you will smile brightly and remember and be grateful. You won't ever forget. Even the sight of blood on toilet tissue will be a reminder: there is still time enough for life to grow inside you. It's been so long you can't remember the last time you got your period, and even the cramps are shockingly refreshing. A new normal. You don't know how or why, but one day you will wake up and walk your dog outside, and you will be okay.