And I Walked for Miles and Carried My Bags on Streets with No Sidewalks in Search of a Ride
I'd like to say that I left Thanksgiving pleasantly stuffed and pleasantly warm and a mere twenty minutes from being pleasantly asleep in my pleasant enough bed, but it didn't turn out that way. I left the city at 1:30 feeling like I wanted to split open my torso and donate my digestive system to charity because I'd had enough of its mean-spirited shenanigans, and after a too-long drive across the too-long bridge, I was finally at home and my feet were painfully cold. I turned the key in the lock that opens into the stairwell that leads to my apartment, but the key just spun around, not catching the lock at all. I tried again. No luck. Someone had fucked with the lock from the inside and now I was stuck on the porch at two in the morning with bags full of kitchenwares and leftovers and cold feet and a stomach full of Pepto Bismol. I just wanted to get in bed and go to sleep.
I tried the doorbell of the landlord. No response. It was, after all, the middle of the night. I tried the doorbell of the guy who lives across the hall from me. Nothing. Grrrr. It was not looking good. I tried the lock again. No dice. What did I expect? So I called Ethan. His parents are in town and sleeping in his room, so I thought that if he wasn't still awake listening to his mom go on and on about every inane thing under the sun, he'd at least hear my call because he'd be sleeping on the couch near the phone. But no. He was in a drunken stupor on the floor of the living room, dreaming away of cold pumpkin soup and brussel sprouts fresh from the vine and organic, free-range turkey that comes in a box, plus whatever other exorbitant culinary unnecessities he'd feasted on that day with his yuppie poseur roommates.
So if you're keeping track, that leaves me still stuck on the porch at two in the morning with nowhere to go. Remember all that stuff I've said about needing friends for working out emotional problems and hanging out with on weekends and all that other friend-only stuff? Well, that still stands, but what friends are really good for is times like this, when you need a place to crash in the dead cold of Thanksgiving night.
My bright idea was to call coworker William. Problem: William's phone number is on a post-it note next to the phone in my apartment behind the locked door. The only thing to do then was sneak into work, retrieve William's number, and hope Ninjaman, who lives on our floor, doesn't mistake me for an intruder and lodge a couple of Chinese stars in my forehead. Happily, I escaped with the number and a Chinese-star-free forehead and William had just barely gone to bed and was happy to offer a futon for me and some fridge space for my leftovers. My feet never did warm up that night, but at least I got some sleep.
But the fun doesn't end there, kids! Oh no, there's more!
I left for home at the perfectly respectable time of 9 a.m., time enough for someone to have fixed the lock or be awake and dressed to let me in the front door. I tried the key. Still fucked. I tried the doorbells. NO ANSWER. At this point I was cursing God and the pilgrims and my dumb cat who couldn't turn a doorknob like a normal three-year-old, and I was ready to drive to Los Angeles, where I knew of a nice hotel with warm showers and a lovely view of the golf course. Instead, I picked up my bags and headed back to my car to go where? I don't know. And then...
George the Jockey. George wanted to smalltalk me about the holiday festivites, but I wasn't feeling particularly festive and almost broke into tears when I told him I couldn't get in the house. George, dear George, offered a ladder so I could climb onto the roof above the porch and get inside through my bedroom window. Nice, George! Too bad the ladder was rusted closed and didn't reach. It was then that I had a brilliant idea. I would climb up the skinny magnolia tree the story and a half to the roof and get in my window that way. George doubted me. He doubted my climbing skills. He thought the tree wouldn't hold my weight. Now if this were fiction, at this point I would probably snap a limb and break my ankle or something, but the truth is that I scaled that tree in my socks in five seconds flat and was in the window before you could say "Girls who climb trees 'do it' for me." I just hope there weren't any creepos watching how easy it is to get inside my bedroom. George better not get any ideas...
So that was the morning of the day after Thanksgiving. The evening wasn't nearly as dramatic (babysitting the baby who no longer screams and flails but toddles everywhere while banging a drum), but the afternoon was one big shitty waste of life wherein I sobbed and wailed at the hopelessness of my future until my tearducts were literally all dried up. I've been drinking Gatorade nonstop to rehydrate myself if only to make sure I have a proper supply of tears at the ready for when they spring to the surface like they do every twenty seconds. A dry cry is what I imagine a dry heave to be, and while neither crying nor heaving is at all pleasant, a little liquid excretion with the cry/heave sure feels better than the ache of smooth muscle straining to squeeze out nothing but parched air.
I had a brief respite from the exhausting crying for the three hours I spent walking around the neighborhood with William, during which I got some seriously heavy shit off my chest, and that is the only reason I'm able to write this at all. There's a lot I'm not saying, but the short version is that it is not about Ethan and I am not in good shape. Not at all. I think I am becoming a different person right before your eyes, and I don't know if I'll ever be the happy, content girl I was for the first twenty-five years of my life. I fell into a groove that quickly became a rut that quickly became a chasm that quickly became a bottomless pit into the depths of hell, and I can't eat or sleep or think or see very well because all the crying has resulted in an opaque salty buildup on my contacts that needs to be rubbed off hourly. All I can force myself to do is listen to music, and in the last thirty-six hours, I have listened to Jude's "Baby Ruth in Atlanta" on a continuous loop close to ninety times. [Hear the first two minutes here; that fifth verse is a doozy, so have Gatorade on hand if you're the least bit weepy.] My within-hearing-range neighbors must love me. Serves 'em right for not answering the door at two in the morning.
Aside from the tears, sounds like your thanksgiving was memorable. I know that isn't helping, but as I sit here in a post-triptophan crash, all I can say is that sometimes the most memorable moments in one's life tend to be of this sort. My favorite all-time thanksgiving I spent in Santa Monica with my ex-roomate who got into a huge brawl with her boyfriend right at the table. He took off wandering the streets of Santa Monica and she asked me to fetch him. I lost a shoe in a mud puddle, lost my wallet climbing over a fence to get away from a dog, got into a brawl myself with two clowns who mistook me for an easy mark and spent over two hours explaining to a cop why I was bludgeoning some 18 year old with a 2x4. All in all, now 15 years removed from the incident, it is my favorite Thanksgiving though at the time, it sucked. But I remember every detail from the sound of my roommate's hand connecting with her boyfriends face to the smell of the dog's breath as he tried to bite me through the fence.
Today I'm sorry for your tears, but I think ten or so years from now, you'll be able to see the humor in it.
Ugh ugh ugh. I am sooo sorry. I've spent many a night (okay, maybe 3 of them) doing something pathetic like what you described because I lived far from family and had only acquaintances, and I didn't know who to ask for help. And you know what? That makes you feel lonely and crazy and exactly like the entire world has shifted under you. But it hasn't...or maybe it has and soon something new will feel normal. The thing to remember is that you will feel normal again...and a lot less tearful and lost.
At least you did find someone to ask for help. :) That's something!! Ain't it?
I really hope you feel a lot better about yourself and life really soon. If your previous posts are any indication, you will.
Good luck!
Awww, Leah... ok, so you WILL laugh your ass off about your Thanksgiving misadventures someday. As for everything else, sounds like a mix of many things - no matter how amicable the break-up was, it WAS still a major change, plus it's the holidays and winter and that will intensify every bad feeling you have by a million, AND you're probably going through major growing pains after the big changes in your life.
None of that, of course, does any good for you right now, but it DOES mean you WILL get back to being that "happy content girl" you used to be. Even more so.
I so badly wish I lived near you! You could totally call me at 2 am to crash on my couch. I've been there and I totally know how you're feeling. Honestly? It's probably taken my entire life up to this point to STOP feeling that way. And things aren't perfect just yet, but I see that light at the end of the tunnel.
I keep meaning to email you just to say Hi, and how much I've been relating to your posts lately, but... eh, you know how we procrastinators are! ;) But if you ever need another ear to vent to, you've got my email. :)
am thinking of you. chin up.
Leah, one comment. Why was your bedroom window unlocked when there is a way to it from the outside?
You should seriously consider writing short stories and having them published. This was funny.
Girls who climb trees do it for me. :)
Glad you made it in your house. What a sad story!
The crying has resumed for me as well. I'm squinting a lot because Lots of crying + Little sleep = Eyes that are dry and burn from overuse.
You've articulated something that I've been struggling to describe ... dry tears ... more tears now than ever before in my life. And when they're gone, the invisible ones are so much harder to endure.
Since I don't know the specifics of your situation, this story could be totally useless, but here goes anyway: My first semester as a Freshman in college I signed up for every course I could fit into my schedule, studied all the time and got a 4.0.
And I cried every night.
My roomate went home all the time and I didn't know anyone in school. My parents lived across town and my brother up the street, but I refused to go to them for companionship. I wanted to make friends, to make a new life. I cried and cried and cried, sure I'd forever be a loser, doomed to spend my life steeped in books and living alone.
Then I made one friend. Then two. Then three. Then four. And little by little the old me surfaced, the one who laughs too loudly, who says outrageous things to get attention, who flirts shamelessly and defends her friends like a pitbull.
My oldest brother once wrote me a card that I've cherished forever. He sent it to me when I turned 20 and it goes something like this: You have entered the most turbulent decade of your life. These are the years you'll experience your greatest loves, your greatest breakups, your greatest victories and your greatest hardships, all of which will lead you to the greatest decades of all: the ones in which you'll know yourself.
So far, sooooo damned true.
Hang in there, sweet stuff. Damn, I really wished I lived closer to SF. P.S. Your thank-you note's coming.
Very powerful. I've lived the male version of this before. Not as many tears, but lots of despair and worry about the future. The upside is that time passes, things change and usually they get better. Maybe feeling the change within yourself will turn out to be a good thing ... like a butterfly emerging from a coccoon.