Sandwiches

….and today, a vast departure from the blog norm.

I’ve been doing creative writing in my spare time. I tell people that I’m doing this, but I hesitate to share much of anything. It feels a little too personal. Which is messed up, if you think about it—I’ll tell humiliating real-life stories about fruit fly infestations and mice in my kitchen, etc., but I won’t share stuff that I made up? Weird.

In an effort to battle my own hypocrisy, here’s something from the creative writing realm.

This is written from the perspective of someone who has lost someone dear to them.

Sandwiches

You kept finishing my sandwiches

Even though I’d intended to finish them myself

And the fact that this didn’t anger me, but rather, made me smile

Was how I knew I liked you

You and your quick wit

The only wit that has ever kept up with mine

You and your pure heart

Which you said had been broken and then healed

You said it was looking for home

And found it in me, accidentally

That was when I knew I loved you

The last time I saw you

You couldn’t look me in the eye

You didn’t even look at my face

Would it have been like looking at the sun?
Or would it have been like looking at a ghost

At the specter of the life we almost had

No matter, really

Nothing changes

The leaves have fallen

They are strewn about the top of our gilded table

And it’s cold and dreary

The little black bugs are dead now

Unable to hurt us anymore

Miraculously the world still spins

But nothing changes

I dreamt last night that you were there

I was sitting on a picnic table under a tree

Waiting for you

And you rode up on a horse

But then I knew I was dreaming

Because you’re afraid of horses

Like me

You’re gone now

An ocean away, more than that

But the memory of you

The last time you looked at me

Really looked at me

You were walking away, but you turned back

The sun lit your face

And you smiled

A heartbreaking smile

It was for me then

And it’s still mine now

I get to keep it

I get to carefully wrap your bittersweet smile in soft blankets

And hold it gently

I’ll tuck it away

In the safest corner of my heart

I hope that you’re well

No, I hope that you’re whole

Wherever you are, wherever you go

I hope you find home

As for me, I’m finishing my own sandwiches now

Dr. Bitz and The Fruit Fly Mystery: A tale of suspense, shame, and heroism

First of all, I’d just like to say to my office mates: I am so, so sorry.

*ahem* (That was me, clearing my throat as I steel myself to tell this story. It’s so bad that I don’t know if I should put it on the interwebs. My strong need to self-deprecate, however, has won the day.) 

We’ve had a bit of a fruit fly problem in our office suite at work these past few months. It’s arguably been the worst back in my office—or at least, I was the one bitching the most about it. On any given day there were at least one or two of the little buggers flying in my face, or worse, in my clients’ faces. It’s been not only annoying, but downright embarrassing, to have to apologize to my clients about this. “Oh, I’m so sorry…I’m apparently a filthy person. My bad.”

I’ve been on an investigative mission to find the source of these effing pests. Let’s call it Operation: Find the Funk. Granted, it’s been slow going. Probably because this operation mostly involves me sitting in my chair, scratching my head, and wondering what’s going on, more than me actually doing anything. Also, complaining to my office mate Megan is an important part of this operation.

A couple of times, I’ve gotten up to check some places. My initial suspicions centered on my purse. Let me tell you about me and purses: I choose to carry one big enough to hold all of these items on any given workday: my big fat wallet, a water bottle, a bag of toiletries, my phone, my Nook, my writing notebook, some files, my laptop and the charger, my lunch, and then whatever other random stuff I need to be carrying around that day. Sometimes an extra pair of shoes goes in there. Also, another small bag (for shopping trips) must be able to fit within the larger purse-- because who could lug that big one into a store, if they needed to shop?

As you’ve probably figured out, the handbags I choose are voluminous and accommodating—too accommodating, really, because I have no respect for them. I’m downright abusive. They get all banged up, slammed around. Small items, once placed in them, are gone forever—my purse is the Bermuda Triangle of children’s toys. And food gets spilled in pretty much every bag I've ever owned. One time I somehow dropped an entire buffalo chicken wing into a purse, and rather than getting mad I was all like “yep, that seems about right.”

That being said, having the thought that perhaps I had put a banana or an apple in my purse and forgotten about it indefinitely, hence generating lots of fruit flies, was completely legitimate. (Portable fruit flies! Bonus!)  Note: I have done this many times before. Purses have been tossed straight into the trash due to finding black sludge at the bottom of it that was once a banana.

But I checked my purse, and I checked it again and again: no decayed fruit. I even bought a new purse, thinking maybe there were fruit remnants from some past forgotten fruit incident in the old one--- like maybe old stank fruit juice was soaked into the liner or something and the fruit flies were living there. But no—even with the new, huge handbag in tow, the fruit flies in my office persisted.

I checked under the couch, my chair, and under my bookcases, just in case an apple or orange had gone rogue and rolled under there. Nope. I take the trash out regularly, so I knew the trash wasn’t the culprit.

Eventually I just gave up and accepted my fate as Our Lady of Flies—like a patron saint for household pests. I figured there was a rotting piece of fruit somewhere else in the office suite that none of us had noticed yet.

And then today happened.

Today I opened my food drawer. Yeah, I’ve got an entire drawer in my office dedicated to random food. It’s mostly chocolate, but also a couple of packages of Ramen (for super emergency “I forgot my lunch” days), an almost-finished bag of Cheetos, gum, other random stuff I’ve acquired as gifts, including a big bottle of Fireball (also only for super emergencies, mostly)…and one, super old, long-forgotten about cup of applesauce. I’ve literally had that cup of applesauce since internship, because I remember bringing it from my old office at Creighton to my current office.  In 2012. Whoops.

You might see where this is going.

Somehow…at some point…the foil cover of the applesauce was punctured. Guess what happened?

Spoiler alert: Fruit flies happened.

I have no idea when this started or how long it has been going on. (cue intense shame)

Oh my gosh, you guys…it was so gross. Have you ever seen the little cocoon shells that fruit flies hatch out of? Neither had I, until today. And boy, did I see them, all transparent and crusty, covering at least a third of the area of the applesauce lid. Cocoon on top of cocoon on top of cocoon. A pile of used tiny worm incubators. *shudder*

I was possibly more bothered by this than the average bear would be. Ask my mom: I have indoor worm issues. Outdoor worms: whatever, do your thing, you are good for fishing and keeping my soil fertile, so thanks. But as for you indoor worms: you have no place in my life. In high school, I went on a cleaning rampage in our family’s entire kitchen on several different occasions, each time tossing almost all of the dry goods, because of a weevil infestation. (Or at least what I perceived to be an infestation.) I HATE indoor worms. I have a VENDETTA against indoor worms. There is nothing about a worm that belongs indoors.

So you can imagine my horror at realizing that I had been the cause of Indoor Wormageddon/ Fruit Fly Hell.

At least I know how to handle this shit. My high school anti-worm agenda prepared me well.

Out went the applesauce. Out went all the food. Anything that was not less than a week old: out, out, out.

In came the dustbuster. I sucked up the leftover worm cocoon casings. And then, because I had a couple of last-minute cancellations today, I spent the rest of the afternoon zapping the fruit flies up in the dustbuster while writing assessment reports. It was kind of fun. I felt like a superhero. They call me Dr. Dustbuster—Warrior Psychologist.

So, Operation Find the Funk draws to an end. My dignity dies with it.  (That’s so not true, by the way. I ran plum out of dignity a long, long time ago. Reference my previous posts on chasing mice while naked and sucking laundry detergent out of a straw, if you have questions as to the whereabouts of my dignity.)

Now that the story is out, I would be remiss to not offer one more sincere apology to my office mates, the distinguished Drs. Prendes-Lintel, Watson, Furr, and Davis. You guys, I’m sorry that I accidentally made our office gross. Also, let’s not tell the landlord.

One last time

If you knew you were doing a thing for the last time, would you do it differently?

I’ve been sitting around thinking about this a lot lately. Or standing around. Because, you know, shower thoughts.

Seriously, though: If you somehow knew that whatever you were doing was the last time you were going to do it…how would it be? How would you be?

It’s kind of freeing to know when you’re right in the middle of a last time. Graduation. A farewell bash. The last day at a job you’d planned to leave. The final day of vacation. The break-up. The watching your friend’s moving van drive away, with her in it. The doing one last thing with your cherished mentor, who you’ve found out is leaving. (Like Hamilton in One Last Time. Sorry, the nod had to happen.) It’s not like this stuff isn’t hard and sad sometimes, but at least you know what’s going on. Hopefully you’re being present and really taking in what you need to take in, saying the things you want to say to people you won’t see again, making your peace with the loose ends as well as you can.  

The last night my grad school friends and I were all together: We were eating supper at a local restaurant, and we all knew what it was…and there was this moment that we all went silent and just looked at each other, tears in our eyes (or running down our faces). That night is inked into my memory, like a tattoo that makes me sad to look at, but that I’m proud that I got. I’m glad I knew it was our last night together. I’m grateful we had that chance to say goodbye, painful as it was.

I’ve had some other Last Time memories tattooed onto me. Experiences seared into my very being, right as they were happening.

But sometimes you don’t know they’re coming. You’re doing something that you’ll never do again, and you never even knew it.  The tattoo doesn’t happen in the moment: it comes later.

I’ve pondered on simple lasts that could happen, things that don’t mean a whole lot. Like, if today was for some reason the very last day I could ever eat Rocky Road ice cream, would I eat it differently? Would I slow down, really savor every nut, every swirl of marshmallow? I don’t know. I like Rocky Road, but there there’d still be Mint Chip and Butter Brickle and Zesto Peanut Butter Cup Mix-Ins….I mean,  I’m pretty sure I’d be okay just tearing through my last bowl of Rocky Road, business as usual. (I eat ice cream Like. A. Boss.)

And for years and years I was a designated butt wiper, and then one day, when Jonah finally, at age six, decided enough was enough, I was butt-wiper no more. Eight solid years of cleaning other people’s assholes came to a screeching halt. I was good with that. No tattoo needed on that one.

Some Last Times have been and would be a lot harder, though. I spend more time thinking about these things. Of course. Because it’s me and my head’s all like “Buzzkill, buzzkill, buzzkill” all the time.

What if tonight was the last night that one of my kiddos asked me to come lay with them? I get asked by one or the other of them almost every night. To be honest, I’m usually annoyed—it’s inevitably already past when they were supposed to be asleep, I’m tired, they’re tired, and I just want to sit and drink a cup of hot tea and space out. And I also know that asking me to lay with them is the crème de la crème of their sophisticated arsenal of Bedtime Stall Tactics. But beyond the ulterior motives, I think they still crave the warmth and solidity of me beside them, that this makes them feel safer and calmer. And I like the feeling of them beside me, too—the feeling of unconditional love, oozing out of these squirmy, noncompliant and precious little people. Last night I laid with Jonah for a little bit…and I wondered: what if tonight is the last time I do this? Would I stay longer? Would I let myself fall asleep, with my nose buried into his curls? I didn’t. But I wonder.

Evie used to call eyelashes “eyeflashes.” And then one day she started saying the correct word. And I wish she would just say eyeflashes in her sweet singsong voice again, because I wasn’t ready for her to be done with this.  If I’d have known the last day of this was the last day of this, I’d have recorded it. So I could watch it again and again.

I work in a field that involves a lot of last times. Transition is central to being a therapist. I meet someone, that someone shares the most painful or shameful or scary things about their lives with me, we develop a trusting bond, and then the client leaves and I never see them again. Repeat: I never see them again. (Usually.) It’s a super weird thing, if you think about it.  Ideally, I know my clients are leaving. Maybe they’ve gotten better (*fist pump!*) and are ready to stop coming to therapy, and so we plan for that and do a final session together to say goodbye. Maybe they’re moving away—and again, we know that’s coming and plan for a goodbye session. But sometimes, people just stop coming...they’re just gone. Sometimes even people I’d been seeing for awhile. I knew them intimately, and then poof, they’re gone, like they never existed. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that this sometimes sucks. If I’d known that the last time I saw them was going to be the last time I EVER saw them, EVER…there were things I might have said to try to be a helper, one last time.

I’m pretty sure the Big Guy upstairs is laughing at me. I built this woman to have a love of laughter, and to be absolutely abysmal at transition…and so what does she do with her life? She becomes a therapist. Hardy har har, Allison. You are cheap entertainment.

Indeed.

One workaround to all of this painful wonder, all of this “oh hell, what if everything is different tomorrow?” is to accept that tomorrow is inevitably going to be different than today was. It just will be. I don’t know in what ways, but it will be. I might do something for a last time and not know it.  So I should probably do that unrealistic shit that song lyricists and overly optimistic people say to do: Walk through every day like it’s your last. Live like you’re dying. Treat today like it’s the most important day of your life. Etc.

Ugh. That shit is hard, though…am I right? If today was really the last day of my life, would I go to work? Would I clean the toilet? No and no. Yet I have to do that stuff. (Theoretically. If you snuck a peek at my toilets right now, you’d think that maybe I really am living each day like my last. YOLO.)

Damnit, I don’t know if there’s a great resolve to this post. I really don’t. Which ironically fricking fits—sometimes endings are hard and unknown and I don’t know how to do them right. Oh jeez.

Even acknowledging that irony...I still crave the neat ending. I wish for a way to tie this all up. It'd also be neat if I had all of the answers to how to do life, including how to really cherish experiences Just Because or Just In Case.

Hmph.

Okay. Let’s do for myself what I would try to get my clients to do for themselves. One heaping dose of self-compassion and a realism chaser, coming up: It’s probably okay that I don’t have all the answers. Because I can’t. Because I’m human and inherently messy and rough around the edges.

Oh snap. I found my resolve after all.