I�m fighting the blues. The marathon is over and it was anticlimactic. My much-anticipated tropical vacation is over, and I returned to a cold rain and a house that doesn�t feel like home.

I�ve been missing my old apartment but I�m trying not to think about it. Maybe that�s the wrong approach and I should let myself wallow in it and get it out of my system. The truth is I don�t trust this feeling, this nostalgia, this sludgy grief and regret. I suspect it�s not as much about my old apartment as it is about my old life, my drinking life. It�s about long hazy afternoons in bed with a bottle and a book. It�s about the perfect ephemeral happiness of rushing headlong down the stairs to meet the dealer who's waiting for me outside in the car. It�s about walking in from work and making a drink before I even took my coat off. It�s about the alcohol and drug-induced conviction that I was in the catbird seat, that things were going great, that my tiny gritty sunny apartment was the axis upon which the crazy sexy fascinating world turned.

This morning I was in the new kitchen picking up an orange I had dropped when I saw a big bug. Although it looked kind of like a roach I immediately knew it was not a roach. It was slower, taller and shinier, and it did not evoke in me the usual roach-response of disgust, horror and shame. I guessed it was a waterbug. I�d always thought waterbugs were mythical creatures people invented to avoid admitting they had roaches. I thought about smushing it, but it was kind of big for smushing and besides, what�s the point of having roommates if not for bug-smushing? As I watched it amble thoughtfully around I suddenly felt happy. I thought, I can love this house, this waterbug-house. Then I saw another one and I got out of there.

prev // next