Barf Bag Love Letter

So here's another piece from grad school. I really like writing these in the longer form. They're so much more fun and anecdotal that way. I don't know what I'm going to do with them, but I'm hoping to write more. I have a few started. Maybe this is the beginning of a beautiful creative spree.

Here's Barf Bag Love Letter:

“Where are you thinking about moving?”

“I dunno. Kansas City, Tucson, New York. Or I could just stay in Springfield, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Overhearing Mark talk to Rhonda as she prepared the lasagna we were going to eat later that evening made my persistent hunger pangs turn into queazy pangs of longing for a change of subject. My face was hot, and I had just finished my coffee, so I had nothing to fidget with. I didn’t want Mark’s friends to know that this was the first time I was hearing these plans, though, so I resisted the urge to have a STOMP session with my dinnerware. I thought it better that I attempt to remember how to breathe or focus on morphing into a being that didn’t need to. 

When I first started dating Mark, I knew he was going to leave. Mark’s favorite book is Vagabonding; he eats salads without dressing. He sleeps in a palette on the floor of his rented room and has epic dreams of Italian landscapes. The Midwest will suffocate him with its food preservatives and narrow-minded populace alone. Those were the reasons I began dating him–I wasn’t planning to stay in Springfield, either. I boasted the fact that my Master’s degree was the only loose end I had to tie up, and it would be finished in the coming spring, then I would be gone too. 

Actually, finding someone who wouldn’t make me feel guilty for wanting to leave was ideal. I had made progress in finding someone I could speak to intelligently and with whom I could create future adaptable plans. He was well-versed in world travel, culture, science, art, and human nature, making him just shy of really perfect. He and I had spoken about his going off and traveling more in the coming year, but the time frame he quoted was vague and had impeccable fleeing endurance. I had an academic calendar to obey, so my plans didn’t ever change, they were always to graduate and then leave. Eventually, Mark’s plans just fizzled. I was enjoying the time that we spent together more and more, particularly because it was no longer interrupted with a reminder that he was planning to get the hell out of dodge.

So when three of Mark’s closest friends began asking questions to which Mark had more decisive answers than he had ever had, I panicked. My brain throbbed behind my eyes with the ticking of wasted time. Had I been growing with Mark and becoming a part of his life? Or had I attempted to collect moments of his presence as though they were rare stamps, in the end: hollow and intrinsically worthless.

I knew that Rhonda and Charlie, who I had just met that evening, were just asking innocent questions to catch up with their friend. I also knew that Freddy, who I had met before and who had come over to Rhonda and Charlie’s for dinner, was just comparing travel stories and life plans. What I didn’t realize was that I had been avoiding the issues on the table so much that I was no longer even a ghost within their storylines. I had, only months before, mustered the strength to talk about these issues when we first started dating, and I hadn’t had to talk about him leaving in so long. I was out of practice. I had regressed in my intimate evolution.

Facing issues is exhausting. It’s work and I’m lazy. Work stresses me out and nauseates me, so I try to avoid it when possible, and emotional confrontations for some reason always seem like excellent issues to neglect when I assess the immediate happiness/sadness ratio. (Yes, I realize that, in the end and in general, this is a terrible plan.) Ultimately, I didn’t have these conversations with Mark because I am terrible at facing the reality of uncomfortable situations. I always have been. If running away from my problems provided the same benefits as aerobic and anaerobic workouts, I would be built like Christie Brinkley. 

***

I became acquainted with emotional vagrancy at an early age. It quickly matured to have olympic endurance, too. In the middle of my first semester of kindergarten, my family began a game of Musical Chairs with midwestern cities that continued until I entered the seventh grade. While bouncing around the Bread Basket, I attended six different schools in eight years. The reason for all of this moving was supposedly obvious: my dad, an air traffic controller who was always looking for a prettier place up in the clouds and more money to enhance the view, and my mom, a nurse who was in unreluctantly in tow as long as the new destination offered strong school systems, were both part of families who were spread across the country. They had no real reason to stay anywhere, so they never found reasons not to leave. 

This meandering across the country wasn’t completely terrible. It gave me the opportunity to make a lot of friends, which is all I really wanted as a child. But it seemed that the running theme in our moves seemed to be that as soon as I made friends who I could actually constitute as close, we always moved away. I befriended Patricia in Sioux City, then we moved to Wichita; I got really close to Sarah in Wichita and then we moved to Longview; in Longview, I discovered an amazing friendship with Christy and then we moved to Ozark; by the time I made it to Ozark, I was exhausted. I was angry at my parents for dragging me everywhere, so I retreated into my shell.

I never figured out how to deal with my problems with people because I never stuck around long enough to have any problems with them, but back then, I didn’t see it as running away from anything. Potential confrontations with people were like polio–I was immune because I had the Vacate vaccination. I eventually figured that if I couldn’t abandon an issue, I could at least avoid it.

One day when I was seven, my mom received a flier when she picked me up from school. She thought that it was advertising swimming lessons, skills that, naturally, most parents want their children to have. I had taken lessons when I was younger, but I had learned only how to energetically slap the water to propel myself and to float on my back. My skills begged refining.

At 5:00 P.M. that evening, we pulled into the parking lot at the Aquatic Center next to Longview High School. The door was open and seemed to invite us inside, and the chlorine in the air filled my tummy with excitement; even though I couldn’t swim well I could keep my head above the surface, and I couldn’t wait to jump in and play. When we entered the pool room, though, we found something very different than what we had anticipated. Instead of seeing small groups of kids working with instructors to perfect their ability to float, tread, pull, and kick, we saw lanes filled with very competent swimmers who dove into the water with impeccable ease and made gliding through the turbulent water seem like a breeze. 

We went over and talked to the coach, and after a very public display of terror on my part, I ended up in the water. 

I was such a horrific rule-follower when I was in the presence of strangers or authorities when I was young. Although I was the rebellious-child-equivalent of a terrorist at home, authorities other than my parents scared me. I knew what my parents could do–strangers were wild cards. So even though I was gurgling so much saliva and water that there was no room for air in my nose or mouth, I obeyed when the coach told me to swim to the other side of the pool–a terrifyingly long 25 yards. 

When I got to the other side five minutes later–I made a few pit-stops along the way to cling to the lane line and perpetuate echoing bellows–I jumped out of the pool, grabbed my towel, and briskly fled to the locker room.

My mom came in to fetch me from the sink I was hiding under. She told me that I never had to come back if I would just go tell the coach that I didn’t want to be on the swim team. I couldn’t decide which made me feel more sickly: talking to the coach and giving into what my mom told me to do or having to go through the hell of repeatedly battling the 1,640 cubic feet of water in a lane for the next few years.

When I was eleven, I earned four first-place medals at the national swimming competition in Dallas, TX. My senior year of high school, I ripped my rotator cuff at a meet, yet I didn’t quit swimming until after that season. Even with a physiological reason to stop, I had a hard time telling my coaches that I couldn’t continue. I decided to wait until I went to college where I wouldn’t have to deal with the anxiety of explaining my abandoning the sport to anybody.

***

At the dinner table, I repeatedly refilled my coffee cup to avoid giving input to the conversations in which I had become a stranger–to both the topic and the person proctoring. I was well aware that I was never going to sleep that evening. Who could sleep with these thoughts in any case? I certainly have no intention of letting these hideous personal effects mature into terrifying nightmares of my future relationship status. I’ll sleep on the plane. Besides, I was more concerned about having a tangible physiological excuse for having rosy cheeks. News of the boyfriend writing his own how-to move away book was a terrifyingly vulnerable excuse but constant siphoning of coffee down my throat seemed legitimate and safe.

The rest of the dinner conversation provided blow after blow to our relationship. I was glad I had my coffee. If it wouldn’t have been for the caffeine cocktail in my veins, my heart would have surely stopped.

“I’m thinking that I’ll be gone in the next couple of months.” 

Where the hell did this definitive timeline come from?

“It depends on where everyone else ends up. I need to be around my close friends to be really inspired.”

Which close friends? Do I count in this group of friends? Why aren’t you adding that we have a great relationship so we can both contribute to the subject? These people are going to think I’m driving you away. Remind them I have plans to do things with my life too!

I felt as though everyone else at the dinner table was looking at me and waiting for my input, but I offered nothing of substance. I couldn’t respond to him in public. I could have filled the Empire State Building with all of my questions, but I knew that, if offered now, my inquiries would make the tiny populated dining room in which we currently sat seem like we were gathering in a pantry. Not to mention that trying to form appropriate sentences was like trying to wash a serrated knife with an SOS pad. It was frustrating, and I couldn’t get to the point. I wasn’t named in any of these plans, so they were clearly none of my business, anyway. I kept quiet and ate two helpings of red sauce lasagna with extra cheese.

After dessert, which consisted of Mark, Rhonda, Charlie, and Freddy’s continued conversation and my contributing nothing but “yummy” noises as I stuffed my face with fudgey brownies, we left. Mark and I headed over to his brother Chris’s place on the other side of town. I was flying out to Greenville, North Carolina, at 7:30 the next morning, and Mark wanted to spend time with his brother, so we were staying with him that evening. 

On our way over to Chris’s, I tried to find the courage to spit out the conversation I still wanted to avoid to avoid. In hearing everything over dinner discussed so passionately to his close friends, I felt as though I had been eavesdropping on a film noir conspiracy for the previous three hours. His plans were secret and dirty, and all of my potential responses tasted salty on my tongue. If I piped up, I could be shot or tried for treason: “I thought you supported my moving away.” I couldn’t have a reaction of my own that wasn’t overflowing with shock or discomfort, and the car was no place for this discussion. I had no where to run if I hated what he said. I borrowed the radio’s volume to replace the words I couldn’t find.

As Mark exited onto 435, I pawed at the darkness with my toes. I saw the city haze by and I saw the feelings that I thought I had for Mark in every blurring image. As we came to Chris’s exit, I looked up and focused on a McDonald’s billboard off to the right. It was one of their advertisements for their “real fruit smoothies,” with a picture of strawberries and bananas. With little motivation from anywhere but inside my head, I suddenly felt giggly. Were the smoothies made out of imaginary fruit before? So the fruit just didn’t exist? How do you hold imaginary fruit in your hands, let alone put it in smoothies? Conceptualized fruit was hilarious. Then, in an instant I felt sick. The fullness of my tummy from the multiple servings of conversation avoidance throbbed against my seatbelt. In a couple of months, I might have a long distance relationship to deal with. No boyfriend next to me who I can hold in my hands. Conceptualized boyfriend was depressing and made me want to vomit on the dashboard. 

I cranked the volume and tried to sing along until we pulled into his brother’s driveway.

***

Long distance relationships, I know, are not the end of the world. I also know, however, that I’m terrible at them. I’m like a nine-month-old baby playing peek-a-boo: when I don’t see people, I assume that they don’t exist in my life. I know it’s probably immature, but I can’t help it. I need to be around people to learn. I have to interact with them. I have to learn and interact to be happy in relationships. Besides, who doesn’t like sex?

The last relationship I was in kindled in close proximity and became a long distance relationship eight months in. It wasn’t the most profound relationship to begin with (all we did all the time was watch Bond and film noir in close proximity on his roommate’s couch), but it quickly went south after the distance between us grew from 2.4 miles to 1,174. I despised when he texted; I’d throw my phone across the room when he called. Misery was the only emotion I could associate with my relationship. I had designed a lifestyle that would keep me busy and the time I had to invest in interpersonal maintenance seemed too extravagant. Nowadays, my gut instinct tells me to avoid those kinds of relationships. Reconstructing that relationship type, even under better circumstances, reminds me of the taste of bitter words that filled my final days with my ex.

***

I normally found it weird that Mark refused to let any of his family members know that we had sleepovers even though he’s almost twenty-seven. Tonight, however, I enjoyed the solitude of my room that was afforded to me by Chris’s devout Baptist nature. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts to prepare for the conversation I needed to have before my thoughts dissolved my sanity. I knew I couldn’t look at him or feel him near me and maintain my focus.

I didn’t sleep that night, as predicted. I finished reading Galapagos and started reading it again. Vonnegut is a master who can always teach me something. He makes me laugh at the disgusting attributes of human life and cry because of the disgusting elements of human behavior. But he makes everything seem okay. In his humanism, he has a way of pointing out the mistakes people make in life and then showing that, though some choices are detrimental, they might merely be functions of our forms and environments. Biology programmed by evolution and provoked by higher order. 

I had set my alarm for 5:00 A.M., and when it went off in the middle of chapter 38, I promptly replaced my bookmark, threw on some clothes, and put on a smile. Mark would be in my room shortly to fetch me and tote me to KC International. 

It was still dark when we got on the highway, and my awakeness was so low that my internal meter wasn’t even registering a reading. Mark, mistaking my grog and anxiety for nervousness, wished me luck for the coming week. I was meeting the faculty at East Carolina University so I could get a feel for their Ph.D. program, and he knew I wanted to make a good impression. My extremities shook with nervousness for the upcoming week, but my tummy growled with fear of what plans my boyfriend would concoct in my absence. I could only imagine what the conversation starters would sound like when I returned.

“I’ve decided to join the Navy.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Upon second thought, I’ve decided to take three years to travel. Then I’m moving into a tent in the middle of a secluded desert.”

“I’ll miss you, but I have to do this right now.”

The potential horrors that could greet me upon my return slithered through my mind and churned the apple in my stomach. I masked my anxiety with all of the semi-excited, semi-tired banter I could muster, and gazed out of the window like a puppy on her first car ride until we made it to Terminal A. With a hug and a peck we parted in the drop-off lane in the bleak light of early morning and flickering florescence. Lifting my bag and dragging my feet, I crossed the border of the automatic door. 

I slept through my flight from Kansas City, MO, to Charlotte, NC, so I was willing to stay awake on my flight from Charlotte to Greenville. Even though I had window seats for all of the legs of my trip, the accommodations were still awkward and crampy, which left my neck stiff and mimicking a magnetism to my right shoulder. To loosen up, I decided to grab some more fruit and some coffee in the Charlotte airport and then people watch until it was time to board.

At the gate, I listened to an oil tycoon on a very rudely speaker-phoned conference call. 

“Well Ih doan kair. Sell the Gawddaim bairrels for thuh contracted prihce. ”

I thought he was choking on his southern accent. 

As he hung up, I saw his pale complexion marred by dark circles fit for an extra in Evil Dead. His quivering hands were accentuated by the chirping of his iPhone with every imaginary button he touched. He sat at the other end of the row of the row of chairs where I had parked, and his ailed quiver and constant fidget fought for the position of power, sending vibrations down the row and causing me to sway noticeably in my seat. He didn’t notice, though. He was preoccupied with his hacking between app downloads. If I sit next to this guy on the plane, it’s going to look like I’m conducting a seance. Or like I’m a mental patient. Or a mental patient conducting a seance. In the name of Charlie Kaufman let me sit next to someone less animate. And someone who doesn’t look as though they will attempt to recreate breakfast in reverse. I went to get more coffee before I got seasick.

When I returned to the gate, the plane was boarding, and the tycoon was gone. I boarded the tiny regional jet and, naturally, ended up sitting next to him. Up close, he looked incredibly frail, and his fingers and legs were even flimsier. Of course I’m next to the only outwardly ill person on board. His constant movement reminded me of his presence and his sickness. As we took off, I cuddled with the window to avoid the plague that I was sure he had contracted, and I whispered “Vitamin C” to myself in hopes that it would spontaneously be produced by my body if I wished hard enough. I can’t get sick. This is going to be an insanely busy week, and the rest of this month and next month will be absolute hell if I come down with whatever exotic disease Tickle-Me Frosty over here has. Healthy thoughts. Vitamin C. Aren’t strawberries really high in Vitamin C? I scanned the passengers. Does anyone look like they are carrying strawberries?

The thought of disease-fighting food stuffs made me remember the hilarious imaginary fruit from the night before. Maybe when Mark disappears from my sight he will be somewhere where he can enjoy that amazing imaginary fruit. It looked scrumptious, and he loves fruit. The image inspired an empty ill feeling despite the 750 mL of coffee slushing within me. I began wondering if US Airways intentionally quarantined this southern fellow and myself in row 7. He was lonely in his sickness and I was feeling lonelier with every climb in altitude, every passing minute, every jolt away from Mark. My balled-up body balanced on the obligatory flotation device/seat cushion/torture tool, attempting to create a force field of protection from the flu virus sitting next to me and the grumbling within. The raw cotton clouds and patchwork landscapes tried their best to pacify the caffeine, anxiety, and sucrose stew in my stomach, but were less than convincing.

The second half of the flight was turbulent, making the small craft seem fragile and vulnerable as it leapt from air pocket to air pocket. As the other passengers and I tightened our safety belts, the tycoon grabbed the barf bag from the seat-back in front of him. I looked at him in horror and he looked at me as though my lap was the target if the bag denied him entry. I quickly grabbed the bag from the seat in front of me, thrust it ajar, and tossed it to him as though it was covered in spiders that would eat me alive. The tycoon’s eyes thanked me as he affixed the bag to his chin and ran for the rear lavatory. It’s the oddest thing, but as he fled 7C, I was a little jealous of him. He had the opportunity to get rid of part of the parasite that was making him feel crummy. I, on the other hand, was stuck in my seat with butterflies and confusion. No amount of coughing or hacking would make it go away. I wished that there was a barf bag for feeling violently blue–something to catch my projectile loneliness that I desperately wanted to expel. 

I partly regretted maintaining the fiction in front of Mark about my reactions to the things that he said, but part of me was okay with it. And apparently I had to be whizzing through the stratosphere to realize that I was ready to talk about where we could be going with our relationship–I’ve always been a kinesthetic learner.

***

No matter what city we were in, my parents were rarely home and even when they were they couldn’t stand to be around one another. I don’t know if I could sense that at an early age or if my awareness is a product of hindsight. Either way, in emulating their maturity and attempting to quickly grow into the only brand of adulthood I knew, I distanced myself from them as they ripped themselves from one another. 

Their divorce exacerbated the space between us all. I spent more time with my extra-curriculars and less time at home. I missed dozens of family functions to attend shamrock, turkey, and jack-o-lantern themed swim meets. Consequently, I never got to know my aunts and uncles and grandparents and great grandparents all that well either. To me, everyone in my family led (and still leads, to be honest) an incredibly mysterious life, the details of which I am oblivious. I know vague generalities, but I always just had the feeling that my older relatives were adults and I was a kid. Even at 23 I had no business sitting among them at Thanksgiving (we tried, with little consistency, to join them about every three years), and even now when they offer me wine, I still feel as though they are attempting to make me feel like a child with special privileges.

My relationship with my mom really began healing about a year ago, and I’ve been actively trying to make up for lost time. I’ve tried to learn more about her childhood and teenage years and what her life has been like during all of the time that we weren’t close. Her sister has come to visit her a few times, and the three of us have gone out to lunch to catch up during many of those visits. 

Last time my aunt was in town, she was breaking up with her boyfriend. My aunt’s a flight attendant and a free spirit, so she’s a tough one to wrangle. She also has very expensive taste–in everything. Men. Shoes. Apartments. Crêpes. You name it. She moved to D.C. a handful of years ago, where extravagant pricing isn’t difficult to come by, and has since regarnished her kitchen with crystal knobs, pink paint, and granite countertops: “Really, no man needs to be happy in my kitchen. I want it to be feminine, French, and fabulous. Mr. X had his own style, it didn’t compliment mine.”

My aunt and I exchanged a relationship stories over gourmet salads as mom listened attentively. I told both of them about Mark, my aunt told us about her disintegrating relationship with Mr. X and about the few long-term-commitment close calls that were sprinkled throughout her twenties, thirties, and forties. One fellow in particular, Mr. Y for my purposes because I wouldn’t be able to remember his name even ifbeing held at gun point, actually proposed, and she regretted not complying. He was a Dutch basketball player: sweet, tall, and beautiful.

“How did he propose?” I inquired, bracing myself for a story of perfect-guy-scares-off-woman. I had done nothing but coo over her entire description of Mr. Y for the previous half hour. I was ready to marry the guy.

“He called me and asked me 5 minutes before I left to move to Saudi Arabia for a year. I told him I’d think it over and call him the next week when we made another trip to Amsterdam.”

“So how’d you let him down?”

“Well, I called him five years later.”

Her singledom finally began to make sense. My mom and I were choking on our laughs as my aunt tried to save face. “On my way over to Saudi Arabia, I couldn’t believe it had happened. I thought it was a dream, but I still didn’t know what to do. He was gorgeous. He was perfect. I was moving, and youngish, and looking for the most perfect thing that could exist, not the beautiful perfect thing that did exist.”

“So you didn’t talk to him until five years later? How did you bring yourself to call him after that much time?”

“I found the letter I had written to accept his proposal, and I wanted to reconnect with him.”

“You were initially going to say yes?”

“Of course. He was perfect.”

“Then why did you turn him down?”

“I didn’t have any paper when I wrote the letter, so I had written the letter on a barf bag. That seemed like it was a sign. When I called him five years later, I had it in hand. I figured if I got too nervous on the phone, I wouldn’t get throw up on my Manolos.”

***

Right before we landed, the tycoon returned to his seat with extra bags in hand; I lost count at five. As he apologized for what could have happened and thanked me for my help, he sat down and resituated himself in 7C, his face was maraschino red. His eyes were watering and all 98 eyes on the plane that didn’t belong to him were focused on him anyway. He squinted so tightly that I could see the figures in his silent wish: they were walking past him as though he was anyone else who merited being ignored. After a few moments, though, he regained a little poise and revitalized his dignity. 

He fumbled around with his bag, prying it open to stow the sacks he had acquired–I’m guessing he had a connecting flight. I watched him carefully place his new emergency luggage on top of his belongings and wave goodbye to them with mild fear and hesitation as the flight attendant passed down the aisle. I straightened up, showing him I wasn’t afraid of any further threat of food/flu graffiti, and he smiled in my direction. Returning the grin, I connected with the first sign of health or warmth I had seen on his face since spotting him at the terminal. Thank God he’s perked up for landing. For the entire flight, the two us had been in our own states of turmoil. Though the apparentness of our quarantine had bled through the barrier of the middle arm rest even in his absence, it was less convincing now. He had risen above, transformed; somehow he found an inner calm and a way to display it. It took less than two minutes back in his seat. 

The self-critical self-editor in me envied his recomposure. I had a week ahead of me that would be filled with stress and exhaustion while running around the East Carolina campus, so I would have no time to be continually worrying about the future state of my love life. Yet I knew I wouldn’t be able to turn the thoughts off. But I desperately wanted to. I wanted to be back in practice with addressing my problems. I wanted to be comfortable talking to my boyfriend again. I wanted to remember what it felt like to be a part of something bigger than myself.

We reached the gate with greater haste than I had anticipated. And the the miniature icon light extinguished telling everyone it was safe to stand. Before I had the chance to prepare, everyone in front of me had deplaned. Quickly, I took off my seat belt, opened my carry-on, and stuffed a barf bag in the side pocket-just in case. I figured that no matter the approach I took when I returned, I was probably going to need it.