Don't look under the bed!

Last night, it happened: I really lost it. 

I was just so tired, and a little drunk again, a little drunk for the eighth night in a row at least, and I'd Zoomed with my family and I'd FaceTimed with Ashley and Lizzie and then it was still not even 9 PM. I cracked, and I looked under the bed. 

I'll tell you what I found: a postcard from a French restaurant in Soho. I've been there only once. I went there for dinner with my ex-boyfriend in November 2018, on a Friday night, after I'd gotten back from an afternoon on Staten Island, interviewing people who hang up Christmas lights on fancy houses. He liked to get drunk but usually with other boys, and I remember that night because he got very drunk with just me.

Here's what I did with the postcard: I taped it to my refrigerator.

Then I stood back in horror and got frantic inside my apartment. Why did I do that? I asked out loud, three times. Ordinarily, this is not where I'm at. I'm well past this point, ordinarily.

To be fair, as I've said quite a bit, I really loved this particular ex-boyfriend. It was the sort of thing where if I saw him fold up a piece of paper or have a polite exchange with a stranger I could get misty-eyed, just terrified by the infinite collisions of matter and coincidences of the universe that had been necessary to put him there in front of me, as he was. And to be fair, I've spent the last year working on readying myself to accept that I might never feel exactly that way again, and still I'm not done. Not prepared. Cupboards aren't full. Maybe it will take the rest of my life! I also already had a postcard from another ex-boyfriend taped to the refrigerator, but that isn't a big deal to me.

In shock, I thought maybe I should steer into the skid. I imagined texting him a photo of the postcard, or, "hey, if you died of coronavirus, do you think anyone would tell me?"

I didn't do it, but I considered the question. This took about an hour. I think maybe his friend Charlie would tell me. Charlie texted me when I got a new job. Or maybe his old roommate Claire would—I liked her a lot and I saw her outside the subway a few months ago, we live near each other. It's hard to say, because they glow in my memory thanks to their affiliation with him and they seem friendly because they're the ones who still like my posts on Instagram and Twitter, but I'm guessing I'm not much of a thought to them. If I favorited a friend's ex-girlfriend's tweets it wouldn't be because I was hoping to maintain a relationship. It would be for no reason. I saw his friend Theo at a New Year's Eve party and he said "hi Kaitlyn" and that was it. I'd known he was going to be there and I'd tortured myself over whether he would ask me about my life and what I might say and if he would bring up my ex-boyfriend and whether I would get a chance to say something cutting about him, since he really is such a bad person.

But Theo said "hi Kaitlyn" and half-waved and turned around to keep talking to his girlfriend. I was like, oh, right, haha, to him this is a quick and pointless interaction with someone he recognizes.

Anyway, after I'd stared at the ceiling for a long time with my hands folded up under my butt, I texted Tamar and Stephanie and Katie "i need an exorcist" and Tamar said "i will google!" I also texted Claire  (different Claire) "i need an exorcist," because you just never know who will respond quicker. She said:

After that, I sat on my fire escape and listened to a Brandi Carlile album start to finish. I wrote down in my Notes app that I thought maybe I was sun-downing. I drank some water out of my Bugs Bunny glass. I texted the tall boy I'm dating now, even though I'm so fucking tired of looking at the iMessage display, and he said I could help him win an argument about the best sit-down chain restaurants. That was okay for awhile. Wow, I do like him. Then I looked up the Wikipedia page for Bugaboo Creek and became weak with longing for suburbia, so I went to bed. I fell asleep watching Pete Davidson's stand-up special. I really want to be clear: I was out of my mind.

As things stand this afternoon, I am back to normal and working well and drinking coffee in my long flannel nightgown. I'm just telling you the truth of my thinking last night, when I really lost it.