My Bugs! My Bugs!
Desperately seeking comfort
I must warn you, I use the word ‘cockroach’ 19 times in this edition. Well, 20, if you count that one. So, if that makes you squirmy, might I suggest replacing that word with a different word? A fruit maybe. Banana. Or maybe a nonsense word. Like antidisestablishmentarianism.
There was a dead cockroach on the threshold to my kitchen yesterday morning.
I spotted it when I was sitting on the couch brushing my teeth. Yes, I do sit when I brush my teeth because I did buy a ‘friend of the pod’ Quip toothbrush which times itself for a full two minutes. It did work well for a while but it seems, like with most things, the quality has slipped in the last few years. Now, it’s a lot more stop and start and sometimes brushing my teeth takes more than two minutes.
The cockroach seemed fully dead so I thought, “I can deal with that after my morning skin care routine.”
Sure enough, the dead cockroach was still there when I returned. But when I went to scoop it up in my dustpan, the antennas moved and it started to try to flip over. I shrieked. Shrieking is actually a newer development for me. I used to just stare for a long time. This time, I fully—but briefly—shrieked and slammed the dustpan on it over and over. Even then, I wasn’t sure it was dead dead so I retrieved one of my Doc Marten’s from the closet and made very sure that the actually half-dead cockroach was now a fully dead cockroach.
In general, I’m lucky. In the grand scheme of things (particularly New York-related things™) I don’t have to deal with cockroaches that much. This year has kind of been an anomaly—sure to become a norm—with an uptick of incidents because of, I’m guessing, the extended length and increased amount of humidity.
The first “summer” incident was in May and made me rethink the amount of craft stuff I left out on the floor. (Previously paid post that is not unlocked.)
Before yesterday, the other incident was a few weeks ago. I’ll spare you the full story but let’s just say it involved me, fully nude, haphazardly spraying toilet bowl cleaner around my bathroom with the ferocity of a firehose. If that liquid wasn’t blue, it really would have looked like an egregious amount of blood and I would have become the next true crime podcast subject.
With the uptick in appearances of cockroaches, there has been an uptick in my imaging myself as a, well, ‘giant vermin.’
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.
-Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
I have read The Metamorphosis, which is probably the reason for the vision, but it’s been a long time. So, of course, before sitting down to write this newsletter today, I took a little trip to Wikipedia and read the synopsis of the story. Turns out that, literally, all I remembered about the story was the waking up as a giant cockroach part…and even that’s not totally correct. According to what’s cited on Wikipedia, ‘cockroach’ is never mentioned. It’s mostly ‘bug’ or ‘vermin’ or something like that, depending on the translation. Apparently Kafka didn’t even really want any illustrations of “the vermin” so as not to lead the reader. The text is in the public domain at this point and there have been graphic novels, artwork, movies, theatre made based on it so, ultimately, Kafka did not get his wish. And now, anyone who knows even a little bit about The Metamorphosis probably imagines that same kind of vermin I do: a cockroach.
Also, if you don’t remember, the story is relatively horrific. His family is sort of kind to his new situation at first. Well, first grossed out, and then sort of kind. Then fully annoyed, thinking he is a burden. And finally indifferent (well, happy) about his death which, incidentally, happened because he stopped eating because he overheard what a burden they thought he was.
Every time I have imagined myself as a giant ‘vermin’—cockroach—something has felt off about that comparison. Especially, after having read the synopsis of the story. It’s not just the regular “imagining yourself as a giant cockroach? That’s weird!” sort of off. Like becoming the ‘giant’ of whatever feels like the wrong symbol of this point in my life. It’s more like a giant cockroach that has split apart into a bunch of smaller ones.
If being a giant version of [insert symbolic thing here] means feeling put together or having comfort or something along those lines, then being a mound of smaller versions of [insert symbolic thing here] means feeling the opposite of that. It’s taking a whole and fracturing it. It’s being a whole and feeling fractured. …I probably could have used a mirror for this metaphor and spared you the cockroaches but here we are.
For the first time in a long time, if you were to ask me what I need right now (a favorite question of my therapist’s), I would have an answer: comfort. I’m seeking the comfort that my life seems to be lacking. I often conflate comfort with things like stability, solidity, resolution, calmness. Pragmatism too maybe. A certain level of confidence. Right now, it feels like many of those things have broken from me and scurried away from my body. I know they’re there, I get the hints that they are running around, but mostly they are hiding in the shadows, waiting until my back is turned or I have left the apartment to make a cautious appearance—only to hurry and hide again when I’ve caught a glimpse.
The seeming expulsion of comfort from my life seems to me to be caused by two things: 1) a bunch of things out of my control and b) a bunch of questions I keep thinking to myself that are unhelpful questions without answers. Questions like, “What are you doing?” and “What were you thinking?” and “Who do you think you are?” and “Why do you think this will work?” And, likely, after I press send on today’s edition, “What have you done?” In therapy 101, these questions are ones you learn to talk back to, to dismiss right away. In life 101, they seem to find their way back from time to time.
These are questions that, when answered negatively, don’t have real answers. Ever. The positive answers are good for mantras. Probably. The neutral answers, the truthful objective answers, are just the facts. Ma’am. They are not particularly helpful questions and most forms of the answers aren’t particularly helpful either. Still, the questions remain. And these questions tend to leave that hollow feeling, the feeling that something is not where it should be. But I don’t think trying to answer these questions will fill these holes because they aren’t questions that come from inside. They’re questions that feel internal that are actually inspired by completely external voices. They’re entirely the wrong questions.
The problem with trying to coax my comfort back out from hiding is that I’m not sure what the right questions are at the moment. Or what the right statements are. Or, more likely, it’s probably some of both. Sometimes it feels like I’m missing something obvious, that there is a much easier trap to set than spraying an excessive amount of diatomaceous earth powder along my baseboards. So far, I don’t know what it is. And if one little comfort appears, it seems to be half dead, covered in powder.
Of course, with cockroaches, you (I) always want to kill them. They are creepy. There is something about a cockroach, especially the big ones, that make me lose my entire mind. A mouse? I’d rather not but it doesn’t bother me nearly as much. A cockroach appears, and I react to it as if it’s exactly what I’ve been imagining myself to be: large, full, crunchy.
With my comforts, I don’t want to kill them. (Hopefully that’s obvious despite the metaphor.) I’d like to invite them back. Or rather, I’d like them to respond to my invitation. Or give me their updated address. Like an old instagram post. Whatever. I can only be a bunch of cockroaches in a burlap sack for so long before all the cockroaches scurry away or some Halloween hooligan unravels me.
I’m baaaackkkk. Did you miss me?
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my favorite cockroach killing technique is using a swiffer and standing on it. i also fell better whenever i called them waterbugs... :)