I Miss You When I Blink: Essays(14)

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I once fainted in the hallway between my dorm room and the hall bathroom while wearing a towel. Another time, I fainted while getting dressed and hit my head on a chair, giving myself a goose egg I had to explain for a week.



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The further I get into adulthood, the less it has happened. I’ve never fainted while driving. When I became a new mother, I used to wonder what would happen if it ever occurred when I was at home alone with the children. It did, once, and as it turns out, they saw Mom’s sudden nap as a great opportunity to get into the pantry and gorge themselves on salty pretzels and powdery mini-marshmallows.

I still think of fainting when I think about moving, and not just because I fainted everywhere I lived. Neurologists say that repeating the same thought patterns or behaviors over time can create mental pathways your brain automatically takes in the future. If the pattern persists long enough, it forges a circuit in your mind that becomes hardwired. This makes perfect sense when I consider how many of my behaviors as an adult come from patterns set years ago: I brush my teeth starting with the back upper-left teeth, then upper-right, then lower-left, then lower-right, then front. Always the same. If you made me do it in a different order, it would feel like writing with my left hand.

I’m no brain doctor, but I suspect that just as my body developed a go-to response to a drop in blood pressure, my mind came to expect a certain routine: Move somewhere, get used to it, then go somewhere else. I think that’s why later, after spending several years in one place, I got antsy to move, although there were other reasons, too.

I do know that learning to give in to sudden fainting spells and weathering the end of friendships severed by childhood moves gave me practice in accepting, without struggle, the unexpected. Don’t make a big deal, let it pass, everything’s fine.





P-O-I-S-O-N


I was living away from home for the first time. This meant I was doing a lot of things simply because they were not what I would have done under my parents’ roof. Getting haircuts that were bold but not particularly flattering. Wearing crop tops that left my belly chilled by an uncomfortable breeze. Eating cereal and drinking Coke and calling it dinner, not because it made me feel good, but because I could. Because no one could stop me. I was defiantly, absurdly, the boss of myself.

It was also the early 1990s, which means I was emerging into the world having been fed a diet of late-’80s television. If there was a theme to TV relationships back then, it was painful longevity. Perhaps I’d taken in too many seasons of Thirtysomething or too many afternoons of The Oprah Winfrey Show, but I had it in my head that the whole point of a grown-up relationship was to take on life’s rocky obstacles and work things out, episode after episode. This made sense to my goal-oriented mindset. If success at a task came from effort, why would relationships be any different? It must be normal for love to require a lot of work.



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Whenever talk among my friends turns to past relationships, it comes out that at some point everyone dated a person who was totally wrong but really fun for a little while.

I knew him socially. He was popular, loud, kind of a clown. Our mutual friends probably kept him around so they could enjoy watching his stunts without suffering the consequences of them. Someone might say, “I wonder what happens if you drink a whole bottle of mustard?” and he would pick up a bottle of French’s and try it. He did spot-on impressions of rappers, presidents, radio commercials . . . you name it. He was human entertainment.

Perhaps I was drawn to him because he didn’t fit the profile of anyone I dated before (or after, for that matter). In my short dating history thus far, I’d been with nice guys, friendly nerds. But when he hit on me at a party, he got my attention. No one had ever just grabbed my sleeve, pulled me over, and kissed me square on the lips before. I probably should have slugged him, but I was too naive to be anything but impressed. He knocked me off-kilter and made me see myself in a new way. Was I the kind of woman who inspired spontaneous kissing?

In retrospect, I picture tiny mythical creatures—fate fairies, you might say—buzzing around the two of us, trying to signal me. There they were, hovering over his head, crossing their arms in a “No!” gesture whenever I leaned toward him. They shook their wands in my face when I picked up the phone to call him. I believe we all have these little voices telling us what we should be doing (whether we call them fate fairies or something else), and when we’re ready, we pay attention to them. But before we’re ready, they might as well be mute. When they first showed up, I was deaf to their protests. I missed the signs.

There was the time he canceled our plans because he said he wasn’t feeling well, so I went out with a girlfriend instead. On my way home, I passed his apartment, where he was having a party so huge, cars were parked on the sidewalk. That was a sign. When I expressed my disappointment that he had lied to me, he asked me why I was being such a nag. Instead of saying, “I’m not a nag, and you’re an asshole,” I said, “I don’t know. Let’s talk about it. We can work it out.” That’s what the dramatic heroines on TV would say.

Once, after we road-tripped to a concert, I found out that every time he got up from our seats, supposedly to go to the bathroom, he’d been going out to my car in the parking lot to sell LSD he’d hidden in my trunk. Another sign. A billboard, really. But I told myself that one was on me, because I had never actually communicated that I did not want to be a drug-running accomplice. Oprah always told couples having disagreements to use a “When you _____ / I feel _____” statement. I gave it a try in my head: “WHEN YOU hide drugs in my car and drive us across state lines, I FEEL nervous because that’s a felony.”