Being numb is a peculiar thing. I don’t remember the exact time or day it started, only that my descent into it was painful. So painful, so agonizing, that by the time the numbness came, I didn’t fight it. I didn’t mind it because it was a respite from despair.
I didn’t realize at the time that numbness comes with its own downside. It’s an impassive virus that spreads silently, infecting all aspects of your life. A virus so virulent and contagious, it robs you of more than your pain. It takes your joy too.
It’s awful.
Right now, I’m grateful for it.
Right now, I stand back and watch, emotionless, as Anna and Connor animatedly discuss the best way to display the photographs. It takes a while, with several options offered up and hotly debated, before they decide on a formal grid pattern that will take up the width of my headboard exactly.
“Should I get my spirit level?” asks Connor.
“Oh,” Anna waves him off. “No need. I have a built-in spirit level.” She places a forefinger and thumb on each temple and turns her head robotically. “I can spot something crooked a mile away.”
I have a lot of questions about that, but Connor takes her at her word, so I let it go.
I stand at the foot of my bed as they scurry around, applying sticky tack to the polaroids and taking pains to get the grid pattern perfect. They jabber enthusiastically and laugh for no apparent reason.
As I watch, I think about something I read somewhere once. It was some kind of religious or spiritual post, so I didn’t pay it ahuge amount of attention, but it obviously made an impression because here I am, years later, thinking about it.
I can’t remember the exact words used, but the basic premise was this: what if our stay here on Earth isn’t about being good and doing things to get us into a better place in the afterlife? What if, when we die, angels or whoever, greet us and say, “How was Heaven?”
In other words, what if this is it? What if we’re here, experiencing nirvana, but we’re too preoccupied with the noise, the little things, to notice?
I remember thinking it was an interesting notion at the time.
Now, I wonder if the opposite could be true. Is it possible to be in your own personalized version of hell and not be aware of it?
It certainly seems like it might be.
I look at the neat row of Oxford shirts and the polycotton work pants Anna has hung on coat hangers in my closet and feel an incredible disconnect between the person I was and the person I am now.
“I used to skateboard,” I murmur, more to myself than anyone else.
14
Lennon
It’slateintheday by the time Anna is ready to leave. She and Connor were concerned by how empty my room looked, so they took everything off one of the shelving units in the hall, dragged it into my room, and placed it against the wall a few feet from the foot of my bed.
Now, not only do I have a very sparsely furnished room, but I have an empty shelving unit as well.
“Would you like to stay for dinner, Anna?” asks Connor.
“No, no,” she replies. “I’ll head off and let you boys spend some time getting to know each other.”
When she says it, she scrunches her nose at me in a supportive, fond way that suddenly reminds me of my mom. My mom at the start of the school year, taking photos of me holding up a board with my grade written on it in chalk. My mom watching and waving as I boarded the school bus.
For no reason at all, it gets me where my jaw and throat meet, delivering a shooting pain that makes it hard to swallow. I hugAnna goodbye and thank her, and as I do it, a strange wave of something I can only describe as acute homesickness crashes into me. I don’t want her to go. I don’t want to be here, in my own personalized version of hell, without her.
“I’ll message you later to check up on you,” she whispers. “And I’ll send you a list of things you need to buy for the shelves.”
She hugs Connor too. I don’t hear exactly what he says to her, but it’s something along the lines of, “Don’t worry…thrifting…tomorrow,” and that’s enough to jolt me back to my senses.
“Wow,” he says when Anna has gone, and the atmospheric pressure in the apartment has had a second to recover from the whirlwind. “She’s something, huh?” Something. Yeah, that about covers it.“You’re lucky to have a friend like her.”
“She’s…a colleague.” To my surprise, when I say it, it doesn’t ring completely true. “At least, that’s what she was until today.” Connor nods as though I’m an interesting person, making a lot of sense. “My other coworker is this guy, Blake. He’s…I dunno. I guess he’s an acquired taste. He has these dead eyes that make me think he might be a sociopath. Or a sadist.” Connor nods again, eyes widening with absolute conviction that I’m interesting now. “Until today, I preferred him to Anna…but now…well, now, I think it’s probably a two-way tie.”
Connor’s eyes slam shut, and his mouth drops open. I see teeth and tongue. His laugh, when it finds its way to the surface, is full-bodied and loud. So full-bodied and so loud that I don’t see it or hear it the way I usually see and hear things like this.
