The opportunities to practice are plentiful.
Waiting for Mom, CeeCee, James, and Imogen to come back from the cafeteria. Waiting for the surgeon to tell us all went well and Dad will be moved from the PACU back to his standard room in a few hours. Waiting for Dad to be discharged in a few days (fingers crossed).
And, finally, waiting for Drew to send a message of any kind, but that’s a private sort of waiting meant only for me.
Tonight, I sit in my dad’s old shed surrounded by disused model trains in front of a ring light with my phone on it. My finger hovers over the “live” button on this hot, new social media app I’ve never used. I’m about to broadcast an apology to two point six million people for vanishing without a trace, and the pressure is on.
I’m ignoring the advice of my PR team and everyone else tryingto tell me to lie low until the frenzy blows over and we can reschedule. The last thing I want to do is reschedule.
In the front-facing camera, I look ghostly—sheet-white and sleep deprived—but I’m ready to make a statement, so I begin.
“Hey, Baked Goods,” I say into the camera once the red light blinks on and the followers start pouring in. The comment feed is split—half hearts and kind messages of support and half mean names and thumbs-down emojis. “I know many of you are disappointed over the cancellation of my Netflix stand-up special. Anyone who purchased tickets to the in-person taping is eligible to receive a full refund from their point of purchase. I wish I could say hang on to them for when we can announce a new date but…”
I start getting choked up over how real this is. How there are hundreds of thousands of people on the other end of this live stream who adore the mean-spirited celebrity I became. Hopefully one day I can have this kind of platform again for the right reasons and use it for good.
“I’m struggling,” I admit to the faceless audience that is listening to my words from all over the world. “Without going into too much detail, I’m facing a really hard struggle alongside a family member who needs me now more than ever.”
A couple of awful comments roll in:
Don’t tell me your helicopter mom is helicoptering on your ass again!
I bet it’s your naggy sister! Tell her to piss off and do the show anyway!
I block those posters, but I’m not fast enough to click away the others.
Is that ginger dude making you quit or something?!
This relationship between me and my fans may be parasocial, but I’m starting to see that it’s parasitic as well. Maybe they wouldn’t have approved of my friendlier material after all. I would’ve gone outonstage, bombed in front of the Netflix camera crew, and ended up disgraced anyway.
Regardless, I refuse to feed these negativity leeches any longer.
“Look, if you have nothing kind or productive to say in the comments, please refrain from posting,” I say as levelheadedly as I can. “I spent many years spewing lies about the people I loved because I had convinced myself that they had rejected me. I somehow thought if I could reject them more loudly and more publicly, then I would win. But that’s…not how life works. There’s no winning. There’s no losing. There’s just trying your best to play the game.”
More comments:
Are you trying to tell us you’re going to host a game show? Such a fucking sellout.
Stop toying with us! Tell us jokes!
I take a deep breath, honing in on my last shreds of patience. “Right now, life doesn’t feel very funny, and if I can’t find the humor, then I can’t make you laugh. And if I can’t make you laugh, then I can’t be a comedian. So, I’m sorry, but this is it for now. Wishing you all love and joy.”
I sign off, blink back abrupt tears, and let out a sigh of relief.
At least that’s dealt with. Partially.
Once I’ve composed myself, I go and chill out on my parents’ back patio, listening to the wind rustling through the trees of my childhood, to the ripple of water in the open pool, and the grill cover as it flaps against metal. I rock back in my chair, sinking my weight into the cushion I brought out with me, and look up at the night sky.
“What’s up there?” I ask myself. Stars and planets and the sun and the moon, sure, but are there portals and other universes too? After all this time, a concrete answer would still put to bed some of my unease.
But any concrete answers are hard to find when you’re sharingyour childhood home with your sister who hates you, her husband who barely knows you, and your niece who can’t yet comprehend the complicated dynamics of adulthood.
Neither can I, honestly. I’m twenty-three. Maybe that’s why Imogen is the only one I’ve had more than a ten-minute conversation with since we all started cohabitating.
It only made sense. The house is close to the hospital, free, and can fit all of us. I suggested I get a hotel nearby, but Mom wouldn’t hear of it. “Family needs to stick together right now,” she’d said, and we all adhered and adapted.
That’s how CeeCee and James end up sleeping in Mom and Dad’s room (Mom having requested a roll-away cot at the hospital to stay by Dad’s side), Imogen in CeeCee’s old room, and me sleeping in the double bed that was a perfect, makeshift trampoline for jumping contests between CeeCee and me in elementary school. The double bed that cradled me during my first struggles with insomnia in high school. Drew and I shared that bed during sleepovers, careful to leave a pillow barrier between us lest our wandering limbs touch in the night, which is so silly to think about now that our limbs have been entangled on more than one occasion.
That mattress might as well be memory foam because it’s chock-full of memories that encroach on me in the dark.
