I used to do yoga. Once a week, one of my best friends from high school — a certified instructor who still smells comfortingly of patchouli — would show up at my house. I’d unroll my yoga mat (it was green and began to absorb the scent of my feet more and more every week) and she would unroll her purple one that never seemed to smell at all. She’d guide my breathing and force me into positions I was initially certain my body was never meant to bend into and my dog would lay beside my mat and yawn, occasionally standing up to do a downward facing dog that put mine to shame every single time.
The first time he went up my shirt I was sprawled across a pool table. It was very late – so late it was almost early – and even the crickets were asleep as I arched my back and wondered exactly what it was that I was feeling. I knew two things with absolute certainty as he pressed his mouth on mine, again and again:
1. His teeth tasted like cranberries, his tongue like vodka.
2. I was always so shitty at remaining in the moment.
The scent of peppermint now wafts through every single room of my house. Courtesy of a essential oil diffuser I bought late one night on Amazon, the steady stream of minty wonder has grown so enticing that yesterday I contemplated licking the wall – you know, snozzberry-style.
Everyone’s got an opinion about my new aromatherapy habit:
You know, peppermint is an energizing scent, said the person I call My Most Informed Friend because she knows pretty much everything about anything. This pumping of peppermint could explain why you don’t sleep so well.
Your house smells like a spa, one guy told me – and I had to inform him the only massage that would be forthcoming was the one he was about to give me.
Know what heartbreak feels like? It's a continuous plummeting in the way back of your throat right near where the words usually form, a rhythmic thudding with zero rhythm that also feels like you're being strangled by the hopes you used to have for tomorrow. It's a burning you swallow with every single gulped breath. It's the purest of your dreams ricocheting through the sky like fireworks that never explode or pop – they never sparkle with the kind of fiery light a piece of you thinks might be the one thing that will actually save you.
“Tuffy!” my father called out, and I could hear his voice rebounding against the rolling waves. “Be careful because I won’t be here.”
I was fourteen years old and it was August. I stood in the East Hampton surf, willing myself to ride the next wave that came my way without being caught inside of it like I had been that time last summer when a chaos of funneled water spun me into what I’d been briefly sure was the absolute nothingness of forever. My father was heading down the shore to cast for bluefish. In less than an hour, he’d be dead. Those were the last words he ever spoke to me.
And the thing is, I have been careful. I knew that to fall apart completely in those first terrifying teenage months would only serve to harm me spectacularly in the long run and I guess I’ve always been someone who considered where one moment might fit into the puzzle that was the rest of it. So instead I did the normal sort of rebelling that was so common for a suburban girl growing up in the days when people looked into one another’s faces instead of down at a screen. I sometimes drank cheap beer in basements. I came home from afternoon barbeques held in my friends’ backyards covered in hickeys. I knew the terror of the second when the condom breaks and how difficult it is to pee on a stick when your hand is shaking and you’re not sure if the screaming is inside of your own head or some external horrible audible omen.
I was on the phone with my mother the other night when I broke in and interrupted her while she was midsentence. She was right in the middle of telling me a story about how she’d just been featured in the Style section of a newspaper and that she’d thought it hilarious when a reporter actually stopped her at an event and asked, “Who are you wearing?” as though she was Jennifer Lawrence sauntering down some red carpet while dripping in Dior instead of holding a purse that had once belonged to her own mother. I asked her to please hold on for just a second because I needed to parent my puppy immediately.
“Tallulah,” I said patiently to the white ball of fluff standing in my kitchen, a ball of fluff that is clearly made up of equal parts goodness and demonic intentions. “You must stop leaping high into the air because you think that trick will get you a cookie. I will give you a treat after you show me that you’re a good girl by eating the kibble you’ve ignored all day.”
My Maltipoo cocked her head to the side as I spoke and then she looked me straight in the eye. I stared back at her, my gaze unwavering, and she slowly walked towards her bowl of food and began eating her kibble.
“Had that been Wookie,” I said to my mother who had waited patiently and silently as I bartered with an animal, “that fight would have lasted for three days and would only have ended once I apologized for my behavior.”
When it comes to a bedroom, my general rule is that I slumber far more effectively when I can theoretically see my breath. I’m not entirely sure where this preference comes from or even recall how long it’s been a habit, but my guess is all of those years spent tucked under the covers inside of dank and steamy cabins at sleepaway camp probably contributed to my current hope that I’ll see frost forming on my windowpanes in the height of summer.
Sometimes, though, manmade chilliness does not quite go as planned. It was a few months ago when I crawled into a bed in someone else’s home and fell into what initially was a blissfully heavy sleep. I woke up less than an hour later due to a miserable combination of factors: a puppy exploring a bed she’s not used to, some Netflix show about gangsters blaring at some ungodly volume, and an air conditioner that was apparently made by NASA to approximate what Pluto feels like. I tried snuggling further under the covers. I thought about that Barbados heat wave I’d once sweat straight through. I nestled into the person completely passed out beside me who clearly wasn’t impacted in the least by everything in that room that was causing me total misery. I considered getting up to turn down the air, but I was afraid Tallulah would think it was morning because, while she’s a very wise puppy, she has yet to master distinctions in time when she gets excited. I finally realized my only real option was to undress the guy next to me. I figured the best-case scenario was I could put on his clothing to warm up, but should he misread anything, sex might work to thaw the frostbite, too.
I did not end up putting on his clothing. And my clothing didn’t stay on either.
STEP 1: REMOVE ALL REMINDERS FROM YOUR HOME
Quickly, take down those pictures from where you stuck them in the top corner of your mirror, the ones you glance at as you snap your bra closed first thing in the morning. Your faces, pushed together in the way you’d only stand beside someone with whom you’ve developed a legitimate closeness, will remind you too powerfully of a hope you cannot allow yourself to harbor anymore. And the pictures that were carefully placed inside of ornately jeweled frames, the ones you’d trimmed unevenly because you’ve still not mastered the art of the cutting with scissors? Those need to be yanked free and must no longer decorate your coffee table or that black thing you bought that West Elm calls a “console.” It’s okay that, to this day, there are still three empty frames that sit in one of your desk drawers, a glaring reminder that once images glowed happily from beneath some glass but now there’s just some emptiness. But remember: it’s not just photographs that will stir up longings or cause you to feel nothing but fragile in that way that you hate. No, there’s other shit cluttering up your home, stuff that’s barricading up your mind with useless remnants from the past. These tangible items will corrode your heart bit by bit in a way that will feel like the sting of acid must as it runs through your veins. The stuffed animal he won at a fair, the one you named? He needs to be carted off to the nearest dumpster immediately. Colorful magnets that live on the front of your refrigerator that were purchased on a happier day than today need to be buried under trash like empty pill bottles and dyed corks of red wine because, if you can’t see them anymore, maybe you can convince yourself they never existed in the first place. And those dried flowers, the ones he gave you on that first night? Well, those need to be destroyed. Besides, daisies aren’t your favorite flower anymore. You like pink peonies now.
STEP 2: WHATEVER YOU DO, REFRAIN FROM LOOKING IN THE MIRROR
The person whose reflection you see glaring back at you is someone you won’t even recognize. There is hollowness in her eyes, a deadness in her smile. Her pallor will have turned a truly unflattering shade of grey and the dimples in her cheeks won’t be nearly as pronounced as they usually are. Those dimples – usually your favorite physical feature – will no longer indent in a manner you think of as charming. No, it will just look like you’ve got two holes pounded into the centers of your cheeks and you’ll notice them immediately on the rare moments you do find yourself settling into a bland grin. Just face the fact that looking at yourself will only give you painful ideas that maybe the reason it didn’t work out is because he was drawn to girls who don’t appear lost and instead behave like an Orthodox Jew might during Shiva: cover the mirror – all of the mirrors – so you have no need to be reminded of the dead.
