Worry

by Alexandra Tanner

Fuck Blue Cross Blue Shield,” she says, pushing her knuckles into her eyes, “fuck health care, fuck America.”

“A few days before it comes I’ll get itchy. I can feel every hair on my head, all the necks of my shirts start bothering me, things like that. Sometimes I flare. Everything’s loud, everything smells. All my senses are heightened. Except vision. My vision gets so much blurrier than normal, like to the point where I can’t even see across the room. Even right now it’s like—I don’t know, like everything has an aura.” I’m jealous of the way Poppy still thinks that everything she’s ever experienced is special.

I’m lying, so I make things colorful.

Every time I think of something I want I manage to talk myself out of it. I close my eyes and tell myself to think hard about my deepest wish for my future life. I tell myself it’s okay to imagine; that I’m safe inside my own head; that I can get specific; that my desires are worth considering. Before I know it, it’s morning, and I don’t remember dreaming of anything.

As Poppy walks past me on her way to the bathroom, she throws the toenail at my head. I let it hit me.

I see it happening in all these gruesome awful ways and I see it so clearly, and I make myself see it over and over, it’s like I’m trying to prepare myself but it’s exhausting because when it really happens it’ll never be like what I’m imagining. It’s this enormous, like, psychic weight that’s with me every second. So I’m sorry if I haven’t seemed like myself.”

“Memes don’t matter, Poppy,” I shout. Now I’m crying. Of course memes matter.

I’m on the toilet. Whatever we ate, it wasn’t wontons.

Things aren’t so bad in my life, I think. At least I’m not one of these people or one of their followers. Then I realize that I am, of course, one of their followers—a devoted one, even, in my own fucked little way.

“You’re not my doctor,” I say. “I’m the anesthesiologist,” he says. “No anesthesia,” I say. “My cousin died by anesthesia.” “It’s twilight anesthesia,” he says. “I love Twilight,” I say.

Starting now, I think, and starting with everyone, I’m going to try very hard to shed my pleaser skin; I’m going to devote myself to myself. Already, though, I know it won’t work.

“That’s so mean,” I say, staring at the old bald woman and trying not to spiral out because she reminds me of my loneliness, and my mortality, and my fear of dying alone; not just of dying alone, but of dying alone in Brooklyn.

that in this life, in our simulation, in whatever terrifying meaningless thing it is we’re all doing every day, we can only create infinite and infinitely worse versions of the things we already have instead of good new things we need?

I start thinking about how I used to work in my own home on my nice couch with my own computer in my lap, the window open, a candle burning, something going on the stove; and I remember that I thought the whole time: Oh my god, I hate this so much, I so need to get out of the fucking house.

She begins to cry. “It’s the steroids making me cry so much, too,” she says, wiping tears away with flat palms, but I know it’s not. I know she’s terrified.

They say dogs are like their owners, or owners are like their dogs—Poppy and Amy both want to get crushed to death.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “I don’t know,” Poppy says. She sets Amy back down. She looks at me. Something’s going on behind her eyes. “I’m fine.” She won’t let me in. I wish I could claw her face off, get to her soul, understand who she is, feel safe in thinking I know her.

When I first moved to New York, I was like Katie. I had big dreams but no friends, and this seemed like the great failure of my life.

I want to live in someone else’s brain.

I don’t feel happy with my alone time. I don’t feel like myself. I don’t even feel there’s a self to return to.

“I booked our Thanksgiving flights down.” I hope this morsel will place me in the sun of my mother’s love.

All I ever want for my birthday is for the day to just go by. I was actually thinking about drinking some fucking bleach, but all you have is Mrs. Meyer’s.”

The dog looks miffed. She licks her genitals. This we allow. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Poppy says. “I don’t know how I’m going to live my whole life. Like, waking up every day, wondering where the fuck my hives are going to be next, checking in on all my thoughts, trying to make sure I feel like me, like I even know who me is.” Poppy claws at her stomach. “I feel like whatever—whatever engine inside me, whatever engine is inside every human that lets us keep going, hoping we’re gonna, you know, maybe experience one nice moment each day, get a raise, eat some candy, it takes so much for me to feel that? And I can’t live like that, I can’t let that be how my life goes forever. And it’s not even, like—where they tell you that hardship makes you stronger—it’s not, it’s not teaching me anything about myself or, like, showing me something about my capacity for suffering, my capacity for grace. It’s just making me physically miserable, and existentially miserable, and it’s making me fucking fat.”

“I couldn’t live in the moldy house, I couldn’t live with Mommy and Daddy because they got sick of me, now you’re sick of me, and I’m sick of you—” “You’re sick of me?” I ask. I can hear myself squeak. “—You’re always making fun of me, you’re always making fun of everyone, you say horrible things and you don’t even notice, it’s so second-nature to you to just say whatever—you called Starlab gay once—to me—” “I know, but it is—sometimes there’s no other word—” “You, like, transcribe conversations you overhear in public, and you screenshot every text you get so you can make fun of it later, and you get mad about hypothetical situations that don’t exist, and you find an enemy everywhere you go, and you’re always on your phone, you don’t even fucking recycle, I can’t take it anymore.” Poppy stares at me. “Am I like that?” “Yes,” Poppy says. “I mean, obviously my experience of you isn’t you, and your idea of yourself isn’t you, and the self isn’t something that can ever be described by anyone, but.” “Okay,” I say. “You’re just talking to talk.” “I’m not. I’m talking to talk to my sister. And I’m not a meme, Jules, and your whole thing with being addicted to memes and the Internet and the mommies and all your miserable fucking irony is making me ill,” Poppy says, and she walks away.

I can see now how that could kill a relationship. But maybe, it occurs to me, I never really wanted a big ring; maybe I don’t really care about all the stupid material things I think I care about. Maybe I just want a life that looks more like my mother’s so that I can have her approval.

In the exam room, Puella sweeps in wearing cool mulberry-colored scrubs; she’s positively skeletal. I tell her she looks great.

She holds us so large in her mind. All she wanted to be her whole life was a mother of daughters, and she didn’t find the ones she wanted in Poppy and me. Of course she sees us as alien, nefarious; of course she assumes the worst of us; of course she’s become one of the mommies. She’s been a conspiracy theorist as long as she’s been our mother.

“You can come back from anything,” I say, meaning it. “I can come back from anything,” Poppy repeats. She doesn’t mean it. Her face falls into a cry. “Fuck,” she says, wiping away a set of huge tears. “Why do we need her so much? Why do I feel like I need her so much?” “Because all anyone wants is to be mothered. Taken care of,” I say. Poppy sniffles. “Is that what you learned about America this year? From your mommies?” “No,” I say. “It’s what I learned about you, and it’s what I learned about me.”

I love feeling better than the mommies. I love feeling better than anyone.

You changed. But right now you haven’t. You haven’t moved on to anything. You just don’t want me with you.” “It’s because you’re keeping me from changing. You’re in the way, you’re always in my way.” I say it even though it isn’t true. I say it even though it’s clearer now than ever that I’m the one in Poppy’s way.