(Over)reactions.

(This is from about 3pm yesterday, but I didn't get to publish it amidst all the drama)

I am currently having a meltdown.

I am curled up outside my apartment, knees to my chest, back to the door, all mush-faced and sobbing like a big, blubbery walrus.

Lets back up.

Today I came home from work. I sat down. I put my feet up. I said hello to the dog. All was right in the world.

Then I saw it.

Out of the corner of my eye: a cockroach. A giant monster of a dead cockroach.

I froze. Stopped even breathing. Autonomous nervous system shutting down in disgust.

I worked through it. Yes, it is big. Yes, it is super gross. Yes it is dead. It is going to be okay.

'This is why I have cats', I thought. 'This is exactly why. They kill stuff that you can't handle. You can totally handle a dead cockroach. This is not the end of your world'.

Lies. All lies.

I stared at him, lying there, feet in the air, all curled up. It's not so bad...not really. I picked up a cup I was okay with throwing away and a chopstick.

I approached the roach. Definitely dead. Good.

I put the cup next to him and went to knock him into it with the chopsticks. As soon as the stick touched him it happened.

He moved.
HE MOVED.

His horrid little legs made that awful cellophane wrapped wax paper sound that is equal parts thwap, buzz, and crinkle as they rubbed against each other. Against his gross little feelers. Against his wings.

Unacceptable.

He smacked into the cup, still twichy and awful and I leaped as far up and backwards as I could.

I stood where I landed, perched on the very tip-tippy toe of one foot, staring, wide-eyed in horror at the cup.

I f*ing HATE cockroaches. They are gross to a level my mind cannot begin to comprehend, and words do not exist that can accurately describe the sickly creeping-crawling feeling they radiate or the way it manages to permeate my skin. Gross.

Now, here's the dilemma: I am standing like a flamingo, perched atop one single toe about 4 feet away from a cup with a zombie cockroach in it. I know that you're looking at this and thinking, 'just pick up the cup and throw it outside' or 'put on the big kid panties, Littlefoot, and kill it', or 'run!', because as I stood there looking over the situation the same thoughts occurred to me. None of them, however, are plausible at the moment.

I can neither kill it, nor pick up the cup and transport it because it is not currently dead. Getting close enough to it to do either of these things means realistically acknowledging that something that gross exists in a living state, and more than that, that it has really and truthfully invaded my home. That is never, ever going to happen. In fact, I cannot think of anything worse than that. I would drink wound drainage before I will get close enough to a living f*ing cockroach to have to acknowledge its existence.

A living cockroach is not the same as a dead cockroach.
They are two distinctly different monsters.

This leaves only option 3, (run!) however, this presents its own set of problems. Most significantly, that I would have to take my eyes off the bug. This is not an acceptable option. Not at all. I cannot break eye contact with the beast as long as it remains in my home. If I look away it could recover, slink off, wait for me to fall asleep, and then lay its damn eggs in my ears.

At this point I am starting to meltdown. I can feel the tide changing, the unreal amount of anxiety and frustration building. A stupid cockroach, one stupid, gross (albeit massive) cockroach has managed to completely dismantle my person. It is unimaginably unfair that I find something, anything in this world so repulsive that I am unable to function on even the most basic level when confronted with its existence. It is unfair that I lost my phone today and can't call someone to come kill/remove it. It is unfair that I feel that I need someone to come and kill/remove it.

As I am staring at him, waiting for what remains of my sanity to crumble, the unthinkable happens.

He rights himself.
He begins to crawl.
He drags himself out of the cup and onto the carpet.
He heads straight for me.

Even now, in his last, disgusting moments, he is determined to destroy me. To launch himself, mid death-rattle, at my fragile and rapidly disintegrating person.

I have had enough. That is is.
I grab my purse and my computer and run outside.
I lock the door, praying that the cats will get him.
I curl up, back to the door and just totally lose it.

This is not fair.
It's really not.
I know that it's hard for the rational person to look at this situation and understand the kind of drama a stupid and essentially harmless cockroach can bring into a life, but that, that Dear Friend, is exactly why I am out here losing it.

It's not not that cockroach is gross, or terribly frightening, or anything else. I mean, it is, to a degree, but that's not the problem. The problem is that its very existence, as a living thing, is so overwhelming that I fail to function as a basic human being in its presence. And that, THAT, is lame.

And possibly even more lame is that if the damn thing were dead everything would be fine. I would throw it away and life would move on. Instead I'm sitting here sobbing like a small child because there is something vital that differentiates a living roach from a dead one and that thing, that immeasurable, incalculable, indescribable, invisible thing, the essence of that stupid cockroach that is clinging to life on my floor, is able to rapidly and systematically dismantle all my systems and rob me of my rationality, my dignity, and my power.

So now I'm just hanging out, blubbering like a baby outside my door. Alone, in the heat with a cockroach holding court in my living room.

Life is unimaginably cruel sometimes.