Lessons From the Kissing Booth

I wore your compliments, even though they didn't always fit so well, because I thought you were only just learning to tailor, that everything eases in wear with use. That you were making them just for me, and I was ready for once to match effort with effort. That I was going to let myself get scared but not run away this time. Except I think I knew that when you said you'd "always" be there to "take care" of my "heart," that we were working off of different definitions of all of those words. Probably in different languages, too. On other planets.

Later, I thought that I could make a gentleman's agreement, forgetting that I am not actually a gentleman, forgetting that I am only a very scared girl, offering this basket of wilted flowers to passers-by in an old shawl and broken shoes. Just, forgetting. As usual. I am consistent in my worst behaviors, in my most frustrating hopes. A girl that turns into a moth in the right light, and usually the wrong light, too.

A few nights ago I watched a bad movie and plugged my laptop back in, and the next thing I knew I was crouched on the floor of my apartment, trying to sob and hyperventilate at the same time, sweating, dizzy, one hand clutching the sharp pain in my chest, convinced that I was dying. A panic attack, of all unwieldy, cliched things. My first. Time to add leeches to my collection of friendly slimy invertebrates and take to my bed with hysterics, I guess.

I've been trying to get to the root of why now, after everything that has happened, something like this would show up and give me whole days with a tight, fluttery, anxious feeling in my chest, like I'm about to drop off of a roller coaster. I hate roller coasters--I like the rides that spin you around until you are dizzy and clinging to whatever doesn't move and laughing at the loss of your center. I'm not particularly pleased with the sudden anxiety disorder, on top of the sleeplessness and the nightmares, not now that I thought I was finally in the clear, that I had finally thumb-wrestled the demons from the first half of the year into submission. The movie I had just watched was bad, but it wasn't that bad.

I don't have any answers, really, but I have a pretty good idea. I was ready for something, and then what I found was better than I could have expected, so when that collapsed all of a sudden like a souffle in an earthquake all of the little gnomes that run me threw in their towels and left to form a union. And now the only recourse left is to take slow deep breaths and let this too pass. I have to remember to be gentle with myself.