Cockroaches (Or, Friends and Difficulties)

So I've been bouncing around a lot of places recently, between Chapel Hill and Hickory and Granite Falls and Boone, and I've been visiting friends and congratulating and bemoaning and all sorts of things. It's been a red letter kind of month/year/week/thing.  I've been, at times, as good of a friend and as bad of a friend as I can be, and I wonder how a person can equally regret and admire the same expanse of time.

In one of my more admirable periods, I was at a friend's apartment, celebrating graduation and pet-sitting and any one of a number of remarkable things that have happened in this friendship, and my friend discovered a cockroach in her kitchen. Of course she screams and of course she yells for me and I respond with a "What am I supposed to do about it?" And she goes on and describes how big it is and how terrible it is and how I have to kill it, just kill it pleasepleaseplease. So I walk into the kitchen to find it and I don't see it. I move the trashcan and the recycling and the bag of plastic grocery bags and no monster cockroach. I declare that it's gone back where it came from, but she's not convinced. We have to drive this thing out or kill it trying because it is a freak of nature and also gross. So I go back to the kitchen and then check out the laundry room and HOLY APPLES AND NUTELLA THAT IS A GIANT COCKROACH RUNNING UNDER THE DRYER.

After several minutes of panicking and laughing and not wanting to show very real fear and convincing and kicking the dryer, I persuade my friend that the cockroach has gone back where it came from and that she can sleep safely tonight. We watch a few episodes of Friends and call it a night.

Then tonight, after returning to my apartment, I walk through the living room to my bedroom in the dark, because I'm lazy and because it's kinda awesome how the human memory can prevent me from stubbing my toe on our couch, and then I flip on the lamp in my room and go into my bathroom and look up because in the top corner of my bathroom is the largest cockroach I have ever seen in my life ever.

What follows here is a real conversation held via text messaging.

Me (11:39pm): [sends picture of the Hulk of cockroaches] This is on my bathroom wall. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Me (11:46pm): Sarai, I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation. THERE IS A GIANT COCKROACH IN MY  BATHROOM. MY BED IS ON THE FLOOR.

Me: [definitely regrets the decision to not buy a bed and refuses to consider the continuing metaphorical symbolism of this moment because THAT THING COULD SURVIVE A NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST (DON'T THINK I HAVEN'T CONSIDERED IT YOU INVASIVE SPECIES FROM THE BEYOND.)]

Sarai (11:46pm): OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO KILL IT!!!!!!

Sarai (11:47pm): BE BRAVE AND STRONG. I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT.

Me (11:48pm): BUT WHAT SHOULD I DO? AND HOW DID IT FIND ME?

Me (11:50pm): IT'S UNHUMANLY LARGE. THERE'S NO WAY TO KILL IT.

Sarai (11:50 pm): IT SNIFFED YOU OUT BECAUSE IT REMEMBERED YOUR SCENT FROM WHEN IT WAS AT MY PLACE. HOW THE HELL DID IT CRAWL UP THREE STORIES. DO YOU HAVE A GIANT SHOE?

Me: [goes to bathroom. Faces off with cockroach. Thinks momentarily about how the first thing I wanted to know was what action I could take and the second thing I wanted to know was how this happened to me and how that's really kinda how my life goes. Realizes I'm going to need a bigger container if I'm going to capture this sucker. Drops the plastic cup. Goes to get bucket o' markers from closet. That'll do. Dumps markers on bed. Balances on rim of tub and toilet. Squeals like a tiny scared child when the cockroach moves like the ninja it is when prodded by magazine. (I know I'm an adult now because I'm using one of my roommate's old Victoria's Secret catalogues to potentially destroy this threat to my safety.) Traps the cockroach. Runs it outside. Dumps the bucket. Watches it crawl down between the boards in my porch. Closes porch door. Double fist in the air. I AM THE MASTER COMMANDER! Returns to phone.]

Sarai (11:56pm): DID IT EAT YOU BEFORE YOU COULD KILL IT?

I responded just before midnight with confirmation of a successful capture and release ("CAPTURE AND RELEASE? IT'S GONNA COME BACK HERE!") and accidentally tweeted my promise to call in case more cockroach situations arose and generally felt accomplished for the night.

Now, I tell you this because I basically ran back to my computer to write about this little adventure. It's just that I can't decide what I want the cockroach to stand for. Part of me wants to say something like, "Hey, why do we all just diametrically hate cockroaches anyway? I mean, they don't bite.* They don't really affect our lives. All they do is freak us out and if I'm applying this kind of banishing logic to things that freak me out, then I'm not the kind of person I want to be." Because, after all, getting rid of something that freaks me out but isn't going to hurt me isn't the best use of my time. Especially if it was already illegal and I decided to put a poorly-phrased amendment to a popular vote just to prove how much work there is to be done still.

Or, I could make the cockroach a metaphor instead of a talking point. Make it something completely different. I mean, it's something I reacted poorly to, and then did my best to get rid of. Maybe I could make it be sin in my metaphor for life. I like that. I helped my friend address her sin, but let it get away, giving her the opportunity to conquer it on her own once she knew it could be conquered. Yeah, I like that! But no, that won't work because when I was in my own apartment, I stood there and talked to it for a good couple of seconds, thinking that would either scare it or convince it to leave me alone. When that didn't work, I closed my eyes and wished it would go away. Twice. In the end, I actually had to do something to make it go away, and before I could do that, I had to admit to someone that there was a problem in the form of a giant, scary cockroach. I had to admit that my apartment, nice though it is, still has the potential to have cockroaches and I'm sorry, but that's too difficult of a message to hear if the cockroach were going to be a metaphor for sin.

(Plus, cockroaches don't eat you from the inside out until you can't think straight anymore and make you want to go back to the days before you even knew what a cockroach looked like, not in real life anyway. They don't make you sit up nights thinking or lose days dreaming ways out of messes that you didn't even think were possible for you. They don't make you shake your head involuntarily while you chorus I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry can I take it back I didn't mean to I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I never did anything just please I'm sorry. Plus, there's nowhere you can go that's guaranteed to be cockroach free. And, most importantly of all, cockroaches never make you feel warm and happy on the inside, even just for a second, so that you think hey, this side of innocent might not be so bad. It just wouldn't work; cockroaches are not complex. But, like sin, they'd survive a nuclear holocaust. So there's a point in the positive category.)

It's just that I need to go back to thinking, you know? So if I made the cockroach the equivalent of some problem I was having my everyday life, or dealing with it a symbol of my burgeoning adulthood (I also got the oil changed in my car and put money in my savings account!), it would just be this tacit acceptance that cockroaches are a part of life, that everyone has to deal with them sometime. But let's face it- some people never come of age, and some people's coming of age story is much less interesting and cockroach-free than books and movies would like to imply. When you realize that your story falls into that category, it makes you want to go out and get a testimony, go live and do something and not make the safe choice. Then again, it might not matter what you do. Cockroaches find you anyway.

All of this is to say that even though this is a weird, difficult, awkward, and awesome time of life, and even though I don't know what's going on and can't figure out what things mean, if they mean anything, it's still great to have friends who can go through all of this with you. Even if all you really want is someone to come in kill the cockroach for you with his giant shoe. 

*(PS- I have since learned that cockroaches eat the eyelashes of sleeping children. I retract this idea for cockroaches. But I stand by the sentiment that goes along with the original thought, pre-eyelash-eating-revelation.)