It is official. I have been in bed for almost 24 hours. Don’t threaten me with a good time. I started noticing I was not feeling well on Wednesday but brushed it off and washed it down with some tequila. Normally that fixes everything for me. And I mean that. As I have gotten older any time a doctor has requested I take antibiotics for something or following some procedure or surgery I’m like man, you sure do complicate the spelling of tequila. Prescribe me a steroid and I’m registering that as a double. One time at a friend’s house two summers ago the women were enjoying their time in the pool so I offered to go make everyone a new drink so they wouldn’t have to get out. Yeah, I can be nice. I should have known there was no future in our friendship when these women told me to measure one jigger of vodka and how many ice cubes to use. Alright, Sally, you want me to just get you a glass of water and breathe on it instead? I am not a fan of getting sloshed but I also want to taste the effort put into making the bottle, it was not meant to be covered with sugar and unrecognizable. Much like people. Those people who are so stinking nice it’s painful and slow suffering to endure. It is agony. That cannot just be me. Occasionally by some weird coincidence, I get a little drinky. “Drinky” is what I refer to it as because it softens the delivery when I walk in the house explaining how I just made a new best friend with my Uber driver and miraculously know their entire life story and secrets and will be texting them every year on their birthday. This happens sober too, but without fail, get me drinky and I’m diving deep into questions, hugs, and cheek kisses. It is like this wall around me goes down even further. Because we all know the person who laughs the most usually has the most damage inside of them. And I laugh…a lot. Hugs not so much. They make me feel vulnerable, sticky, love, energy drained, and closeness. I give the loose hug where I twist my chest so my boobs don’t touch your chest and instead, I cram them under your arms nicely. Like yeah, that’s the spot. And then the light little back pat. I want to embrace you. I really do. Well some of you. And sometimes I do depending on the moment, circumstances, etc. There are some people I always feel very safe with hugging so tight and transferring every ounce of good energy I can to them. I give the kind of hug where you know that person loves you and just trusts you with their space. When I am drinky, I trust everyone with my space so long as I am in the right lighting, the music is not too loud, I can taste the alcohol instead of sugar and the people aren’t painfully sweet either. 

One of my sons is like this too. Not the drinky part. The hugs. He likes to hug backward. Like nah, you just hug me instead cause clearly you need this more than I do. That is likely because I hug the shit out of my kids. I loveeeee to hug them. Kid hugs in general are so healing but getting a hug from your own, nope, hands down I am done. My dad once commented on my son being like me in this way, and how uncomfortable I am with affection. My mom commented many years ago about how it hurt her feelings but I am pretty sure she is the same. So we are even. I mean, I am so aware of it now, I have to pep talk myself when someone walks into my house or I am about to approach them. Oh fuck, here we go Britt, this is going to be awkwarddddd…and of course no one notices but me, and then I spend the first five minutes with them just playing it over and over again in my head while they’re asking me what’s up and how I am doing. You know the normal shit people do. Or perhaps the shit normal people do. I have never claimed to be normal because what is that anyway? And as it was once said to me in one of my biggest anxiety attacks at a children’s birthday party when I said I was not sure what was wrong with me…”you were raised by those people” Alrighty then! Ugh, I love Jim Carrey comedies. And I love my family. The problem was not that I was raised by “those people,” the problem was that she was raised by people who think that way and I was surrounded by them. As I laid in bed today I watched Pride and Prejudice. This is easily one of my favorite movies and makes me gasp, cry, and feel like I am being hugged. Or what I am afraid a hug will make me feel. The loyalty she has to her family and to herself, the way she brushes off what is said to her but only after owning it and then cleverly addressing them with a grin and a giggle. She never changes for those around her or to be around anyone. She fully understands my jawbreaker theory. I am not the most delicate person, but sometimes I wish I was. Sometimes I wish I would just fall into a hug and fall apart because essentially that is what would happen. I am going to fall apart. I am going to feel what I have avoided, feeling like a child again. I have had hugs that teetered on the edge of this. Being cradled around my head and kissed on my cheek. And it was so shocking to me that I had to announce it like a weirdo…” Ok, ummmm you’re holding my head…” like no shit, Britt, you want me to announce you crammed your tits under my pits? Actually yes, yes I do. Please help me laugh through this and take down this wall. I have remembered special moments like this for my whole life. I am not just full of memories of the negative things that make me laugh or the grown men who threw beer bottles at me and the soon-to-be other end of my nose ring chain friend’s heads because we were not interested in flirting, giving our numbers, and hanging out. Although I do remember this fondly, especially his finishing move…an air kick followed by the loudest cackles and clever addressing (grins included) of his man tantrum as we walked our way out and back to her place, and sat on the porch drinking champagne that had never been refrigerated. It was disgusting yet never tasted better. I got drinky that night. I remember it all, it takes a minute sometimes because I am preoccupied pep talking myself through the next hug. But I remember. 

So the tequila didn’t work this time. But since I started writing this entry, I have gotten out of bed and I have showered. You do not want to know how long it has been. Sometimes my skin needs a break. I am a big advocate of this, especially for children. This is also a thing. Lucky for you, it is not likely I am going to hug you close or long enough for you to notice anyway. I am now curious if the bottles were thrown to shoo us. This would not be hard to believe actually. And I would enjoy my memory on this one even more if that were the case. I love making up shit in my head about things. Full-blown BS literature about things like why an ambulance has its lights on but is going so slow. The proximity it is to town is absolutely going to factor in the twist I add, along with the time and day of the week. One time as we were driving I got really wrapped up in an ambulance and its passenger’s story for being in it. I concluded it was death. Total absolutely cannot convince me otherwise of serious non-sense truth. Dead. And I was informed that the ambulance could be empty as an alternative. Yeah, sure. Years later we still joke and say “The ambulance could be empty” when I let my brain stretch its legs and run. This brain has some long ass legs. The kind you envy, the kind that would make an epic air kick in your forties certainly worthy enough to beat some Guinness World Record and perhaps woo the women you quite possibly are trying to shoo. And to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t want it any other way. I find magic in everything. I make sense of what seems impossible. I daydream. I see my daily life through the eyes of an author. One with a sick sense of humor and likely into dreadful endings. But one who writes a book I want to read over and over again. A book that gets turned into a movie that I want to turn on when tequila fails me, a hug is not an option, and inspiration is resting after a long bouncy ride home in the slow lane. I love that slow lane too, because as you know, Bossy my Subaru, and I have that in common. Nothing is boring and while the ambulance may be empty, at this moment it is not. I try and suck people in as I am out and about. I observe them as if I am going to draw them later and develop an entire lifetime of stories for them. I want to remember what I can and sometimes that leads to me sitting at dinner in a restaurant and staring at someone at another table. Yeah. Staring. I am that person. I read their lips and I start laughing and crying at what they are saying. Then they glance at me and I look at them like, how dare you leave me out of this?! And mentally I erase all the notes I took on them, the happy life I wrote, how beautiful their laugh lines are, the beautiful style they collected throughout their years, and I picture that ambulance out in the middle of nowhere with its lights on going slow with the “for sure” dead person in it. Then I place them in it. Yup. Found the person for that leading role. Dead to me. And I know damn well they would thank me if they knew my sentiment and I likely would hug the hell out of them for it. Because for me that is a safe hug and totally normal. Hugging the person who is glad I consider them dead because I ruined their dinner with a staring problem…as my sons once told me, “You are staring because you’re caring, but they think you are starin because you’re Karen…” Clearly, I need this on a shirt as I evidently have no pride, but certainly some prejudice against those who do not want to take part in my imagination.