My Kingdom for a Bathroom

There are few things in this world worse than the urge to pee.  Anyone who has ever been on a long drive with miles between gas stations or rest stops can empathize with this.  First comes the denial and pep talk... "ok, you can make it another hour... no prob. Just relax, don't think about it, it's not so bad. Ha! I don't even have to pee, I'm fine! ...... turn the radio up, distract yourself..... mmmmmm ooookkkk.... no for real, you can do this. Just don't think about rivers or streams or... damnit, now I'm thinking about them and I really really REALLY have to pee.... ok where's the next exit?.... 30 MILES?!!!"

Then comes the wiggling and dancing and whimpering, followed by the Formula 1-speed turn into the rest stop and ripping the keys out of the ignition and half sprinting/half waddling to the bathroom where you slam the stall door and DAMN the asshole who invented button-fly jeans to hell and then sit and AHHHHHHhhhhhhh....... There's really nothing worse. Except...

Imagine that you're 20 feet from a bathroom for an hour while needing to empty your bladder desperately...  but if you do take that potty break, your current financial assets will drop by 50%.  You'll probably end up doing the potty dance and holding off the bathroom trip as long as you can. Humans have proven throughout time that few things will motivate us more than money.

As a server, I experience this on a daily basis. I'm perpetually forced to choose between fetching a guest's ranch dressing or alleviating my bladder's discomfort. If I do retrieve the requested condiments, my tip could stay at or increase to the desired 20% or higher, but I'll be sweating and breathing deeply while I do so, half-frenzied by my desire to run to the restroom. If I choose the toilet route, I could be sacrificing up to 10% of my tips.... which is bad. The urinary urge is manageable as long as I'm running around, but what really gets ya is standing at the computer terminal, ringing in an order, standing still and focusing on the screen. It's really quite awful. After refilling drinks and bringing napkins I finally have a few minutes reprieve and I escape to the facilities. My uniform includes an apron which is easier than breathing to tie and untie... unless I really have to pee. In those situations, the apron strings willfully choose to become hopelessly knotted and tangled, forcing me to shimmy out of it and frantically fumble at my belt buckle. You really can't understand what it is to suffer until you've worked an insanely busy weekend shift at a restaurant and have consumed wayyyy too much water/soda/tea/coffee...

Bottom line... if you sit in my section and I disappear for a bit... please consider that I might be peeing.

Yours truly,
Jane Waitress 

Day 8

Philip,

We buried you today. Grandpa Himebaugh spoke—he told such wonderful stories and really captured your personality. Nicole spoke too. She talked about that noise you used to make…. the velociraptor noise. It was awesome. Uncle Mike and Colin both played songs. I cried so hard when Uncle Mike was singing. I just couldn’t help but remember you and I sitting in that basement studio with him, learning Medicine Boy… “We live our lives in fear, hold our ground. We stand as one. We live our lives in love and devotion. Conquer our fears with the notion that we are young. We stand together as one.” And remembering that moment hurt so bad… I miss you. I loved you so damn hard when you were here… even if I didn’t always show it in the best ways… everything I did was out of love. I worshipped you when we were younger… and even now I do. You were my big brother. You taught me how to catch bugs, fish, play video games, tell jokes… You are in every memory I have. You’ve always been there even when you weren’t quite the best brother; you were still a constant in my life. And now that’s gone. Every memory I make from here on in will be Philipless. I’m an only child now. I have ceased to be somebody’s sister. That’s an overwhelming thought: no one on this earth will ever use the words “my sister” referring to me ever again. Dramatic, I know. But still, losing you has torn a hole in my world.

At your graveside today, the Airmen took the flag from your coffin, folded it, and presented it to…. me. The poor guy was halfway through his speech when someone hissed “that’s not hers!” and he embarrassedly turned to your widow and repeated his speech. The family decided that it was your last prank. I remember sitting in the hotel lobby in San Antonio when you said “I’m glad you’re here. I could care less about everyone else being here, but YOU are the one I really needed here.” Granted, you didn’t have a girlfriend then, but that moment meant more to me than any interaction with anyone ever. It always will. Even though these past couple years have been rough between us, I’ll still hold on to the friendship we had before that. You were my best friend. You were my brother. That’s a void that no one and nothing will ever fill. I’ve lost something truly irreplaceable. I’ll never stop missing you or remembering you. I really hope that that flag coming to me meant you were trying to tell me that you’ll always love me and need me like you did back then. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t close to you when you needed me most. I should have been there, and I like to think that I tried really hard to get back to that point with you, but you kept pushing me away. You wouldn’t let me in. It hurt. But now I know that you were dealing with so much more than you could handle and I should have been more aggressive with my love. I would have come out to see you and sistered the hell out of you. But alas, only hindsight is 20/20. 

Day 5

Transcribed by my Aunt.... please ignore the grammar. 

I feel  like Philip and I had an empathic connection. Of course that means we would finish each others sentences and laugh at the same things… we were raised together. But there was a deeper level to it: we wouldn’t just see something and laugh, we’d see something random and we would think the same things…  and start laughing.

My anxiety issues have been a constant struggle for the past few years, and though I don’t mean to say that all of those anxiety problems come from empathy with Philip, but they have gotten so much worse since he joined the Air Force. Yes, the pressure of missing him could be to blame, but I’ve been borderline unstable for 2-3 years now.  I’ve almost felt like there were two sets of feelings I was dealing with– random emotions would pop up in my heart that I couldn’t find a stimulus for at the moment. 

That burden is gone now. I haven’t felt emotional clarity like this in a few years. I feel like myself for the first time in a long time. This past Sunday, my boyfriend and I got in a fight over something little and stupid, but it just tore me apart. It shouldn’t have generated such strong negative emotions, and yet I was just so sad and destructively angry. I felt overwhelmed and hopeless and this whole set of just crappy emotions all day on Monday, and I went to sleep with tears in my eyes even though the conflict with my boyfriend had been resolved. Tuesday, I woke up and I just felt … I don’t know.  Lighter. Even before that, there have been other times when we would talk and we would discover that we had both been dealing with negative stuff at the same time. We would go through the same little bouts of depression or self questioning at the same times. Bad breakups, suicidal self doubt, crushing hopelessness…  our most devastating emotional traumas always happened in sync. It wasn’t just that we shared emotions, but we transferred them. I know it sounds crazy, but he and I were such emotionally charged people in general.  I think that he and I were kind of ying and yang with it. I am the one who feels for other people so quickly. I’m everybody’s therapist, everybody’s shoulder to cry on. He was more of a projector. All of the wonderful stories about how positive he made people feel … it was just this cloud around him, an aura. His emotions were contagious. If he was sad you could feel it. If he was happy you were happy too.

I’ve felt for so long that I’ve been trying to watch a tv that’s showing 2 channels simultaneously, but all of a sudden, there’s only one.

On Tuesday, I woke up and felt at peace. Peace for myself, and I don’t know… for him too. 

Day 3

Philip,

We had dinner at Uncle Jeff's last night. Being surrounded by our family was nice, the love and longing for you was tangible. You were so loved by so many people, man. While we were there, I listened to our mom and her siblings tell stories from their childhood, and it broke my heart. No one could tell stories like me and you. We had some wild times, and though I'll never stop telling our stories, I will miss having you to turn to for the punch line. There are so many memories that I share only with you... watching Pokemon in the morning when we were supposed to be doing schoolwork, tearing apart action figures and gluing them back together freakishly, throwing a tennis ball to each other over Chloe's head and watching her flip out, catching turtles and salamanders and fish and bugs and snakes together, fighting off hoards of bumblebees with tennis rackets, gorging ourselves on candy from the concession stand at every swim meet... there are so many things that I can tell people about my life and yours, but you were the only one who was there with me through it all.

I'll love you forever, big brother.

Day One

I don't even know how or where to begin this long, dark journey. I know that the numbness I'm feeling now is  based in denial, and that it will fade. I'll welcome the pain because the sooner I start to feel this hole, the sooner I can start to heal the edges of it.

Philip, I don't know why you're gone, but you are. You left Sophie without a father, mom without a son and me without you, my only sibling, my better half. Oh wait, I'm YOUR better half, you're my OTHER half, as we used to say. It's been so long since I've gotten to spend any time with you and now I'll never get the chance to again. I will hold tight to the memories of that cross country road trip we made almost a year ago. It was the first time in a while and the last time ever that you and I got to just be brother and sister, stupid and silly, happy and carefree. I love you, man. I'll try to remember the good times. I'll try my best to tell your daughter who you are, so she can know you even though she won't remember you. I'll try my best to be happy and live my life. That's all I can promise you now.

I'll miss you every day. I love you.

Do NOT play Monopoly.

I live in a house with 3 guys. Under normal circumstances, that would suck. Boys are messy, smelly, loud and stupid (aka very bad roommates), but my roomies are fantastic. They're usually clean, occasionally nice-smelling and smart (they're still loud as hell, but I can deal with the bass). About once a week we all gather together to drink beer and play games like Yahtzee, Uno, Scattergories, etc. and it's great fun. Well, the other night we decided to play Monopoly....... bad idea.

All four of us were initially excited due to the fact that we hadn't played the game in ages, and on a whim, we'd purchased a few rounds of Four Lokos to replace our normal 30-pack of (insert shitty domestic light beer). If you've never had the joy of consuming a Four Loko (hereafter referred to as "crazy serum"), let me catch you up to speed: DON'T EVER FUCKING DRINK IT. EVER. It will turn you into an unrecognizable ball of fury and disaster and bad grammar. Furthermore, definitely do not play Monopoly while consuming aforementioned crazy serum.

Here's why:

you know how when you don't notice someone landing on St. Charles Place and the next person rolls so you don't get to collect rent and that's kind of irritating? Yeah, well take that mild "aw crap" and add some crazy serum and you will become Godzilla. I'm not kidding. You will turn into a giant lizard and start eating people. I told you, don't drink that stuff.

But I digress... Imagine those minor irritations escalating as certain roommates of yours who are secretly professional Monopoly players somehow end up with like NINE FUCKING HOTELS while all you have are 2 Railroads and Baltic Avenue, and you've been drinking crazy serum for an hour and a half, and there's a spray bottle filled with water within reach (we have cats).... I think you can see where this is going. But just in case you don't, I'll spell it out for you! So then a squirt-bottle fight ensues, and you know how they say "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye?" That's a lie. It should say something more like "it's all fun and games until someone starts to get really tired of being sprayed in the face and decides to kill you." THEN someone pours beer on your head and you get mad and then they get mad and kick a table through a wall and someone ends up sleeping on the bathroom floor because sleeping ON the toilet isn't easy, but they tried, and there's lots of yelling and you know what? It's bad any way you slice it.

The next morning is never very much fun either... especially when you spend it in the ER, but that's a blog for another day.

My roommates and I have since burned that horrid game and sworn to never drink Four Lokos again. For your sake, as well as the world's, don't play Monopoly.

Interstate 40

My older brother lives in Nevada. He drove home for Thanksgiving and was (understandably) reluctant to turn around and drive back alone. So out of the kindness of my heart, I volunteered to split the drive with him...and what a long long LONG ass drive it was: 2,000 miles, 32 hours, 2 packs of cigarettes, 37 Redbulls, and 2 iPods (one of those is an exaggeration).

We weren't stupid enough to try to get it done without stopping, so in reality we were on the road for about 41 hours including an overnight stop in Amarillo, TX. In hindsight, the drive was pretty rough... but only in hindsight. During the trip, I was perfectly content to look out the windshield and watch the tree-covered, rolling hills of Georgia melt away. First came the faded grasses on the prairies of Arkansas and Oklahoma, then the windmill-dotted plains of Texas, the striking red mesas and deep canyons of New Mexico that eventually grew into snow-capped mountains and thick evergreen forests in Northern Arizona, and finally dropped and flattened into the nearly barren desert of Nevada.

While I watched the landscape slowly transform, I was more relaxed than I've been in months. There's just something so simple about a road trip. Committing to traveling along one road (in our case) for 2 whole days makes every other care fade away. Our only obligation for 48 hours was to drive from point A to point B. If we had really felt like it, we could've turned off our phones and ignored everything but road signs and gas stations. I didn't think about the bills I had to pay in a week, the laundry I'd left behind, the rough nights I'd had at work... and if we're being perfectly honest I didn't think much about my health either (greasy fast food, lots of cigarettes, waaaaaay too much caffeine). I just rode or drove along and chilled the hell out. My brother and I shared music and standup comedy, we told stories, we talked about everything from the past to the future, we laughed at things only we would laugh at, we just existed in that tiny little space together for 2 days. I would say we got to know each other, but he already knows me better than anyone on the planet and vice versa. Driving with him made the whole thing a helluva lot more enjoyable.

My point (WHOA! One of my blog posts has a point?!!?!) is don't underestimate the power of a good road trip. I found the experience to be cathartic and refreshing. My head can't wait for the next one, but my butt and legs definitely can.