Up in the air but eyes on the prize
It was a weekday. Before I opened my eyes, I felt one of my arms wrapped around some big, firm but soft shape. Slowly, my heavy eyes still closed, I ran my hands up and down trying to use my sense of touch to make up what it was, and why it was in my bed. When I couldn’t immediately tell what it was, eyes still closed, I went into my head and tried to unbox the memories from the night before. Nothing.
Better open my eyes then, I thought. And as unready as I was to face the sunlight lighting up the room, I squinted. “Oh,” I said. “Right.” It was a foreign cushion. A sort of big, soft floral square.
I woke up to an unfamiliar view and an unfamiliar scent — a damp, musty smell in the air. But everything came back pretty quickly after that. Was it the autoimmune memory fog or was it the wine? I couldn’t tell anymore. I hadn’t slept for more than five and a half hours in a long time. I had too many legitimate reasons to forget and too few to remember. But I remembered. I woke up in yet another stranger’s bed.
Okay, I should explain.
Not that I owe an explanation, but what I meant was a bed in an Airbnb. From New Jersey to Switzerland, I must’ve tested over one hundred mattresses by now. Which, considering my neurosis and self-diagnosed mild OCD, it is kind of strange and out of character to put myself in those situations. I don’t go in blindly, though. I methodically look for that one review that’s going to change my mind because sometimes, for certain places, I really want someone to change my mind. But it didn’t happen.
So there I was, hand still on the pillow, staring at the foreign pink walls, with a good frown. I lowered my gaze and it landed on the sheets, judging every inch. One single strand of hair and I was out of there. I have people and places to thank for being this neurotic: my mother and Paris, France.
My mom because she would make me scrub every corner of the house when I was a young girl and it got me used to squeaky clean; and Paris because it was the first place, besides Spain (where I lived in a clean house), that I visited abroad and didn’t have the experience I had anticipated.
To make this story within a story short, a travel agency in Spain had a weekend deal, so a friend and I booked a hotel room in Paris…that ended up being in the outskirts of the city. Before reviews were cool and social media gave everything away, and before I knew Paris, there were those shady places actually making business like it was nobody’s business and you had no way of knowing until you got there, and that’s how I met my trauma.
We went up to our room and at least everything looked better than it did outside. Bright white blankets, clean surfaces… Basic but no clutter. But once we removed the comforter from our bunkbeds, my friend and I spotted some curly hairs. My gag reflex couldn’t even pretend. It might’ve just been body hair, but I’d prefer to see nothing at all on my hotel bed.
I can’t quite remember how we braved it out for a whole weekend, but I do remember there was laughter — and a whole new lesson. A lesson that nonetheless would become useless years later when, as a grown ordinary person, sometimes you’d need to learn to choose saving over comfort.
Fast-forward to years later, when I woke up to the damp smell, the visibly refurbished pink walls, broken blinds, and dusty surfaces in the “business” apartment I had booked, there was no laughter, just a quiet grumble. Many years ago, wishes, ideas, goals, and dreams were still up in the air for me — and I guess I write this today because I can’t believe some of those things still are.
It makes me question everything I’ve learned about perseverance and hard work. I haven’t been sitting around, you know. If anything, I’ve been running like hell, chasing dreams, and pushing through, and just trying and trying and trying…
Oftentimes, things do come at the right moment. But other times, as we’ve seen with a lot of iconic people, like Vincent van Gogh, recognition and dreams come true only after death. I want to live in the moment and not think about any of that stuff. It’s always been one of my mottos. But I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t terrify me; dying without ever accomplishing all I wanted.
That’s the thing about having a mind that never sleeps. You’re constantly trying to make sense of everything at once.
I’ve come a long way since that weekend in Paris, though, so that is something to reflect on.
As far as the pink-walled Airbnb, I did wonder how not even one out of the 135 reviews changed my mind. I took it as a sign, something to keep me grounded, even though it wasn’t all that bad. In addition to the soft pillow that woke up in my arms, the light blue and white blankets felt and looked squeaky clean.
