unknowndespair asked:
Tell me a story about 50 ft of bubble wrap.
50.000 feet of bubble wrap. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but then you learn that I had to wrap all of the air out of my apartment. This is actually an easy task to get into – I’m sure you can figure out why. The only difficulty with the task is that one has to do it while suspended, at a time when my apartment is not. In such a state, I must be doing something to the air. It is not an easy problem, but it is an easy enough problem that I’ll get into it shortly.
It’s also important to know that no one who had any claim on my apartment could have helped me. The bubble wrap was given to me by a company – a company whose entire purpose is the bubble wrap. They make the bubble wrap in their factory and then hire out its distribution and installation. They did not want to be involved with me at all. The only person who could have helped me was my landlord, and he had better things to do. No matter how much you want a job done well, if you are a contractor you are going to get stuck with the task of doing it. And it is my good fortune that no one thought of me. There would have been all sorts of trouble if my landlady had been around.
And let me say that she was an interesting person to be around – I could never decide what to make of her. She was always in the office when I came home, always dressed impeccably. Her presence was never overwhelming, though: it always felt more like I had been introduced to a friend. She had a few children of her own and they would come over to play with the cat, and I would just watch. It is hard to be bored when you are around children, especially when there are so few adults around. The feeling of something missing in a room only compounds the difficulty, of course, but it’s a tough challenge.
On the whole I was a pretty positive person in those days, and I could not help thinking how nice it was that someone was always here to see me, to take the place of the person who would never be. It would have been easy to feel that way once, maybe, but the people around me were always on and on and on, working or taking care of things in their time, and I was working too, and the sense that there was something there to be done faded, and with it the illusion of contentment.
I’m not saying this was a happy time in my life, exactly. But there was a lightness to it, a sort of half-dormancy of expectation. Of course there wasn’t much room to be alive then – we were all in the bubble wrap – but there was enough there. If I had to point to one moment as a high point in my life, I would choose that moment, as I was beginning to wrap up the bubble wrap: I had just finished making a phone call, and I was on the phone for a long time, and the bubble wrap was wrapped up. The bubble wrap had been a good thing to wrap, and it had helped to take me a long way: when I woke up after the call, I remembered wrapping the bubble wrap, and that made me feel okay.
If I had been forced to point to a low point, I might point to that moment: there was the feeling of wrapping the bubble wrap, and that’s when I had to go back to the apartment, and there was nothing to do there, no bubble wrap to wrap, except the feeling of wrapping the bubble wrap (which, by the way, I wrapped up in something like 12 minutes). It wasn’t like that in the end: I still have a feeling of contentment and lightness from those 12 minutes, more than from any of my other bubble wrap, but I don’t think it is the best time to point to as a low point.
I’d also point to the call with my therapist: when I made the call and had my talk, I felt like I hadn’t been in the bubble wrap for quite a while, but I was sure that things would be just as comfortable soon. Sure, I had to wrap the bubble wrap, but it wasn’t anything serious. It just took me a while to remember that I couldn’t be in there all the time. The talk made me feel better.
In the end, I don’t remember any of the feelings I have when wrapped up in bubble wrap very well. It’s all a bit vague, after a few months in this void. The only one I can point to was just wrapping the bubble wrap one final time: when I woke up after that, it was a bit different. It was easier to be there. The feeling of contentment persisted: I did not have a lot of energy to do much of anything once I was home, but I did not have the energy to work either, which was good, since there really wasn’t that much work to be done.
All the other bubbles were just floating, one after the other. And I remember I was very, very happy. I was still a long way from my first real girlfriend and from my second real girlfriend, but I was happy. I had done something, something important: something that wasn’t just floating around, it really was wrapped up.
Of course, it wasn’t really wrapped up. The bubble wrap still remained. But that was my little secret: the bubble wrap was not the real thing. The only thing I was wrapping was myself. It was as though the bubble wrap were the bubble wrap and I was wrapping my apartment, and I was a little guy in a room with a lot of walls. And I was having fun and it made me happy. It was a little bit like what it must be like to be on heroin: not that I’ve ever done heroin, but that’s how I felt, when I was wrapped up in bubble wrap. It was great, really. I was so happy.
Then came the day the bubble wrap got unwrapped. It was like a dream, after all – the bubble wrap felt wrong, it felt as though the bubble wrap had never been there – but all the wrapping was really for naught: what was it for, if there was no bubble wrap to wrap?
The day came when I had to unwrap myself, and it was hard. It was not just unwrapping myself, but unwrapping the bubble wrap, and it was all for naught, all of it was a dream. I had not been wrapped in the bubble wrap – I did not have any bubble wrap to wrap myself in – and there was nothing for me to wrap myself in. It was all just bubbles and space. I did not have any bubble wrap to wrap myself in, and I was going to unwrap myself.
Well, this is getting pretty far-fetched. I wrapped up the bubble wrap and I unwrapped myself. What else could I do?
Well, I wrapped up the bubble wrap and I unwrapped myself. I have wrapped myself in bubble wrap before, but this time was different. It was not the same bubble wrap. The wrapping was different. The bubble wrap was full of different things, and it was not the same thing. I am not supposed to be here, not supposed to be wrapped up in bubble wrap. I am not supposed to be full of bubbles. So I am unwrapping myself. I am taking everything out. I’m just going to go to sleep, here, and not be wrapped up in bubble wrap anymore.
But what did I say, that the wrapping is for nothing if there’s no bubble wrap to wrap in? This is how it is in my life, that it’s for nothing, that I do not exist. What is there to unwrap in this empty bubble wrap? I am not supposed to be wrapped up in this bubble wrap, but what else is there? So I unwrap myself, and all there is, in this bubble wrap, is my empty bubble, a room where I should not be.