Don't let the bed bugs bite.

When I start feeling insecure about my life (i.e. fearing that I'll never make it as an adult human being), I become sure that I have bed bugs. I hallucinate bites. I itch incessantly. And then I end up taking a flashlight to my mattress (that is, of course, covered in a vinyl sheath)and incessantly staring into the creases for signs of them. One night, when I woke up at 3 worrying about how I'd ever pay off my credit card(s), I decided that, to make myself feel better about debt, I'd get rid of my (nonexistent) bed bug problem. I moved my mattress, bookshelves, and bed side stand and got to work with packing tape...yeah, packing tape, apparently paranoid hysteria makes me dumber...covering all the cracks around the floor of my room. When the clock struck four and I realized that I was crawling around my room like the crazy bitch in that short story The Yellow Wallpaper (remember that one?), I decided I didn't have bed bugs and that the wee hours of the morning were not the time for preventative measures. In all honesty, I just can't believe that bed bugs exist and that we have to think about them in real life all the time. Before I moved to New York, I thought they were just things babysitters talked about to scare you. Now, every mattress I pass, every chair I wish I could steal off the street, is infected and I find myself avoiding such objects by at least 20 feet *see note*. Anyway, I suppose this post is an indication that I'm feeling a little insecure about my life? I mean, I was inspired to write this after I stared at my mattress for 25 minutes... But really, how AM I going to pay off those credit cards??

*note* I once told someone bed bugs could jump up to 6 feet and now it's a lie I've started to believe myself.

It's not quite the same, but here's a picture of me being genuinely terrified of a poster about a bear sighting. This is pretty much how I look when I examine my mattress or my credit card statement.