Unlucky in Bugs

Number one question I get from my friends who have never had bed bugs.

Although bedbuggers themselves often talk about being “bed bug free,” there is a fundamental difference in the way bedbuggers and their innocent, lucky never-had-bed-bugs friends use the phrase. “Bed bug free,” for those who know a little about bed bugs’ elusive behaviors, can not simply mean a lack of bed bug sightings, though this is part of it, or even being bed bug bite free, also certainly part of it. “Bed bug free” is not even having been sighting-free and bite-free long enough to feel confident mopping up the residual on your floors and taking your clothes out of plastic.

To me what “bed bug free” truly means is shedding that last, oh so powerful, shred of doubt and paranoia in your mind.

I haven’t yet gotten to the mopping and clothes-freeing phase, so even though I want to answer my friends to the eponymous question in the affirmative… even though my PCO did a wonderful job and my infestation was incredibly light to begin with… I can’t. Worse, even though bed bug related tasks are no longer the heavy strain on my budget and schedule that they were in July, I often feel just as depressed as that first week of July when this all started.

I don’t want to turn this into a therapy session, but some causes for my depression are: sleeping on an air mattress, having to keep my clothes in plastic bags, uncomfortable living room, pesticide on the floors, general ugliness of my apartment which used to be a cute place, a now strained relationship with my landlord, fear that if I do get comfortable the bed bugs are lying dormant somewhere/will return again, and over $2000 of bed bug expenses last month. I’m pretty sensitive, and all of this has really taken my self-esteem down a few notches.

I know, I know, getting bed bugs doesn’t mean you are a slob, five star hotels get them, blah, blah, it’s completely irrational. But it’s still depressing. And maybe if I made a little bit more money I would still be faced with all these issues, but if I made A LOT more money, like corporate lawyer amounts of money, I could live in the Avalon Riverview and have a washer/dryer in the building and central air in the summer. But then I would be depressed because I was a corporate lawyer. Ok, that thought actually makes me less depressed. (Being a corporate lawyer==not being a corporate lawyer and having bed bugs.)

But to return to the subject at hand, I am realizing the hard way that it is important to me to have an apartment that is comfortable and completely my own. This is something that I always suspected, and in fact having such an apartment, for the amount of money that I was making from 2005-2007, in New York city, was actually kind of a miracle. Oh New York, if only I could quit you, you lock-jawed, flannel-wearing Ennis Del Mar, you.