Allowances for Fireflies

I don't like bugs.

I know that's hardly a revelation worth breaking over a year of silence for, but like all things there's more to it than that.

One year ago, almost to the day, my apartment was infested with bed bugs. I don't mean infested in the sense that I found a couple of them and took care of it. I mean infested in the truest sense of the word. After a weekend away, I returned to my apartment and went to bed. Within minutes of laying down, I couldn't stop itching and broke out in what I thought were hives. Thinking I was having some kind of allergic reaction, I slept on the couch. My plan was just to wash my sheets in the hope that whatever I was reacting to would be gone. I pulled back the fitted sheet to see hundreds, if not more, of these tiny disgusting bugs crawling all over my mattress.

This was the first event of many that comprise the complete unraveling my life went through in the past twelve months. Most of the rest of it will be detailed as it becomes relevant, but my internet silence can be largely attributed to that unraveling, and the subsequent rebuilding process. I write this now from my current residence, the guest room of my parents' house.

But back to bugs.

Things are only what they mean to us. My apartment symbolized so many things for me. It was my home, my independence, my haven, my responsibility, my space, (my my my my my). I felt safe there, and I loved it there. After the bugs showed up, the apartment never changed. The walls, the floor, the furniture (with the exception of my bed, which was thrown out), it was all exactly the same. So what changed?

My mind did. In my mind, my apartment was no longer a special place to me. Even once the bugs were gone I was afraid to be there. I felt uncomfortable and uneasy there. My apartment's value to me took a drastic turn because I wasn't getting what I wanted from it anymore. There was no more point.

Maybe the months of insomnia and nightmares had something to do with it, but I've since taken a largely anti-bug stance. I've recently noticed, however, that there is one notable exception: fireflies.

Not only do I not hate them, I get excited when they start coming out. Fireflies mean it's Summer. Fireflies mean sitting on your porch late at night with a cigarette and a beer watching your backyard twinkle like Robert Pattinson in the sunlight. Fireflies mean Jersey bonfires and night swimming (REM style) and road trips and boardwalk food. It's easy to see the beauty in fireflies. You don't really have to look.

It's harder to see the beauty in things that don't glow in the dark.

Were it not for their fluorescent asses, fireflies would be just another annoying bug that comes out when it starts to get warm. We'd swat at them, and set traps out and try to get rid of them. We make special allowances for fireflies because that glow means something to us.

I'm sure if we tried hard enough, everything could mean something to us. If not personally, everything could still mean something because it means something to someone else. That's the point of shirking this whole "I" fallacy. It doesn't matter if something annoys me or gets in my way because it's just another clump of cells, just like me. We're not different, I'm not special. There isn't any more of a point to me being on this planet than the housefly you just smacked with your rolled up TV guide. Obviously we like to think there is, because what's the point if there's no point?

But that's it. The point is that there is none.

There's no spoon either, in case you were wondering.