an introduction

As I am writing this, I can only see out of one eye due to bad infection. The right side of my face is swollen and I imagine my retina detaching, as my mother's did so many times a few years prior. We lived under the same roof then- my mother and I, but I did not tend to her. We are much closer now, one thousand miles apart. And if anything happened to her I would quickly book a flight out of LaGuardia airport (because it is the closest) or JFK (because Jet Blue provides unlimited snacks) or even Newark airport (because you should ride trams, for the sake of your own mother.)

I watch the weather reports now, still, and I monitor if the tropical depressions will turn into tropical storms and then into hurricanes, and if they do, I will still try and board a plane, because those are the things I want to sit through. I have adapted the power of positive thinking, special yoga breathing, writing in a journal but if it came down to it, I would want to see if the hurricane windows were holding up. I would feel like I was missing out. I would began to envy all of my friends that graduated from state schools in four years and moved back home. I know that any of them would take care of me during this kind of an infection.
I did not take care of my mother then. I did not tend to her- not in the way a daughter should have. Sometimes it's like something switches off inside my brain and then I cannot attend to anyone. I cannot realize that I know people. There is a disconnect. I will think about a good friend or a man I slept with for a long period of time but there will be no recognition. Instead of having memories of that person I will have to spend the whole thought just trying to remember what their face looks like, my heart will beat faster, I'll feel almost dizzy and then I will have to remember their hands, the sound of their voice, and eventually I will understand that I know them, that I have met them, that there is a connection after all.

This is supposed to be an introduction. I wish I was reporting to you from a far off land, and then you had hired me (on a mission) to tell you about falling bombs and a family I am staying with that is not my own. I can tell you that I have long dark hair and I am not feeling very well. I am laying in bed in my Brooklyn apartment and I am wishing I would have written this introduction when I was eight and we lived in Italy, or when I was four and first learning to write my own name, or when I was twenty-one and in England- yes, I should have written it in the summer of 2006. But all I could write then was "today is the hottest day in British history thus far-" and all I can write now is "I am tending to my own eye infection, my face is swollen- can you see those spots too?"
I can tell you that the left side of my bed has broken. That the "slats" manufactured by Ikea won't stay in place. I have been heavily medicated but I still feel a lot of pain, and despite the fact that I know better, I keep touching my eye ball with my finger. In my dreams, in deep sleep, I imagine waiters coming into my room- maybe I am awake after all, and they are bringing me different kinds of sodas to try. I am asking for whiskey from someones flask, I am asking for gin straight from your mouth. These men have no teeth and they smile at me, they bring in glasses of coke from the fountain, sprite from the bottle and Diet Dr.Pepper in a can. I am going under, in this bed, in these memories, in a street I wont cross and before I fall asleep I am desperately trying to remember that I know people- I am desperately trying to stay awake. And the waiter who has wandered into my bedroom- well, he has his hands all over me. I ask him if he has ever been to Paris, Ohio. I ask him if my eye looks like my mothers. You cant mix liquor with pills. You cant make beds this cheap for a reason. You cannot stay online that long if you don't want to remember.
And because he is a gentleman, he asks what I'd like to drink,
And I tell him "Sir, since this an introduction, will you make my shirley temple strong, please?"