Bite Me

There are some experiences that, having once touched your life, continue with you for the rest of your journey through the world. I am becoming more convinced that one such experience is bedbugs.

You may recall that the day I moved to New York City my apartment had been treated for bedbugs. I was never in the apartment during an active infestation, but for the first ten days of my New York life I lived out of plastic bags and had to vacuum the crevices of my room and bed daily. So even though I have never been bitten (that I am aware of), I carry the fear and paranoia of them with me. Even in moving to a new apartment, I've wondered if some few bugs survived the Great Extermination and hitched a ride in some small corner of my belongings. Have they been breeding and infesting every possible nook and cranny of my new bedroom, waiting for the right night to swarm over me as I sleep and drain me of my life-vital fluid... or at least bite the crap out of me?

Though under normal circumstances, the thought of nightly being bitten by insects would bother me a lot, that's not really what gets to me the most. I have been bitten by insects before. In high school I lived in a tent in the Florida swamps for over two weeks. I learned I can survive being continuously bitten by bugs. No, it's the thought of the bedbug extermination and recovery process that kills me, should they ever return. It completely disrupts one's life. Anyone who knows someone who's had this experience can see the mental and physical drain it is.

So this past week, for whatever reason, I woke up a couple of days in a row with what felt like the itch of a bug bite on my ankle. Immediately my mind went to bedbugs. What else could they be? But then again, any little itch I feel makes me think of the little demons. And I also can't remember if it is normal to wake up feeling an itch or two here and there. I think it is, but my mind isn't clear anymore. Regardless, this week I obviously was bitten by something. I was speaking to our roommate Sarah about this and she told me that she and her sister had been bug-bitten during her sister's stay last week, but they thought it had been mosquitoes. We reasoned through it, that for all of us to be bitten in the apartment around the same time on different floors made it unlikely that it had been bedbugs, and that we shouldn't worry about it. But if you know me, you know I don't let go of things in my head very easily sometimes, so while I wanted to believe it, there was some lingering doubt in my mind. Who knows, perhaps this was the Great Takeover that my paranoid self felt was coming like some great prophesied Apocalypse.

But then (great joy!), I was in the bathroom getting ready for work when a very fat and happy looking mosquito came buzzing around my head. I was quick to squash it and it left a significant spot of blood on my hand. I was VERY happy to see that it had been feeding well. I say, bring on the mosquitoes! As long as the bedbugs stay away, I can deal with other pests. Are other pests annoying? Yes. But other pests can be destroyed with much less chagrin and disruption to one's life.

Despite my relief about this most recent incident, I'd like to tell you that my bedbug paranoia has left me now, but I have to wonder, "What if...."