Crickets

Crickets.

It’s night time again, not my favorite part of the day too much anymore. I don’t know what it is about the sound of crickets that swallows me whole, but it does. I remember being a little kid, wide awake at my parent’s house watching episode after episode of “I love Lucy” on Nick at Nite fighting against the sound of crickets. Not much has changed, insomnia is nothing new to me. I fell in and out of love with my insomnia over the course of my twenty six years. I moved home from NYC a little over a month ago after living in the city for 7 years. About three weeks and some change before my brother’s incident. Whatever really fueled my desire to move home, I’ll never understand. Considering In the past I had nightmares about what it would be like to have to move home at one point in my life and now I was willingly doing so … even my family was shocked, but as they say “everything happens for a reason”.

In Brooklyn I came alive in the nighttime. Not even saying so in a party sense, but in a creative sense. Sitting alone at the kitchen table in my big giant scary loft I came alive at 3:00am every night. I did most of my writing during this time and if for a second i felt a little off, I’d walk right out of my apartment make a right and walk for less than a minute and I’d go take my seat at the Mark Bar. If the Mark Bar really wasn’t in my budget, I’d go in my room download some new songs and run all over Greenpoint, into Williamsburg where people were alive and rowdy no matter what night of the week it was. The difference between living in NYC and living in New Jersey is this and only this, you could be alone every night in NYC and never feel lonely at all verses fearing the sound of cricket’s setting in around 6:00pm. I could get off on other people’s energy and live in my own head .. and all it took was a decent house playlist and just simply running past a crowd of people …

So here i sit 26 years old, every light on in my parent’s downstairs. I poured myself a giant pint glass of box wine and mixed some Cesar dressing into lettuce and i made my way toward the couch. I stood up, I paced around, I sat down yet again, I felt momentarily motivated to turn the tv on but i lost that motivation as soon as i saw the same Kardashian episode was on, that has seemed to have been on everyday for the last week (the worst week of my life). I might go as far as to say the Kardashian’s could have been the official sponsor’s of the worst week of my life. I turned the TV off, starred at the wall as my mind began to wander.

The last three weeks I spent with Casey were interesting to say the least, a short period of time that I am thankful for but at the same time .. confused about. It’s amazing to me how long I can actually be inside of my own head before i come back to reality. As i flicked the deck switch off, I recalled a night I shared a thirty minute conversation with Casey on my parent’s deck. It was the same night i learned that he had switched from smoking Newports to Marlboro Reds. I sat with him as he chain smoked and he asked me why I would ever want to move home and I paused for a minute and said “I guess I don’t know, the City started to feel like Jersey to me like I couldn’t escape .. but then again the sound of these cricket’s is real talk, REAL TALK”.

He laughed at me and said, “What there’s no Cricket’s in Brooklyn?” and I was like “Of course not, I mean if there was … no one has time to hear them.” Then he asked if I was in for the night and I said “I must be, I mean.. I’m here alone early enough to hear the crickets … crickets can only mean the death of a perfectly good evening”.

He laughed and told me that he never really thought about the sound of crickets, but i would be the one to bring something up like that and make him fully aware .. & that he didn’t need another reason to feel weird. Feeling weird was something i knew all too well about. I told him I knew no better than him, truth of the matter being .. I am 26 I have been through a slew of careers, I quit everything .. the grass is always greener and as much as i resent being weird, I’m afraid to admit to myself that I might actually be some what normal. Being normal had become my biggest fear…

He told me he wished he was just normal, I told him he totally didn’t .. Eventually I said, you will find an appreciation for this weirdness and it will become something you cherish and live by. It’s just like growing up and going into toys r us and searching high and low for a sticker, a pencil a notebook with your name on it… if it’s not there, it’s never going to be…

His phone rang, he walked off into our backyard and I stayed seated at the table watching him walk away, I know this isn’t the last time I will revisit this conversation or try and find some answer .. So many moment’s shared the last three weeks, no way of going back in time to try and change things…