🪲 The Bug

NOTE: This is not a story about me. This is a story about The Bug.

There is a bug inside my brain. I believe it is a spindly little thing with long legs. It pokes and prods at different parts of me and anyone who sees me is none the wiser. The Bug was not always there; when I was younger, there was no bug at all. I still don’t know what it looks like, but I assume it must be green.

I haven’t told my wife about The Bug; if I tried to explain it to her, she’d think I was crazy. Besides, The Bug was already there when we met and that might raise some uncomfortable questions about our reasons for getting married.

Every physician has told me there’s no such bug, that my brain and my heart are in perfect order. The physicians are wrong. There’s a bug in there; I have no doubt.

The Bug came at a very specific time in my life, and so my life can be sorted into two periods: Before Bug (BB) and After Bug (AB). I was born nineteen years before The Bug made its way through my innards.

I can not stress enough how absolutely normal my life was up to a certain point. I had my first girlfriend at thirteen (7 BB) and lost my virginity to her at fifteen (5 BB). Though I was something of a late bloomer, my girlfriend had no problem waiting for me to catch up with her in all aspects of maturity. Many young men don’t get the opportunities I had in this regard.

We started to grow apart towards the end of our schooling together. I couldn’t afford to go to an out-of-state school, but I had a decent enough scholarship for a mid-tier university at home where I was certain to find a modicum of success. My girlfriend had higher aspirations, there was simply no way around it. This was when I was nineteen, or 0 BB.

When I’ve had enough liquor to force The Bug into hiding and allow myself the freedom of speech, I begin telling this story. Every person I tell this story to assumes my first girlfriend was the root cause of the disorder, but they’d be wrong. It’s a natural assumption to make and it would make the entire story much easier to understand.

We parted ways about a month before graduation. I was still stubby and embarrassing to witness, but I was at least on my way to attend university. Many of my peers could not say the same.

I spent my last summer going to all the parts of my hometown that I previously neglected. It wasn’t like I was going very far, but I got the feeling that once I left, I wouldn’t be coming back. 

Two friends and I went to an old bowling alley in a shitty part of town to play for an hour or so while we waited for a friend to get off work around the corner. 

There were three girls playing two lanes over from us. It was a classic setup, something I was certain I’d read in a book before. Three guys and three girls—it was almost too perfect. We assigned ourselves prospective counterparts and drew up plans on how we’d talk to them when the time arose.

It took me a minute, but I noticed that one of the girls—one that had already been “claimed” by my friend—had a certain look about her. I’ve tried to describe it many times. One might say she was beautiful, but that wouldn’t be right, it had nothing to do with her physical appearance. I had never actually known anyone like her before; so I’m not certain it had anything to do with her personality or way of carrying herself either. There was simply something about her that caught my attention in a very extreme way.

Caught my attention may be putting it lightly. The moment I recognized this thing about her, I thought my heart was going to give out for a couple of seconds. It wasn’t beating too fast or slow and it wasn’t painful, but it did feel heavy, like it might burst through my ribs at any point. 

It was a sad feeling too, not just oddly painful and hard to comprehend, but depressing. I think the best I can explain it is as an understanding that this was not a girl or woman I expected to see ever again. 

It was around this time that a little bug came around on my bowling ball of choice. I’m not sure which hole or seepage it snuck its way in, but after a couple of moments, I was sure there was a bug crawling around somewhere inside of me I couldn’t see.

The rest of that night was irrelevant. None of us ever actually went and talked to those girls. Instead, we picked up our friend from work and shot guns in a junkyard. During that whole time, my heart felt terribly hard and my skin felt terribly loose from The Bug crawling around.

While I was sleeping, The Bug sunk its dirty little pincers into me. It must’ve taken a minute to get its bearings, but it eventually found its way into my brain. 

I suppose I should thank The Bug because my chest no longer felt ill the next morning, and my skin no longer felt loose. Any pain or depression I had from that chance encounter at the bowling alley was absolutely irrelevant. My body had been restored to its prior state.

But I didn’t feel much of anything else either. In fact, I felt a total disconnect between every aspect of my body and my being. At least, it still felt like I was seeing through my eyes and controlling my limbs, but something wasn’t quite right.

My body was no longer mine—it became The Bug’s.

The Bug prods at little bits and pieces of my brain; it sets off emotional reactions and controls my arms like a crane game at the carnival. To the observer, my movements might appear natural and human, they even fool me sometimes. But they aren’t. It is The Bug moving my hands and arms and eyes. I know this because while I still see things and understand my surroundings, I do not feel anything.

I went through a flurry of decisions and flings in university. If I had any real feelings about them, I’d call them “bad,” but they were The Bug’s feelings, not mine.

How’s this?

There was a girl I dated in university for about three weeks—this would’ve been 2 AB—and we decided to get some fancy drinks. There weren’t many places in town for cocktails, so we made do with local craft beer from a brewery downtown. The girl seemed alright to The Bug, but it still didn’t like paying for her drinks.

After four or five beers, I felt The Bug start to get a little drowned out. That kind of thing happens when you get a bug in your head, a couple drinks might slow it down and give you freedom of thought and movement for a night. I’m not sure why alcohol would slow The Bug down, I can’t imagine it having any kind of taste or affinity for booze.

When the words and feelings are my own, they flow more freely. I’m able to be honest with myself and others, and though the conversation does not usually go the way I’d like, I somehow end up waking up feeling refreshed.

During this date, I felt my real consciousness emerge from The Bug, like I was finally gasping for air after weeks underwater. I started talking more, so I must’ve enjoyed my date's presence more than The Bug. We got to talking about all sorts of topics I never had the chance to because of The Bug.

“There’s a bug in my brain.” I made a great effort to explain this to her, but no matter what I said, it seemed nothing was satisfactory. No matter, that night we did consummate that relationship, and I felt rather pleased and relieved. Without The Bug, I was doing alright.

But nothing lasts forever, and in the morning, The Bug returned, so I left without saying goodbye. I never reached out and ignored her attempts to do so. It wasn’t my fault, it was The Bug’s orders. I know this because I did enjoy my conversation, and would like nothing more than to speak to her again, but The Bug would not allow for it.

So that was that.

I started dating my wife 6 AB, we got engaged 7 AB, and married 9 AB. It was a long engagement, but it was all up to The Bug. The Bug pulled a lever and pressed a piece of pink meat under my skull to make me get on one knee and pull out the ring it chose.

It wasn’t me she loved, though, it was The Bug. Confronting this so long into our marriage would be pointless, she might as well love me and I may as well love her, any rejections of this would be so arbitrary as to defy logic.

I’m approaching something of an important deadline soon: 19 AB. This would mark the fact that I’ve spent more time with The Bug than without it, a kind of “Brain of Theseus,” because it will mean The Bug has had more control over the entirety of my life than I have.

How unfortunate is that?

One night soon, before the sun rises and The Bug wakes up, I will slip out and crawl under the bed, sneaking my way across the floor until I will find myself in the quartz-tiled bathroom.

I will sit on my knees in front of an open toilet like a sorority girl who has had too much to drink at her first college party. I will take my hand and reach it down and deeper through my mouth. I will keep pushing until I find that spindly little bug, so that I may take it by its tiny green legs and pull it out from inside me.

My hand will keep going as long as it has to; I will swallow my elbow and shoulder to keep my arm in motion; I will reach further and further until I pull it out.

Even if there is nothing there.