No One Asked for This

by Cazzie David

  “So sad,” Romy repeated.

  “Powerful,” my mother said.

  “Very moving,” Romy added.

  “Can’t believe it,” I said.

  “I was a little disappointed by it,” Bart blurted out.

  “Yeah, me too,” Bella agreed.

  “What?!” my mom, Romy, and I said in unison.

  “Listen, let’s just say it didn’t move me as much as I thought it would and I wasn’t impressed.”

  “The Anne Frank House didn’t impress you?” we said, once again in unison.

  “I thought she was living in a closet! It was two rooms! I’m thinking, I can live here!” he went on.

  “But the rooms were still so tiny!”

  “There was nothing there, it was empty. It was underwhelming,” he said.

  “It was where they lived,” Romy said with disgust.

  “They should have re-created the beds or something. Anything!”

  “Hmm, that’s interesting,” my mother said. She always says “That’s interesting” when she doesn’t find what you’re saying interesting.

  “Maybe because you’re not Jewish, you couldn’t connect to it,” Romy added.

  “No, I was incredibly moved by the national lynching memorial. I just think they could have done a better job here. They should have done a better job.”

  “Let’s all agree to disagree, shall we?” I said.

  “I wish I saw the room. I think I needed an after-hours private tour. It was too claustrophobic,” my mom reflected. And that was the moment the Franks decided to eternally haunt us.

  * * *

  The Anne Frank House sadness wore off after a few hours and was once again replaced with my twisted breakup terror. When we got back to the hotel, I locked myself in the bathroom to cry and call one of my friends.

  “Cazzie, they’re both obscene! What they’re doing is obscene,” she said.

  “In math, two negatives make a positive. Is that the same for them?”

  “CAZZIE, SHUT UP!” Romy screamed from the other room. She couldn’t take me asking one more question about it.

  “You dodged a bullet,” my friend said as I tried to be quieter so Romy wouldn’t hear me.

  “I didn’t dodge the bullet. I was hit with one hundred bullets and am now in critical condition in the hospital,” I whispered.

  “Your ego is just a little bruised, that’s all.”

  “No. Not a ‘little bruised.’ Someone pulled out my ego, beat the living shit out of it, and threw it back to me like a crumpled newspaper.”

  “You jumped off a burning ship!”

  “No, I was pushed off the ship! I’m alone drowning in the water and no one cares.”

  And so on and so forth.

  My friend then let it slip that they had just posted their first Instagram together. I’d known it was coming soon at the rate they were going; it was just a matter of (no) time before it happened. Though even if they’d posted their first one together two months after our breakup instead of the two weeks it had been, it still would have felt like whiplash.

  I visualized the millions of comments and hundreds of sycophantic articles. I asked her to describe the photo to me, because I was too fragile to see it. She told me they were in matching Harry Potter sweatshirts, which was particularly comical apart from being so stereotypically millennial, because for our first date, we also, embarrassingly enough, went to Harry Potter World. There, we bought the same matching sweatshirts they wore in the photo, except mine was Ravenclaw and hers was Slytherin, which is too ironic to make a joke about. His sweatshirt and mine were still both folded up in my closet back home, gathering dust, sitting next to each other like gravestones.

  Other Things That Happened in Amsterdam

  I smoked a lot of weed in front of my mom, which was permitted by her only because of the combination of Amsterdam and my breakup.

  I had to leave both museum tours we went on because I couldn’t stop crying.

  The food was amazing, but I also cried at both dinners.

  I decided I’d move to Amsterdam if I never got over this.

  May 30—Johannesburg

  I wrote for five hours straight on the plane. My hands were numb and got stuck in the shape of crab claws. Writing all of my disoriented thoughts and getting even farther away from American pop culture gave me a sudden burst of energy, like I was literally running as far away from them and everyone who obsessed over them as I possibly could.

  I looked through the movie options to give my hands a rest. I tapped my sister on the shoulder to ask what she was watching.

  “Fifty Shades Freed.”

  “Oh, that’s stupid and fun—maybe I’ll watch that too.”

  “Don’t. I think she has a song in it.”

  I dropped my head heavily onto my arm that lay on the plane table. My forehead fell directly onto the bracelet he had bought me. It hurt like hell and left a screwdriver imprint on my forehead for the next two days. An almost-perfect metaphor for my place in the world.

  We were spending only one night in Johannesburg, to get some sleep before traveling to the border of Mozambique in the morning. Before we’d even gotten into the car to go to the hotel, my sister called the first shower. But even if I had called it, she would have taken it, because she’d argue she needs it more for her OCD.

  As I waited for Romy to get out of the shower, I walked around the hotel room in circles. I was too plane-dirty and antsy to sit down. I FaceTimed my friend Owen, who happened to be with two of my other friends. He didn’t answer, but they called me back a minute later. I imagined them seeing the call and saying, Fuck, do we have to FaceTime her back?

  I think we have to.

  Okay, ugh . . .

  When the FaceTime opened, they all had huge fake smiles plastered on their faces. “HEY!” they said collectively with fake enthusiasm.

  “Hey . . .”

  “How are you doing,” he asked as they all tilted their heads ninety degrees as if on cue.

  “Um . . .” I started to cry again because it made me think about how I actually was doing. So after a few awkward seconds, I told them I had to go shower and we said our goodbyes.

  Whew, that was pretty painless, I imagined them saying after I hung up.

  How was I doing? I wanted to self-induce a coma and not wake up for years, but even years didn’t seem like it would be enough time to feel normal. Never waking up would be my first option. I don’t know, I think intensely wanting to die is the only thing you can truly feel as a result of watching the entire world fawn over people who are simultaneously bringing you so much pain.

  I felt everything he had always felt all at once: rage, self-­hatred, loneliness, wanting love from someone you feel “doesn’t care at all.” I had the urge to do all of the things he would as a result of these feelings, things I believed were wrong of him to put me through. It made me feel like a hypocrite. And because I had seen how many times he felt this way—even though his reasoning was often warped and mine seemed inevitable—it made me feel regret and guilt. That maybe all of his unhappiness really had been my fault because I hadn’t understood the depth of his pain, and now I finally could.

  Overwhelmed, I fell to the ground without caring if my head landed softly. I lay on my back on the dirty hotel floor as tears ran down the sides of my face and into my ears, creating little puddles. I heard my sister turn the water off. I stood up, wiped my face, and hopped on one leg to shake the water out of my ears.

  May 31—Travel Day

  Like a zombie, I silently followed my family down to the lobby, then to the car, and then to the plane, looking like a depressed high-school boy, with my headphones plugged in underneath my hood, listening to nothing.

  We landed near the border of Mozambique in the middle of a dirt tarmac and piled into a white van with the lodge’s name written in cursive across the side. Everyone was excited and talking, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The only thing I could hear was my
mind telling me over and over again that I didn’t matter. I felt so dumb for spending every minute consumed by something so insignificant. But I couldn’t stop it, no matter what mental gymnastics I attempted.

  A few moments after we pulled away from the tarmac, we saw a pack of twenty zebras through the window. Then baboons. And giraffes. Then some kind of rare bird I don’t remember the name of, but it was still so cool. It was as if all the animals had come out to greet us. And I swear, every time I saw one, a bit of light entered my body.

  After we settled into our rooms, we gathered for our first safari. We were given our schedule—two safaris every day, one at five thirty in the morning, and one at four in the afternoon. It was clear we were all thinking the same thing: Why are we going on this many safaris? Won’t we get the idea after one?It felt like we’d already seen everything there was to see on the drive over here.

  We were instantly proven wrong. Every sight was new and exciting, and with every trek out, I felt less numb, although that could also be attributed to my being revolted at my own ability to be upset while on an African safari. It was dead quiet except for the sounds of birds, monkeys, and elephants (whose trumpeting, I learned, could be heard up to six miles away). I felt myself starting to look at my situation differently. Seeing exactly how this planet has always looked, and being surrounded by majestic creatures who have been around for millions of years, made everything happening back home seem small, stupid, and shallow. There’s just nothing more extraordinary in the entire world than being next to an elephant in the wild. This is super fucking corny, but I guess it took actually seeing the world to remind me what mattered in it. And how unbelievably lucky I was to be able to experience something like this, especially in that moment. So I guess thank you, Mom, for the best Christmas present ever.

  June 2

  The only thing more amusing than the animals on the safari was my mother. Going on a game drive with a neurotic Jewish mother (NJM) in the back seat makes for an entirely unique experience. If you’re lucky enough to ever go on a safari, I recommend bringing an NJM along with you for the entertainment. Every time we’d hit a bump she’d yell, “WHOA!” When we’d off-road she’d emphatically ask, “Is this safe?! Are you sure this is safe? Whoa! Hold on, you guys!”

  “We’re fine, Mom,” I said.

  “Mom, you’re so embarrassing,” Romy said.

  She even warned the driver (who’d been doing this for twenty-five years) to “watch out for that ditch up ahead” and “be careful around the buffalo!” But she really killed me when she told the tracker (who sits on an exposed seat at the helm of the vehicle) to come into the car so he wouldn’t get ticks from the tall grass.

  June 3

  My mother read me chapters aloud from The FUCKING Untethered Soul.I was too broken inside to protest the things that I would normally be repelled by for unoriginality. It was easier to submit. At the lodge, the two of us lay on the deck that looked out onto a watering hole where elephants might come to drink at any moment, my head on her lap, and she read sections to me softly, like I was a delicate baby bird who’d have a stroke if she went above a certain volume. As she read on about how to stop thinking incessant negative thoughts, I had incessant negative thoughts. I tried to pull away from them and come back to her voice, but it was ridiculously challenging, like walking against sixty-mile-an-hour winds. She read about how important it was to be present, and I went back to the tools I’d been taught at nineteen on how to be mindful and think only about the things in front of you. I looked down at our matching khaki pants and button-up white shirts. She smelled of coconut oil. Her hands held the book and her black framed glasses sat on the bridge of her nose.

  “Mom.”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Will my life ever be normal again?”

  She put the book down and pushed her glasses up. “Remember in The Wizard of Oz when Glinda tells Dorothy that she always had the power to get home?”

  “No.”

  “Well, she said that.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “It means as soon as you choose to stop letting it affect you, you will get home.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever really had a home.”

  “Oh, shut up, Cazzie.”

  Warranted.

  June 4

  Every night at dinner, my mother asked one of us to give a toast. We had been together for enough time now that everyone was running out of things to toast. There’s only so many times you can do health, family, and being blessed enough to get to go on a safari. I had previously given only one toast in my life and it was two weeks prior, at my sister’s graduation dinner. My mother had asked my dad to give it, but he declined, as he’s incapable of saying anything trite. “I can’t, I don’t toast.” When he said this, I saw my sister’s expression go from anticipation of her father singing her praises, which she desperately wanted to hear, to being thoroughly let down. So I swooped in before she could really get herself worked up over it. I was, after all, the next best thing, since I am also an unforthcoming toast and praise giver. I recited some stuff about how amazing she was and how proud of her I was. It didn’t have to be that thoughtful because the mere act of me making a toast was so out of character that anything would suffice. I felt embarrassed and unnatural doing it, but I proved to be less socially inept than my father, which was a comforting fact just for life in general.

  Because in that moment I happened not to be crying, my mother asked me to give the toast.

  “I don’t give toasts,” I said.

  “You’re just saying that ’cause Dad says that,” my sister said.

  “No, I’m saying it because, like Dad, I also don’t give toasts.”

  “You gave one on my graduation night.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Well, you had to,” she said.

  “I didn’t have to.”

  “I mean, you ruined my graduation weekend and made it all about you. So the least you could do was make a toast.”

  I think you can imagine how this dinner turned out. If you’re assuming it ended with me storming out because my sister had no understanding of my situation and then her breaking down because I seemed to have no understanding of how badly I’d ruined her graduation weekend, then you’d be correct. It seems we’re both completely self-involved. But probably mostly me.

  June 5

  I cautiously re-downloaded Instagram to post a few select photos from my trip so maybe I wouldn’t look as pathetic as I felt. Even though everything I uploaded got twisted in the most absurd ways. And even the posts I deemed untwist-able quickly proved me wrong via the direct messages I received.

  A drink: Yes, girl, live your life! Drink the fuck up! I would!

  My feet in the dirt: OMG you’re calling them dirt!!!

  A Jacuzzi: Soak your sorrows away! We’re here for you girl!

  An elephant: Yes! Animals won’t fuck you over! Men ain’t shit.

  My sister: Is your daddy gonna buy you a new boyfriend?

  Anytime I do anything, I experience panic and shame. Anytime I do anything that can be considered public, I experience amplified panic and shame. My panic and shame were so far past overdrive, I couldn’t articulate what it was I was even feeling.

  The fact that people were talking about me at all, let alone talking about me being dumped on such a large scale, was a nightmare my psyche was not equipped to handle.

  I tried my absolute best to look at nothing else on my phone, as the few times I did, I’d come across their new photos or tattoos or statements and the relentless articles. I avoided the Explore page at all costs. It was a legitimate war zone; any scrolling would have killed off the few living cells I had remaining. I had started to become deranged, feeling betrayed by anyone who even “liked” something that implied support for either of them, as if it said something about that person’s character that they didn’t see what I saw. I couldn’t see past my own experience, and so it was as if the entire in
ternet was pouring alcohol all over my open wound.

  Going onto social media after a breakup is like going to work at the same office as your ex. In the case of my ex and his extremely famous new girlfriend and the behavior they were indulging in specifically, the metaphor was amplified tenfold. Going onto social media for me was like having to go back to work in the same cubicle as my ex and his new girlfriend while they had pornographic sex in front of me all day that was broadcast over the loudspeakers. And then everyone in the workplace stands up, starts clapping, and declares, “THIS IS THEIR SUMMER!!!!!!!!”

  You’d have no choice but to quit, right? Like, quit your phone and quit life.

  June 7

  We saw more hippos, leopards, rhinos, and lions, seven different types of deer, crocodiles and baby cheetahs, and mountains that dinosaurs used to roam. It was incredible. But after seven long days, I wanted to throw my family to a pack of lions and never see them or another sunset again.

  I didn’t feel entirely ready to go back to the States, but I was eager to see anyone who wasn’t on this trip. Every minute started to feel like an hour. I’d politely ask, “So, how many days do we have left here?” which quickly turned into “So, how many meals does that mean we have left?” Once you have fourteen dinners in a row with the same people, it doesn’t matter if they’re your heroes—there is nothing left to give. I wanted to leave just so I could stop having dinner with them.

  June 8 and 9—Cape Town

  You can tell Cape Town is running out of water because they have it written everywhere you look. On the coasters, on the walls; even the Wi-Fi password was SAVEWATER. There’s an alternative hand soap that doesn’t require water so you don’t have to use any to wash your hands. When Los Angeles was in a drought, the city did almost nothing; people still watered their lawns. It was eye-opening to see the contrast.