Oh my God
“Is this right?”
“Sorry?”
I was standing naked…astonished…and yelling to the naked man in the next room, a guy I had just met.
It was a hookup. There’s no easy way to say that. Yet another one. To fill the void of the last three lonely years of my life. To fill the space in between bad dates, or worse, dates that never showed up as I sat waiting with a fresh haircut and far too much optimism.
At least, under a promiscuous exterior, I was still me. I had written him on Grindr in the middle of the night, asking if he was in the mood to cuddle. He looked a little bit like AJ McLean in the face. He had a voluminous faux-hawk. Tattoos covered his body. And he smelled faintly of Marlboro Light cigarettes, sealing the deal on his bad boy image. One could speculate why I was there to begin with. Was I there because I choose the wrong men? Was I there to feel close to somebody I once loved very much, who ended up being a “bad boy” in the end? Honestly?
I think I just wanted to be held.
Held I was. And we had sex, which is no surprise (although I surprised myself by being the top in the situation, but I digress). Gay men can go through emotionless sex like…oh I don’t know…insert some witty comparison here. But you get the picture, even if you don’t want to. And yet, emotionless is perhaps not the most accurate way to describe the experience. I think that can conjure up the image of a very cold human, something I am far from. Perhaps…”attachment”. We have the ability to easily engage in sexual activity without attachment.
Minutes earlier, ironically, I had been very much attached to this guy, at least physically. I had wrapped my entire body around him like a koala, clinging desperately to the fleeting sensation of security I was experiencing. I knew it would come to an end, though. I knew he wasn’t “my person”. I knew that sooner or later, he would ask me to leave. But I was the one who initiated the break in our attachment when I said,
“I have to pee.”
Half awake, he directed me to his bathroom. He worked nights as an Uber driver and was attempting to get some much needed sleep. As I peed, my mind wandered. How had this become my life? Strange men…in one moment and out the next. I guess I was searching for something. So after plenty of…we’ll call it “searching”…why did I feel so fucking lost?
I rolled my eyes as I flushed the toilet. And as I washed my hands, I noticed something in the corner. I told myself to leave it alone. But the temptation was far too great. I walked over…and a moment later, I gasped dramatically.
“Oh my God. Is this right?”
“Sorry?”
“Um. Your scale. Is it right??”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Fuck.”
Pull through
So much of my life has become unrecognizable in the last (almost) three years. In early 2020, my now ex-fiancé abruptly left me and everything we had built together, including an infinite number of hopeful dreams. He also left me with his half of the rent on the house we were renting, something he just decided he wasn’t going to pay, despite signing his name to a legal contract. With my life turned completely upside-down…my sense of security and trust shaken violently to their core…and with daily thoughts of suicide circling my head like an army of hungry crows…I sent him a photo. A photo of me sobbing…bewildered…destroyed…and his only response was…
“It’s not my job to pull you through this.”
Well. He was right. He had officially resigned from the job of emotional support system. But with my Mom in the hospital and unable to pick up the phone without pre-arranged assistance from the hospital staff, I wasn’t totally sure how to pull through.
I wasn’t even sure if I could pull through.
I barely could function every day. I had no appetite. When I looked in the mirror, I saw myself…literally and figuratively…disappearing before my own bloodshot, tear-soaked eyes. I think if it wasn’t for my dogs and cats giving me a sense of purpose, I would have just ended it all. This was truly the break-up of all break-ups. Images of a man who I once felt so safe with disappeared beneath the last images I had of him sitting in front of me. He was cold. Unemotional. Unsympathetic. Heartless.
A monster.
It sounds dramatic. It sounds like an exaggeration. Then I remind myself that I was there. I know what I saw. And I know that I’m right. It was like a different human being.
Days went on. I survived them, by some miracle. And just around the time I felt I could get dressed…put product in my newly cut hair…get in my car…and go out into the world (which is code for “Target”), the further unimaginable happened. The worldwide pandemic hit. And life for not just me, but everyone, was about to change in a very big, very scary way.
I don’t remember much about that year. I just know that I survived it. And I survived the next year, too.
My mother, however, did not.
My Mom…my best friend…my rock…my heart…my safe space…my everything…left this earth one year after the pandemic began. It was, perhaps, right when I was feeling “sort of” ok with where life had taken me. And with her death came feelings of taking endless backwards steps on the emotional healing path. I was starting all over.
Everything blurred together. I don’t know where 2020 ended and 2021 began. I don’t know where time went. and I don’t know how my house got so out of control, either.
Surrounded
In the late summer of 2022, something unusual was happening in my house. Radical, almost. I had company. Like, company that wasn’t a stranger in my bed company.
My washer and dryer was being replaced by the husband and boyfriend of two of my only girlfriends in Denver. And by that, yes…I absolutely mean that the machines were leaving and they had agreed to stand there as human machines and clean and dry my clothes by hand until further notice.
I never said I was good at comedy.Anyway.
Following a four week appliance nightmare, They were there to rescue me. after purchasing new machines to replace my broken ones, every local professional in the industry had seen the available space to install them and quickly walked away, saying it was “impossible”, even though it had been done several years prior. For six hours, these two amazing men showed up for me in a big way and gave me back the ability to do laundry at home, which is no small thing when you have pets. It made me more emotional than I can explain, to have somebody be dependable and show up like that, when you feel so alone in this world.
As the men worked, my friend and I chatted. She had accompanied her husband to keep me company during the hours long job, because standing there watching them possibly get crushed by my old or new machines was not high up on my priority list that day. We stood and chit-chatted for a few hours, until out of nowhere, I broke.
“I need to show you something.”
“Ok…”
With her walking behind me, I reluctantly opened a door that unfortunately did not lead to anything resembling Majestic Narnia, but perhaps closer to Monica’s secret closet on the show “Friends”. Silence filled the air until I could hear my own heart beating in my ears. My friend said nothing. She is a calm person. But I could tell what she must be thinking. I briefly turned to her. Then I looked away.
“I don’t know what to do.”
We were standing in what had once been my ex’s office, and then later a guest room, while we still lived together. On the day he left, “our home” officially became “my home”. And having no use for the bed in the guest room of my home, I had…one by one…started to place large dresses made for my photography clients on top of it.
I had started running out of room to store them in other areas. And so I put them there. The problem? The disorganized pile was so high, it nearly touched the bottom of the ornate chandelier hanging from the ceiling. In the corner was a fish tank with fish and an aquatic turtle belonging to my ex. Creatures that he just hadn’t gotten around to transporting out of my house. Creatures that he hadn’t left me with instructions on how to keep alive. Creatures it took over two years for him to ask if they were even still alive. By the window was a table covered with endless loose Swarovski Crystals, and two or three unfinished strassing projects. On the floor were client shoes quickly collecting dust. And over the closet and bathroom doors…more dresses.
“I don’t know how to fix this.”
My eyes started filling with tears. And I finally said what I’ve needed to say out loud for a long time.
Despite having a moon in Virgo, My house had, quite gradually, accumulated an overwhelming amount of clutter. Every single day, I would wake up…look at it…and feel utterly disgusted. With the clutter…with myself for allowing it to happen. And yet, I felt nothing inside of me…no irresistible urge…to fix it. And I didn’t know why. I confessed to her that every day, I looked at my Invisalign trays sitting in my bathroom. I had started Invisalign to prepare for the wedding I ended up not having, and the painful association had led me to “take a break” from my treatment…a break I did not tell my Orthodontist about. And day after day…week after week…the trays sat there, as I created excuses as to why I could not make my next appointment. I would look at them daily. I would feel angry at myself for stopping. I would tell myself that “next week is the week I’ll start back”. And then…nothing. Week after week.
Nothing.
I then reminded her of the bathroom in my house which faced the closet where her husband and my other friend’s boyfriend were currently working. I had left the light on to help illuminate their working space. For a brief moment, the light went out…then flickered back on. When it happened, I had nervously laughed and said that it obviously needed to be changed. But the truth was, it had needed to be changed for a long time. Like, a long time. Like, way too long. But somehow, I couldn’t seem to bring myself to do it. It was yet another item, on an ever-growing and never-ending list of things that needed to be done. How I felt no motivation to go to the store and buy a new fucking light bulb is just…beyond me. Perhaps I ultimately felt…underneath all of it…
”Who cares if it flickers? Nobody is even here to complain about it but me. I mean, I’m fucking alone, so it doesn’t even matter.”
Then, in almost a whisper, I quietly confessed the hardest thing of all. Something I felt more ashamed of than I can accurately convey to you. I had started smoking cigarettes, an addiction I had kicked twenty years prior. And for twenty years, I was sure it would never be an issue again. The bizarre and wicked contradiction here is that I have a bit of what can only be called a smoking fetish. I suppose I watched too many classic movies as a child and images of Desi Arnaz and James Dean puffing away became ingrained in my memory. I, unfortunately…often secretly….find it sexy on a man. But in a very distant way. If a burning cigarette…being smoked by anybody…was even sort of close to me in the last 20 years, I would throw an uptight and dramatic hissy fit. It doesn’t make sense. I’m not saying it does. Perhaps I have found men who are willing to do what I adamantly refuse to do…intriguing? Maybe it’s the fact that they are willing to “lose control” and give into temptation, when I live such a controlled and clean lifestyle? I don’t know. But what I knew in that moment was that for the first time in two decades I was…completely unexpectedly…struggling with an addiction. And I needed to say it out loud. I needed to admit it.
Because I desperately wanted to fix it.
“I don’t recognize myself. I don’t recognize my home. I don’t know who I have become. The fact that I have been smoking on and off for the last few weeks is…quite literally…the thing I’ve needed to shock me, and make me wake the fuck up and realize how lost I am. Because none of this behavior is me. I think I am filling myself…and surrounding myself…Barricading myself…with things. Lots of things. Clutter. Sex. Food. Nicotine. To-Do lists that don’t get done. So that I do not have to feel. So that I do not have to surrender to defeat. I wasn’t enough. He left me. He’s not coming back. And neither is my Mom.”
Exhale.
Take your power back
I started therapy not long after that conversation. I have no idea if it’s helping. But I’m doing it. Finally. Several sessions in, I went into great detail of my last relationship from start to finish, including each and every circumstance around my ex’s horrid behavior, and my normally calm and grounded therapist looked back at me with eyes of shock and disbelief. So I suddenly didn’t feel so crazy…for feeling so crazy.
I stopped smoking. Then started again. Then finally decided, on October 1st, that I was done. That I had to be done. I had done this before…danced with this addiction. I was young and foolish the first time. But doing it a second time as an older and wiser adult approaching middle age was just plain fucking stupid. I think…honestly…I had stopped caring. I think after 20 years of a super clean lifestyle, I felt like…”for what??”. I was living a clean lifestyle to…what…live longer, so…I could be alone for even MORE years??? I guess that’s why I did it. I don’t know.
Maybe I just wanted to feel like James Dean.
Nothing else seemed to change, though. Day after day, my house remained the same. And as I looked in the mirror, I realized that nothing about my body was changing since I had last laid with AJ MCLean’s doppelganger, either. As much as I lived a “clean lifestyle”, which for me means abstaining from cigarettes, drugs (recreational and pharmaceutical) , alcohol, and meat…I had still packed on weight. Twenty pounds above the weight I was as a professional dancer, to be exact.
That may not sound like a lot. Or maybe it does. Well. I am 5’6” tall. This weight is not showing up in my legs. It’s not showing up in my arms. And aside from a bit that maybe only I notice under my chin, it is not showing up in my face. It is in my belly. And 20 extra pounds of belly on a 5’6” body is not good. Not when you take health into consideration. There’s a point where even the most loving of family and friends need to stop being so goddamn supportive saying, “you are beautiful at any weight!!!!” and say,
“Yes. I agree. You are out of control. How can we best support you as you take your power back?”
I knew I had gained some weight. I just didn’t know it was that much. What I knew, however was that going back to the gym was…well…let’s say it was the equivalent of putting my Invisalign trays back in. Right there in front of me…and no action. I live walking distance from a gym. And allow me to be a bit more descriptive, if I may.
The gym that I have an active membership with is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And if I walked slowly…hit a red light…stopped at the corner before walking in to update my Instagram Story…it would take…maybe…MAYBE…five minutes to walk there. And yet, for over one year, I “just can’t find the time”.
I have waited and waited for a time to find me. To go to the gym. To declutter my home. To fix my life. And typically, it’s hilarious to expect that from life. But somehow, by some miracle, it happened.
Vortex
At the recommendation of, I don’t know, EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, I fell down the Netflix rabbit hole of “Dahmer”. Stories about serial killers isn’t really my Netlix go-to at all, because I would much rather laugh my ass off to Moira Rose saying “bebe”. But I watched it. I got sucked in, like everyone else. And it depressed me.
Not the show. It’s actually incredibly well done. And oddly enough, I recommend that you watch it because it unexpectedly highlights some major issues in our society that, unfortunately, still exist today. What depressed me is that I lost about two days of my life. Two days of laying around. Two days where I could have been promoting my business…enjoying the warmish weather while it’s still here…cleaning my house…photographing nature “just because”…catching up with old friends…moving my body. Instead, I just got drawn into the Netflix vortex. And laid there on the couch, for hours.
Lucy didn’t mind tho, yafeelmeh
I woke up the following day. I had completed the series. And I felt angry. Really, really angry. Furious, even.
And thank God.
“This ends today”, I heard my voice echo from the walls of my house.
It was around 6am. Way earlier than I would ever start my morning. Maybe it was the energy of the full moon. Maybe I was suddenly hungry enough…desperate enough…to let the light back into my life, after watching such a dark and harrowing saga played out on tv. Or maybe it was just a miracle. But I knew…like I know that I love Panera Bread…
This ends today.
I spent several hours storming through my home, dealing with shit that was most certainly not being dealt with. Despite having beautifully white teeth, they have not been cleaned in over a year. I made that appointment. I took a box that sat at my back door for weeks…picked it up…and walked the ten steps needed to put it in my garage. I looked down at my body. I felt proud that I’ve been strong enough to stay in it…to keep fighting for my life. I told myself that I loved myself. I apologized to my body for hurting it over the last few weeks with nicotine…and for well over a year of no exercise. And I promised to it…to the beautiful shell that I’m blessed to reside in…that the time to do better…way better…had arrived. That I was done punishing it, and ready to live; not just survive.
And as I walked towards my car feeling productive and back in control hours later, with a very long list of items to purchase at Target, including bins to begin the process of decluttering and organizing my home and a yoga mat to reignite my very lost spiritual side…I stopped…rolled my eyes into the back of my head…shook my head as I reopened the Notes app on my phone…and as I typed, scoffed at myself and said out loud…
“And for the love of God, Mark. Please. Buy a new fucking light bulb and change it.”
Because it’s time to let the light back in.
