awake and alive inside that mess

removing my ac unit + rejection emails + the trap of anger

i have come here to say that, lately, i have been angry. so angry, that kind of anger that fogs up like a cloud around your ears and your eyes and catches you standstill in your tracks and prevents anything productive from happening at all. it comes in small bursts, mostly. i can’t write all the why’s here. the rest of the time i’ve been sad. not really the filled-with-nothing-but-despair crying type of sad, the god this is getting tedious but it needs to be felt so that i can be rid of it type. and the rest of the time i’ve been neither - and that’s a kind of emptiness that in itself has been hard to get used to.

i read this article about mixed emotions and how they drain you more than any other. it’s an understatement to say i am filled with mixed emotions. they’re right, they are historically the hardest for me to work through, to move on from and leave behind. in a fully examined life, your mixed and negative emotions don’t go to waste the article says. it doesn’t really offer any solutions at all. just encourages readers to embrace the messiness of emotions and instead of turning away for us to resolve to be fully awake and alive inside that mess.

so i’ve been listening to a lot of the new mitski album. coming to terms with the fact that i am allowed to be angry and others are allowed to be angry at me and both of those things can exist at the same time. for a long time i thought i didn’t deserve to be, that i wasn’t a good enough person to feel anger towards anyone, that i probably had it coming, that any resentment i felt was just karmic retribution.

i tell my friends who don’t know what happened on the phone, they say it’s ok if it happens again, i say no i really mean it this time, who knows if they believe me, i wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t. i’ve said it before, what matters is i know it is the truth. isn’t it, the truth?

and i did something really really hard this week. i had help. i can’t tell you what it is because it is too embarassing, too specific, it might not actually appear to be hard at all. but some choice people would know it is something that i have (for reasons beyond my full understanding) been unable to do for over an entire year.

and now there are other things to do that come from doing the thing, but i did that first step, i did it, part of me thought i might never be able to. part of me thought of course i would, eventually, whenever that is.

but this seemingly small thing - i was really beginning to think there was a possibility it might be a thing that hung over me for the rest of my life. and it’s nice to know it won’t be. my worst fears won’t always come true, i have some control.

and it’s been raining in new york city for the past 5 days. i went to go see radiator hospital this saturday, in it. the band wasn’t there, it was just the lead singer, he was in a terrible mood. i thought with dismay maybe this guy is an asshole i thought i guess even assholes can make meaningful art i thought maybe he’s just having a hard night.

the crowd sings his most popular song and he’s exasperated, i look at them all swaying together out of sync and i am too. but later i hold my miller high life with a death grip while he sings fireworks and tears well up in my eyes.

after, he says ok now that i’ve done that, i can do whatever i want. he doesn’t smile once. tells us to buy the opener’s merch after the show. i didn’t catch them, in fact i walked in a quarter into his set. i wanted to be here alone, i got my wish.

the last time i was at this venue i ran into someone i hadn’t seen in over a year. he has an incredible energy, a real aura of kindness around him, this person. a great dancer. the last time i saw him he was running off with a friend of mine. i asked him about you. he doesn’t know we haven’t spoken in a year. i was reminiscing heavy. i can’t go there yet. he has a girlfriend now, i met her. felt an immediate in-solidarity defensiveness. the band was great. she seems cool. you were cooler.

now in the back of this crowd, two people are leaving me on read, and the plans i was supposed to have afterwards are falling through. i buy a grilled cheese from a deli and take the bus home alone, watch the water on the windows move. watch an incoming phone call time out until it’s gone.

i’m thinking about that day on my roof. i’ve cooked the two of us dinner and you’re not lying and telling me it’s great, it isn’t, i don’t know what i was expecting. even when i did my best to clear myself of all expectations i still had them. i’m certain you did too. both of us constantly letting each other’s down. this land is inhospitable and so are we.

i got antsy having you in my house in the daylight, it never felt as good as i thought it should, wasn’t the domestic bliss i had in mind. the one where we have a baby, the one where we settle down and become complacent like our fathers. your fantasy - the one where i give up my life for you like your mom. my fantasy - the one where we divorce amicably, become loving co-parents who still have sex sometimes, support each other’s individual dreams from afar. like mine didn’t. our mutual shared fantasy - a family dinner table that’s set every night. where we’re both not the parents, but the child.

so we’re sitting there in the disappearing light on my roof and we’re talking about death. i’m telling you about my grandmother, about my regret. you are telling me that you’re sure you’re going to die soon, you just have a feeling. the doctors didn’t find anything wrong with you, but i feel that you want me to be worried about you anyway. as if i don’t already have enough of a scarcity mindset. and our conversation isn’t making any sense, it’s overly philosophical, it feels like we’re speaking two different languages, i feel this way often, i catch myself losing interest in what you’re saying and watching the television in the neighbor’s window behind your head instead.

i removed my air conditioning unit from my window last night and this morning i saw all the light it had been blocking, remembered the cold air and bright white of winter of early spring mornings. remembered i lived a whole life here before the summer started, before i installed that ac unit, before you followed me here just to rip me open again, in new but not unsurprising ways.

and the italian sandwich store man came back from florida. he first popped up again on a day i really needed it, it almost made me cry at the espresso machine. he and his girl are giving it another shot. i’m just happy to have his comforting presence back again. this one, she pays attention he says when i remember something he told me once, and it’s the best compliment i’ve gotten in a while.

and i found a pharmacy that has adderall in stock - an end to my 3 month halfhearted search. have begun taking 7.5mg a day. on the days i don’t forget. it’s been mostly really nice. really helpful. so helpful that i feel like a bit of a fraud.

and i got a rejection email from something i really wanted. in a way it’s a relief, a ripped off bandaid, confirmation of my fears so that i can finally move on to something else, and all that. self-impose less pressure.

i visited a new park after work. it was good for resting.

and i redownloaded tinder. because sometimes you just need a hot guy named joey who lives in boston to call you sexy. who you match with accidentally while having your distance radius way too wide, so there’s no fear of an actual meeting happening. so you can say rip, hmu if you’re ever in town and feel safe and log out, having gotten the validation you came for.

and i rewatched our sex tape. the first one. it made me angry. not because of how happy we look, how much we laugh in it. because it ends as soon as you finish. you don’t even try to make me orgasm too. because i watch you convince me not to use a condom, watch me let you pull out and spill onto my back, despite how nervous you know it makes me, despite both of us knowing better. because of the conversation i know we have later about what we would do if it ever went wrong, about the way you ask me what i would want as if i have a choice. because none of this bothered me at all the first time i watched it. this makes me the most angry. this anger i feel at myself. now all i see is your selfishness. i know it’s not really about the sex tape at all.

and i’m remembering the last time, how you said i know you need this, how i didn’t. i thought i did, until it was happening. how much i missed when i could say it’s true i need you no one makes me feel the way that you do and mean it fully, without resentment. it wasn’t true anymore. was it ever? i don’t remember what i said back. i remember how much i wanted to need you. how i laid there afterwards and it all felt wrong. how i looked at my reflection in that tiny mirror in the bathroom and tried to convince myself not to take anything you say to me personally for the last time.

how after you finish inside me too quickly half the magic is gone, how you say i’ll do anything you want but i can’t think of a single thing i want you to do, except somehow be forced to sit in this miserable feeling the way i have to. it’s unpleasant and it doesn’t seem fair, that you get to take all the things i gave you and leave so unscathed. that i spent so long thinking about and defending those women to you, and they’ll never know. that our stories here are not the same, that yours is mostly about sex. that mine is about depression. that you never gave me a real apology, that you walked out of that movie, that we had sex in her bed so many times but i never got to meet her, that you offered to take that train upstate with me for my birthday, that you told me once not to believe a word you said, that half the time it was just to try them on, that you took yourself so seriously, that i didn’t take myself seriously at all, that we disagreed about how sexist that awful comedian man was, that you stopped the music in the middle of wild horses that night, that you weren’t carrying guilt the way i was, that i didn’t let it go sooner, that i wasted all that time on you, that you let me, that you wanted me to waste more.

how when we’ve been silent in each other’s necks for too long, i laugh at what comes out of your mouth when i ask what are you thinking about because it’s both so completely ridiculous and indicative of everything i hate about this situation, about you. how later down the street the bar below the steps i’m crouching on is playing don’t speak by no doubt. the universe has a sense of humor, again.

and it is all too easy now to get caught up in the routine, in feeling like i am just biding time between shifts of work, hours where i’ll say hey what can we get for you and make small talk and carry cardboard boxes of oatmilk up from the basement and know i have no future here. maybe get a fleeting crush on a customer that’ll help get me through the day. move my hands and stand on my legs and if i’m lucky get to perform the immensely pleasing rote action of pulling espresso shots and steaming milk into little shapes. maybe make a mini cortado for one of my two favorite older men customers, remind him again to show me the photos from his psychedelic upstate music festival.

so yesterday i am standing there at work behind the counter trying to flirt with this beautiful person in front of me who’s expressed an interest in me, who has very nice eyes, a kind smile. because it’s what i’m supposed to do. but then that song starts playing over the aux and it’s no use. because i’m not there. i’m floating above us, i’m crying making dinner in the kitchen, i’m walking in the rain on the street, i’m on the ground, i’m under the ground, i’m in the earth, in the dirt. and the only thing that could bring me back would be if they could see it, if they could tell. but i am far too good of a liar for that to ever happen. and anyway, it’s not fair to put that on someone with all this inside me.

i retreat into the back room into myself and i know, the happiness i’m searching for is never going to come from anyone else. it’ll come from finding a purpose again. i have an inkling of it, i don’t have it yet. i knew what it felt like once and i want that feeling back. i want it back so badly, the way i once thought i wanted you.

and i chastise myself for not being able to be alone, but the truth is i’ve been alone for quite a while now. i was involved with someone on and off for over a year. but i was really just alone the entire time. that’s hard to grapple with. i am doing my best to grapple as quickly as possible.

and it’s clear (to me, to them, to probably anyone reading these) that i still have a lot of anger. a lot of grief. but it’s a trap, it’s too easy, it’s a distraction. i am complicit in the reasons for my own anger. love is the most alluring self-sabotage of all. it’s not the pain that’s the most distracting, it’s the hope. i said it outright the second-to-last time, in LA. it’s easy to distract myself with people like you instead of dealing with the business of figuring out what i actually want from life. i think if i ever went back into that house i’d blow into a million pieces, all the anger i felt inside it.

so here i am, crawling out of the well, trying to get down to business. my brain is a vault of constantly-vomiting memories and maybe once they’re all out something else will finally be able to make it through.

p.s. this is the song i’ve been listening to most, while being awake in the mess. i’m not afraid of being wrong she says. i’m not.