#36 | arrivals
On New Year's Eve, my friend and I had a sleepover. We took edibles, ordered Thai food, and binged the entirety of Heated Rivalry, gasping and overjoyed at the show's bold and hot gay sex, but then finding ourselves touched at the depiction of how it feels to realize the extent of your true self and then be forced to live in secret. How falling into a queer love isn't a choice, but a process that leads you to discover who you were always meant to be, and eventually that person becomes cumbersome to conceal. I thought about how I hid my last relationship from my parents for seven months until I couldn't bear it anymore, and my ex held it in for three years; I thought about how the aftermath brought us together and then tore us apart, our private world caving in.
My friend was a great host. In the morning, he brought out a tub of chia pudding that he had prepared in advance, and then sliced some strawberries to put on top. We ate it with a side of kerrygold butter and Maldon salt on sourdough before driving to a korean spa in new jersey. I felt myself dissociating as we drove north on FDR, staring at the cloudless blue sky of 2026.
Have I been depressed for longer than I originally thought? Since Monday, I have found myself in a frenzy of unpacking and settling my new home, scouring facebook marketplace for good deals on the things I needed to replace: humidifier, silverware, shoe rack, garbage can, vacuum. I hate online shopping and used this as an excuse to wander my new neighborhood for miles on foot, my bad knee aching after picking up the final item on my list. Yes, I was supposed to be working, but I just couldn't. I had to ride this momentary high for as long as possible because I didn't know when it would end. I even wondered if perhaps I was actually entering a new phase of euphoric late-20s where my mental illnesses were fully surfaced and addressed, where I was incredibly driven and confident and could more seriously pursue my passions and and make lots of cool new friends and volunteer at a local food pantry and figure out my hair/fashion and never be on my phone and get drunk more and make out with people at bars and-and-and maybe the collapse of my relationship actually freed me, in a way, to live the life I always wanted to! Aha!
Well, I thought about her the entirety of my walks around the neighborhood, so I knew this was all imaginary and a ruse for myself to get through the day. Sometimes I still can't imagine my life further than a week into the future, and yet after two months the arrival of the new year has made me realize that I am finally in the grand, long-awaited Next Chapter. The Next Chapter that has consumed every waking thought since the breakup: finding a new roommate and apartment, keeping a social calendar and exercising to avoid extreme depression, packing, moving, unpacking, furnishing, and lots of crying. Objective necessities forced the meat sack of my body to bring itself into this era. In terms of emotional processing, I have successfully internalized that I have incredibly little information about her other than that she needs to be alone, so all that remains is the Rest, this indefinite period where I am alone, with nothing to think about except healing myself.
My point being, I realized I have actually been depressed since last spring because once the whirlwind of our move ended, I was waiting for an invitation into my ex's inner world that would never arrive, and then I spiraled and felt so worthless and scared as a result that I couldn't think to ask her myself, until her grief made her fall out of the world and forget I even existed. I have been making myself minuscule for so long because this entire time, I have been obscuring how much I hate who I am by meddling and caring for others, and her rejection of emotional support made me subconsciously lose who I am. But I don't want to hate myself anymore. Now that I'm alone, it's no longer feasible. I have no choice but to let go of shame, accept who I am, and place the building blocks of the life I want to have again.
It's sad I can't do this with her by my side. We used to do that, before everything fell apart. We used to do so many things together. I remembered we used to play hooky from our frustratingly difficult art class to walk around in central park. We took a hand-building pottery class once where everyone marveled at my ex's sculpture. We ate so much delicious food and drank good wine, never running out of things to talk about. Together, life was warm. I wish we could continue to build ourselves up with the support of one another. I mean, maybe we'll discuss that as a possibility when we see each other next (in a month or so), but I don't have any expectations for that. All I can do is what everyone tells me to do, what I'm terribly sick of hearing: focus on myself.