Absolute Terms & Abstract Ideas

 My friend and I could not agree on what the top five best feelings in the world are. We sat on the couch in her living room with Marrying Millions playing quietly in the background and discussed the topic for a little bit. Washing your butthole in the shower is a good one, so is peeing when you have to pee so bad you almost didn’t make it to the bathroom. Farting away a stomach ache made the list, as did orgasming (cuz duh). We consulted Reddit, we asked her roommate for guidance, but we couldn’t agree on what the last one would be. My lover said warm laundry from the dryer. Close, but no cigar. He also said a scared person grabbing you so they feel safer. Getting closer. I think the closest I got was telling someone a secret and knowing with all your heart that they will handle you with care. All solid answers, but I didn’t put them on my list. 

That same day, a friend from high school who is now a life coach and energy healer pulled a card for me that said expect miracles. I expected her to tell me what miracle was in store for me. I let my heart soar as I fantasized about my lover telling me that he’s completely head over heels in love with me and wants to be my boyfriend. My mind started to spiral into a rabbit hole of being woken up by him with hot coffee and going to bed covered in kisses. I imagined being wrapped in a blanket that would never lose its warmth, because there would always be love there. Instead, my friend offered a perspective about miracles that did not look how I wanted it to look. She explained that my entire life has been brought together by miracles. They’re happening all the time. I just need to get out of my own way and pay close attention to the ones that are happening before me. This was a disappointing answer, but one that I needed to hear. 

I get in my own way all the time. If there’s one thing that bitch named Lizzy does when she wakes up in the morning, it’s get in her own fucking way. I do it by trying to control people, places and things. I fantasize about how certain situations are going to look, and when the characters act in a way that isn’t in line with how I planned them to act, or maybe the setting looks different, or maybe the objects don’t look the way I need them to look (a painting I made that I showed to someone on Tinder before they promptly unmatched with me comes to mind), I get in my feelings about how fucking disappointing everything is and spend the rest of the day angrily hitting my vape and frowning into the abyss. I’m a very sensitive girl, in case that wasn’t obvious. I want my life to feel like a movie. Every day, I listen to FKA Twigs’ new album (obviously “tears in the club” is the first track I play) and dream of a world where I am never let down by anything, because I can control everything. My ego is god-sized, and so is the hole I’m looking to fill by imagining situations going exactly how I want them to go instead of how I need them to go. 

A perfect example of this magical thinking is the most recent conversation I had with my lover. I met him on Tinder a few months ago. I don’t know what I wanted or what I was looking for when I swiped right on him. The only reason I redownloaded the stupid app, the app that led to my relapse on cocaine back in October, is because my friend encouraged me to put myself out there. Dating is a perfectly normal, and even healthy, activity for a regular degular ass bitch who is 26. I wish, oh how I fucking wish, I approached dating the way well-adjusted, regular-degular bitches approach dating. Instead, I used the app the same way I used drugs. I swiped when I woke up in the morning, before I got in the shower, on the train on the way to run errands, when I was alone on a random ass Tuesday, before I hit the club, and when I got home from the club at 6am on a Sunday. No time of day was off limits. No person was off limits either. He looks like a fucking douchebag, my friend said one day while she watched me swipe. Perfect, I thought. He’s just my type! When the app pauses for a minute after you swipe right on someone and the screen lights up with IT’S A MATCH, I felt for a second like I had won the damn lottery. Incredible! Someone thinks I’m hot! Holy cow. I can die happy now. As it turns out, you actually have to talk to these people who match with you. Gross! No thanks. Talking with people? Couldn’t be me. 

My profile explicitly said I was looking for someone to go to raves with. I put up photos of me in my cute little club outfits to prove I’m a bitch who knows how to fucking party. I think that’s what I was looking for at the beginning, because that’s what I was looking for when I used drugs. I wanted a good time, a fucking party, a girl or a guy who could live in the fantasy world that I’ve created for myself. A world where I don’t have to work for anything, I don’t have to think about anything, I can be reckless and utterly thoughtless because nothing matters. We’re just dancing. 

“Come dance with me,” my profile said. Let’s share that and nothing more. I’m comfortable with sharing a concert experience with someone because I can control the outcome. The energy on the dance floor doesn’t last forever, and Uber prices skyrocket the longer you stay out. There’s a time stamp on the entire evening. There’s a guarantee that whatever happens on the dance floor can’t hurt you in the long run, because it’s a fantasy. I can become the hot party girl for a night, one who gets lost in a fantasy, and that fantasy can come true because anything is possible on the dance floor. If the person I came there with changes their minds, there’s plenty of other people in the club. There’s no room to be disappointed by the outcome unless the music fucking sucks. 

I swiped right on my lover because he had photos of him at festivals and shows. I thought, oh yeah! This guy FUCKS. He messaged me and said he had only been to one rave in his life (damn shame), but he had been to a lot of other shows and we talked about which ones were our favorites. I’m pretty shit about talking to people online, it just feels like a waste of time. So we went out for coffee. I slept with him that same night and after he made me cum multiple times I fell asleep while uttering the words “I think I’m falling in love with you.” Holy WOW. Tinder guy, run for the hills! All this bitch needs to fall in love is a cup of coffee and a few orgasms! She is indeed a traumatized drug addict, willing to settle for very little because for a very long time all she knew was pain. I barely remember telling him I was falling in love with him because I was half asleep, but I’m not surprised I said it. I was trying to control the outcome of the situation. If I told him I loved him, that meant we shared something special. It meant that he played a definable role in my life. It meant that he could be a part of my fantasy world where everything happens the way I want it to. 

The first week of our relationship was intense. We spent 4 days in his apartment having sex multiple times a day and talking. We talked about what we saw in each other, and what that meant to us. I remember him telling me the things he saw in me that made him nervous. He said I’m a flight risk, always looking for a way out. He said maybe I’m into him just because he’s the first guy who has ever been nice to me. I told him there wasn’t anything about him that made me nervous, and he said that made him even more nervous. I wasn’t seeing the ways that he could burst the bubble in my fantasy. I had stars in my eyes and my head was cloudy from the large amounts of serotonin and oxytocin that are released when you have multiple orgasms in a row. As we continued to hang out he tried to take things slow with me. He wanted to do things besides just have sex. He took me out to eat, and we went to the museum together. We watched Real Housewives and ate ramen. One devastating day after taking me out to eat at a tapas bar in Greenpoint he told me that he wasn’t able to offer me the relationship that I wanted right now, one with definable roles. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to extremely loud music, but I could still hear him. I just didn’t really hear him. I still wanted to hang out with him. I still wanted to have sex with him. I still felt like there was chemistry between us. All the desire was still there, all the longing. We kept hanging out, we kept fucking, we sometimes even made love. I know enough about this Tinder guy to know that as a response to the trauma he’s endured throughout his life he’s become very good at compartmentalizing situations. For him, the sex we had and the dates we went on existed in a world that was separate from his thoughts and emotions. That isn’t to say he didn’t care about me, but he wasn’t going to let himself get carried away the same way I did. 

As we continued to date, I did not compartmentalize anything. I knew that he wasn’t my boyfriend, because he told me outright that he wasn’t out here looking for a girlfriend. He didn’t need that right now. Nevertheless, I continued to try and fit him into this narrow idea of what I thought a relationship should look like, and I fell really fucking hard for that idea until it became another one of the fantasy worlds that I lived in, not so different from the one I enter when I get past security at the club. I forgot there was another person on the other side of the relationship who did not consent to being wrapped up in this fantasy because how could he? I never told him about it. He was straight forward with me about where he’s at and what he wants, but I did not offer him the same sense of clarity. I was too wrapped up in the fantasy, too focused on the ideal person I made him out to be instead of hearing where he’s really at. I told him a couple weeks ago that I value being seen more than I value being loved, and I did not see him. 

A couple nights ago we went out to dinner and then went back to my place to have sex. I told him the same thing I told him on our first date, but this time I wasn’t half asleep. I said I’m falling in love with him. He looked at me and said that’s just not where I’m at right now. This time I really heard him, I really saw him. He told me that he’s focused on getting his adult life together. He’s looking to make six figures and buy a house. He wants to have a kid someday. He isn’t looking to fall in love right now, and his ability to compartmentalize makes that possible. He’s fallen in love before, he knows what it feels like, what it looks like. I did not. I was extra sensitive about love because the last serious relationship I had been in is one where I was abused mentally and sexually. I was not in love with that person, and I wasn’t in love with the person in front of me, either. I was in love with the fantasy of the role he played in my life. My friend thinks he fucked up. I think I did him wrong just as much as he did me wrong. 

We would prefer to think of people in absolute terms. This person is a dick, so we need to stay away from them. That person is kind and caring, so they are a good person to be around. Thinking in solid, definable terms like that makes us feel safer. It’s a way of reminding ourselves and others that we can protect ourselves from being hurt if we avoid the people who are bad and surround ourselves with the ones who are good. We forget that we aren’t dealing with a world that offers guarantees. The rather unfortunate reality of human existence is that most of our daily life involves dealing with people, not abstract ideas. In a fantasy world, at least the one I live in, we would never get hurt by people because we would look past the reality of who and what they are and create our own little world for them. It’s disorienting when the bubble pops and we find out the person we built up a narrative for in our minds goes off script. Turns out, 

people, whether we deem them good or bad, can let you down. They can disappoint you. They can hurt you. Those things are unavoidable, because even the people we’re certain about can change their minds. I think of who I used to be and I certainly wouldn’t wanna know that bitch. Now, I walk into work and people say thank fucking god you’re here. We needed your energy today. I have friends that say the same shit. It always astounds me, because I forget the same cracked out bitch who used to rain misery down on every person who had the misfortune of coming into contact with her can be the same one whose presence makes someone’s day. We’re dynamic. We’re transcendent. We all have baggage, idiosyncrasies, and perspectives shaped by our pasts and what we plan for in the future. It’s scary to think of walking through the world unprotected. Protection from harm is what our snap judgments of others offer us. When we stop to think of the complexity of those around us, the world gets bigger. We can abandon our fantasies for a world of opportunities. We can live in a world where we can see past definable boxes, and see people for who they really are. Movies in black and white are mad boring. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself this. 

I don’t know what the next right move with this Tinder guy is. My sponsor says I need to spend more time with myself. She says I’m using that app and the people I meet on it as a form of escape. I do like to live in fantasies, that much is true. I have been dishonest with myself about what I want and what I’m looking for, because a lie of omission is a lie all the same. I didn’t just download Tinder to find someone to go to raves with, because I’m a pro at raving alone. I don’t know what I was looking for. I also don’t know what I’m looking for when I talk to these random ass dudes who have slid into my DMs on Instagram. Just like drugs, all of them provide me with some sort of pleasure, and all of them let me down. I guess the answer is as simple as that. My friend says my lover is a dick and I need to cut him out of my life. I don’t want to do that, either. 

Tonight, I will light three candles for the homies I’ve lost, and those are just the ones I know have passed. There could be many more, but I wouldn’t know. I have swiftly cut a lot of people out of my life, and many of them didn’t deserve it. Who knows what they’re up to now. Most of them have blocked me due to bad behavior of my own, so the only action I can take is praying for their good fortune. There are only so many prayers I can say before the person on the other end becomes another candle that needs to be lit. We don’t have infinite amounts of time. We don’t have infinite amounts of people who can become meaningful to us. We need to hold onto our people while they’re still here, and we need to hold onto them tightly. Young kids are dying from drug overdoses. People are getting stabbed in broad daylight coming out of the subway. 132 people in the U.S. commit suicide every day. It’s snowing in the Sahara and New York City is sinking. Is your protection from the world, your desire to disconnect from those who don’t meet the expectations of your fantasy worth it if the life on the other end suddenly fades to black? That’s the only black and white thinking that’s rooted in fact: life and death. There are people that need you. I need you. The version of yourself you will become in 10 years needs you. I don’t wanna shove people into a box and get mad when they don’t fit. I don’t wanna push people away when I get hurt. I don’t want to say prayers anymore and wonder if they reached who I needed them to. I want to know exactly how many candles I need to light.

Maybe that’s what number 5 on the list of best feelings is: empathy. We don’t have to forgive those who have done us wrong. I think of my ex boyfriend and the 5 years he spent sexually abusing me, manipulating me, gaslighting me, and isolating me from the opportunity to make connections with others. I don’t forgive him. I can’t forgive him. I won’t ever forgive him, because he robbed me of the experience of sharing my life with others, of making my world bigger. He narrowed down my thinking to black and white. In therapy, I labeled him as a bad guy who did really bad things. That much is true. From time to time, I still say a prayer for him. I pray because at one point I also was the villain in someone else’s story. I changed that narrative myself and became someone I love deeply, and other people love as well. I’ve told people about who I used to be and they are shocked. I can’t imagine, they say. That’s not the Lizzy I know at all, they say. Who am I to say my ex doesn’t get to have the same experience? I’m not a God. I don’t just get to make up fantasy worlds in which there’s bad guys and good guys and expect them to play their part until it’s game over. In this world of opportunities, every day gives us the chance to be better than the person we were yesterday. Eventually, we can become a completely different person than we were 5 years ago. That’s only possible if we have empathy for ourselves, for the ones we threw away, for the ones who come into our lives in the future, and for the ones who are in our lives now. Without that, the world fades to black. Expect miracles, my friend said. They happen every day. We just need to pay attention. 

I have a lot of character defects, but I’m not a fucking fool. It isn’t game over between me and this Tinder guy, not yet. Yeah, he hurt me. He really hurt me. I hurt myself more though, because I got in my own way. I got all up in my feelings about him not living up to my fantasy. I tried to control what the miracle would look like. I hope he reads this and hits my line. When he told me the other day that he isn’t looking to fall in love right now, he lit a fire that was strong enough to guide me towards reality. Now, when the time comes where I need to light a candle, I’ll light it with peace. Because we made something together that meant something. Because we lived in color. Because he made my world bigger. That’s not just what I wanted, it’s what I needed.