I wasn’t going to post anything today, to let the last post breathe a little and attract some readers, but I can’t turn off whatever gets me writing, so here we are. plus, I doubt i could actually say any of this without getting choked up again, so I had to write it.
I woke up this morning and went to the bodega to have a bagel. I then had my morning Newport with my black coffee and put some music on my headphones. For some reason, I was reminded of “Here’s to Us” by Elle Goulding, from its part in the finale of the HBO Lena Dunham series “Girls,” so I put it on. i have a strangely diverse taste in music. It’s a good thing I have these $3 De Niro in Casino sunglasses because I started leaking out of the eyes. I have been overpowered by strong emotions all morning, and I don’t really know how to describe what they are, so I am typing to see if I can get at what’s going on here. Hopefully, I’m not going mental.
Tomorrow, I will go to Long Island to see one of my oldest friends from high school, who I haven’t seen since I was a complete mess at the last Phish show I attended at Fenway Park in the summer of 2019. I do believe I had split my head open the day before and had a few stitches, and I was way more preoccupied with getting high than anything that Phish was playing or anyone that was there. I left the show well before the encore to chase after inhalant intoxication. I went on to have one of the worst summers of my life until, of course, the next time I would have the worst summer of my life. That’s the funny thing about addiction, and I say this all the time, but it always has a lower level to show you beyond how bad you could have possibly imagined.
Not only will I see her, she’s recently had a baby who i will meet. She’s actually done something people should really do more often before they reproduce: get her shit together. This is very much the opposite trajectory of my life. I have social anxiety about the visit, wondering what I’m going to talk about. Like “Hey, I got hit by a car in shithole Flatbush Junction.” No, I’m sure I’ll be fine. It’s just funny; I used to visit her at UVM, and a be social butterfly, standing on tables telling people to put their hands up in the air, and now I’m nervous about little social interactions with a friend I’ve known for 20 years. I don’t need to impress her; I have nothing to prove; we are family.
Anyway, I was standing at the corner of 3rd Avenue and Avenue D, listening to this song, which comes off to me as a kind of victory lap for people we have known each other for a very long time, hence the “Here’s to Us” kind of celebratory Cheers thing. I’ve had so many coming-of-age experiences with the friend that I am going to visit, those transformative adolescent experiences that you carry with you forever. Not only the formative kind of “16-year-old at a huge music festival in the middle of nowhere with 75 thousand people,” or your token “junior prom after party” type stuff. We were forcefully introduced to the whole concept of our own mortality at only 18 years of age in 2005 through the tragic loss of her brother in a car accident. When you have those kinds of experiences with someone, you can go for long periods of time without any contact, and you usually just pick right up wherever you had left off, however long ago it was. It was actually her brother who once said to me after a long time apart, “Ev, I don’t even need to see you to know that we’re friends and we just pick up where we left off.” When someone says something like that to you, you don’t forget it, especially if they leave this physical plane that we are on, in our little fragile human bodies with its little anxieties and dilemas. seriously, if we didnt have each other and of course The Grateful Dead, i don’t know how we would have managed that kind of loss at a very tender age.
“There are things you can’t avoid; you have to face them when you aren’t prepared to face them.” — Wayne Coyne, “Fight Test”
I’m not here to tell my life story right now; I’m trying to navigate these very powerful emotions so that I can move on with my day, maybe land a little job at this interview I have in a few hours. My hair looks pretty good, and I’m listening to Jay-Z.
I think this is it: I didn’t anticipate seeing anyone I care about ever again. this seems very dramatic, but i can tell you with comlplete certainty that it’s true. Last summer, I was calling the people closest to me from the worst hospital, in the worst part of Brooklyn, and telling them to just let go of any possibility that I would ever recover from the state I was in, and I had given up on myself. I meant it, one hundred percent. I went out from there hell-bent on overdosing on street fentanyl, and I did, twice in one week. It wasn’t on my bingo card to be where I am right now, in New York City of all places, getting all choked up from fairly serviceable dance-pop music from a show I really loved, despite definitely not being the target viewer demographic.
I was similarly emotional when I saw my brother and mother in January for the first time in about 4 years. I may not be actually going mental; all of this might be an appropriate response to surviving various near-death experiences. It might be an appropriate response to feeling anything at all, given I spent my entire adult life vigorously chasing the comfortable numbness of drugs and alcohol.
I know what it is: I cried tears of joy and gratitude this morning in Lower Manhattan. That’s a very beautiful thing. I had a beautiful moment with myself; it just confused me. I may not have a PlayStation 5, an investment portfolio, or any number of material things one would expect a 37-year-old to have, but look at what I do have — lifelong friendships built on the most powerful shared life experiences that life can throw at you . I have to stop now; I’m leaking onto my keyboard.
Here’s to Us
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For those who prefer to directly support my creative endeavors but aren’t comfortable with Ko-fi, I’ve created an Amazon wishlist! This way, you can help me get the tools I need to keep creating.
https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/38UI78GFY4ROR?ref_=wl_share
