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Really, I have very little—if anything—to complain about in life. I’m a straight white male originally of the upper-middleclass who lives in America in 2023 and owns property in the Bay Area. I get to work from home doing what I love: Writing and editing. I have a beautiful fiancée who I’m marrying in mid-October. I get to travel. (I just did a wild 15-day 8,000-mile cross-country and back journey via car through America; click here to read about it on my other stack.)
I am only 40 years old—the new 28—and my body works excellently. I am in good health. Though my father died a little over two months ago, and my small family is fractured and complex, I have a mother and other family members who love me wildly and would do anything to keep me safe. I have a fair number of solid friends, perhaps half a dozen of whom know more or less all my secrets—even the darkest ones—and whom I could call at 3am anytime if I needed to. I could go on and on with this list.
And yet.
Somehow, despite all of these very real privileges—though, I must admit, my skin color and gender don’t, in my opinion, really mean all that much, certainly not as much as the social class I come from—I often feel…angry, annoyed and sad.
Not depressed, mind you. Don’t get me wrong: I have definitely experienced serious depression. Last year, 2022, I went through the worst patch of it ever in my life. Back then—pre-Britney—I was lonely, spiritually, emotionally and physically exhausted from taking care of my terminally ill father, and sexually and romantically desperate. I was at one point on eight—you heard me right—online dating apps. It was a mistake and an addiction. I thumbed that thing incessantly.
As a sober alcoholic, these horrid apps had always been like that for me. And it was the same every time (well, 99.9% of the time): Messaging back and forth and then…silence. Or we met up and the woman was much larger than she’d made herself look on the app. Or else she was much older. Or else she looked absolutely nothing like her image on Tinder, Bumble, etc. Or else she was perfectly fine but the chemistry just wasn’t there. Or else I liked her but she didn’t like me. Or we just didn’t click, connect, get that feeling that’s required.
But more than the lazy self-pity I’d felt for myself a la women “not wanting me” (the way I basically framed it in my mind, as if I were some sort of victim) which I’d carried with me from New York City, where I hadn’t touched a woman for an entire year before my father’s diagnosis of Stage Four Melanoma, I felt a mix of anger, guilt, love, duty and frustration regarding the fulltime caretaking of my father. Dad and I’d always had a complex relationship. I’d only had one good “normal” year (2019) in Manhattan before Covid hit, and now this. Of course, on the ironic flipside, I’d produced a book out of the experience, about my time in NYC during the lurid pandemic. (Click here for that.)
As beautiful as Santa Barbara is—and it is beautiful—it wasn’t ultimately where I’d wanted, hoped or expected to be. I’d come there by force, more or less, knowing that if I turned down the caretaking of my father I’d regret the decision for the rest of my life. Plus: My father was an incredibly good—if confusing, mysterious and odd to me, his son—man, and he’d given me so much in my life; perhaps not emotional support or spiritual understanding, but in the practical ways, like money, he'd always been there. And I’d learned that, for him, that was how he showed his love.
Living in Santa Barbara in 2022 felt like having my face half-submerged in water at all times. I couldn’t seem to get out of my own way. I wanted…well I didn’t know exactly what I wanted. I suppose I wanted sex, of course. And attention from women. And for my father to be better. For more solitude and independence and yet simultaneously for friends. Except for one person, who I became close with, I knew nobody in town. I went to coffee shops, read, and wrote when I wasn’t caring for my father. Work had stopped coming in altogether, months prior. All I had was time and sadness. The boredom of the non-routine routine was staggering. I was in debt. Had no money. So I just sat around and whined internally. When my parents saw me I always had a scowl on my face.
Eventually I got to the point sometime in summer of 22 wherein I just let go. I’d started seeing a therapist a couple months before and she was helping. Contrary to most of the probably two dozen therapists I’d seen in various cities since getting sober in 2010, this woman actually helped me. Usually, in my experience, talk-therapists tended to help me gain new insight about my childhood and my past and my current self; helped me to grasp how I physically experienced my internal emotions in my body; helped me to cognitively understand myself in relation to other human beings; helped me to see how my trauma had informed my behavior in the current moment; etc. But really at the end of the day none of these therapists had actually done anything to truly change my life. It was all talk. Ideas. Theories. Feelings.
But this woman was different. She was no-bullshit. Direct. She gave me advice, which some therapists claim should never be done. She called me out on my bullshit. She pushed me. She helped me take actionable steps to change, to get out of my depression. (I had also been taking Prozac.) She helped me realize I had way, way too much time on my hands; I’d been getting so far inside my head I barely even existed on planet Earth anymore. The dating apps were nothing but cocaine, she said. She was right. I needed to fix my debt problem. Sometimes she hurt my feelings. I left flustered, angry, and inspired.
Before long I’d decided to start walking dogs. Editing work had slowed to a crawl starting just after Covid hit: What easier thing is there to hit the economic chopping block than paying someone $3,500 to edit your novel? I’d never in my life walked a dog…until my father got sick and suddenly I had to help walk my folks’ two 8-year-old dogs. I’d gotten used to it. Actually, I enjoyed it. I had a tuxedo cat: Animals had always been comforting to me. Safe. Unconditional lovers. Not unpredictable like humans, with their complex needs, wants and motives.
Shockingly, I was good at walking dogs. I got on the Rover dog-walking app and, within five weeks, I was making over $1,000/month. I did dog house-sits as well, and that brought me even more money. I connected with some very wealthy Santa Barbara dog-owners who love their pets and have lots of money to spend. At last, I was very slowly paying off my debt. My expenses were low. The rental income from my house I rented out in the Bay Area covered my own rent in S.B. I went from 8 online dating apps to 3, and I used those remaining ones much less frequently. I tended the one friendship I had in town. I started going to physical A.A. 12-step meetings, including a men’s group once a week, which I’d been avoiding doing for months. (I’d been doing A.A. via Zoom with my camera off, half-listening.)
My life changed. I accepted the fact that I was 39 years old, that I’d left NYC and would probably never live there again, that my dad was dying and I had a massive, incredibly lucky opportunity to help him. I accepted that I was living in a city I didn’t want to live in, and that this reality was temporary. And I accepted that I would meet a woman eventually, some day, when the time was right. Women, I’d learned, can smell desperation from a mile away, if not two. So I let go of that need. It’d happen when it was supposed to. I started meditating again, five minutes each morning. Life got busier and more joyful. I found myself smiling again for the first time in a year.
And then Britney and I met, on August 24th, 2022.
It was like the stars all aligned. I’d stopped caring about dating and women. For weeks I’d barely checked the apps. I was busy walking dogs, caring for Dad, doing in-town local A.A. meetings, writing. She and I met at Carlitos, a Mexican restaurant on State Street downtown. The second I saw her I thought: Wow; she’s beautiful. In truth she was rare: She looked even better than her online photos.
We ended up talking for three hours straight—our eyes never moving from each other’s—and we never even got close to running out of things to say. We covered all the topics we could think of from politics to alcoholism to music to cities to animals and more. My whole body vibrated with chemistry and desire. It wasn’t purely sexual, though certainly there was that. It was also much deeper. Something borderline cosmic; spiritual. We talked so long we were basically kicked out of the place. They were closing. Laughing, I walked her to her car across the street in the closed Chase parking lot. We ogled each other, awkwardly, both giggling dumbly. We almost kissed. We didn’t. But that was the beginning of everything.
*
And yet here I am, now, on August 12th, two weeks before our one-year anniversary, living together, preparing for our marriage ceremony in October, and I’m happy—more than happy—and in love, and yet, somehow, someway, there’s still that lingering…thing. Loneliness. Boredom. Sadness.
I think I’m just one of “those people.” One of those freakish artist-types. The guy who is never fully satisfied, no matter what. We have so much to look forward to: Marriage; Morrocco; wedding reception; Japan next June; moving to Chicago (the new plan). And still: There’s that madman wild part of me that thinks, I wish I were one of those international-traveling journalists who go to Vietnam and Thailand and Brazil and Paris and Russia and are always going, going going. I want excitement, adventure, thrill.
But it’s funny, ironic, isn’t it? I just got back from a 15-day 8,000-mile epic journey. We’re going to Africa in October. We’re moving to Chicago next year. There’s even Japan. It’s not like my life is actually slow, boring, dull, average.
And the deeper truth: I don’t truly, actually want to travel constantly like that, always heading to some remote place around the globe. (Well, honestly I would love to travel around the world for a year, or to go places here and there more frequently than now, and I would like us to live for a year or two abroad some day.) I actually do like the dreaded “routine.” To a degree. I am actually a creature of habit. Ask Britney: She’ll tell you. Reading and Irish Breakfast tea in the morning. Writing. Walking the dog. Exercise. Repeat. Etc.
I think what it comes down to is a few things:
1. I just don’t do “Real Life” all that well.
2. I come from privilege and expect too much from Reality
3. I am afraid of nothing in this life more than the “horror” of “being ordinary”
4. I have a very strong sense of self and very strong imagination
5. I want to have my cake and eat it too (I want everything all at once all the time)
6. I genuinely, deep down inside, truly do think I’m both “special” and “different” and yet I simultaneously know I’m not (As they say in A.A.: I’m different…just like everybody else)
7. I am probably too angry, too sensitive, too needy for this world…and yet I must somehow live within it
8. I crave both wild adventure and total freedom…and yet routine, dependence and safety
So. Yeah. I’m a complex bag of psychological worms. What can I say. It is what it is. Bless Britney for being with me, for suffering through the trenches of ME. That said: She has her own stuff. We all do. Human beings are torrid, fascinating creatures. I forget sometimes—possibly purposefully—that I am an addict, deep thinker and contrarian. That does not make for an easy existence. But humans of all variations are nuanced and layered and complex.
Are we not?
Interesting and soul-bearing stuff, Michael. You speak right to the heart of the human condition circa 2023 -- we can have everything and still feel that there's something missing. You are not alone or unique in your suffering, luckily. Good luck finding your way through the dark!