AUGUST 30, 2017
THE GOOD THING ABOUT LIVING in LA was there was always something happening. Always a premier or a party or a celebrity at some club. LA at night was like gold in my veins. She breathed me in, taking me under her wing for the night, making me feel like I was more than average. Making my hurts feel small compared to her grandeur. With her, I stayed busy. I formed a new routine.
Edit, party, wake up hungover, and then repeat.
I made sure I took the back streets that led me around Lucas’ gallery. I formed an unhealthy obsession with checking Facebook. Hudson’s page was no longer a one-post sob story. It was full of colorful people and art and a lifestyle I didn’t fit into.
I’d become a stalker, checking often. Trying to make sure I wasn’t heading to where he was going to be. He went to this club, so I went to that one. Silas took him to this restaurant, so I went to that one. He took a picture with his new girlfriend, so I kissed that random guy. I felt like I was in Hudson’s life, only he was on the other side of the glass. I couldn’t touch him. He couldn’t see me.
But I found comfort in the fact that he was there, and he was doing well.
When my contract was up with Silas, I decided it was time to part ways. Nothing was the same between us after that night at Hudson’s debut. We barely met each other’s eyes. Although I understood why Silas felt and acted the way he did, I still couldn’t bring myself to accept it.
Too many times we made our feelings the responsibility of others. We thought—you made me happy or you made me sad. But the truth was, only ourselves made us feel those things.
Silas was mad at me because I didn’t choose him. But I didn’t make him feel that way. He chose to take the truth of my feelings for Hudson, and, instead of accepting them and moving on, he set boundaries like he was on some sort of adolescent power trip. One that Hudson and I played into, tying our hands back from what we both wanted, both for different reasons. I couldn’t be the one who caused another rift between them. Hudson would never do something that would cause him to lose his brother all over again. Invisible knots kept all three of us apart.
It was the right choice when I declined his next project and he didn’t fight me on it. We’d hit a dead-end, and it was time I moved on.
And I did.
I moved on with Jack and Johnnie, and sometimes Jim.
I’d come to realize I liked whiskey. A lot.
I liked to drink until I didn’t think about him anymore.
Oreos went to the wayside, replaced by an amber liquid that warmed up my cold, dead insides.
I also liked running. A lot.
I liked to run until the pain in my lungs dimmed the pain in my heart.
I told myself I was going through a change. Evolving. Like taste buds. An every seven-year itch. I wasn’t tied to any man. I wasn’t tied to any project. I was in the city of Angels, where dreams became reality. I was still in control, and I was happier than I’d ever been.
Until I’d catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
There were purple half moons under my eyes that had never been there before, and my gaze had a faraway, detached look to them I couldn’t decipher. I was watching hope die inside my eyes, and didn’t know how to stop it.
My heart became a battle ground, warring over the hate I held for myself and my fucked up decisions, and my defiant need to stand behind those decisions.
My mom would pop in every other night to put some kind of casserole in my fridge. She said I was getting too thin. I was whittling away. Maybe I was, because I felt like old bones buried in a grave. Hollow and broken. Hiding behind withering skin.
If this was what love felt like, I didn’t want it anymore. I needed an exorcism. A new interest.
I found it unexpectedly in yoga. I couldn’t walk two blocks in LA without passing some kind of yoga studio, and Mom wouldn’t take no for an answer when she dragged me out of bed one morning, still hungover, and forced me to go with her.
At first, I thought it was ridiculous. What good would putting my body into those awkward angles do? But it was after my third session, when I started to get the hang of it, that it clicked into place.
I found a quiet happiness inside my mind. One where no man could enter. It was just me, trying to learn to love myself. To forgive myself. To let everything go.
I realized self-sabotage had tricked me into becoming my invisible best friend. I created him when I couldn’t cope with my father’s departure. He held my hand, telling me lies about love and about men, because those lies were easier to digest at twelve years old. My mind wasn’t mature enough, hadn’t been through enough, to understand that people were people, flaws and all… even parents.
One night, I was scrolling through Facebook and decided to pull up the man who so generously gave me half my DNA. I know I’d vowed to never search for him again, but Basil’s words were that I needed to do this. I needed to let the flames of anger rise, so I could start anew. Like ripping off a band-aid, exposing the deep wound to the air. It would sting, but in order to heal, it needed to breathe.
He wasn’t at all the man I remembered. Not from the photo I saw of him a couple of years back on their anniversary. Time had taken a chisel to his bones. Chipped away until his shoulders sagged, and his skin clung to his small frame. He wasn’t holding his family together in their portraits anymore. He wasn’t the tall tree, fanning out his branches for all of us to see.
He was tired. Old. Grey around the edges.
I kept scrolling, trying to place the face in my memory to his. The deep, round eyes that seemed to be looking for something just out of his reach. The long length of a clean-shaved jaw that smelled of pepper and antiseptic. The crispness of the suits he wore. The grin that could ignite the most stubborn of hearts.
He was none of those things anymore. He was big, baggy shirts and a permanent frown. Grey fuzz along his jaw and a receding hairline.
I didn’t know this person. Maybe I never had.
How strange was it to have those memories of someone, and yet not know the person? Did he still crack jokes? When his son was upset, did he look at him like he used to with me and say, “Don’t smile. Don’t do it,” knowing it would in turn make me smile? Did he still fish? Did he still cook that alfredo recipe that made my mom and me do a happy dance every time we smelled it?
I’d never know. I’d never know, because I didn’t have the guts to ask. I was a coward. I was bitter. I was still clinging to the hurt that he had yet to find me and reach out. Why? Why did it make me feel like I was that twelve-year-old girl crying on the doorstep, begging for him to come back? Why was it so easy to leave me? Was I annoying? Did he see too much of himself in me?
I reached for a glass, but couldn’t find the will to bring it to my lips.
I thought I was past those feelings. I thought I was strong enough to take a walk down memory lane and return unscathed. How stupid was I? How naïve?
Why did I keep blaming myself when I knew better?
Because Basil was right.
I’d never quell this anger. Not until I forgave myself.