I don’t need a reason for what I became

I am chagrined to admit that I  forgot about this.  Forgot about who I was, who all of you were, the history I left here.  OD went quietly offline sometime after my last entry in 2013, and the fact that it barely registered as a loss speaks volumes to me now about my emotional state then, and how I have transformed since.  Truth be told, I went through a few hoops to reclaim my diary on something of a lark, not quite realizing until I logged in and began reading my past what exactly I had nearly lost: an unfiltered and full record of who I was in my 20s.  If that’s not treasure, I don’t know what is, there are some fucking JEWELS here if you look back far enough.

I am struck, now, by how unhappy and uncertain I was in my later entries.  So much of this stemmed from my relationship with Nick which was, to be perfectly honest, unhealthy in more ways than I can count.  It was my first relationship and the cognitive dissonance between believing we were perfect for each other and the lived experience of constantly second-guessing myself and my intuition was insidious and isolating.  I do not know why he stayed in as long as he did, perhaps a mix of love and his almost predatory need to have access to the emotional lives of women who are attracted to him.   I stayed for awhile out of love, for longer still out of fear of loss and being on my own again, and for longer still out of a naive hope that if I just waited long enough, we would each figure our shit out and finally live happily ever after.  We broke up for good in early 2017.  After the initial shock of my world crashing down wore off,  I found it surprisingly easy to move on with my life and enforce boundaries with Nick.  Even more surprising to me was Nick’s reaction to me holding firm on my boundaries and not engaging with his antics: he totally lost his shit, passive aggressive tactics on full display like a fireworks show on the Fourth of July.  We are, needless to say, no longer in touch (minus his occasional swipe at me somewhere online to try and get my attention).

The most painful part of breaking up with Nick turned out to be losing my relationship with his family, especially his father, who took a particular interest in me and with whom I had become close.  Time helps to lessen the intensity of these things, but I still grieve the fact that I am not likely to see him again in this lifetime.

Another surprise (to me): I’ve had a lot of really satisfying sex since early 2017, some of it with partners who stuck around for a bit, including one short-lived relationship which probably merits its own entry.  And there have been so many interpersonal adventures and so many discoveries I have made! About myself! And the world! Transformation! Transcendence! There is every possibility I never end up in a serious relationship again and die old and broke and alone in a Brooklyn apartment, but … I’m doing it without the fear that gripped me nearly the entire time I was with Nick.  Which is not nothing.

My time in the PhD program, already a background activity by the time I abandoned this space seven years ago, turned out to be more fruitful than I ever would have guessed back then.  Every academic thing blossomed right after 2013, actually.  I was so fortunate to have advisors who supported my work, to have scraped enough funding and teaching to live on after my second year, truly lucky to have passed my exams and reach ABD status before everyone else in my cohort.  And after that, so many opportunities fell into my lap at exactly the right time: a part time job at the same organization where my research began allowed me to give up teaching and focus on writing; the part time job turned into a decently-paying full time job which freed me from the unending grind of finding and submitting grant applications (and saved me in many ways post-breakup); an invitation to submit to a peer-reviewed journal spurred me to finish a chapter that otherwise would have languished for several more months; weekly co-working sessions with friends at coffee shops around Brooklyn built in some regularity and made the experience a bit less isolating. My dissertation took nearly five years all told, twice as long as it took me to get through coursework and exams, and somehow I was still the first person in my cohort to reach the finish line.   I defended my dissertation a year ago, rushed to the finish in a burst of frustration and exhaustion, walked across the stage at Lincoln Center in May.  I kept waiting for something to sink in, to feel closure, and it didn’t happen, didn’t feel real at all.  Not when I sent the finished dissertation to my committee.  Not after I passed my defense.  Not when I began baking and fucking and living again.  Not when I sweltered off a sunburn under PhD robes, nor when I picked up my diploma afterwards.  None of it felt real at all until … now…as I watch friends who have finished in the past several months react to the news that they will not get to walk across a stage with throngs of other newly-minted Doctors.

When last I wrote here, I had lost the courage of my convictions, very nearly lost my voice because of how much I wanted to believe all of Nick’s reassurances.   I write now, in 2020, having reclaimed my voice and my convictions a time or two.  I am, I think, a kinder and more empathetic person than I was then–at the very least, I am better at expressing these qualities to others.  A couple of years ago I read Anais Nin’s fiction for the first time and it was almost like reading my own inner life.  I can’t help but wonder how the contours of my life might have been different if I had read her work much earlier.  I have re-tuned to my own intuition and spirituality, walk the cities of my interior with grace and an understanding about how to hold all of the different parts of myself at once.

Last night I dreamed that my old Roommate had found me and wanted to reconnect.  Tonight is a full moon in Libra.  Tomorrow is the first night of Passover.  As I write these penultimate words an ambulance siren wails somewhere outside my window, as if I needed–right at this moment–a reminder that we’re in a pandemic now.  And somehow all of this seems like the most fitting way to return.

I have come back, and it is so good to be here.