The Year of the Unicorn - Lesson 3: Reach Out

Before the rest of my guests arrived for the unicorn-themed party I threw for myself last weekend, two of my closest friends appeared at my door to help me prep and to present me with a few hostess gifts. One of the boxes contained a festive trio of spices. While I inspected them, my friends explained their purpose with the affectionate bluntness that only a pair of Scorpios can offer.

“So you can start cooking real meals for yourself again,” said one.

“You ate frozen pizza three times last week,” said the other.

I’m sure I turned several colors as I mumbled a thank you and set the box down on my counter. It went without saying that I’d devoured each flat, cardboardy pizza in entirety on three separate days, leaving no leftovers and considering that and my breakfast Slim-Fast shakes to be sufficient for my daily nutrition. I wanted to protest and explain that I did occasionally cook for myself, but they’d already seen the contents of my fridge: multiple rows of condiments, a drawer of sliced cheddar, and several half-empty bottles of alcohol.

The truth is, I’ve only truly cooked when I’ve had company in the past three months. Otherwise, I’ve been falling back on my old bachelor habit of relying on frozen food and raw carrots for almost every meal.

And that’s not the only habit that’s been returning now that I’m solo again. Now that my free time is entirely my own, there’s nothing to stop me from staying up all night obsessively editing my latest drafts, or wasting entire Sunday afternoons binge-watching The Tick on Amazon. I can indulge in all the things that would drive a companion crazy, like alternating watching five minutes of a movie with reading five pages of my homework, or sing-narrating my entire laundry process. With no one to break up the routine, I repeat the same schedule every day, like an NPC in the blandest open world video game you’ve ever played. I may shake things up for a weekend adventure (usually prompted by someone else), but otherwise, I stay on my little track, blurring time via repetition.

In short, I’m functional but a bit off-kilter, like an abandoned robot trying to make meaning out of obsolete processes. Which sounds kinda sad now that I’ve typed it out, but it’s also the plot of Wall-E, so it’s probably fine.

Source

For the most part, I enjoy the solitude and control of having space and time to myself. I’m not prone to loneliness and I excel at entertaining myself. As a kid, I imagined adulthood very much like this: solitary but not sad. Lord of my own private castle, attended by a small fleet of animal companions. Things could be much worse.

But then there are nights that are too cold and silent for me to find healing in. I fill my home with music and podcasts so I don’t have to endure the emptiness of those evenings, but that’s the emotional equivalent of putting a band-aid over the stub of a missing finger.

Luckily, I learned this lesson some time ago and have been deliberately applying it now:

Reach Out

It took me a long, long time to wrap my head around this one, despite a lifetime of supportive friends/family members and a massive archive of research that supports how emotionally, psychologically, and physically vital it is to nurture social bonds.

I’ve talked about this a lot: I’m an anxious little goblin. I’m irreconcilably weird. I am neurologically impaired when it comes to facial recognition. My brain has a lot going on it in that makes socializing uncomfortable, but I’ve worked hard to address my insecurities and forgive myself for my inevitable blunders.

I am so, so grateful that my hard work allowed me to reach out after my divorce and that I had so many people willing to listen to me and help.

Even though I shut a lot of those people out during my marriage’s decline.

I screwed up. I got scared and doubled down on my most intimate, most legally and emotionally committed relationship. I didn’t want to embarrass Kelsey (or myself) by talking to “outsiders” about what was going wrong, what was hurting me. I didn’t want to burden anyone with my suffering. I didn’t want to hear the people I loved telling me that my efforts to reanimate a dead relationship by conducting electricity through my own body like a mad scientist from a 1940s horror flick were futile and foolish.

This, of course, made it all the more traumatic when the actual separation occurred with the suddenness and shock of a beheading, my head cleaved from my shoulders with altogether too much ease, like the act of discarding me was as effortless as passing a knife through warm butter. It felt like all the love and trust I thought I’d been pouring into our marriage had been sucked through a black hole instead, leaving me hollow-chested and headless in my empty house.

(How embarrassing.)

Fortunate, then, that rather than mounting a red-eyed steed and haunting Sleepy Hollow in search of vengeance, I corrected my mistake of self-isolation and reached back out to my loved ones.

Our relationships are shields. Our true friendships are mystical healing pods (you know, like in Voltron). There is so much power in the simple act of listening to and understanding another human being. That’s why reaching out is such potent medicine.

I’m not always good at taking my medicine. As much as I’m working to accept myself, warts and all, I still fear making a fool of myself in front of others. But it’s not fair to leave all the work of reaching out to my friends. I have to remind myself to text first sometimes, or follow up on a situation one of my besties is going through, or schedule the next session for my D&D campaign, even when I’m scared of being a crappy DM.

Which is part of why I threw a goofy party for myself last week, despite my anxiety. I wanted to reach out and put some sunshine back into my life and (hopefully) the lives of my friends. We decorated unicorn headbands, ate unspeakable quantities of snacks, and played dumb games together for a few hours. It was nice. I want to throw more events like that, random excuses to get the gang together (a daunting task for all us busy adults).

I’m grateful for everyone who has responded to my attempts to connect. Whether by cheering me up with nonsensical memes or including me on random excursions or checking in to make sure I’m eating vegetables, I know I have a wonderful band of people looking out for me.

My heart is still broken. I don’t know if I still have access to the depths of love and trust that I used to take for granted within myself. But in order to keep finding wonder in the world, I have to keep reaching. So I’ll continue trying my best, connecting to the people I love, and cooking meals for myself again, maybe even with vegetables.

A Heavy-Hearted Announcement

One year ago, I wrote about my Anti-Death Spray: my reasons to stay alive and joyful. The list started with my wife’s name. Today, after months of agony and resistance, I removed her from my list.

Kelsey and I are divorcing. Even now, after everything we went through to come to this immensely sorrowful decision, I find myself rereading those words in disbelief. I don’t want this to be happening. I stand by my vows to her, that I love her with a love bigger than myself. I feel eviscerated by this change.

I’m sure many of you who know me personally are shocked by this announcement. I get it. Hell, I’m shocked too. I could never have foreseen this outcome. But that’s what everyone in this situation says, huh?

I won’t get into the details here. There’s an angry and wounded voice in my heart that wants to heard, but letting that voice out to rage helps no one.

What does help is updating my list of happy things to keep living for.

I still love Kelsey, but she can’t be at the top of my list anymore.

She’s not the only part of my list that’s changed, though. Life is change. Over the past year I’ve found many new treasures to cherish. New video games and new music. New recipes and new restaurants. New friends and new adventures. I’ve learned to appreciate an assortment of experiences that would never have made my list last April and I’m grateful for that.

Instead of asking me about this enormously difficult moment in my life, I encourage you to review your own list of loves. What has changed in your world? What new joys await you?

I may be quiet for a while as I process this lifestyle shift, but I’m still Abi, I still know who I am and what I want, and I still have happiness somewhere on my horizon.

As do you.

Anti-Death Spray

Recently, as I was avoiding chores by digging through my laptop's archive of fanfic- UH I MEAN my totally legit unfinished pieces of fiction, I came across a document with a weird title: Anti-Death Spray. I didn't recognize it, but the date stamp claimed I edited it in 2017. 

My arms got kinda tingly. At last, my life was taking on the elements of a psychological horror anime, just as I'd always dreamed.

As soon as I opened it up, however, I remembered it.

At the top of the page, instead of "Anti-Death Spray" followed by the unraveled mysteries of the universe typed in Wingdings font, was this phrase:

"Things I love:"

Followed by a 42-item list.

The 42 things I love fit on one single-spaced page. The list starts with the blessed givens: Kelsey, my family, my friends. My dogs. Corn dogs. The big, obvious, right-out-the-gate things that I cherish. 

Then it gets a little funkier, and smaller.

Pokémon. Cool jackets. Sitting around a fire. Being the big spoon.

When I say funkier and smaller, I mean it. The last item on my list is "Diet Coke paired with cheddar cheese." Which is silly, and debatable (if you want to debate it, though, be ready to catch these hands first). Putting cheese and low-calorie cola on a list of beloved things seems like kind of a stretch.

But I remember when I first had that thought, back in high school. Yes, specifically this thought: "Heck, this block of cheese that I'm consuming as if it were an apple (not that it matters to my impervious 16-year-old digestive system) pairs very nicely with this Diet Coke."

I was stressed out at the time. I know this because I have been continuously stressed out since I was a zygote, and have cycled through various degrees of denial for the subsequent 27 years. The cheese and soda snack was fueling a study session for my upcoming finals. Rather than absorbing information, my brain was preoccupied with forecasting my inevitable, world-shattering demise. It told me I was going to fail my tests, and never go to college, and never get a job, and rain shame upon my family. And that all sounded reasonable to me, so I didn't question it. (Believe it or not, I got even worse at handling anxiety from there, to the extent that in the worst throes of my adulthood anxiety, I didn't consider my problematic teenage thought-patterns to be anxiety at all. But you already knew that, because I post about my mental health circus about once a month, partially because I want to normalize conversations about mental illness, and partially because of my compulsion to overshare on the internet.)

Anyway, high school me with the flawless internal organs of a god, eating a slab of sharp cheddar and sipping Diet Coke from a can. The savory tang of the cheese balanced by the mellowed, false sweetness of the carbonated drink. I told myself that there would be a time that I could have this snack again after the tests, whether or not I passed them. There were still things in the world to enjoy.

I passed my exams. After all, I'm a neurotic overachiever who had a dissociative meltdown the one time I got a B in college (and it was in Drawing 101. DRAWING ONE OH ONE.)

Things have improved tremendously for my head in recent years, but every so often, my defenses are breached. During one of those times, I wrote my list of things I enjoy and will enjoy again, like the company of my spouse, and the smell of a bonfire. 

And, like a total weirdo, I named that list "Anti-Death Spray" and trolled my future self into thinking I was in the plot of a gritty magic-realism video game.

There is a lot to be afraid of today. There are many opportunities to feel worthless. But there are also camping trips with your friends, and used bookstores, and really cool candles. Maybe there's pain ahead, but someday, you'll have your cheddar cheese and Diet Coke again. 

In the style of my favorite 90s public television Science Guy: "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a love list to add to."