Between the years of 2010 and 2013, I lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans, being one of the most magical, cultural, colorful, beautiful, eccentric, and fun places one can ever hope to visit, is also in my experience one of the most terrible, toxic, fucked up places one can ever be unfortunate or stupid enough to live. Granted, I may be bias based on my personal experience there; plenty of people I used to know there still live there and love it there as much as they did the first day they set foot on that swampy Louisiana soil. In contrast, though, plenty of people I used to know there have since died from drug overdoses, health problems, and murder. So I guess you could call it subjective...
Anyway, I considered those years in retrospect some of the worst and unhealthiest of my life. I was very unwell during my time there, and in January of 2013 when I finally managed to escape on a permanent basis, I was thankful to have gotten out alive and before it had caused any serious life-long issues, aside from the post-traumatic stress I took with me to intensely psychoanalyze over the course of the 5 years that followed. Attached above is a video of the PechaKucha I did a few years later after I'd had some time to dwell on and evaluate my experiences there. In said presentation, I contrasted what I considered my most vibrant, wonderful, extraordinary photos that I had taken there, with the darkness and harsh realness of my adventure there. In seven minutes and twenty two seconds, I made a good handful of grown men cry. My voice shook uncontrollably as I spoke with complete vulnerability of how I wondered if the ceiling fan would support the weight of me, while photos of beautiful girls in baby doll dresses and gorgeous men paying guitar in the sunshine showed above me. Unfortunately I was forced to cut the photo of two middle-aged men having sex in a motel room in Metairie, but even without my climactic photo, I made the desired impact with my story, one that required no embellishment or exaggeration; it was as sadly unbelievable as it was sadly real.
Why do I bring this up? Why do I allow myself to fall down the rabbit hole of the dark years and awful hardships and grotesque memories of New Orleans? Because last night, I moved my things from my quaint, colorful, shared room at the Red Victorian, to my new "home" on Haight and Stanyan, and felt for the first time since January 2013 like I was back there. Not physically there, but emotionally. Like I was back on a crummy old hotel mattress with no sheets and listening to all my roommates have sex at the same time in every other room. Like at any moment a rodent could crawl through my window or floor. Like I'd start coughing up a lung and wouldn't be able to stop or breathe for a solid hour. I moved into the room I'm to be subletting for the next two months, and realized I had just agreed and paid to live in a reincarnation of the worst period of my life. At one point in my life I may have considered it glamorous to live in a punk house, but that only lasted until I moved out of the punk house and into adulthood, where dishes and towels are clean, and there's always toilet paper on the roll, and the bed doesn't have a lingering smell of piss when you lay your head on the pillow. In the frenzy of transition, and the fear of failing my move to San Francisco a second time, I moved into a punk house on Upper Haight with 12 other roommates without a second thought of how depressed I'd be when I finally spent my first night there, and all its reminders of a person I didn't want to be anymore became a reality.
To be completely transparent, I'm scared of what parts of myself I'm sacrificing just to be here. I'm scared to tell my mom that I've picked up smoking again and that I've completely lost my appetite and often go entire days without eating. I drink through hunger, I drink through boredom, I drink through loneliness, through horniness, through fear, through drunkenness, and even through contentment. I'm scared of the fact that without my dog, I don't seem to force any kind of routine responsibility on myself. I'm scared of the fact that without any close friends nearby, I talk to anyone and everyone, which aids both in making me more social, and making me realize how many people I fucking hate. I've made myself more vulnerable in this move than I have since the day I stood up on that stage and told an audience of 100 people that I once sold my underwear on Bourbon Street for $69. And now I'm living in a womanizing douchebag's dirty room that smells of pee and feet while he moves to Portland to become another hipster who can't win the hipster contest. I cried myself to sleep last night, wishing I had my dog to hold close and cry into, while the hookah bar below my room blasted reggaeton until 2AM and the sounds of drunk roommates echoed from every corner. I tried to close the window to gain some semblance of shutting myself out from the rest of the world, only to realize the giant hole in it covered with cardboard, and its inability to close all the way without breaking more. I awoke to scuffling sounds in the hallway, only to find nothing moving outside, and wondered what kind of creature must be living inside the wall, and when it would shut the fuck up and just die there so it might mask the pee smell. I found myself knee deep in my past self, only this time I was smart enough to know that I didn't want to be there, which only made the fact that I had no choice in the matter even worse.
Anyway, I considered those years in retrospect some of the worst and unhealthiest of my life. I was very unwell during my time there, and in January of 2013 when I finally managed to escape on a permanent basis, I was thankful to have gotten out alive and before it had caused any serious life-long issues, aside from the post-traumatic stress I took with me to intensely psychoanalyze over the course of the 5 years that followed. Attached above is a video of the PechaKucha I did a few years later after I'd had some time to dwell on and evaluate my experiences there. In said presentation, I contrasted what I considered my most vibrant, wonderful, extraordinary photos that I had taken there, with the darkness and harsh realness of my adventure there. In seven minutes and twenty two seconds, I made a good handful of grown men cry. My voice shook uncontrollably as I spoke with complete vulnerability of how I wondered if the ceiling fan would support the weight of me, while photos of beautiful girls in baby doll dresses and gorgeous men paying guitar in the sunshine showed above me. Unfortunately I was forced to cut the photo of two middle-aged men having sex in a motel room in Metairie, but even without my climactic photo, I made the desired impact with my story, one that required no embellishment or exaggeration; it was as sadly unbelievable as it was sadly real.
Why do I bring this up? Why do I allow myself to fall down the rabbit hole of the dark years and awful hardships and grotesque memories of New Orleans? Because last night, I moved my things from my quaint, colorful, shared room at the Red Victorian, to my new "home" on Haight and Stanyan, and felt for the first time since January 2013 like I was back there. Not physically there, but emotionally. Like I was back on a crummy old hotel mattress with no sheets and listening to all my roommates have sex at the same time in every other room. Like at any moment a rodent could crawl through my window or floor. Like I'd start coughing up a lung and wouldn't be able to stop or breathe for a solid hour. I moved into the room I'm to be subletting for the next two months, and realized I had just agreed and paid to live in a reincarnation of the worst period of my life. At one point in my life I may have considered it glamorous to live in a punk house, but that only lasted until I moved out of the punk house and into adulthood, where dishes and towels are clean, and there's always toilet paper on the roll, and the bed doesn't have a lingering smell of piss when you lay your head on the pillow. In the frenzy of transition, and the fear of failing my move to San Francisco a second time, I moved into a punk house on Upper Haight with 12 other roommates without a second thought of how depressed I'd be when I finally spent my first night there, and all its reminders of a person I didn't want to be anymore became a reality.
To be completely transparent, I'm scared of what parts of myself I'm sacrificing just to be here. I'm scared to tell my mom that I've picked up smoking again and that I've completely lost my appetite and often go entire days without eating. I drink through hunger, I drink through boredom, I drink through loneliness, through horniness, through fear, through drunkenness, and even through contentment. I'm scared of the fact that without my dog, I don't seem to force any kind of routine responsibility on myself. I'm scared of the fact that without any close friends nearby, I talk to anyone and everyone, which aids both in making me more social, and making me realize how many people I fucking hate. I've made myself more vulnerable in this move than I have since the day I stood up on that stage and told an audience of 100 people that I once sold my underwear on Bourbon Street for $69. And now I'm living in a womanizing douchebag's dirty room that smells of pee and feet while he moves to Portland to become another hipster who can't win the hipster contest. I cried myself to sleep last night, wishing I had my dog to hold close and cry into, while the hookah bar below my room blasted reggaeton until 2AM and the sounds of drunk roommates echoed from every corner. I tried to close the window to gain some semblance of shutting myself out from the rest of the world, only to realize the giant hole in it covered with cardboard, and its inability to close all the way without breaking more. I awoke to scuffling sounds in the hallway, only to find nothing moving outside, and wondered what kind of creature must be living inside the wall, and when it would shut the fuck up and just die there so it might mask the pee smell. I found myself knee deep in my past self, only this time I was smart enough to know that I didn't want to be there, which only made the fact that I had no choice in the matter even worse.
I have to keep telling myself why I'm doing this. I have to maintain the reminders that while there is comfort in Burlington, there is no career there, and no future there. I have to keep telling myself that Robin and I have wanted to move to a city together for a long time, and we knew that in order to do so, we'd have to spend some time apart, and that the transition, no matter where we went, would be difficult and tumultuous. At least we agreed on a city that one of us already knew, so that in addition to all the anxiety and stress, I'm not also having to navigate a set of streets I've never seen before. At least I feel the entire load lift from my shoulders every time I see Graham and Sissy, even if it's only once a week. At least I have a few people already here who truly want me to be here with them. I have to remember that if something's not what I truly want, every bad situation is only temporary, and with enough time and effort, Robin and I will eventually find ourselves settling into a nice place in a nice area that we both like and can begin to call home. It might take years, but eventually, those years will end and make way to the life we want. I find it tough and slightly unfair that I have to suffer through every garbage transition and somehow find a way to make it work so that we can have this, while he is back in Vermont in the comfort of home and friends, but that isn't going to stop me from doing it.
Every day I feel like I'm teetering on the precipice of a rocky cliff, and any moment I could tip off the edge and fall into despair and failure, and it's the most anxious and afraid I've been in as long as I can remember, but somehow every day I keep doing it. I have to remember to commend myself for every single day that I've gotten through so far, rather than dwelling on all the days ahead of me that I've not yet faced. But doing so is easier said than done, and doing so without a support system, without a home that feels like home, without all the close love and companionship that I'm used to, is even harder. Many days I just want to crawl up into my mother's arms and cry until I exhaust myself and fall asleep, never to wake up to a worry again. Many days I stress over why ANY of us do this to ourselves, what the point of working ourselves to death is, and how anyone ever truly finds happiness and comfort and stability in this fucked up life we're all supposed to just deal with. Perhaps I should do what my mother does and just keep buying lottery tickets, hoping to win it big and excuse herself entirely from this capitalist nightmare. Although it's been as long as I can remember and she's still never won, so maybe it's just a farce. At this point, I'll take any delusion, just as long as it keeps me going.
Every day I feel like I'm teetering on the precipice of a rocky cliff, and any moment I could tip off the edge and fall into despair and failure, and it's the most anxious and afraid I've been in as long as I can remember, but somehow every day I keep doing it. I have to remember to commend myself for every single day that I've gotten through so far, rather than dwelling on all the days ahead of me that I've not yet faced. But doing so is easier said than done, and doing so without a support system, without a home that feels like home, without all the close love and companionship that I'm used to, is even harder. Many days I just want to crawl up into my mother's arms and cry until I exhaust myself and fall asleep, never to wake up to a worry again. Many days I stress over why ANY of us do this to ourselves, what the point of working ourselves to death is, and how anyone ever truly finds happiness and comfort and stability in this fucked up life we're all supposed to just deal with. Perhaps I should do what my mother does and just keep buying lottery tickets, hoping to win it big and excuse herself entirely from this capitalist nightmare. Although it's been as long as I can remember and she's still never won, so maybe it's just a farce. At this point, I'll take any delusion, just as long as it keeps me going.