The Sea Comes Ashore
The life, death and rebirth of John Gorman.
I was on a train. November 16, 2017. 8 a.m. local time. Typing on this very laptop, crafting a story about the toys from my youth. That’s when, at age 35, I first saw the Pacific Ocean with my own eyes. There were surfers — the chiseled, sun-kissed gods and goddesses I’d only once imagined, or watched on The O.C. — chasing the waves with boards in tow. I did what anyone would do to mark the occasion in modern-day America, I snapped 36 smartphone pics in the hopes I’d find the one perfect shot worth uploading to Instagram. None were remarkable. This one sufficed.
I’m in motion, on the Pacific Sunliner track just north of San Diego, half hungover from a late night spent downing dangerously delicious drinks at a Tiki speakeasy, headed toward Los Angeles to meet two dear old friends for four days of fun, soaking up the Southern California sun. The trip is part of a now annual tradition, where the three of us gather in a destination city of our choosing, building a long weekend around a Buffalo Bills road game, in a futile quest to one day watch them win. I’ve been to 22 since 1992. They’ve lost every single one of them. They lost this one, too.
But, first, the ocean. It’s a quirky curiosity that I’d gone so long without ever seeing it. I’d been to Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles all before, yet had never ventured those last few precious miles all the way to the coast. And whenever I’d try to schedule a trip out to where meeting the sea was an absolute certainty, something cataclysmic would derail my venture — a firing here, a DWI arrest there, or a first decade of adulthood spent damn near destitute and one misstep away from being cast out onto the street. In fact, that one misstep happened once. I spent the Summer of 2012 jobless, penniless and somewhat homeless, camping out in a rental car as I started a new job, the job that would one day catapult me from poverty into the upper-middle class in less than five years, from drowning in payday loans to a six-figure net worth, from Top Ramen to top-shelf tequila. It all happened so fast, it was hard to make sense of it, or internalize it, or make peace with my rise meet my life at its apex. That zenith is where our story starts … but to begin, we need to go back to the other coast, and flash back 19 months, now 106 weeks ago to the day, to when I with someone, and was someone, entirely different.
I. Miami, April 2016
“I had it all. And I had that confused with having it all figured out.”
I’d never been to Miami before. It was the second-to-last city in the United States I’d wanted to see. I was six months deep into a flourishing relationship with my adventure partner, a whip-smart devil in a black dress equal parts Martha Stewart and Lara Croft. “Transatlanticism” played in the rental car, as we sauntered through South Beach with the windows rolled down. It was late afternoon, and a light sunshower sprinkled on the windshield. I was, for the moment, finally at peace.
I’d spent the vast majority of the preceding 42 months trying to prove I was worth something, anything. After building myself up from where I’d been — panhandling for food at age 29 just to survive my first few weeks before my first paycheck, half of which would go straight to payday loan-sharks — I’d finally had the chance to take a trip with my new boo.
I’d worked my way up from the lowest rung at my job to crawl my way out of over $50,000 in debt, rehabilitated myself after undergoing shoulder reconstruction well enough to start rock climbing and run half-marathons, moved out of my old apartment and into my new condo, and established a Swiss Army Knife of a side-career as a singer-songwriter, a freelance columnist, and a branding mercenary.
I’d lost 44 pounds, dated around, and gradually accumulated an eclectic social circle of bartenders, musicians, working professionals and quirky degenerates I found entertaining. And, now, I had finally found love. The kind of love that keeps you awake at night, laughing and crying tears of euphoria. The kind of love that melts you the way it did as a teenager, and softens you with the easy maturity of knowing better at 33.The kind of love that leaves you breathless, wordless and reckless. By the time we’d reached the East Coast at the only point I’d never seen it before, I was an ecstatic fireball.
I watched her dresses and hair blow dutifully in the tropical breeze. She gazed at me with the wild wonder of a young child perpetually unwrapping the biggest box on Christmas.
“You make me so happy,” she confessed to me on a bridge where we stopped to take the second of just four pictures we’d ever appear in together. And she smiled from ear to ear. I had no worthwhile reply. My brain had short-circuited and zapped me clear of sentences.
We biked from our hotel down to the Art Deco District. I can’t remember if I followed her or she followed me. And when we ended up amongst the departing cruise ships and EDM-bro day-drinkers, we disembarked and meandered our way to the pier. Her hand in mine. My blood like running Christmas lights. I could feel her heartbeat through her hand, and could feel my own in my throat.
We stared off into the endless Atlantic at Miami’s southern point, the only thing separating us from the end of the world just the comfort of each other’s company. We staggered to find words for each other as we dined upon bone marrow, sea urchin, oysters and soft-shell crab. We sipped on craft cocktail after craft cocktail at hidden gems and dimly-lit lounges. We made love in the afternoon and chased infinity through the morning light. We took free shots of rum at a Haitian dive with impossibly great food. We watched the old Cuban men throw dominoes in a bar next to a laundromat. We danced to reggae at a blacked-out underground club. We walked under the endless sun and kissed as it breathed its last sigh over the endless blue of the horizon.
Yes, Atlantic Monthly, you can have it all. I had it all. And I had that confused with having it all figured out. I felt a tinge of fraudulence burble up to the surface. Had I earned this? Did I deserve it? How could someone like me possibly have everything I could possibly imagine, after so many years of being nothing? I tried to put the doubt back into its proper box, but it was a bit more like trying to sweep milk back into its carton. The sensation cemented itself in the dark recesses of my mind, and would spend the next few months unfurling its tentacles in all corners of my cranium. By the time I returned to Miami, in October 2016 to watch a Buffalo Bills game with my two friends I met in L.A., I would be engulfed in total darkness.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the 42-month bull market came to a slow crawl on that beach, and would then come to a screeching halt. By the following month, my girlfriend and I would have our first fight. By July, I’d be in a larger, more public fight, with the entire Internet.
II. Twitter, July 2016
“Falls from grace are never graceful. This was a belly-flop over Niagara Falls onto the rocks below.”
The tweets were taken down after a mere two hours, but not before they were taken out of context, and not before I was taken to task for being the kind of over-emotive idiot that I can be in my darkest of days, when I’m downing two bottles of champagne per night and hiding bottles behind the garbage can so my girlfriend can’t find them. (Spoiler: She did.)
I can’t recall what was said: only something-something Dallas shooter, something-something righteous anger, something-something I understand why. I’ve tried to black that out from my memory, and have made no attempt to re-read what I’d written.
One thing I cannot un-remember was the sheer volume of notifications unspooling on my timeline. I, quite stupidly, had my jobs in my Twitter bio. I, quite stupidly, didn’t realize the kind of firestorm I’d waded into. Falls from grace are never graceful, this was a belly-flop over Niagara Falls onto the rocks below.
By the time I’d mentioned it to my boss, she already knew. By the time I’d taken down the tweets, I’d been roasted by Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter. By the time I played a set at a local microbrewery that evening, death threats were being called in. By the time the sun rose the following day, the Internet had largely moved on, but I hadn’t. I had to sit with it. I had to live with it. And what was, at first, a gentle decline into morose feelings of unworthiness had detonated into a mushroom cloud of inward-directed rage and sorrow, the kind that irrevocably damaged my relationship with my girlfriend, irreversibly napalmed my mood, and irreparably ruined my reputation at work and in life. My boss asked me if I was okay, like, mentally. I lost real-life friends. Maybe by now they’ve forgotten. But I hadn’t.
I went another year without writing a damn thing about sports at all. I’m still not yet sure if I’m cleared to write for another real-life publication that isn’t Medium. And so I retreated to writing about music, away from the harsh glow of hot-take reactionaries and Republican firebrands, and I further isolated myself in a growing darkness that was only truly just beginning. If Miami was the golden hour, then this was the sunset, and what was coming would be the longest night I’d ever faced. And in the crisp cool of another corner of the world, I could feel the sun setting over the Pacific Northwest.
III. Cascadia, August 2016
“Although I can say I never enjoyed a city more, I can also say I never enjoyed myself less.”
In a caption to a Facebook photo of the two of us, I told the world, “I’ve traveled with this woman to both ends of this great country, and I would follow her to the ends of the Earth,” but the faster I’d run to catch up with her, the farther she’d run away.
Seattle and Portland were the last two places in the United States left for me to visit. We went together — I with the expectation it would be just like Miami. From the moment we touched down, I instantly fell in love with Seattle. It was bustling, welcoming, beautiful and just the right amount of weird. Although I can say I never enjoyed a city more, I can also say I never enjoyed myself less.
My recollection of the trip is that of a boozy, food-y escapade through the Pacific Northwest, with bartenders mixing libations with beakers and torches, and sushi as fresh as the crisp, maple and seawater-infused air. The glass skyline shaded us. The museums enraptured us. But, as for each other, we didn’t talk much, except on a three-hour car-ride from Portland to Seattle, where I probed a bit too deep about the tragic awfulness of future dystopia that awaited the United States after election night, and she heatedly berated me for talking to her without showing any discernible signs of empathy, curiosity or humility. By the time we boarded a plane back to Austin, we were barely speaking. I could feel her slipping away from me, and my inclination was to try harder, to try and be better, to try and be more worthy of love. Perhaps if I could be someone that she could be proud of, then that could smooth things over: I could take up two-stepping, or learn how to build things, or develop new talents and layers of complexity, dress better, become more edgy and mysterious, or become more physically fit. Anything to prove I could be a man you could keep around as an adventure partner.
The faster I ran, the farther she’d run. And so when I decided to run as far as I ever could, I wanted her to be there with me. I had a marathon in just over three months, and there was no face I wanted to see more as I crossed the finish line in triumph. Perhaps it would be her face that would light up the darkness I now found myself encircled by. How far would I run to outrun my demons? As it turned out, 26.2 miles could never be far enough.
IV. Walt Disney World, January 2017
“I thought I would feel this extraordinary euphoria of having done something magnificent, something I never thought possible, and something most people never do. That moment never materialized.”
For a great many years — seven to be exact — I would do the same thing on my birthday. For every year older I would become, I’d write down a corresponding number of goals I wished to achieve. For the year I turned 35, I wrote down 35 things I wanted to check off.
On January 8, 2017, I conquered one of the big dragons on the list, which was to “Run A Marathon.” My history with running is checkered, as I am not an athlete and my lungs work like a late-model Yugo. But I did do it, and it was awesome, but not for the reasons you would think.
I did it at Disney World, because it’s flat and easy (by marathon standards), and I could stay with my mom to avoid the exorbitant hotel costs. My girlfriend joined me that weekend. I thought this could be a coronation of sorts, a victory lap, and a giant middle finger to my lungs and to my depression. I don’t recall any of these things being true.
What I did take mental inventory of was the feeling I got along the course. I loaded my Spotify with a 6-hour playlist of my favorite songs, and just vibed. Bright sunshine lit my face. I texted my dad along the way. I was completely at peace. There was nothing to think of except the road in front of me. Concern over money, my future, my relationships, my hashtag-legacy all vanished. And I was the most “me” I’d ever been.
At the halfway point, I stopped and high-fived other runners behind me. The bliss of being one with the road, of just doing something I loved to do in a way I never dreamed of, was overwhelming. I enjoyed every step, and when I saw that finish line, I perked up and ended strong.
I anticipated the fever dream of reaching the finish line, falling down exasperated, with my loved ones there to congratulate me, and I thought I would feel this extraordinary euphoria of having done something magnificent, something I never thought possible, and something most people never do. That moment never materialized. In fact, after I’d finished, I was mostly just done. Another check-mark in a box next to a goal. Another 100-like Instagram post. As you can see, I smiled with my medals on, but my adventure partner and I were very clearly not equally as excited about my new hardware. Those medals are now tucked away in a closet. The marathon — the medals — they still were not enough.
“You’re just like your mother,” she told me later, becoming the first human on Earth ever to tell me that. I was perturbed by this. My mother is a fine person, and also one who has a Ph.D. in guilt-tripping, and is overly affectionate, and tries way too hard, and is way too extra, and invests too much of her self-worth in whether or not other people love her.
“Oh,” I thought to myself, as I sat on the balcony smoking a cigarette after downing a bottle of champagne at 3 p.m. on a Sunday, a mere hour after she’d packed four bags of her things and silently slipped away, never to return except one time, five days later, to remove the rest of her things and drop off her key while I was at work. “That’s what she meant by that.”
V. New York, April 2017
“This would finally be when I re-entered the atmosphere, and re-emerged from the depths of depression: I was sure of it.”
“Sounds like you need a weekend in the city,” my friend — one of the two who travels with me to Buffalo Bills games — said to me after I broke the news of my breakup to our group text. Did I ever. On April 1, 2017, I booked a flight to New York for two weeks out — one of five flights I booked for that year with my bonus check from my job. I hadn’t been to the city since 2010, since before I had moved from Buffalo to Austin. This would finally be when I re-entered the atmosphere, and re-emerged from the depths of depression: I was sure of it.
We went to an arcade bar and played NBA Jam. We blasted Kendrick Lamar’s just-released “Damn” as often as humanly possible. We made small talk with a particularly enjoyable and amiable bartender at the Crocodile Lounge in the West Village. We met our other friend for a Yankee game. We drank some of the most delicious beer I could ever recall. We ate pizza. We spent a night at a Jazz speakeasy in Harlem. We met a friend from college for late night drinks in Astoria. We went for a walk in a park and ate bagels with lox. It was all so perfect. I was drunk for damn near all of it. And when I bid him adieu to catch a flight, I did so a touch bit early, to embark upon one of my trademark whirlwind mad-dashes to see everyone, as weirdly and hypermaximally as possible.
I met a friend I’d only known from the Internet for beers at a beer garden, then scuttled off to a Matinee showing of Waitress with an ex. Then met another ex I hadn’t seen in 15 years in Brooklyn for tapas. And here’s what I want to zoom in on.
She was the ex I left my high school sweetheart for, the high school sweetheart who I was convinced would be the “one.” That started a chain reaction of decisions that, whenever I was presented with a clear path to a normal life in front of me, or a rockier path to a weird life down some side-street, I always chose the latter.
She looked good. A little older, the years had been hard but kind, and she still had the same deep gaze and genuine empathy that drew me to her in the first place. We slammed several vodkas to avoid overthinking about just what the hell we were doing there, or what the hell we were going to talk about, or how we were going to talk about it. We moved some charcuterie around without ever really trying to eat it. Toward the end of our summit, I thanked her. She asked me why.
I ran back the years between 2002 and 2017 in my head. We aggressively kissed goodbye at the table like I was going off to prison, or to war. And then I grabbed the check, stumbled into my Uber, and boarded a flight at JFK to come back to Austin. I drank more gin on the plane, and awkwardly flirted with the gal sitting next to me. We drank more gin and made out on the plane. She came home with me, and was gone before I woke up — which was just as well. After all, I had to get to work by 9 a.m. Back at the office. Back on that grind. Back to normal. Back to gambling away his life by hitting on infinity even though 21 would’ve won, and 17 would suffice. Just a man, surrounded by demons, betting against them and losing, long after the pit boss told me I should probably leave.
VI. Chicago, May 2017
“That’s the thing with chasing ghosts. You have to be dead to be fully present with them.”
I had initially booked the trip to run a 10-mile race that weekend. But I, too afraid to take too much time off work, decided to shorten the trip so I only really needed to take off one full day of work. A Wednesday, of all days — and one I’d willingly work remotely from a variety of favorite Windy City establishments.
I was staying with an old friend, one I hadn’t seen since 2005, and only barely talked to since then. She was the type of gal I used to blow coke and make out with in the restaurant office, long after we’d cleaned up the bar and all the other employees left for the night. We saw the sunrise together. We were 22. She was also my manager, and she fired me once after she went to work one morning, forgot I was sleeping at her place, failed to wake me or bring me along with her, and considered me a no-call, no-show.
I wondered how it would be, to be reunited with someone I was once close with, then radio silent, and then suddenly face-to-face with again. I only needed to look to New York for answers. Though this was not quite that.
I woke up Wednesday morning and trucked off to a doughnut shop, then to Lou Malnati’s for deep dish, then to a Starbucks, then to a bar I once had brunch in back in October 2009, while watching the Bills beat the Jets in overtime, and in between sex with a woman I met randomly through other Internet friends. I tried to overwrite the memories. It only mildly worked.
That evening, I returned to her place, and we trucked off to Wrigleyville for a Cubs game. We went to a bar before the game, met two of her friends, took an Uber to Wrigley Field, took up residence in the bleachers, sat for two hours in a blinding rainstorm, then trucked off to a Lincoln Park bar for more drinks together. I made small talk with her brother, who I knew from my distant past. I’d been spending the previous six weeks chasing ghosts, and now I was surrounded by them. That’s the thing with chasing ghosts. You have to be dead to be fully present with them. In the darkness, it nearly happened. I was as close to dead as ever — a drunken, depressed mess of my own making, trying anything to feel something.
I had an amazing time, and, again, made enough memories to fill a small shopping cart. She was a gracious host, a gifted communicator, and every bit the warm and fiery woman I knew all those years ago. But as I boarded the plane on the return flight home, I felt as though I’d reopened a box that didn’t need reopening. An overnight in Chicago was fun, sure, but was it necessary? Was it enough? I could not be sure. I was lost in a spool of my own clouded thoughts. And so I went next to the place everyone goes when they’re lost: I went to the desert. There, I would find out just how lost I could really be.
VII. Phoenix, July 2017
“I always say I will change, or am changing, but people do not change — they merely drift.”
“Tell you what,” I said to one of my very best friends and one of my favorite people, “if you want to go see Kendrick Lamar July 12, I’ll gladly go with you.” And with that, I booked concert tickets and a flight to Phoenix to see K-Dot open the Damn tour at the Gila River Center. But first, I had someone else to visit, someone from deep within my past like the gal in Chicago was, on a day so surreal it was actually 10:15 a.m. twice.
I remember she picked me up from SkyHarbor airport, all frazzled and fraught from event planning and being a mom and a housewife, and she drove me out to her prefab ranch in Mesa. She was still as beautiful as she was when we hooked up all those years ago, back in 2004, back before I drove her from Buffalo to JFK airport, high on the cocaine Chicago gal and I were doing, and rushing to race her out of town and onto a plane to Phoenix before her physically abusive ex could find her, after which I’d drive up to Connecticut to visit my ex, the one who I saw earlier in the year in New York. Yes, this where the stories begin to connect. This is where it all begins to make sense — or stop making sense, depending on how you choose to see it.
We went to her house, where I was greeted by five cats, a sink full of dishes that doubled as an ashtray, and her live-in boyfriend, the father of her six year-old daughter. This is where we pick up the story of the gal who moved to Phoenix some 12 years later. The story of that gal being the first thing I ever wrote publicly, on a Live Journal, buried somewhere within the bowels of the Internet, called “No Escape.” Fitting.
We made small talk for a few hours before I was transported by her man, sans her, to my hotel in Downtown Phoenix. There, I would catch an Uber to Glendale, to meet my other friend for drinks. She arrived all boundless energy and striking wit, and caught up over a couple cocktails before we meandered across the street to the arena. We had a blast, bopping along, rapping along, me obnoxiously high-fiving everyone within range. Strangers passed us blunts. We had an uproarious time. We met her friends for more drinks and bites at a nearby restaurant, and then we retired to our respective dwellings.
The following day, we met up again, this time for pizza, and to visit the Frida Kahlo exhibit at a museum, and then later for coffee, and then drinks at a downtown speakeasy. We played darts. We listened to Velvet Underground and Television. We changed the game Taboo into a game of Turnover — a game I pillaged from a TV show I watch, where we put a card with a word on it on our forehead and we give each other clues in the hopes that the other could guess the word on the card. We were having a good time … and then we weren’t.
We went to In-N-Out and she said she would go to the parking lot. I asked her if she wanted anything. She said no. When I got my food, she was getting into her car, and told me to grab an Uber to my hotel. I was baffled. I was crushed. And then, like I had done with my girlfriend all that time earlier, and the way my mom often does, I leaned in, thinking I hadn’t done enough. I thought wrong.
I spent the following evening with my other friend again, and we went out for pizza, and it was delicious, and her baby-daddy did all the talking, existing in his own reality, ordering for her and such, and I thought the entire time that I was, perhaps, existing as an accessory. After dinner, I went back to the hotel, promptly drank as many drinks as possible. When I got back to my room, I penned this:
I’ve spent the past 90 days tearing myself apart, trying to find the innermost essence of my being, wondering who I really am, and where I have left to go. I’ve been pushing myself, simultaneously, to the farthest reaches of what I am capable of, living with an acute reckless abandon for good taste and good sense. This sub-chapter, and frankly the much longer one it bookends, is closed.
I’ve returned from this journey physically paralyzed, mentally and emotionally exhausted. I can go no further, and fall no deeper. Not in this form. When you take away the travel, the running, the partying, the singing, the sarcasm, the writing, the friends, the lovers, the jobs, the jokes and the madness, what is left is nothing. Yes, I’ve had “it all.” And enjoyed it less than I ever have. Here’s what I’ve learned:
What I realized, I think, more than anything, is I am incapable of being alone, and thus, incapable of getting as close to other people as I want to. I keep trying to get closer to people than I’ve earned, I keep meeting people to distract me from working on myself, and if I am not with someone physically, I have my head buried in my phone. I do those things to distract me from loneliness. When I’m just sitting, when I’m just existing, I feel completely empty. Like I’m missing something big. And so I alter the state I’m in, or bring people into that state. Always more people. Always new people. The texts. The travel. The social media. The stories. It’s all the same drug, designed to ease the existential ache of never feeling fully present, never having the full capacity to truly appreciate and understand others.
The innermost me is not much different than you, and it is certainly not exceptional. I breathe. I eat. I occasionally make things. I think we share that in common. Beyond that is anyone’s guess. I think about myself too much. I always say I will change, or am changing, but people do not change — they merely drift.
I am not sure who I was addressing. Perhaps the future me.
I woke up the following morning to no texts from anyone, and went down to the hotel bar to resume drinking until it was time for me to board my flight back home. The power went out in the city. It was pitch-black now. I was pitch-black now. The bar got nearly as hot as the 110-degree outside. Still, the beer was cold and my buzz was cool. I met another woman on my plane-ride home, one who was healthy and smart and kind, one who I didn’t awkwardly flirt with. We merely conversed, and it was nice. I momentarily forgot just how badly I wanted to escape my life; I just sat with her and smiled. And then we exchanged contact info, before I drifted deep into the night, drinking alone back at home, wondering what in the hell had just happened, or where the hell I was going to end up when all this was over — and it needed to be over soon.
VIII. Austin — August 21, 2017
“I knew that in order to defeat the darkness, I would need to become the darkness. I would need to sit in the darkness. I would need to face it, without a light.”
I woke up, trembling. I knew today had to be the day. August 21, 2017. A Sunday. I walked over to the upscale burger joint across the street, and slammed a double-breasted hot-chicken sandwich with avocado, bacon, tomato, pepper-jack cheese and tzatziki sauce. The sloppy burger came undone under the sheer weight of my tremors. I drank a frosty IPA. I couldn’t move my mouth to talk. Only to drink. Then, I had the urge to catch a film at the Alamo Drafthouse — not across the street, but across town.
I walked into the theater, and bought one ticket to Ingrid Goes West. It was entertaining, and all too real. Aubrey Plaza’s character tries too hard to get too close to someone she admires, and brushes off most everyone else, pretending she’s too good for them, but secretly feeling not quite good enough. I drank two glasses of champagne, and ate an entire pizza. If there’s one thing you take away from this gargantuan dispatch: It’s that I love pizza.
It was a hot, sunny day in Austin. I rode in an Uber with the windows rolled down, briefly catching myself sticking my hand out the window the way children do, as if my hand was an airplane, hovering against the wind. I smiled, and told the driver to drop me off at a bar close by to home, so I could down a shot of fernet branca and sip a single-malt. I called another Uber, and on my way home, we stopped at the Sunrise Mini-Mart so I could load up with supplies: A four-pack of Avery Brewing Company’s Maharaja, the first craft beer I was ever given for free, the one that kickstarted my writing career (I started as a beer blogger), and La Fin du Monde, which is my favorite beer of all time, and which literally means “The End of the World” in French. I went home, and I began to write. Here’s what happened:
I had long planned that I would retire from regular drinking activities at some point in the year. I had picked either August 21, October 3 or November 22. After having lived through what I’d lived through in the previous 16 months, I decided to hit the eject button as quickly as possible. Then I hit the publish button. And I waited.
Immediately, the texts came rolling in from concerned parties. “I’m worried about you.” Or, “You okay?” Or, “That was very brave of you to do.” Or, “I’m here for you.” And the truth is when I read those, I didn’t think much of them. I knew that in order to defeat the darkness, I would need to become the darkness. I would need to sit in the darkness. I would need to face it, without a light. This was no mere alcoholism, no. It was not that. I had to say it was that, to allow myself the breathing room to change, to come up for air, to be a little less dark, a little less everything … just, to be a little less. The drinking was not the problem. It was merely compounding it. What I needed to tackle was the why. Why did I not feel worthy of love? Why did I feel the intense urge to self-sabotage? Why could I not stop running my mouth? Why was running a marathon not enough to provide me a sense of self-satisfaction? Why was a perfect weekend in New York only a temporary relief? Why did I go to Chicago? Why did I drive her away to Phoenix, and why did I drive the other one away in Phoenix? Most importantly: How did I end up here? Drunk, depressed and alone at home, after having it all, all those 16 months ago on the beach in Miami?
I had so many questions that all felt like they had the same answer. And so I hit the eject button under the cover of darkness, I waited for the clouds to part, for the fog to lift, for the answers to come, and for — hopefully — the sun to one day rise.
IX. Seattle, September 2017
“What would I do if I had 36 hours to do whatever the hell I wanted to, with no one around to notice?”
One year after I’d been there last, I returned to Seattle. Partially to overwrite old memories; mostly because it was $100 round-trip on Alaska Airlines. I deplaned at 8 a.m. Pacific, and took the train to downtown. There, I dropped my bags off at the hotel, grabbed the obligatory Top Pot maple bar, and walked up the hill to a coffeeshop that wasn’t Starbucks. I sipped a cappuccino, and purchased a ticket to the next day’s Seahawks-Niners tilt. I walked to a thrift shop, then to an oyster bar. I wrecked a plate of oysters and allowed myself a glass of champagne. It was my first drink in three weeks, and I was traveling alone, and so I thought, I don’t mind the indulgence. I walked to another coffeeshop, and made small chat with a barista who loved LCD Soundsystem. I then took an Uber to the park on Puget Sound, and ran a quick 5K while talking on the phone with a friend I’ve talked on the phone to more often than all other people combined. I sipped a west coast IPA immediately upon finishing, and then grabbed an Uber back to my hotel to shower.
I re-emerged dressed to the nines, and tried to hit up a pizza joint I visited last time. They were full. I meandered to an experimental restaurant, where I had a beer and something like ostrich, before I meandered across town to a Vietnamese restaurant named one of the best in the United States, where I sat at the bar and joyously consumed one of the finest plates of food I could ever recall. From there, I walked to Cannon — a whiskey lounge so ornate, luxurious and delicious that it should not be allowable by law. I chatted up the bartender, and she passed me her THC vape pen. I chatted up the people next to me, and they gave me an edible. The bartender dropped me her name and Instagram, and told me I was unusually easy to talk to, compared to the patrons who frequent such a pretentious haunt. We talked until 2. Then I went home.
The following morning, I went to a bar where they were showing all the NFL games, but it was a Philadelphia Eagles bar, and so it was crowded and loud and caustic, and so I retreated back to the pizza joint I tried visiting the night before. I ate a full pizza. I’ll bet you’re noticing a theme.
From there, I walked the two miles down to Century Link stadium, in my Syracuse hoodie and in full Seahawks garb, and an old school Seattle Mariners cap, just to blend in. The rain began to fall. I talked to a yoga instructor from Vancouver on my left, and an Amazon employee on my right. And the seats were just perfect. Ninth row — 30 yard line.
I was awestruck and spellbound. I drank Elysian Dayglow IPA. The Seahawks won 13–9. What it must be like to watch the team you actually want to win, actually win. After the game, I hit up an Irish pub to down shots of fernet, and then attempted to hit up Cannon. It was closed. I then lugged my bags to the bar next door, made a poor attempt at eating poorly made wings, before headed to the airport to catch a red-eye flight back to Austin.
I tried to get some sleep on the flight, but I was awoken by a woman sitting directly to my right, who wanted to talk to me all night. And so we did, and it was entertaining, and everything I could’ve wanted. She then told me she was strung out on meth, escaping Alaska and her four kids from two fathers, and going to rehab. We still talk to this day.
I returned to work harboring a delicious secret. I had successfully pulled off the Picasso of my genre — a wild, 36-hour romp through a city I loved, answering the question: “What would I do if I had 36 hours to do whatever the hell I wanted to, with no one around to notice?” I drank good coffee. Ate my favorite foods. Hit up a Seahawks game. Drank delicious drinks. Chatted with new and interesting people. Ran along the water. I did what I do and didn’t feel the least bit bad about it. It was 6 a.m. by the time I returned home. And, for the first time in what felt like forever, I felt the sun begin to rise.
X. New Orleans, October 2017
“I was comfortable. I was content. And as the sky began to brighten, I could feel myself becoming … myself.”
It should not go untold what happened immediately upon returning from Seattle. A friend offered me tickets to see Cafe Tacuba at ACL Live. I took them, realized I didn’t know anyone else who enjoyed a Mexican rock band from the late-90s, and so when a total stranger asked for one of the tickets, I happily obliged. It wasn’t until the Uber ride on my way down to the venue that I realized they were not general admission.
We met, and I informed her we were stuck together. So we made a date of it — posing on a red carpet, and in a photo booth, and I introduced her to friends of mine who were tending bar there, and we had what I distinctly remember as one of the most enjoyable nights on record. She took me home, and we continued to talk and occasionally see each other.
Another great friend of mine came into town to stay with me and go to ACL Music Festival. She met this random gal as we settled in for Solange’s set. She said, “oh she likes you,” and I fluttered with delight. There was a two-hour stretch where we saw Solange, the XX and Jay-Z all in a row. I was comfortable. I was content. And as the sky began to brighten, even as night fell upon the fest, I could feel myself becoming … myself.
It was a fanciful weekend filled with music, love and lots of laughs. The following week was my 35th Birthday, where I took the gal from the concert to a paella and wine dinner hosted by friends of mine. I was glowing, radiant with happiness, and after she said goodnight, and I went up to the bar where I normally go on my birthday, I had an extra spring in my step. That’s when I finally, finally, saw the woman who left me all that time ago without ever saying goodbye. She said, “you look cute,” and I left to go home. Still smiling.
But it was all just preamble for the trip I would take, the night before which I would meet the gal from the concert for wings. We kissed. Lightning coursed through my veins. That was our first kiss. And yet that was all the magic we made, and yet it was enough. She’d have a boyfriend soon … and that boyfriend was not me. No matter: I had a plane to catch.
I touched down in New Orleans, still buzzing from the night before, drinking Cafe Au Lait at Cafe du Monde, then doing a mad-dash between Copper Monkey and the Erin Rose to watch the Philadelphia 76ers kick off the season in which they were expected to finally be good. (Spoiler: They were. And still are.) I chatted up a cat next to me who gave me some weed, and then my mom texted me to say she had made it to the hotel across the street. Yes, I was meeting my mom in New Orleans. Why do you ask?
Because it was her 60th Birthday, and because although I initially wanted to buy her a solo ticket to Paris, she did not much care for traveling alone, so I split the difference and took her to the French-ist place in the US. We had a magical time. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she said, “Whatever you want to do.” Her funeral.
We went to the New Orleans Pelicans season opener against the Golden State Warriors. We saw the U.S. Women’s Soccer team play an exhibition in the Superdome against South Korea. I took her to my favorite bar in the Roosevelt Hotel for a Ramos Gin Fizz. We had beignets. We watched the epic Chiefs-Raiders four-final-play classic at Copper Monkey and ate wings. It was fantastic. And it was there I learned a valuable lesson about how to enjoy your family: Treat them like they’re casual acquaintances that are in town for the weekend, and just show them a good time. Some might scoff at the reasoning, but I assure you, the minute you put down your baggage, is the minute you become light enough to float through wherever you find yourself. We had a breezy time together, with zero expectations. That’s how I want to remember my mom. Happy-go-lucky, just enjoying her time. The XX played as we walked out of the Superdome. It was my second time seeing them in two weeks. My life had come to her, my life had come to New Orleans, she had come to New Orleans, and I was just where I was. And that was the important thing: To just be where you are. And as I stood there, the fog continued to lift.
XI. California, November 2017
“12 years ago, when I was making $9/hour in Buffalo, New York, Southern California felt as far away from me as the moon. Now it was real. And nothing felt impossible anymore.”
I was on a train. November 16, 2017. 8 a.m. local time. Typing on this very laptop, crafting a story about the toys from my youth. That’s when, at age 35, I first saw the Pacific Ocean with my own eyes. There were surfers — the chiseled, sun-kissed gods and goddesses I’d only once imagined, or watched on The O.C. — chasing the waves with boards in tow. I did what anyone would do to mark the occasion in modern-day America, I snapped 36 smartphone pics in the hopes I’d find the one perfect shot worth uploading to Instagram. None were remarkable. The next eight days were the most remarkable in years.
I met my friends deep in Downtown L.A., staying in a fourth-floor loft staring at the Los Angeles Convention Center which was the beginning of the end for me some five-plus years earlier: before the firing, before the destitution, before the new job and subsequent rise and fall again. We hit Venice and Santa Monica. We hit three local brewpubs. We launched our podcast. We saw the Lakers play the Suns, the Kings play the Panthers, and the Chargers play our Buffalo Bills. I randomly met a woman, sitting behind me in the stands, who I still talk to. It was all so perfect — the sunsets, the laughs (my god, the laughs), the weather, the company. I felt normal and complete for the first time in what felt like forever … and the moment didn’t feel unearned or too big for me. That Monday, my friends left for the airport, and I was scooped up by a friend I met, of all places, on here. On Medium.
The woman picked me up in her car, and we drove down to Laguna Beach, where we had shellfish and cocktails on a deck overlooking the ocean, and then more cocktails on rooftop overlooking the ocean again. The view was serene; the feeling impossible to describe. I felt as though I had walked through the glass in my phone and directly inside the Instagram app.
We traveled to her restaurant, where we had more seafood. We meandered to my hotel bar, where we watched the Seahawks and Falcons, drinking Irish Coffee and chatting until deep into the night. The day was remarkable and surreal without feeling random or disconnected from the rest of my life, or maximalist for maximalism’s sake — the way so many things used to feel.
I woke up the following morning, and rented a car to drive the Pacific Coast Highway from Newport Beach to San Francisco. I rolled the windows down, and listened to West Coast rap. I was alone … and I was free. I stopped in Huntington, Malibu, Ventura and Santa Barbara … basking in the warm glow of what felt like endless sunshine. I climbed mountains. I took (so many!) pictures. I ate Korean BBQ from a little haunt in Atascadero. But what I want to talk to you about is a little place called Carpinteria.
For many years, I had a little scene from the public park on the beach in that sleepy coastal town as the background on my computer. As I meandered my way up the PCH, I sought it out. I, again, was talking to the same friend on the phone as the one I talked to while running along the Puget Sound. I wandered, quietly, up the wooden deck path toward the beach. All was still. My heart beat out of my chest. Then, (again, from Instagram) this happened:
12 years ago, when I was making $9/hour in Buffalo, New York, Southern California felt as far away from me as the moon. Now it was real. Life was real. And nothing felt impossible anymore. Nothing felt undeserved. I am 35 years old, and capable of anything I set my mind to.
By the time I arrived in San Francisco, at 10 p.m. Pacific, I felt complete. It was the first time I could recall feeling as though I could die in peace. I posted up with family, and we ate croissants from a little corner bakery in Laurel Heights. We drove to Napa, and drank beer at Russian River Brewery — my all-time favorite brewery from since I started writing about beer all those years ago. (Russian River Consecration is the greatest beer I’ve ever tasted, and second place isn’t particularly close.) We went to a mezcal bar and ate oysters. And when we woke up the following morning, we rode scooters through the winding hills Presidio and Golden Gate Park, out toward Land’s End and the Cliff House, where we settled in for Hot Toddys. That’s when the conversation took a sharp turn to Bitcoin.
A woman sitting with her attorney at the table next to us eavesdropped. I told her stories. My step-sister whispered, “Oh she likes you,” and I fluttered with delight. I dropped my number on a piece of paper as we walked out of the restaurant. She texted me later in the day. We still text.
I flew out of Oakland on Thanksgiving Day, and by the time I’d returned to celebrate the holiday with old friends, I felt as though all the parts on me had been replaced. I was calm. I was still. I was quiet. I just let them wash over me. I felt so distant from where I was mere months ago, and I realized something valuable as I turned in for the night: The darkness had faded, but the light revealed that the landscape had changed. I was once in the wilderness, a river running to the sea. Now, I felt like an entire ocean — one that finally came ashore. The restless river stopped running that day.
XII. The South, December 2017
“I’m reminded how similar we are as people: All just trying to make our way and leave our own tiny mark on the world, in our own unique way.”
My dad lives in Madison, Alabama. I lived there in Kindergarten. In an intriguing quirk, it takes the same amount of time to reach Madison from Austin whether you take the Northern route through Memphis, or the Southern route through New Orleans. And so, whenever I drive there, I like to do a lap around the South.
I irrationally love Memphis. It’s the last outpost before the final four-hour trek to his house, it’s a manageable mid-sized city that seeps culture through its pores the way the Mississippi seeps through the delta mud. I have a disproportionate amount of acquaintances there, and I met one I met on Medium for dinner on the evening of December 23. We ate Indian food and talked about writing for three hours. She was charming and easygoing. And then I left to meet another friend, again from the Internet, for a Grizzlies game.
It was my second game at FedEx forum, and my first since Halloween night two years ago, before this story began. We had lower bowl seats and the home team won. We made small talk about wrestling and being “Internet famous.” And I made new friends. I felt light, and felt at home. And when I snuggled in for rest, I felt content.
Driving to Alabama, through the parts of America I never see inside my city-dwelling bubble, I’m reminded how similar we are as people: All just trying to make our way and leave our own tiny mark on the world, in our own unique way. Humans are survivors, and I believe that — when you take away all the disinformation, or systemic oppression, or cultural misunderstandings — we have a basic instinct to help others do the same. I like to believe that, anyway: It beats the alternative.
My Dad is a strong yet gentle human, a god-fearing Christian with a curious mind, married to one of the strongest and most gentle women you’ll ever meet. And I met them both for Christmas, along with her daughter from San Francisco I’d seen just a month prior, her other daughter’s family who live locally, and my sister, trekking down from Nashville. And the Christmas felt like our Christmases of old — the same music playing, the same food served, the same easy laughter that we’ve all shared for the past decade. The states may change — New York, Iowa, Alabama — but the state of mind is the same. There are no unruly expectations, nor unnecessary drama. There is no time for that when the days spent together are so few and far between. That’s how I feel about all humans, but family especially.
I packed my car on the afternoon of December 27 en route to New Orleans, a place I’ve now visited six times in six years. I checked into a cozy throwback hotel, and hit up all the places I’d been before: The Roosevelt Hotel for a Ramos Gin Fizz, the Copper Monkey for Crawfish Etoufee, the Erin Rose for shots and Abita. And when I woke up the following morning, head pounding from mixing liquors, I didn’t much mind as I rolled out of town. I drove through to Austin in less than seven hours, and immediately went to sleep. I would ring in the new year alone — eating queso and watching the Buffalo Bills make the playoffs for the first time in my adult life. I was content. I was at peace.
XIII. Medium, February 2018
I ghosted Facebook and Twitter for 2018, to concentrate on writing, sure, but also to concentrate on fully inhabiting whatever space I found myself in. I wanted to live unfiltered, and experience the world the way we were meant to: as humans, not as curators or megaphones. I became quiet, except in my craft. I needed a project, for it is projects bring satisfaction. I retreated to Medium. I began pouring my every waking thought onto paper, writing about monsters that scare me. I searched for truth and stumbled upon gospel. I shared it with you because, in the end, what we share is what people remember of us.
I thought back to the beach in Miami, and remembered what started the old ball of sadness rolling, back when I had everything I wanted. In that moment, I had flipped and reversed my mantra: “Always be happy. Never be satisfied.” It was the difference between being told “I look nice,” and actually feeling beautiful. Sure, I had everything I wanted, but did that mean I was everything I wanted to be? I began searching for answers, but fuck the answers … what we really want is the story. This is the final piece of the that story.
What I found was, once you get everything you want, and you stop looking for other mountains to climb, and you’re satisfied with where you are, you begin to get restless. You begin to worry that, because now you can’t see the shore or the horizon in any direction, or in every direction, that you’ve peaked. For me, life couldn’t have really gotten any better, so I started inventing problems to solve, and becoming dissatisfied for the sake of being dissatisfied. I started making up reasons to be miserable. Thinking about everything and nothing.
Problems are man-made. They’re deficits in character that we only deem true when we compare ourselves to an arbitrary standard, or when we compare ourselves to arbitrary people close in proximity to us. I had an abusive inner monologue that dished out a fire-hose of negative self-talk morning, noon and night.
I’d become a distorted approximation of myself. I started telling myself lies often enough that I began to believe them. Until I became the shit I was full of. The road to ruin wasn’t paved in big decisions gone awry— it was paved in repeated, habitual, autopilot decisions that stopped me from sitting at the table of my life.
Of course, I am describing the dark art of self-sabotage. A coping mechanism that simultaneously laser-focuses my mind on exactly what I want, and then either actively ensures it never happens or helplessly lets the opportunity pass me by. It’s built on a bedrock of fear — a fear of either failure (rejection), or of the loss of identity that comes along with success (impostor syndrome). By engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors, I am excessively mitigating risk. And all anxiety is essentially just excessive risk mitigation. But it isn’t just the worry that was problematic — it was the behavior that I engaged in to distance myself from my emotions to help me hide your pathology from others. Behavior like drinking to quiet the inner monologue.
I was losing interest in things I once loved, and taking a liking to pursuits that could kill me if I did them long enough. I had stopped growing, exploring and dreaming, forgetting that if you stay in the same room, the same doors will open.
There are only four truths in life: Death, change, the present and love. I clouded these, by the lies I was telling myself: my memories, thoughts and expectations. They had deluded my self-image, and torpedoed my self-confidence. To build it back up, I needed to lean into truth, to fail without giving up. Confidence is a product of repetition … a product of incremental failure. It’s knowing what the fall feels like and being familiar enough with it that you can be comfortable with the risk, without needing to hedge. I would need to be humble, for to truly learn or master anything requires humility. It would suck, sure, but everything sucks at first, very few things suck forever, and overnight successes don’t happen overnight.
As I moved beyond where I was, and began exploring the corners of this country and the depths of my psyche, I began to liberate my own being. I realized, that I do not need to be what’s expected, to be what’s required or to be what I am not. I am merely enough as is. We all have our ticket to live how we choose, and choose who we aid. So, if I could tell you anything, I’d tell you to go live your life the way that you want to. You are enough, and the world needs more of you.
Life is not zero-sum, nor a transaction at all. Life is an investment, and when we truly invest not expecting a return, we bring more love to the rest of the world. In fact, our potential is still as limitless as our imagination. When we are finally able to measure our strength by how high we can lift our loved ones instead of how far we can throw our enemies, then we will have truly changed the game.
For when we reach out to heal, stand up to our bitterest demons, paint with a fine brush or build with our hands, we do so to reach outside ourselves and lasso the world closer to us. The greatest things we will ever do in our lives are those things which breathe life into the souls of others. In doing so, we can only begin to realize that the universe is not merely something that happens to us, but something that we happen to. Everyone you meet will leave you. Make sure they leave you better than when you found them.
There aren’t many rules in life: Drink without getting drunk, Love without suffering jealousy. Eat without overindulging. Never argue. And once in a while, with great discretion, misbehave. No one’s as bad as their worst act and no one’s as great as their best. The secret to life, as always, lies somewhere within the grey nebulae of moderation. Being enough without being extra. I never realized that you don’t need to be the brightest star in the sky to be seen, you only need to be brighter than the night is dark. The magic in life, lies within the ability to manifest or sublimate “enough” of these things, whether they’re emotions, states of being or people.
Yet I wondered, as I’d often done, why did I feel the need to be so extra? Extra can never be enough. I did so, because it is a pathology, one that stems deep from my childhood. I was extra to attach to people. And I did so in an unhealthy way. I would either ratchet up the intensity too high and overstep my boundaries, or — more often — I would surround myself with needy people because I grew up thinking that people who needed you were the ones who loved you the most. My attachment pathology stems from an abusive inner monologue, caused by an overbearing and codependent mother who herself was verbally abusive and an anxious-preoccupied parent and partner, and this pathology impacts all other romantic relationships with secure women who I view as a life partner.
Indeed, all throughout my life, I have felt lonely. I don’t mean like I was alone — I always had people around, which is why I wrote that note to no one in particular while back at that hotel in Phoenix — but, rather, true loneliness. Loneliness isn’t feeling like you don’t really know anybody. It’s feeling like nobody could ever really know you. And at the root of loneliness, is a fundamental misjudgment of what people want: Nobody wants to really know you. They want to feel like you really know them.
To find it: I asked what I’d like to do, what I was willing to suffer for, and what problems I wanted to solve. The only way to find peace is to densely pack your life with creations, experiences, people and memories. What matters is what you do, how you live, how much joy and meaning you smash into the sides of every waking second.
I found peace through focusing on processes, activities and experiences: things I learn, things I make, and things I do. Any sort of achievement or shallow culturally-defined institutional box I can check? They will be side-effects of the life I want to live. Once you realize nobody’s fighting your battles but you, and you’re not beholden to anyone else’s opinions, you can act in accordance with your own code of conduct. I grabbed a spiral notebook, a really nice pen, and spent five minutes jotting down everything you think would make up a “perfect day.” I wondered: What does it look like? What am I doing? Who am I with? What do I eat? Where do I go? How do I feel? At the end of five minutes … I stopped and saw what I’d written. Then, I saw where the gaps were. In Seattle, 2017, I learned how to fill in those gaps.
Life is not linear. It is not a list. It’s a blank sheet. An ellipsis. A trail to be blazed. A route to be charted. Explore. Jump. Draw. Write. Sing. Play. Laugh. Hide. Seek. You will never have more energy, more youth, more freedom. This is it. This fleeting, flimsy, fragrant world is as vibrant and brilliant and available to you as it will ever be. All money is house money. And we’re playing with all of it, all the time.
Life is long. Dreams are weird. Reality is chaos. Finding our final form means letting go of our desires, shedding our egos and breaking the concept of self in order to find the only self that is true. We cannot surf the waves, for we are the ocean. Pathological individualism is not the path to the finding our final form, but it is, in fact, a magnetic pole apart from it.
Instead, the key to being human is to connect — without attaching — to others, by cultivating three great qualities: humility, curiosity and empathy. Humility is the soul. Curiosity is the mind. Empathy is the heart. Humility is how you value yourself. Curiosity is how you value your others. Empathy is how you value the bonds between yourself and others. Humility is the soil of knowledge. Curiosity is the water that helps it grow. Empathy is the sunlight that shows us which way to bend. With these three traits, you are now free to pursue the grandest, most human mission of all: to see as much of the world as possible, and to help as much of the world suffer less. I think all we really want out of life is to feel a little less lonely and a little more hopeful. That’s what I got out of writing this. That’s what I hope you gathered from reading it.
XIV. Austin, March 2018
“You can reinvent yourself. You can reimagine yourself. You can rebuild yourself. Better still, you can do all of it hidden in plain sight.”
As the clouds parted and the darkness faded, I could feel myself re-entering the atmosphere as a different species altogether. It’s one thing to go on a voyage of self-discovery, it’s quite another to discover that you’re someone else entirely.
In March of 2018, I re-entered the land of the living: I attended the SXSW music festival, started running regularly again, dating without putting to much pressure upon myself, and just genuinely enjoying the stillness and lightness of not taking life too goddamn seriously, or identifying too much with what I did with my life. I took up photography and photo editing as a project — the end results of which are what you’ve seen all throughout this entry. I began writing about things outside myself, since I had thought about me all that I could.
I’m happy now. I feel intrinsically enough. As I snuck into VIP parties at SXSW with friends of mine, or friends I’d soon make, I didn’t do so to try and win some imaginary prize, or to run up some high score in a game that doesn’t exist. No, I did so because I could, and because it is what I genuinely enjoy doing.
I no longer feel the need to voice my ill-informed opinion about anything. I made peace with being silent on social media, only speaking when spoken to, only going where I’m invited, and being fully present wherever I am. My goal is to be a light, and on days when I’m too tired to shine, to settle for being a mirror. That’s more than enough.
I still run sometimes, but only when I want to. I went on a 14-mile run in late March for no reason at all, and every blissful mile was soundtracked by a band I’d seen at SXSW the week prior.
Those friends I went to New York and Los Angeles with? We talk every week — on a podcast. About sports. Over a year since I was shunned by that media’s community. And we’ll see each other again this year, probably in Houston, to see if I can watch the Buffalo Bills lose a 23rd straight game I’ve been in attendance for.
There will be no more mad-dashes to Chicago just to say that I could go. No more chasing ghosts of people I once knew to understand how they shaped who I was. There will be no more trips to Phoenix, nor drunken notes to myself in hotel rooms, nor hanging onto people I no longer need, nor drinking just to numb the existential ache of an abusive inner critic. There will, however, be another secret trip to Seattle. I love that city.
There will be pizzas, and Ramos Gin Fizzes and periodic chats and vacays with my mom. There will be trips out west and football games and meeting more people from the Internet. There will be laps around the South, easy nights in Memphis, and hard nights in the Big Easy. And more Christmases with family, same as they always were.
There will be more silence, more writing, more festivals, more dates. But less doubt, less thinking, less trying too hard and less worry. I don’t need these things anymore; I don’t recognize these things anymore. You can reinvent yourself. You can reimagine yourself. You can rebuild yourself. Better still, you can do all of it hidden in plain sight, so imperceptibly incremental that it hardly looks like you’ve changed at all. How do you do it?
You go places. You try new things. You write over old memories. You take everything that you want to keep with you and bring it to wherever life takes you next. You drop little pieces of yourself that you no longer need in the places they need to go. You meet people you never imagined. And you let all these experiences, humans, events and desires leave a mark on you. You’re shaped by what you’re surrounded by, but you also shape your surroundings. They are equal yet opposite forces that combine to form the self. And that brings us back to the ocean — the Atlantic Ocean, one last time.
XV. Miami, April 2018
“You’re shaped by what you’re surrounded by, but you also shape your surroundings. They are equal yet opposite forces that combine to form the self.”
I checked into the same hotel I did two years ago, when I had everything I wanted. The very first thing I did was nap. Upon waking, I called an Uber to American Airlines Arena, and bought tickets to Heat-Raptors while en route. I like going to games in different cities alone, it’s like eavesdropping on someone else’s Wednesday night. I made small talk with the woman next to me, who’d been a season ticket-holder since the Heat’s inception in 1989. She was sweet.
I called an Uber to return to my hotel, she was Haitian and looked a touch younger than I, and we immediately started talking about music: Kendrick Lamar, Anderson Paak, Donald Glover and Janelle Monae. And when SZA’s “Love Galore” came on her radio, I audibly gasped, “I love this song!” She looked at me, and said, “You? Love this song?” I mean, listen to it: how could you not?
She sized me up and said, “You know what? You seem cool. You wanna smoke up?” But of course.
She handed me a baggie and a piece and said, “careful, don’t pack it too full. It’s really strong.” We talked for 30 minutes about life and about Austin, we swapped Instagram info, and I hopped out the car. “Enjoy the flight,” she said to me, sounding magnanimous and profound. “Enjoy the flight,” I thought to myself. I’ll be damned if I don’t.
I spent the rest of the trip toggling between drinking espresso, running along the beach, eating ceviche, and exploring Wynwood and Little Havana. I spent an entire day without speaking English until 4:30 p.m. That’s when I ran into an old friend.
Remember how I told you I used to write about sports? In 2011, I struck up a Twitter friendship with a Miami-based lawyer who has a fairly famous husband. I met her in Coral Gables at a place I liked from two years prior. She was going to hang out for an hour. An hour turned into five. And I assure you, I was only the second-best storyteller in the restaurant for all five of those hours. She, just like seemingly everyone else I’d met at random over the past two years, was fantastic — perhaps most fantastic of them all.
I went back to the pier at the ocean, and just laid out in the sand, watching the planes fly by and people dodge the incoming waves. I drifted off to sleep for a while, before heading back to catch my homeward-bound flight. I’d felt myself melt into the beach before understanding something I’d never quite known how to articulate before — the final answer to my most elemental question, “Who am I?”
As mentioned before, I am an ocean. We are all oceans of our own making. And the ocean — the Atlantic, the Pacific, and you — is both the water, and the coasts which contain it. The ocean carves itself into the cliffs and the sand in the way the bedrock forms the boundary beyond which the ocean ceases to be. The tides roll in and out, the coasts expand and contract, and the body of water is ever-changing, even as it exists under the same name. The Atlantic Ocean of today won’t be the Atlantic Ocean of the tomorrow. The you that lives today won’t be the you that lives tomorrow. You’re shaped by what you’re surrounded by, but you also shape your surroundings. They are equal yet opposite forces that combine to form the self. We are both the liquid and the container.
My dad’s wife once told me, “Water seeks its own level.” And although I intrinsically knew what she meant, it never struck me on a visceral level before now. The self is a liquid that expands and spreads out until it careens into the sides of its container. What we are — underneath our jobs, our social circle, our lovers, our memories, our thoughts, our expectations — is water. And all these things that we think, or do, or love, or identify with, are our coasts. When we seek truth, or seek success, we too often try to change the liquid, rather than changing that which contains us. The shape of the sea changes with the waves and the tides, each crash against the shore, changing the sands, each gradual release changing the sea further. Water seeks its own level. It’s up to us to define what level that is.
I spent 106 weeks coming ashore, each wave different than the last. And each time I crested and broke, I changed a the coastline a little bit. When seas were rough and the night was dark, I thought I was changing it faster. In reality, the container was just eroding. I was cutting into what I could be. And so I waited for the storm to subside, and realized — over time — that we can all change our levels a little bit. It just takes repeated, rhythmic failure: The thing that builds confidence is the same thing that shapes coastlines. The waves fail to crest over the cliffs, but in doing so, they shape the cliffs that contain them, before the cliffs ultimately shape the sea in return.
I returned home to Austin, 11 p.m. on Saturday, April 14, and knew how different I’d become. It all happened so gradually, it was easy to make sense of it, internalize it, and make peace with my rise to meet my life at its apex. This zenith is where our story ends … but to begin a new one, we won’t need to do much. For the coast we’ll need to travel to is that which contains us, all we need to do is decide where we stand when the sea comes ashore.
