Episode 68: NO NEW LOVE

NO POTENTIAL!!! GOD DAMN BRISKET!!! PEELING MYSELF OUT OF BED!!! THE ETERNAL OPTIMIST (aren’t you sick of her yet)!!! THIS SHIT IS HARD!!! CULT LEADER!!! THE PARADOX OF CHOICE VS DESTINY!!! MAYBE THIS IS NOT ALL PART OF SOME EPIC LOVE STORY!!! & I mean I’m one chocolate cake away from recording this show in the bath while crying and chain-smoking Marlboro 27s…. Folks. I’m like a bad Bukowski novel but without all the booze…

Excerpt from the show:

“So….. I’ve been trying to figure out something to say about this week that was good but I’m seriously coming up with a blank. Turns out I’m really only human, and I have a really boring blah week every couple of weeks. And I think particularly this week’s been tough because I haven’t been feeling my best. Every once in a while I have a week where my inflammation goes up, it doesn’t seem to be connected to anything, in particular, no factors I can track or be prepared for. And because most of the time it’s just me, I just power through it. I just keep doing what I’m doing. I mean the week wasn’t a total wash, I had a lovely dinner with another sober person, I got some new sheets and bedspreads for the condo. I watched Ted lasso, which has to be the best television show I’ve seen in years. So heartwarming and sweet. I had some lovely client meetings. I cooked some good food. But folks. I gotta be completely honest things are looking bleak. I have not an eddy of energy to think about my romantic life. Or let’s be completely truthful, any and I mean any potential for any relationships. And I don’t currently feel like I bring much to the table beside a damn good brisket. I mean and even that’s missing a little extra pizzazz. And I have no auxiliary energy to peruse any of the other side things that bring me joy. And folks, well my love life has been in the toilet for longer than I’ve been single. And well I don’t have a good joke about it in sight. Can’t even muster a joke. About my dead love life. That’s a new one. So fun. I did decide to offer to take one of my exes on as a roommate for a couple of months. So that should be funny and interesting if it works out. To be fair it’s one of my favorite exes, and we definitely don’t have any charge left between us. And they are family. Someone I’ve known since I was born. But with the dismal standing of the end of my last relationship, I’m not even sure anyone would want to live with me. I mean I don’t have a regular sleep schedule, and my physical condition seems to change daily. And I constantly smell like tiger balm. Like I always say, if you love the smell of tiger balm and not sleeping, I’m your girl. But in all seriousness, I don’t have the energy. To explain to anyone new what I’ve been through and who I am because and in spite of it. I mean my playlist for this month is literally called “NO NEW LOVE” I mean I’m one chocolate cake away from recording this show in the bath while crying and chain-smoking Marlboro 27s…. Folks. I’m like a bad Bukowski novel but without all the booze. I mean I got sober thinking I’d wake up feeling good every morning. Isn’t that the best part of sobriety, no hangovers, and feeling like garbage? And I don’t even get that. I wake up every morning and peel myself out of bed to go get a kombucha, and then lie in bed for another 2 hours praying to feel some semblance of ok enough to get on with my day. And if I have a meeting or a treatment, I just get dressed regardless. And frankly, since I got Covid a couple of months ago, I haven’t been in great shape, and I think I’m allergic to the dog I’m boarding, which I never could have known because my dogs hypoallergenic, apparently for a reason unbeknownst to me at the time she was thrust into my arms when she was a puppy. So basically what I’m saying here is this week I’ve clearly got nothing to do but complain. I mean a swift turnaround from last week’s epic love letter to the universe. This weeks just no new love and feeling like garbage. Ain’t life grand? And it’s times like this I try to remember where I came from, the complete and utter misery that used to be every day of my life. Not just a crummy week here and there. And I try to remember the fear and the discomfort, and the loneliness and the impending doom I saw around every corner. That if I could pull myself back from the edge of death to a place as functional and normal as this one, then I have to be capable of getting better than this. And my relentless optimism, dear god it’s annoying. How do you all put up with it every week? Aren’t you sick of her yet? She has so much trust, so much faith that things are always working out for the best. Ughh Jesus, I mean sometimes things just fail to become something, sometimes something didn’t mean anything at all. And just leaves you with more self-doubt and questions than answers. Like my last relationship, ayyyyyyy. Well, at least that’s true. And I try to remember, something my therapist is constantly telling me. That she’s never seen anyone change as much as I have, in all her years in practice. And I have changed, and grown, and I spend every day tirelessly taking one step in the right direction. And my life is expanding, and changing in all the ways I hoped it would. It’s been an uphill battle, every day. To stay sober, to stay present, to stay in the flow of what is. But it’s hard, you know? Because we’re in the business of honesty here, I have to admit that at this point in my life, rounding the corner to 28, I thought that I would have more to show for my life. Now granted when I tell people what I’ve done, that I managed restaurants, owned my own ceramics Company for 2 years and studied at the Leonardo da Vinci art academy of Florence, dropped out of Emory University, and had Lyme for 4 years, was a photographer on and off for 6 years, worked as a coffee stylist on food shoots in NYC, and have loved countless people, and have 3 certifications, and own a business, and I was a painter for a long time, black and white acrylic, portraits mostly. And I can knit a sweater with my bare hands, I work as an extremely high-end private chef and I’ve cooked for some incredible noteworthy people in my life. And yet somehow, somehow at this point in my life, I thought I would be further along. And what that really means is I thought I would be a part of a team. I thought I would be doing all this alongside someone I can knit sweaters for. Cook brisket for. That I would have a small apartment, full of love and sunlight and flowers and plants, and there would be someone to come home to, someone I’d be dealing with all this alongside. But instead, I got a load of random symptoms, that may be just carry-over from Covid and Lyme and lead poisoning, and a floppy dog that I’m increasingly convinced may be my only true soulmate. And well, this week reality hit me like a baseball bat to the lower back. Yes, one of my random new fun things is lower back pain. And every conversation I have with my most recent ex just seems to make everything worse. Because it’s just a reminder of that extra fun sentence. Sometimes love isn’t enough. And I think I always had this sweet delusion, that if there was enough love between two people that they would be capable of making anything work. Of finding all the pathways back to love every time something got a little too difficult. Wow, that’s gloomy, anyways. On a brighter note stay tuned for the world’s strangest reunion next week, when I potentially live inside of a sitcom with my ex, my dog that looks like a muppet in a 3 bedroom condo! Anyways let’s listen to some music from my playlist NO NEW LOVE. Which is completely ironically full of love songs. But let’s start with ‘Wrong Vibration’ because that’s definitely where we are this week, by Balthazar, followed by a great one sent to me from a different ex, ‘Cult Leader’ by KiNG MALA, because apparently, it reminded them of me. I’ll let you all psychologically analyze that one, woof, they said it was a compliment. But you know that’s up for strong interpretation here. So have at it…”