#79 Celebrating a year in the only healthy relationship I’ve ever had
On the myth of no good men and the chronically undatable anxious attached, and what good actually feels like.
Today is the one year anniversary of being in the only healthy romantic relationship I’ve ever been in, and while I planned to never really write about this, for some reason it feels a little important given the state of things, because love.
He followed me on Instagram, and I knew of him, because I knew of every man between the ages of 37 and 52 in a 30-mile radius from my home. I live rurally, and I’d been here for five years by then, and when you are single and there are only perhaps a dozen datable men in your immediate vicinity, you have opinions on all of them even if you’ve never made eye contact. I’d decided based on observation alone that he was not for me, but like I said he followed me on Instagram, which was more interest than any of the other 11 men had shown, so I asked around about him. The feedback was great; 10/10.
I didn’t want to go out with him, but I was very community-oriented at the time, and I asked him out for coffee and apologized in advance for my impropriety if by chance it was that he’d only followed me on Insta for my sobriety tips. I told him that some of our mutual friends thought we might fall in love but I was more interested in expanding my network, and we agreed to meet that Saturday, April 20th, at the Mud Club, which is now closed.
On April 18th, a Thursday, I told my therapist I didn’t want to go, that the last thing I needed was more fucking men and that I was fine and happy and good, and could I just skip this date please? She told me I could not.
That Saturday I had big plans. A Sasquatch talk in Red Hook, dinner with my friend Dana in some still further away town, so I fit him in before the talk. I did not wash my hair, and I did not look my best, and I did not care. I insisted on paying because I had asked him out, and he did not argue at all, which had never happened on a date, where paying was always a thing. We split a bagel with hummus and avocado and he spilled some on his pants.
We sat in two chairs that are no longer there, and I folded my legs under me and contorted myself into a little pretzel, which he told me later was a selling point; he liked that I liked to be cozy, because he liked to be cozy. He told me he had a feminist mother whom of which he used to distribute menopause literature for and also workout to Jane Fonda videos with, and that he was the middle child, the only boy, with two older sisters and two younger, and I asked him if he might say he had a “woman’s perspective”, and he said he might say that, and that’s when I was in. Before he was anything else he was safe, and not one man before had ever been that.
I only stayed an hour. I didn’t care too much about how I presented or came off, and I’m sure I talked too much and said the wrong things. I did everything I had always and forever been trying not to do and that every other coach and friend and concerned person had told me not to do, which was act like myself, because myself ran them all off.
We texted casually that night, a Thank you, a Nice to meet you, but then the next night he sent me a text message that said “I’ve been thinking about YOU”, and the YOU was capitalized, and I have never felt serotonin like that in my life.
The next day, a Monday, he came by my house and I made him coffee and he then he followed me around my garden and let me tell him about all of my plants, and when I worried I was telling him too much about the plants, he told me he wanted to hear everything, and I knew he really meant it.
The next day, a Tuesday, it was unseasonably warm and we spread a blanket behind Sunfrost in Woodstock where we laid out in the sun and then moved to another park and did the same thing, and we did the same thing the next two days at different locations. That Thursday, back at my house, still laying on a blanket on the grass in the sun, I told him about a guy I’d dated who was trying to “date intentionally”, and who asked me how many dates I needed before I’d feel intimate enough to have sex, and how I’d blurted out “TWO!!” like a real big slut, and how this guy had said “(long pause)…Ten…” and then stopped talking to me, and we laughed, and then he kissed me for the first time because, as he later told me, he did the math and it worked.
To describe that week, or him, or how it unfolded is impossible. He literally told me he wanted to feed me, and I was fucking starving, and part of me wants to describe it this way, as a long awaited nourishment; eating for the first time, and having enough of it, as much as I needed, without feeling any sense of owing or obligation or shame. Feasting like I deserved it, like I was fully worthy of every bite, like it was the most natural thing I could do.
What has been the most shocking to me is how utterly different healthy is. It is beyond maddening to realize this whole time all I had to ask myself was whether I felt good, safe, loved, loving, secure, met, seen, and held whenever I was with someone else, instead of all the things I asked instead, which was usually something like “What’s wrong with me?” or “Do you like me?” But then that would miss the point that the only way I can recognize what healthy is, what standards are, or the man standing in front of me as my person, or him at all, is because I had decades of experience with un-health, with no standards; with scraps of scraps of fucking scraps.
He is unlike any other—an actual amalgamation of a composite I made ten years ago: a best friend, a sexual beast, the funniest human I’ve ever met, the absolute cutest, the most generous person that exists, a community builder, an extrovert and center of the world, my co-conspirator and defender and charge, who can cook and fix anything that breaks and who thinks all the same petty thoughts that I do, etc. etc. etc.—and knowing him, being with him, loving him, and being loved by him are the best things I’ve ever experienced. There are times when I can literally feel the trauma in my body dissolving and the actual corporeal sense of healing from his preternatural response; from his just being and his not even trying.
It is bliss, it is all the good things I was promised, it is likely a continuation from a previous life, and today is the celebration of one year since its inception.
And today is also the day that the deadline for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to assess the national emergency at the southern border comes to an end, possibly leading to the invocation of the Insurrection act, which means today is potentially the beginning of Martial Law in America, or the full slide into authoritarianism, or the end of democracy as we know it.
And today is also somehow Hitler’s birthday, Easter, and 420.
Today we are going out into the garden to sow seeds: Peas, lettuces, beets, radishes, greens. We rented a tiny little cabin in a nearby mountain town which feels silly because we live in a cabin in a mountain town, and we’ll drive there after the sowing, where we’ll celebrate the best thing we’ve each ever had and discuss the more serious version of our plans to resist authoritarianism, because it’s happening so much faster than I think I’m actually processing. This is an insane task, to live fully into such celebration while plans for the ultimate horror, that is a certainty now.
Ezra Klein said this week he wants to look away, and I do too. I really, really want to look away and escape into some kind of privilege that actually doesn’t exist anymore.
My government, our government, your government: is disappearing people, and have made it clear they have no issue disappearing anyone—Trump literally said he had no issue sending “homegrown” “criminals” (criminal as in a speeding ticket, a small amount of pot in the wrong state, a letter to the editor with the wrong opinion, or any allegation made up out of vapor) to gulags in other countries1, and this means me, and this means you, and everyone else. We are not in the stage before the stage. We are here. We have arrived.
I do not have prescriptive advice, and I myself have no clue what the fuck to do. But I do know it’s my responsibility right now to be very clear that this is not a test.
I highly recommend listening to this week’s Ezra Klein if you have not.
Love, love, love.
9 THINGS RIGHT NOW
As I mentioned, Ezra Klein’s latest show is (IMO) a must-listen. His guest,
has a newsletter called The Freedom Academy, and here is her latest roundup.I just finished reading
[1] Survival of the Richest, which I cannot recommend enough, especially [2] paired with this essay from Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor in the Guardian (“The rise of end times fascism”) on the convergence of authoritarianism and prepping and the rise of corporate townships (see also , “New techno-authoritarian nightmare just dropped”); [3] this Cut article on the moral trade-offs one of the astronauts that went on the Jeff Bezos flight had to make (“As a ‘pathological optimist,’ she has always ‘climbed cringe mountain’ to reach her goals.”); and [4] this article in the NYT on the panic industry boom. Between all of them, there’s too much to unpack, but the distillate points are that we are 100% moving towards corporatized/privatized everything, and the complete dismantling of the American government is but a step along the way to that end, in an epic and horrifying display of every man for himself that trickles down through the rest of society, leaving us all running for the last scraps of whatever is left to ensure our own survival at the cost of everyone else. This is individualism, neoliberalism, capitalism, colonizer mindset, etc. to its full expression and taken to its logical conclusion.My directive to myself right now is to remember these things, to remember we are living through the death throws of individualism and colonization and patriarchy and greed and a sick cultural logic taken to its full extreme that’s left our planet and co-habitants and all of us sick, and that it’s not so much about beating them (which we will) as much as it is not thinking what they thinking or doing what they do or succumbing to what they have succumbed to. They count on us to be self-serving, flaccid, scared, fragile, distracted, comfort-seeking, callous, cruel, vapid, and every shit thing that they all that they are. They count on us needing what they need and wanting what they want. What they will never see coming is divestment from their mindset, is us not being beholden to all the things they are.
Which is also a very long way of me telling you I tried prepping for a minute—like I used the discount code TRUMP20 once—and that it made me the absolute worst fucking version of myself.
I’m volunteering at the Kingston Repair Cafe this Saturday, April 26—if you’re local and have skill to share please please please consider coming, and look for these in your town! They are everywhere.
I thought this article in the NYT on ADHD was worth the read, mostly because it touches on how context-based ADHD can be (for instance, I struggled with it the absolute most between 2021 and 2024 (when all my supports and structures evaporated and I lost my sense of purpose and direction as well as my daily routines, deadlines, etc.), and I’ve felt the effects of it wane as my existential dread recedes and my purpose is restored). This quote (“For some parents, it may indeed be less stigmatizing, and more comfortable, to be able to say, ‘My child has A.D.H.D., a medical condition, so he needs to take this medicine every day,’ rather than, ‘I want my kid to succeed in environments for which he’s not well suited, so therefore I want him to take these pills.’”) also made me think about what still feels so perilous and confusing to me about ADHD medication, because so much of my drug use has been to essentially try and succeed in environments for which I’m not well suited. Studies like this one show that over 40% of folks in treatment for an SUD have ADHD (the number is around 5-10% in the general population), and that most ADHD diagnosed in SUD treatment is untreated/undiagnosed—meaning that folks who don’t get screened, diagnosed and treated for ADHD have a much greater chance of developing a SUD (to manage symptoms). I have zero conclusions about any of this; I just find it quite fascinating. There is a LOT of conflicting research out there; with ADHD I’m still in my observations stage.
A song that always leaves me feeling something better than I was before
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During a meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Trump stated, "The homegrowns are next”
Big hearts exploding all over the place! I'm going to celebrate love at every turn, while also making plans with my pack for our next act of resistance. It can be both. It has to be. xoxo
Love you so much!!!!
Happy anniversary to us!