Wonderland

Last night I had a dream. A dream that, like a Hallmark Christmas movie, I reacquainted with my first boyfriend and found it to be wonderfully pleasant. This is how I should have known it was a dream - we rarely had a civil interaction when we were dating. But, in the dream, it was easy to be taken in by his secure presence and enchanting home.

For most of the dream, I was in his living room, where the canopy of a Japanese tree flourished over my head like a cloud. When I zeroed in on the branches, it only further proved how healthy this tree was. Every leaf was glowing a vibrant shade of green. I could have sworn they were growing right before my eyes. 

Though this may seem like a nonsensical feature of my dream, I knew upon waking, that it was not. My ex was fantastic at nurturing and growing plants. We often talked about how, one day, he’d build a stone wall and a garden in our backyard. One that I could pick herbs from and incorporate into our meals. By then, I would be a successful counselor and he would be a successful paralegal. Once I earned my counseling license we’d start our life in Seattle but, in old age, move to Bainbridge island.

My ex and I had split up many times before our final separation, but what always brought us back together was the coziness of the world we created for the two of us. In this world, I was a butterfly and he was a cheetah. Two species with endless differences, but also endless admiration for each other. Maybe a part of us always knew it would never come to fruition, but we imagined our life together the way one would imagine a storybook. One where the characters are set, with clear career paths, and a permanent home. 

But, one fateful day, this butterfly flew away. For good. Created a whole new life for herself, where memories of Cheetah, and the life they planned to share, drifted further and further away, like a fading dream…

Only for the dream to come back to her, when she had all but forgotten it. 

~~~

Upon waking up from this dream, I felt a lot of emotions. I’m not sure cheetah would have treated butterfly nicely, in the long run. In fact, I’m sure that he wouldn’t have. But butterfly was still enamored with the idea of him. With the idea of their life together. Just not enough to stay.

Mulling over this dream, it dawned on me that my breakup was the first catalyst for me in a string of deviations from my life plan. I jotted down a poem about it in my dream journal, drafted and deleted some texts to my ex, and cried while listening to Noah Kahan. I hoped to carry on with my day.

Unfortunately, once this topic was dug up from the grave after a four year burial, my feeble attempts at addressing it were not adequate. It was seeping through the cracks of my hardwood floors. Wafting through the smoke of my incense. I had to tackle it further. Lest it create an avalanche in my mind. It dawned on me that to not reflect on the path I had gone down, post breakup, would be doing my younger self a disservice. And maybe others who were, or are, at a fork in their lives. In my dream, I had actually set out to write a blog post about the aftermath of my divergence, before I woke up. 

            Perhaps dream me was on to something. Perhaps not. But I follow the wisdom of my dreams like it’s my religion. So buckle up. 

All journeys start with an ending. My ex and I broke up for the last time in the fall of 2020. I was standing in the heart of Boston. He- in the heart of Seattle. There was screaming and crying (from my end), but then it was done. And in my core, I knew it was final. Though at the time I had blamed it on him- the way he talked to me, his passivity around traveling to attend my sister’s wedding, etc., etc- I know now that I had been looking for an out. For quite some time. I was dying to break free.

And break free I did. Two weeks later, I lost the only job I held since grad school, as an addiction counselor at an outpatient hospital branch. The company had gone bankrupt. I had about one week to say goodbye to all my individual clients, coworkers, and the group I ran every day. This meant I had to pack up all my things at work and at home, as I was also moving out from my sister’s place (so she could start her life with her soon-to-be husband).

Had I still been with my ex, I likely would have left for Seattle to close the distance and start our life together. But that was no longer an option. My other sister tipped me on a friend looking for a fourth housemate in a shared living space in Somerville, MA. So that was to be my next home. Looked like I’d be staying in Boston. 

Focusing on gathering and moving all my things, as well as attending my sister’s covid wedding, provided distraction initially. But, once I was moved into the new place, unemployed in the height of the pandemic, time stretched before me like a looming, pervasive fog. I couldn’t, for the life of me, see through it. Other than my intensive fitness and nutrition regimen and studying for my counseling license exam, I lost my will for what I was doing with my life, and why.

I remember walking along the Charles River, in complete disbelief at what my life had become, or rather, dwindled down to. It felt like my roots came out from the earth and I didn’t know what was left to stand on. The only choice I had was to keep walking.

I wandered through the beautiful BU campus pretending to be a student, crossed multiple bridges, talked to some trees, and watched the sun set on the water. By the end of my river walk, my spirits were lifted. But the end of that walk was just the beginning of my walk alone. 

For the sake of honest truth, I am going to reveal a reflection from the archives of my Google Docs. I think it describes better than I can now what I was going through at the beginning of my journey, at my new place. For the sake of confidentiality, I have changed the names of my housemates at the time. 

I left barely a person. Burned out from my job and my home environment. Timing was funny. In one big swoop I had a new home, away from family, and no job. And no boyfriend.

I was free. Choked with fear, but free.

My first days in the new apartment, I woke up at 5 am, my regular time to clock in to life. I don’t honestly know what I did to fill the time. Exercise, meals, studying for my license exam and god knows what else. I started out with just one housemate to acquaint myself with, Wayne. Smart in all the ways I am not but naive in the ways I excel. He kept to himself a lot. I noticed it was only when I left a public space that his bedroom door would open and he would slink out. It was a momentous feat the day I caught him in the kitchen and forced a conversation onto him. From there, we bonded over Game of Thrones and my love for cooking versus his love for robots.

Nero, an additional housemate, was the one I already knew slightly and the reason I was there. He was a friend of my sister and I trusted him completely. Skinny, with the grace of a ballerina and the brain of Wayne if it was tempered and aged like a fine wine. Or like a homemade mead, which filled five jars in the common room, each labeled by an “M” for mead and an additional letter to represent what herb or spice he aged it with. Ironically, he left as soon as I arrived, to go back home for a month in Oregon. I was left to fend for myself.

Wayne had not worried me. Men don’t intimidate me. It was my fourth housemate, Alicia, I was most concerned about. From my fleeting impressions of her she was a very hard worker and very “adult.” Bohemian style but always sleek and fashion-forward. Never left a trail behind unless it was fading streaks of cleaning spray. Compared to my jobless state, lack of direction, and oblivious nature, she would probably appear to anyone else as the older one. I was worried sick she was going to hate me.

Lucky for me, she was gone most of the first week I was there. Her international boyfriend was leaving back home for Spain so she was spending almost all her time with him before his departure. My worries were kept at bay.

One evening, during my second week there, I decided to fully make use of the spacious kitchen and lack of inhabitants. I let myself go nuts in the nearby Whole Foods, using my intuition as a compass. I was beyond excited to be able to cook without my sister and her boyfriend watching my every move and passive aggressively tensing at every crumb I misplaced. When I got back home and laid all the ingredients out, I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me but that it would be worth it. I started slowly, savoring the process, feeling on top of the world.

About halfway through the prep, something changed. As I painstakingly dipped every zucchini strip into eggs, flour, and breadcrumb mixture, my excitement waned. I looked at all the work still ahead of me, and all the food with only me to eat, and my appetite suddenly grew stale. I continued on, but with the mechanics of one of Wayne’s robots. I tried to play music to drown out the emptiness, but it only made my loneliness more apparent, so I turned it off. 

It was around this point, right after sliding the zucchini fritters into the oven and turning the music off, that Alicia walked in. Glowing from her past few days with her boyfriend, she grabbed a bottle of wine from off her shelf, uncorked it seamlessly and settled down at the kitchen table with a glass, saying, “I don’t think I’ve officially introduced myself. I’m Alicia.” 

~~~~

Bet you didn’t know that by clicking into this blog post you were signing yourself up for dream references, journal entries, fairy tales, and depression. Like wanting to listen to some mindless pop and ending up stuck in a loop of all of Taylor Swift’s albums. But, I did call this post Wonderland, so you had to expect the unexpected. Still, I don’t want to turn this blog post into an epic, so I will try to keep my points concise going forward. 

I have stayed in the same place ever since my breakup. To be honest, I was really sick of moving at that point so I would’ve had to hate the place to leave. But in my case, I actually love it. The location is primo (near Harvard, MIT, and Boston), and I have met so many interesting individuals here. As you may have been able to surmise from my little narrative, I was blessed with an amazing crew of housemates right from the get-go. They all left to move in with partners at the end of their lease, but the overlap in timing couldn’t have been better. I became a person again that year, and formed lasting friendships.

Rather than building a life with a partner, I stayed solo, but have been surrounded by a flow of people. It’s been quite enjoyable for me. My floor is usually fantastic (because I help pick the people) but the one year it wasn’t, the rest of the house had a great vibe. In recently reading (and loving) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland I realized that the conversations in the book mirrored some of the conversations I’ve had in this house. Conversations about nothing. And yet, they were something. 

One year, for a joint Halloween party, my floor represented Heaven and the others represented Limbo, Purgatory, and Hell. I stayed outside for most of it, by the fire, but I like to use the metaphor to describe my life these past few years in independence. 

With my serious boyfriend (who fit in with the fam), and my Master’s in counseling and addictions from a reputable grad school (with a near perfect GPA might I add), I was on a track. One that proverbial good girls stay on. 

And it wouldn’t have been bad, I don’t think, if my dream was any indication. To stick with my boyfriend and my career path. To find another counseling job after the one I knew ended. It might have been very stable and snug. I mean, I had a stalker and counseled a murder convict at my outpatient job, and my ex and I screamed our throats hoarse every other time we interacted. But at the end of each night I got to bask in the knowledge that I found “my person.” One who made me carry pepper spray in my purse. One who advocated all the way from Seattle about when I should contact the police, or at least my boss, when a client became dangerous towards me. These are not the kind of guys I typically date anymore. I’ve learned the hard way that a lot of people really just care about my body. Nothing more. Or they love everything about me, in a creepy way. 

So, yeah, my experiences with my long distance ex who I was always in a fight with, felt snug. And a part of me really wanted that comfort.  But I also knew I couldn’t help but want to leave “Heaven.” And check out purgatory, hell, even limbo. I made the reckless albeit privileged choice to leave a stable and (tumultuously) happy lifestyle. For a big old question mark.

I think a lot of people are faced with this choice, when they find themselves in a serious relationship at a pivotal age of development. The choice of, do I lean into this relationship, knowing it will probably walk me down the line straight into marriage and maybe even family. Or do I pursue other yearnings, whether that be people, interests, or endeavors. For me, those yearnings were all tied together. By knocking down one bowling pin, I was striking out on all my life plans. But opening up the doorway to many more.

In hindsight, my ex was kind of right about some of the guys capturing my interest when we were still together. Everyone’s true colors come out eventually. I think sometimes it’s fun to hype things up in our head. To want what we can’t have.

In the wild dating kingdom, the games continue. It gets toxic. I get tired of all the superficiality. Games are fun until they’re not. And I guess I’m not really looking for “serious" either. I mean, I already walked away from three marriage proposals in my life, not trying to deny any more.

I am currently taking a break from dating. I can appreciate qualities now about my ex I took for granted at the time, but I also know I needed to let him go. I had growing and learning to do, that needed to occur on my own. I was scared to give him up but I was even more scared to spend the rest of my life with the first guy I seriously dated. 

I felt similarly with my career. It had barely begun but it already daunted me to picture doing it for a lifetime. I knew I needed to try out other paths. Without a serious partner anymore, I could take those risks, follow those whims. “Bring me that horizon,” as Jack Sparrow wisely put it. After I obtained my Massachusetts mental health counseling license (no easy feat), I jumped ship to novel writing and the restaurant industry. 

I thought that the restaurant industry would be a change of pace from the serious addiction and sudden deaths that occurred at my outpatient job. But though I left the field of addiction, it still surrounded me like a plague. At my longest standing restaurant job, two people died within two months. Both great individuals, one in her young twenties.

Some may wonder if I regret the choice to enter that restaurant, or the industry, in general. I can’t, and don’t want, to picture my life without these experiences. I never would have had the pleasure of meeting and knowing them and many other extraordinary individuals had I not worked there. Had I stuck to my path. And I could probably count my number of friends here on one hand if it weren’t for these jobs. Being thrown into the deep end every night really brings people together. Or tears them apart. But it’s all part of the journey.

Service industry jobs are taxing, but I can still think, focus and study when I’m not working. As opposed to the mush that became of my brain every day I walked out of that outpatient center in downtown Boston. I think that is why so many people straddle these jobs with school or their passions. In my case, these jobs help me write. And my writing helps me feel fulfilled. 

Our life can go in so many directions post-education. Rewatching Dead Poet Society recently (such a good movie) really brought that concept home for me. As daughter to one of the pupils taught by the teacher that inspired Robin William’s character, I feel destined to have chosen a life of creativity. And I am very glad I released my inner need to frolick. To go in whatever direction feels right. To fail. And get back up again. All the while, pursuing and honing my ambitions. While I’m still young. 

I’ll never truly know what I gave up. But if I hadn’t gone the direction that I did, I wouldn’t have had any of the amazing experiences that followed. I doubt I’d be working on a trilogy right now. Or be able to read books like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and call it education. I wouldn’t currently be working a stellar solstice event at my favorite cemetery. And most importantly, I wouldn’t be me. The one who is who she is today not because she followed her head and not because she followed her heart. But because she followed her gut. 

Cue Stick Season by Noah Kahan