Beautiful friends, I want to thank you for sticking around Self Made despite the infrequent missives these past many months. I have a lot to share so I’ll jump right in~

In the late-nineties I wanted nothing more than to be part of a “tight-knit group of music-savvy youths.” In high-school, I got there. My best friends and I were super into music, and every weekend—and occasionally on a weeknight when we could coordinate with our parents for pickup and drop off—there we’d be, earnest and bright-faced in the front row of every all-ages show, saving all the set lists from the shitty garage bands made up of people we idolized who were most of the time barely older than us.

This is not a dark forest, this is an open plain, and I am exposed, sunburned, wind worn and dry. I seek cover, but the saguaros are too skinny, and besides, the sun is a sped-up sundial and I can’t follow the shade fast enough. I stumble, and sweat, eyes casting about horizons and periphery, ever on the lookout for the cool blue calm that runs softer than the unforgiving sky. You know, water. I want to be quenched, I want to float on my back for a while, I want to fill up my hat and smack it over my head, let the coolness drip down my face, under my shirt. Basically, I’m looking for a break.

In February 2020, I’d just started dating a man I’d met on Tinder. He had a strong, if constantly furrowed, brow, sad eyes, and rode a motorcycle (say no more, right? Who knew I was such a cliché!). He had a brown belt in Jujitsu, worked in the fine art world, and was fixing up a Vanagon to travel across the country in. Sure, he was just getting out of a sixteen-year relationship, but I was smitten, which meant fantasizing about #vanlife and magically thinking away every last red flag (including the one from our very first date where he told me he was still living in his ex’s basement).

For a long time, my desire was at odds with my behavior.

More than anything, I wanted to be good. I wanted to be good, and I wanted to know that I was good, to believe it, and to never question the veracity of that belief. I wanted to be good, and yet I kept behaving in ways that made me feel bad. Inside of this discrepancy, I became a person whose entire lived experience was colored by a low-grade, yet omnipresent, felt-sense of shame.

“Is that OK?”

I’m halfway through a session, listening to one of my people recount the details of a decisive action she took inside of her marriage that was way outside of her comfort zone. She casts glances my way, which is to say, through the screen, waiting for my response, and I can feel her yearning speaking to me all the way from the front seat of her car in a city over 3,000 miles away from where I currently sit.