This is going to be a rambling one. My thoughts are all messy and disjointed. So many things have happened. Maybe I’m starting to calm down. Or maybe I’m just getting more worked up. Maybe both.

I went to an AA meeting the other day. Alcohol isn’t my main addiction, obviously. But it was good to listen to other addicts talk about their out-of-control behavior. It was a small zoom meeting so I participated, minimally, too. It was nice to be seen and heard and welcomed by these imperfect and vulnerable strangers. I guess.

2020 has come to an end. It’s 2021 now. Time for new beginnings? Ugh.

On New Year’s Eve I decide to reach out to my friend, Jim. Jim and I have known each other a long time and have a storied history. I find him to be pretentious and phony. But also intellectual and witty. He likes to go out for cocktails and talk about philosophy and he’s almost always available to hang out with me when I ask him to. He and I tried at having a romantic relationship with each other a few months ago. It was a valiant effort, at least on my part, I’d say. But it didn’t work out. So we decided, I thought, to go back to being friends.

It had been at least a month since the last time Jim and I had spent any time together. It was time enough for me to have become enmeshed in this crazy love triangle with my abusive ex, Carl, and my new boyfriend, Blake. Triangle might be the wrong shape to describe it, actually, because there’s also Blake’s ex girlfriend that he’s still in love with and a few other characters that may or may not be worth mentioning. I don’t know. It’s a big old messy love storm is what it is.

I made it clear, I thought, to Jim that I was not interested in any holiday intimacy with him. I texted him before heading over, on New Year’s Eve,

“No making out or anything. That’s not my intention. Is that ok?”

“Of course,” he responds.

So I head on over to his place. It’s about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. His house is a 9 minute walk from mine. I imagine we’ll have a few cocktails, spend some time catching up, and I’ll be home in bed with Carrie Bradshaw by 8.

I’m really just looking for something to pass the time and distract me from the reality where Blake isn’t texting me back and I’ve blocked and deleted every form of access I once had to Carl. I feel abandoned and on my own for the first time in years and it’s scary. I don’t know where my next attention fix will be coming from. So a few hours with Jim will have to do.

After a few very stiff cocktails, a hand full of Jim’s friends reach out and want to come over. Looks like this is gonna be a party and I am so down.

The next several hours are a pretty fun-filled blur. We play some games and have some laughs. I have a vague memory of Jim kissing me on the couch at one point. I think we might have wrestled a little bit, too. Jim’s got this one friend who’s apparently not drinking and talks with me about detox and recovery. He will hand us all an edible sometime after midnight. There’s another friend who, for some reason, keeps calling me a witch and thinks I’m casting spells on everybody. It’s funny, I guess.

There’s only one other woman at this party. Her boyfriend is the one that’s calling me a witch.

One of Jim’s friends stands out to me. His name is, get this, Karl. Karl with a K. I’ve met this ridiculous character before. He’s bold and hilarious. He’s not at all worried about being too loud or offending anybody. I’m really glad he’s here at this party. He makes me laugh so much. He’s just so absurd. What a wonderful addition to the distraction I was looking for.

Sometime around 2am, I‘m super drunk, stoned, tired, and I’m literally starving to death. I look at Jim and ask, “is there anything to eat?”

“Would you like me to make you something?”

I nod, pathetically.

Jim starts making a ruckus in the kitchen and the only other woman at the party joins him. I am glued to my chair at his dining room table. There’s some more talk around the table of detoxing (from my Ambien addiction) and the likelihood of my being a spell-casting witch.

Whatever’s happening in the kitchen is taking up an eternity. And this is when Karl with a K starts paying me a different kind of attention. His foot is touching my foot. We start to hold hands but abruptly pull away whenever Jim comes back into the room. It’s silly. It’s stupid. I’m into it.

“Are you and Jim a thing?” Karl asks.

“Not as far as I’m concerned.”

We play this game for awhile. Jim is taking forever in the kitchen. I ask for Karl’s phone number and shoot him a text so we can be more clandestine about this whole operation. He doesn’t really get it, though, and continues to put his foot on my lap and reach for my hand and whispers loudly about how we should leave together.

Once forty minutes has gone by and Jim is still mysteriously banging around in the kitchen, I decide to just get up and leave. Karl, right on cue, asks if he can walk me home and I say yes. I quickly say goodbye to whoever’s in the room, passively shout in the direction of the kitchen ‘bye Jim, thanks for everything’ (of course he doesn’t hear me) and get the fuck outta there.

Karl follows me and immediately starts saying allllll the right shit.

“You’re so fucking pretty.”

We stop and make out for a minute.

“You’re so fucking gorgeous.”

He’s grinning. Probably I am, too. This is my fix. This is the kind of attention that gets me high.

“Where are you taking me?” he wonders out loud.

“My house is just around the corner. Come on.”

I’m giggling and soaking it all up as we stumble, hand in hand, back to my house. It’s unclear, though, how this is all gonna go down. Do I wanna sleep with this person? I dunno. Of course I haven’t thought this all the way through. I’m fucking wasted.

We get to the steps of my house and I say something about calling him an Uber. He wants to come inside, though, and I kind of want him to, too. So he comes inside. He picks me up in his arms — mmm, he’s strong — and is determined to take me to bed. He doesn’t even know where my bed is, though, and I direct him to the couch in my living room. We sit down, we make out, I suggest calling him an Uber again.

“I’ll do anything to sleep with you, though.”

I am so conflicted. A part of me loves this attention and is desperate to keep it coming. Another part of me wants me to stop being such a slut, though, and get this drunk, horny guy outta here.

“No, come on, let’s get you a car.”

“Um, can I just crash here?”

“You wanna sleep on the couch?”

“Can I just lay with you?”

“You wanna just lay down and go to sleep with me?”

“Yes, and I promise to be a perfect gentleman,” he holds up his hands as he makes this oh-so-sincere declaration.

“Ok, come on then.”

I show him to my bedroom. I get him some water. I use the restroom and take my Ambien.

I climb into bed and he is definitely not a perfect gentleman. The Ambien does it’s thing, though, and erases most of this sexual encounter from my memory. Did I consent to this? Did I enjoy it? I won’t ever really know.

We are both completely naked under the covers when I wake up in the morning. We spend some time in my bed jovially reminiscing about all the stupid shit that had happened the night before. I confess to having absolutely no memory of the sex and ask him to describe it to me. Sounds like it was a pretty good time and we laugh about it.

I check my phone to find out that Jim had called and texted after I’d left his house the night before. He’s angry. He thinks it’s messed up that I left without saying goodbye while he was making me food. I imagine he’s probably also angry that I didn’t stay and sleep with him, but he’ll never admit this. What a pretentious, phony little bitch.

Karl with a K wants to buy me breakfast but he’s got to leave to take care of some family stuff. Later in the day we’ll get together for some Bloody Mary’s and some snuggling. He’ll want to have sex again but this time I’ll successfully say no. After he leaves, I’ll text him to say I can’t hang out anymore because my heart is too heavy from all the drama in my life right now. He’ll understand and he’ll agree that Jim doesn’t need to know that we slept together, as that would just cause more drama.

That same night after Karl is long gone, Blake will show up at my house at like midnight, demanding that I let him in. I won’t. I’ll want to but I won’t.

The very next day I’ll end up spending the entire day with Blake, though. We’ll play tennis together. We’ll watch movies. I’ll cry, he’ll hold me. We’ll have sex. I’ll get upset that he doesn’t want me as much as he wants his ex girlfriend but I won’t leave for a few more hours because what else am I gonna do to pass the time?

The day after that I’ll zoom into that AA meeting and I’ll reach back out to Karl. I’ll boldly ask if he wants to take me to lunch and thank God he does. This will be a fun distraction. We’ll have some drinks. We’ll laugh. We’ll make out a little bit before he’s got to leave town and go back home, two hours away. We’ll text each other during his trip back home and for the next few days. We’ll even talk to each other on the phone one night and squeeze in a few more giggles. I’ll feel vaguely satisfied that the connection with this Karl character has turned into something a bit more innocent than just that sloppy, drunken, Ambien-black-out sex.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue hoping for attention from Blake. And I’ll get some. We’ll spend another day together having lunch, playing frisbee, watching movies, having dinner. He’ll want to have sex again. Maybe I will too. We’ll argue about how he still hasn’t re-accepted my Facebook friend request. Half seriously I’ll say that we’ve gotta be Facebook friends before we can have sex again. He’ll promptly grab his phone, send me a request, and like one of my photos. But ultimately I’ll say no to the sex and he’ll respect my no, which I will appreciate.

Things are maybe looking up for Blake and me. We just spent a lovely, fun-filled day together, didn’t even have sex, AND we’re Facebook friends again. Maybe we can take things slow this time. With boundaries and stuff. Maybe it’ll work out between us, after all.

I’ll continue to illicit attention from both Karl and Blake, throughout the following day. These text-message-mini-fixes will tide me over, I think, until the next time I can see Blake.

I’ll go and see my therapist. It’ll be a good session. Lots of tears. We’re getting closer to a dark sadness inside of me, it seems. Maybe getting closer to healing this part of me that is so very desperate for connection to a man.

In the evening, I’ll reach out to both Karl and Blake. When they don’t respond, I’ll reach out to any other man I can find in my phone but nobody is responding. I am not getting my fix. My head is spinning. My chest is burning. That unbearable feeling of impending doom is starting to descend.

I go on to Facebook messenger. I can see that Blake is currently active. Although he is not responding to my text, there is something comforting about just seeing his face with that little green dot next to it. He may not be responding to me right now, but at least he’s still my Facebook friend. At least he’s not blocking me anymore like when he was trying to get back together with his ex girlfriend and lying to me about it…

Oh wait. Did I speak too soon? His little icon face disappears. The green dot remains so he’s still active but his picture’s gone. Maybe he’s changing his profile pic? Nope. Now he’s totally gone. No little icon. No green dot. I check our previous messages and there it is again at the bottom.

“This person is unavailable on Messenger.”

Motherfucker. This is happening. Again.

I go to the main Facebook platform and I search his name. Sure as shit. He has fucking blocked me. Again.

This can only mean one thing, right? He is with his ex girlfriend. Or I don’t know. What does this mean? What the fuck? Why does he need to block me? What does he think I’m gonna do? Does he just not want me to see that he’s active on Facebook right now? Does he just need space?

This makes me feel fucking crazy.

I call my best gay, Zach, and finally somebody answers the goddamn phone. I groan in agony. Zach awkwardly tries to comfort and/or distract me. There is no distracting me right now, though. I’m so embarrassed and humiliated and hurt and sad. The feelings of rejection and abandonment are so intense. I can’t believe this is happening again. I thought we were past this blocking-me-on-social-media bullshit. I thought we had gone back to being open and honest with each other…and/or at least some kind of mutual understanding that there was no commitment here and no need for lying or hiding or BLOCKING.

Ugh.

Now I’ll do anything. If I don’t get some attention from some man who finds me attractive tonight, I’m gonna die.

Carl (with a C) is the only option left. I’ve deleted his number from my phone and blocked him on social media, though, so I’m gonna have to get creative here. I decide to create a new Instagram account and see if he’ll accept my follow request. He does. We talk. It’s not great. It’s actually pretty sad. We don’t know each other the way we used to. And there’s lots to be angry about. There’s definitely no hope in us getting back together or even seeing each other just one more time. It’d be too dangerous. But we can pretend to be friends and chat with each other until it’s late enough for me to take a sleeping pill and go to sleep. This’ll do. For tonight.