SCREAMING INTO THE VOID — Help Me, Nancy Meyers!

If you’ve ever awoken to a faint cry in the distance, the horrid sound of a deep, insurmountable pain, echoing through the ether, wrapping its sorrowful tendrils around you while you lay cozy in bed, sending chills down your spine, and wondered, “what mournful beast could be in such mortal peril?” - wonder no further, my friend, thats just me, attempting to shovel my driveway, solo, again.

I’m sorry, I know I’m supposed to be a hearty woman who has SEEN * CLAP* SOME * CLAP* SHIT* CLAP * but the reality is, I fucking HATE shoveling. I hate it. I hate waking up, looking outside and it being absolutely magical, like some real snow-globe amazingness, with glitter coated cotton candy flakes everywhere, and instead of being in awe, my heart will immediately sink because I realize in order for me to get out of my driveway it will take approximately an hour of shoveling, four puffs from my rescue inhaler, and about 3 - 5 times of me falling on my ass due to the ice under all that snow. And thats just to get out of my driveway. Thats not even the hellish adventure that awaits when I attempt to drive down my street, which is one of the steepest in town. Most days my brakes lock-up about 3 seconds into the drive, and then its me skidding down a one lane hill, while I scream bloody murder and pray to Satan that the snow plow isn’t awaiting me at the bottom. Its honestly terrible. 90% of my snow related anxiety is due to that fucking hill. Y’all we’re only two months into 2019, and I’ve had to do a lot of fucking shoveling. And a lot of Dukes of Hazzard sliding down my hill. I’m exhausted. Exhausted from shoveling. Exhausted from the cold. Exhausted from looking at my bills and realizing I bought $600 of heating oil first of January and I have to buy another $600 this week. I’m exhausted from being single and having to handle all this shit by myself. I’m exhausted from pretending that living in this Hallmark fever-dream isn’t a little bit harder than I expected.

My 2019 started in stark contrast to how I spent the first couple weeks of 2018. This time last year, I had just gotten back from a trip to the West Coast. I went a few days before New Years to escape the polar vortex that was plunging the East into a Siberian ice-hell, and, looking back, to escape myself. By that point, I had begrudgingly lived in quaint isolation for around 4 1/2 months, and it was showing. And it ain’t a good look. I guess I didn’t have any real exceptions when I moved to Vermont, other than sleeping, walking through the Green Mountains and trying to figure out what the FUCK I was supposed to do with my life. What I didn’t anticipate was my former boss being outed as a predator, and everything that came with that news. The media. The stress. The reliving scenarios over and over again. The lawyers. The conference calls with former coworkers trying to make sense of it all. The people I hadn’t spoken to in decades coming out of the woodwork asking me extremely personal questions, chomping at the bit, hoping that I’d have some sort of salacious answers for them. And when I didn't , the same people would lob accusations about my complicity. And I guess I thought I could move to Vermont and kinda shake off everything that had happened to me like a snake sheds its skin, and emerge, not a new person, but a cleaner, refreshed, invigorated version of myself. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the introspection and reflection covered me in thousands of little paper cuts, that stung and burned and reminded me of everything I wanted to shed. And I also assumed I would lose the weight my doctor said I put on due to being stressed and in fight for flight mode for over 6 years. So I got a personal trainer/ boxing coach, and my full-time job was working out. I drove to Burlington six days a week to box, and row, and do pushups, and box jumps, and kettle bells, and cardio, and whatever else my trainer threw my direction. But nothing happened. I wanted to look in the mirror and see the old me coming back - I wanted to look in the mirror and see the bold, funny, yes, skinner, old me. The one who took risks. The one who laughed. The one who had an endless surplus of creativity. But she didn’t show up. And the weight didn’t fall off. And then, because the world is cruel and things tend to kick you when you’re down, my dumbass went and got a long-distance crush. As one does. And because it came out of the blue, it made me think that, by God, it was really supposed to happen! Why would that appear out of the ether if it wasn’t written in the stars?! I felt that somehow, this was the universe karmically (finally) paying me back! Maybe all that bullshit I went through led me to this. place. right. here. This place where I found someone who, while they seemed way out of my league, for some strange reason, actually liked my brain and personality? It was the perfect fucking Nancy Meyers moment! This was my out of the blue potential love affair that would reinvigorate my soul (and loins) and would catapult me into the awesome and deserved life I’m supposed to fucking have in this adorable little hell-hole! IT WAS FINALLY FUCKING HAPPENING. But, like most things, it was a mirage. And a cruel one at that. There’s something truly crushing about being given the slightest taste of something, something that feels good, something that you didn’t know you needed until you got a bite, and knowing you can’t have it. Having a fleeting moment of hope and then having that snatched away like Lucy pulling Charlie Brown’s football. And a lot of that was due to me, due to the piles of bitterness and shame that envelop me like a cocoon. Looking in the mirror and seeing some sort of lumpy, chubby, hobgoblin who doesn’t believe she deserves happiness or love or sex because it’s been withheld from her for so long. And so, it was with all that and the impending Winter weather hell, that I packed my bags for an extended trip to the West Coast and my former life.

I embraced the Manifest Destiny of it all - I rented a chic hotel for my stay. I booked a private boxing coach because I didn’t want to lose my momentum with training, and I was still hopeful that I’d look in the mirror one morning and be happy with what was looking back at me. And I took general meetings, hellbent on getting back into the industry and back with my friends. Friends who had known me since my first job at Playtone and UCB and my move to Atlanta and then New York and now Vermont. And I went out to drinks with everyone I missed. And I drank oat milk lattes and pretending to like them. Pretended to fit back into my old scene. But my edges were jagged and nothing locked together smoothly for me. I felt like an imposter. But I’m fucking stubborn - so I just jammed myself into my old life - ignoring the discomfort. The little warning bells ringing in the back of my head, singing, “This isn’t good for you, Morgan”. Because being alone in the cold, didn’t feel good either. So I assumed it would be better to embrace the Devil I knew. And I celebrated New Years with champagne and merriment and when I woke up on New Years Day I felt terrible. And not hangover terrible, but I felt so profoundly blue. Something about the dawn of a new day and a fresh year felt like a scab had been ripped off and all that tender, oozing flesh underneath it was exposed. I went with a friend to get our tarot cards read that day. And it was one of the strangest, most intense experiences I’ve had. This woman said things that shook me to the core. And her main point kept being that I used to be a fertile valley, but in the process of nurturing and feeding and tending to everyone else, I dried up. I was cracked, brittle mud. And I had tapped all of myself for others. And eventually, with time and rest and self love and focusing on my own needs, I would be green again. But it wasn’t going to be an overnight process. I needed to work through my karma. Work through my sadness. Work through my pain, and when I was ready, contentment and joy woudl come. But It would not be today. Or tomorrow. Or soon. And I guess I took that shit as a challenge, because my dumbass went all-in and in the midst of all of this, I thought it would be a good idea to be bold and meet that person I had weird, unexplainable long distance feelings about. I joked to my friends that I felt like people were bellowing, “DEAD MAN WALKING” at me as I entered the bar to meet him, because we alllllll knew that would not end well. But, I did it anyway. Because at that point I still thought that if I fucking put the work in, if I worked out everyday and took chances and felt all the hard shit I had to feel, that there would be some sort of fucking cosmic payoff. And the dude? He was lovely and funny and very kind and very, very much not into me in person. Which I assumed would be the case, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t give it the good old college try! I was Bruce Willis giving my pals a thumbs up while going down to blow myself up along with an asteroid. I wasn’t going to make it back alive, but ya gotta give me credit for trying, right? And I extended my trip, because going back to Vermont was going back to reality. I think I knew deep down that I wasn’t going to move back to LA. That the jobs I was meeting about wouldn’t pan out. That blue that I felt was me realizing that my old life was just that. And LA couldn’t be my safety-net anymore.

So instead of escaping reality this year, I chose to, maybe not embrace it, but at least dig into it. I spent my Christmas solo. I spent my New Years Eve, curled up in bed at 9pm, listening to my sleep sounds app. I could’ve ventured down to the local pub, drank way too much and awoke on January 1st worried I’d made an ass of myself as I’ve been wont to do. But I didn’t. And I couldn’t polished off a bottle of wine while watching Bridget Jones Diary and lamenting my singleness, which I’ve also been known to do on a fairly regular basis. But I also didn’t do that. Instead, I did something that I needed. I slept. And I protected myself from the feelings of longing that nights like that can dredge up inside of your guts. Because I realized something about my trip back to LA last year, and why it needed to happen, and why I have to be careful about tricking myself like that again: that trip made me feel legitimately terrible. In my attempt to momentarily flee my realty, what that actually did was put into full view all of the things I missed out on while working myself into an early grave. I missed falling in love. I missed getting my finances in order. I missed having a family. Going on vacations. Spending time with my grandparents who had gotten very old while I wasn’t around. And I missed learning who I am as an adult. Because I just fucking pushed all my shit aside for men who would never appreciate me or my skillsets until I was gone. And thats on me.

And so, here I am - stir crazy and tired in Vermont. When I say I’m single, I mean that in a way that reinvents the definition of “spinster”. After my hideous attempts at online dating here, and watching men’s eyes fall with disappointment when they saw what I look like, which I assume is something on par with a tubby Swamp Thing, I deleted all those apps. Then, right around this time last year, due to the cold making me very cranky and very horny, I decided to throw caution into the wind and go and meet up with a ski bum lawyer from NY happened to be at a mountain an hour away. I had turned down his offers for months, but then figured the worst thing that could happen would be that he murdered me. Sexy time murder might be the best outcome I could imagine for myself here in Vermont. I literally have zero idea what I’m doing otherwise, so why not end up a Dateline special? With Keith Morrison staring quizzically at all my garbage art and stacks of romance novels and ruminating on what a sad life I surly did lead. All my friends getting to sadly shake their heads “yes” as Lester Holt asks if they saw this coming. Better than spending every day staring into the void, so I said fuck it and drove to meet this guy at his hotel near the ski slopes. An hour away, for the record. An hour that was used to remind me that every fucking minute I drove toward this stranger was a very stupid minute indeed. But I arrived at the hotel, and I use the word “hotel” loosely, as it was a Rodeway Inn and it was not what you would call “chic”. My friends now refer to any sort of boning down as “going to the Roadway Inn” - which is hysterical and also really embarrassing. My late 30s have been the Walmart version of Sex and the City. It’s all the grossness and regret, but none of the sensuality. I was definitely creeped out upon arrival at said snowy hovel, but the hunk of a hipster who met me at the door with a deep-ass French kiss, might’ve helped me gloss over more of the unsavory elements of a busted hilltop motel from the dark side of the 70s. This shithole seemed to be ok for the hipster lawyer, a man who liked to spend his money on helicopter trips to remote mountains where he could live out his K2 fantasies, and loved to French kiss, instead of a clean and non-panic inducing abode, but to each their own, ya know? And I guess I had to suck it up it in order for me to live out my “I’d rather not morph into Jack Nicholson in the Shining so I might as well get busy with a stranger fantasy”, so whatever. I’m not proud of this. I was also not convinced that this man, a man I drove over an hour to meet, woudln’t regent me upon site. I was so nervous I dry heaved in a Dunken Donuts drive-though 20 minutes away from the motel. I was convinced, obviously very healthily influenced by former experiences with beefcakes, that the guy would take one look at me and high-tail it up the Mountain, or lock the door and not let me in. But hell froze over, and he didn’t lock me out. He greeted me with a deep French kiss like a total maniac, but I stayed because, I mean - horny and cold and also over an hour from home. And you'll not be surprised to find out that true love did not ensue. Nope, I stayed, and it was awkward and strange and kinda great until I thought about it and then it wasn’t at all and I immediately felt REAL weird about being at a Roadway Inn. But life is truly is a highway and this highway let me to a budget motel and a handsome dude and some deep dicking that did not bring me back to life, but definitely made me question a lot of things. But y’all, . the winter months do weird shit to people here. They make you seek out murder by handsome stranger dick over spending another fucking night alone in your house, drinking wine and watching youtube videos of the making of Steely Dan’s AJA album. But that was last year. This year I haven’t reached that level of insanity, yet, tho I can feel it nipping at my heels. Its coming. This winter has been long. And I’m tired of myself. I’m tired of treading water. I’m tired of pretending that life here is easy and magical when most times its me looking out my window and saying, “what the fuck am I doing??” as I watch people snowshoe through the hills of my neighborhood.

The forecast is calling for another 2-4 inches of snow to fall overnight. That means tomorrow morning, at 5:30am, I’ll be dragging myself out of bed, into my boots and will then attempt to shovel my car out without falling and breaking my ankle or having an asthma attack. And then, after that, I’ll have to see if I can make it down my hill without killing myself or someone else. And, if I’m able to make that happen, then I have to go into work and stand on my feet for hours and have twenty-somethings roll their eyes at me when I ask them to do whatever task is needed. And then I’ll go home again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. For the duration of the Winter. So, when you’re trying to sleep and you hear that faint scream in the night, know that its me. Shoveling again. And hating it.