There were bodies beneath us, so the stakes seemed high.

It was never clear if this was a “date,” but the depth of meeting someone in a cemetery held gravity that was undeniable. Hollywood Forever was tranquil— cinematic in the golden-hour wash with the Cinespia movie screen overlooking the lawn.

I was surprised how relaxed I felt, how happy one could be amidst decay, coffins, and the tragic resting place of Judy Garland.

For a second, I wondered if that thought made me a horrible person. Then I realized my excitement was due to the anticipation of popping Prosecco with someone who actually had a sense of humor.

I used to give my former partner shit about her drinking habits. How our weekly sushi nights were always accompanied by two large Sapporo beers— and how quickly an argument would ensue when I’d verbalize any discomfort.

It’s funny what divorce makes of you.

I empathize with alcoholics now. I’ve been in circles with the twelve step program and feel the magnetic draw, myself. To hell with judgment— if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

And so, I began pouring.

Before he arrived, he let me know he was running late. A supposed friend that was supposed to tag along “bailed” last minute… And for a second, I wondered if that person was as much of an apparition as feeling David Lynch’s ghost by the pond.

I laughed to myself, thinking it was cute if it had been a lie to get me alone— then I humbled myself and accepted the simpler explanation. This guy was from Pittsburgh and intriguingly dead pan, so maybe I was getting the fantasy all wrong.

Doubt settled in, so did insecurity— aspects I’ve worked laboriously to overcorrect from being cheated on three times by the one person I gave all of my twenties to.

I coasted by on luck and evaded the dreaded dating scene from ages 20 to 27. Marrying my first love; my one and only serious relationship. Now, I was free falling with no game at 29.

As the sun blushed into a peachy nectar, I took bodily inventory before he arrived. I fluffed my hair, I smoothed the wrinkles on my quilt— I even straightened my spine in fear he’d walk up too soon and see my real posture, revealing years of adolescent shame.

I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder blade, and when I turned around quickly with enthusiasm, I felt disappointed in myself for not sticking to the script. I wanted to move slow and ethereal— instead, I probably looked hyper.

I stood up, barefoot in the plush grass, and gave him a genuine hug. He was beautiful and authentic— salt of the earth, as they say. Someone from August Wilson’s neck of the woods. Someone I’d easily cast as the son of Troy in Fences. A person whose honesty was refreshing, with a wit to challenge mine.

We met at work but I hadn’t seen him in months since I quit. He showed me his treasure trove of canned margaritas and assorted vegan snacks he thoughtfully brought for me. I showed him my large bottle of sparkling Italian wine, and we laughed at my translucent dinosaur cups— the only disposable ones available at the grocery store.

If this had been anyone else, I would’ve been more self-conscious of using kids cups, but I knew he did improv. It was safe to assume he’d embrace the absurdity with the comedic rule of “yes, and…”

The conversation mirrored the swans in the nearby water; effortless and natural. We fired off playful comebacks like cowboys in a showdown. His vulnerability was nice— something I wasn’t met with often.

He was inquisitive with questions like:

“What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite dinosaur?”

I caught on to his curiosity slowly. He was observant and understood the hidden implication of each seemingly innocent answer.

“Oh, pterodactyl?! Because you like to fly away from it all?” He joked.

He was aware of psychological reasoning.

Someone not just talking for the sake of talking. Someone trying to understand another person. Someone whose favorite color revealed a hidden introversion and mystery that immediately piqued my interest.

As the sky dimmed into the blue hour, a young Mia Farrow appeared on the movie screen in a marigold shift dress— reminding me of the feminist story: The Yellow Wallpaper.

All of a sudden, I felt the unfamiliar joy of being out in the city past 8pm. I felt like an adult.

I began reflecting on my reclusive ways since my separation— a form of avoidance I’ve swung the pendulum over to from the opposite side of attachment theory.

Mirroring the hermit nature of my literary idols was subconscious, but my flaky tendencies seemed to drop at this moment. Honoring this invitation felt thrilling; it was the first time someone tailored an experience to me… Appealing to my cinephile side.

I was stunned he enjoyed the wine.

He held out his triceratops patterned cup, thus, making me feel like an expert in alcohol I knew nothing about. He asked what I had for lunch and playfully kept pushing the Sabritones-tasting chips towards me during the movie to ensure I was eating.

“Great. He thinks I’m anorexic,” I joked introspectively.

His whispers of commentary during the film were funny. When I’d turn my head to meet his gaze— I was soon faced with a gentle intimacy I wasn’t prepared for.

As the night came to a close and the clapping of hands filled the echoing graveyard plots, we staggered back to my car slowly under the moon.

We talked about the ending of the film, discussing the repercussions of having Satan’s child, and then he complimented my dress.

Feeling eyes on you is an intoxicating feeling when you’ve been starved.

Whether it was admiration for the pattern of the fabric or the body beneath it— I lapped it up.

As we drove to his car parked a few blocks away, he drunkenly confessed:

“You’re so talented… Humorously talented.”

I felt embarrassed for wanting to interrogate his statement.

On the freeway, I missed all my exits driving home— still easing out of the tipsy fog from hours earlier. I was re-routed back to the highway overlooking my old job, coming out from the tunnels of Forest Lawn— another cemetery with the resting place of my distant relative: Clark Gable.

I smirked at the absurdity of the Hollywood themed evening and turned up the volume on my Lana Del Rey Ultraviolence CD.

“Down on the West Coast, they got a saying. If you’re not drinking, then you’re not playing…”

I arrived home in one piece with the strange worry I’d taken a spirit home… But the only thing haunting me was the realization that nothing “happened” on this date.

Then, I remembered our conversation where we bonded over growing up on episodes of Seinfeld.

We toasted our cups on the picnic blanket and I drunkenly quoted Larry David’s hilarious initial pitch for television:

“A show about nothing!”

So quirky.

So enjoyable.

So human with no expectations.

The only bones we were jumping that evening were the ones under the damp earth of the cemetery lawn.

And somehow that was everything I could’ve asked for.

I didn’t care where I was going… I just needed a body of water to stand between me and whatever I was trying to run from.

New Orleans was the fantasy, but Catalina was easier to approach. Hurricane season in a tin-can was daunting, and I wasn’t about to inject myself with fear on a special day. Like most men when courting an intimidating woman, I wasn’t about to rise to a challenge that could possibly humiliate me.

Hové Parfumeur, ghost walks in the Quarter, and gutter jazz at Preservation Hall were what I longed for. Too bad I needed hypnotherapy first— I could only handle the idea of a ferry ride to Catalina Island.

As I age and lose more people, planes give me a hyper awareness of mortality that I’m no longer comfortable with.

It didn’t matter if it was the Mississippi River or the Pacific Ocean. I just yearned for a Paris, Texas moment. Pulling a geographic for my twenty-ninth birthday, where I would take nobody but myself.

At 4 AM, I gathered two sundresses in an African basket tote and headed to Long Beach on the darkest highway. As I boarded the Catalina Express boat, I felt the icy sea air nip at my legs— hoping they’d be kissed by the shy sun in an hour or so.

Upon boarding the ship, two older men boxed me into my isolated window seat. One of them asked seductively if I was a teacher.

“Do I look like one?” I said with sarcastic amusement.

I figured the tone of dismissal would refract his advances; boy was I wrong. The journal I had laid out for my morning pages was soon being analyzed and observed. I eventually shut it, put my headphones on, and pulled out some Dramamine— which I ended up chewing on accident when the man asked what hotel I was staying at.

“I’m not telling,” I cushioned with a laugh. The first time a boundary of mine vocalized itself.

My throat began to swell with the mysterious numbing agent; eliciting internal panic in me.

As I looked out onto the water outside my cabin window, I thought of how minor this crisis was in comparison to if I had chosen New Orleans. Turbulence, flooding, levees breaking…

I’ve felt a kinship with New Orleans ever since I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at the age of eleven. I’d visit that city every summer on our family vacation to Florida, and even when my father would mention Katrina destroying it, I felt enamored by the city’s resilience— knowing how special the devastation made it. How its magic never seemed to drown with it. How the rushing of that water gave it a supernatural allure.

I was lonely on this trip, but comfortable with it. I treated the loneliness as a companion, someone I needed to nurture and guide around the island town of Avalon. I treated myself to oat milk lattes and oat milk ice cream on the shores of the marina each day. Memories of a trip to the other side of the island two years ago flooded when a Neil Young song appeared on my Spotify.

Two years…

How so much can change in seven-hundred and thirty days. A time when my former partner liked me enough to request a local island band to play Heart of Gold by Neil Young as a surprise.

As the 6 AM waves crashed, I let the disappointment rock me like the sailboats in the harbor.

As I waited in line for my 1950’s bus tour of Avalon, the guide checked families in, group by group. When it got to me, he perked up. Gifting me the unexpected glow of pride.

“Traveling solo, huh? I like it!”

The bus screeched and spun around the canyons and valleys lined with Australian cypress trees and bushes of St. Catherine’s lace. The Beach Boys Pet Sounds played faintly as he pointed out Marilyn Monroe’s old home. A rickety old thing that needed a power wash, with a faded American flag hanging over the gabled roof.

I thought of how lonely she might’ve felt on the island back in the era of World War II, and soon felt comforted by the thought of someone so beautiful being just as bruised.

Little by little, step by step, I gathered crumbs of self-esteem each block I walked around the island by myself. To celebrate, I bought myself a vintage Hawaiian sarong and rested in my hotel room by popping the complimentary Prosecco bottles.

I sipped and danced alone to “Love Her Madly” by The Doors and “One of These Nights” by The Eagles. I laid on the ivory bedding with a smile on my face for the rest of the evening until it was time to see the sunset over the Wrigley Casino.

The clouds blanketed over the island with prismatic hues of blush and lilac. It was dark enough to see the lights of the Casino glowing over the ocean. The same waters that swallowed the body of Natalie Wood.

It was a quiet Monday night on the beach. No tourists. No families. Just me turning twenty-nine the exact moment the sun dove into the water.

I sunk my toes into the moon dampened sand. I sat alone overlooking the shoreline. I thought of how crazy it was that I was on a beautiful island, in a beautiful coat, in a beautiful dress that I miraculously made happen with the career I’ve made from using my intuition.

How none of this would’ve ever come to fruition had I not gone through separation. Had I not experienced loss. Had I not had the alone time to sit with my tarot cards and be uncomfortable.

Everything I had in this moment came from destruction.

I didn’t cry on this trip, but the levee erupted the night I came home. The burden of codependency finally being lifted— like the relief of a root canal. Proof that I could be the captain of my own ship.

To think that I had driven myself to and from Long Beach in the exact sports car my parents picked me up in years ago when I was suspended for bringing Crown Royal to junior high.

The same car I fearfully and tearfully learned to drive in the city of Los Angeles after my partner left with our shared vehicle.

The progress from a lost lonely girl into whatever I was now.

These flawed tidal waves pushing me over, year after year, inspiring me to stand back up firmer and steadfast.

I wasn’t in New Orleans, but I now knew what it felt like to be New Orleans.

To be wrecked.

To be abandoned.

To rebuild.

To embody complex layers.

To become even more intriguing because of it all.

It’s easier to throw rocks at the mistress.

Someone whose name reignites grade school paranoia, like a “Bailey” or “Hailey.” Someone who possesses the power to activate you. To provoke you out of character without even touching your body. Ruthless and violent, the moment you see them kissing in the same photo booth at the same damn skate rink Addison Rae frequents.

Someone who naively fell in love with the same partner you did. Someone you, unfortunately, have one thing in common with.

When I’m down in the depths of comparison, I like to sink deeper with a Lana song by the title of Thunder. Resonant and melancholic, much like the muse it was rumored to be about: an elusive Scottish musician with long dark hair— reminding me of my former partner.

As the song crescendos, the surface of the melody reveals a haunting acceptance… The fate of this man’s potential being clouded by the intensity of his depression. An acceptance of this man’s “fire” that Lana releases so he can “just keep burning.”

In the wake of my separation, I would listen to this song. Over and over. On vinyl, on the way to work— even on the way home from a taxing day of people asking me how my partner was doing; blissfully unaware of the brutality that transpired between us.

I did myself no favors by welding myself shut in a cocoon of dismal music for an entire year.

As I listened, I played out every scenario leading up to the end of our marriage: the creaking floors of the Indian restaurant from our first date, located inside of an industrial trailer in my hometown. I pictured the flaky black railing of the staircase to the Princeton Club Apartments, home to an antisocial dealer who spoke in fragmented rap lyrics as my partner and I dissociated on his shag carpet. And then the memory of The Blue Room resurfaced— a memory I swatted away like a wasp.

Eventually, the wasp stung me— searing me with the pain of shame.

I remembered the whisky sour, the teal leather booth, even the wooden ceiling fans of the local dive known as The Blue Room. I remembered feeling embarrassed from my vision becoming blurry after one drink. I had a hard time focusing on the man I was with, and I remember texting my wife updates while he talked at me manically about The Matrix, Star Wars, and Christopher Nolan being a God.

If you’re wondering if I was texting my wife while seemingly on a date with someone else, then you’d be correct. It’s taken me over a year to admit this— that a seemingly innocent invitation to happy hour by an HBO employee in his forties was actually a boundary that I should have never crossed.

I met this man at a strange time in my marriage. My partner and I hadn’t slept with each other in over two and a half years. We both had separate therapists. We were both clinically depressed. My partner and I were working in the same building and enjoyed each other’s company— but scheduling our breaks together often resulted in fights when our routines didn’t allow for perfect syncopation.

The HBO employee appeared for the first time on a Friday— I remember because he was the only soul working on our designated floor while everyone else worked from home. On his first day, he brought homemade banana bread for an empty floor with no employees. Taped down on the counter next to the loaf was a long typed out letter…

I remember it sounded like a serial killer.

He introduced himself in the letter as the “tall, tattooed, nerdy guy.” He wasn’t my typical type— a bit too Aryan with his dishwater blonde hair and lack of dark features. Nonetheless, he was attractive and seemed smart. I had never felt intrigued by a man before, which was also a strange occurrence.

There was a quiet intensity he possessed— an almost alien robotic nature in the way he walked around the halls. His hands, knuckles, and fingers were tattooed with Sanskrit symbols— to which I’d try and fail not to stare at.

The letter divulged a drawn-out explanation of why he decided to bake this in the first place and proceeded to list what ingredients were not in it: gluten, dairy, sugar, and soy.

I was confused as to what he actually used— then a horrible thought occurred to me that he might be one of those freaks who uses their semen as an ingredient.

I never spoke to him that day, not until weeks later when we both entered the elevator to go home.

I stayed silent, but after a few beats he made some awkward joke inferring I was done for the day. He eventually let it slip that he saw my name on a “Meet the Staff” board and found my IMDB page online. I felt stunned but weirdly enthralled by his blatant curiosity of me.

He eventually got my number with the excuse of notifying me when he’d have baked goods to bring to work. Every Monday, he’d gift me a large bag of muffins just as horrible as the initial banana bread. I tried to share them with my parents and partner, but we all gagged and laughed at how awful they continued to be.

He and I began to talk every day for long periods of time. He’d text in the evenings and email me scripts he was working on, but I got the ick from how poorly written the dialogue was.

This would continue for months— bringing me gifts, ignoring me if I didn’t compliment his scene edits, and staring at my hands as I peeled stickers off of apples for the fruit displays.

“You’re a lefty,” he observed with a smirk.

His analysis of my hands awoke a self-consciousness in me that I hadn’t had in years. So much so, I started getting my nails done with acrylics every three weeks.

Then one day, he suggested drinks.

I immediately suspected the hidden context of “happy hour,” but I shrugged it off as a networking opportunity— which was just as uncomfortable. He invited my partner, which seemed like a kind gesture until I remembered a statement he made weeks prior: “Yeah, straight men love lesbians.” A sentence proven to be true from our bad experience with the dealer back in Texas.

I eventually told my partner about the strange invitation, to which she seemed open to. I even called him over one day in the lobby while my partner and I were taking a break. They shook hands, and later when I asked what it felt like, she told me his hand was clammy.

I ended up meeting him alone after my partner discovered my journal entries about him.

Her initial hysteria cooled into understanding after a few days, to which I found astonishing. I wondered deeply about her newfound maturity— I figured my excessive crying and over-explaining softened her, somehow. I knew I wasn’t in love with him. I had never been in love with a man in my entire life. But I selfishly wanted a story to tell.

When I pleaded with her to join us at the bar, she encouraged me to go alone.

Turns out, she was busy setting up dating profiles while I was away. An act of betrayal I genuinely deserved.

He didn’t ask me a single question that night. I remember it being awkward when he kept referring to the elderly bartender as “boss” in a neurodivergent way. In a sea of turquoise leather couches, he yapped at me about his ex-girlfriend and how he was the most attractive brother in his family.

I could feel tears rising—for choosing a night with someone like this. Someone so uncouth. Someone who actually believed the Earth was flat and got agitated when I laughed at him.

I ended the night early. He drove me back to the workplace pretending he wasn’t inebriated, but my gut told me he was. The drive was fast and scary— I felt angry at myself for being so meek.

I remember reading a theory about the song Thunder that seemed to strike me after this experience. Lana sounds like she’s referring to someone she’s in a relationship with, when in reality, she’s referring to herself in second person.

“You roll like thunder, pourin’ all your drinks. The party’s lit and you, my friend, half-cut when it begins… // You act like fuckin’ Mr. Brightside when you’re with all your friends, but I know what you’re like when the party ends.”

When I listen nowadays, I don’t picture the artist singing about the Scottish musician. I don’t even picture my partner anymore. I just see a reflection of myself.

Loneliness allows for deep silences and deep awareness.

You notice your own idiosyncrasies, annoyances, and flaws. You begin to suffocate on your self-sabotage, crying patterns, evasion of practical tasks, poor money management, and neediness. Gradually, you see yourself as your partner did.

It’s easier to throw rocks at the mistress.

Someone seemingly without skin.

Without morals.

Without integrity.

Without a mirror to hand back to you.

You become your name.

At least, that’s what my Grandmother used to say. She begged my mother to name me “Golda,” after Golda Meir— Former Prime Minister of Israel. Thankfully, my mother didn’t listen.

My birth name gave me a strange sense of foreboding throughout my adolescence. I was always one of three or four girls with the same dreaded commonality. It wasn’t until I met my wife that I gained the knowledge that I, too, could become a new name— my wife had changed hers more than a decade ago. And in the tradition of being an actor, I set forth on becoming something mysterious, glamorous, and odd.

Then I saw Grey Gardens for the first time.

A wild documentary about the eccentric cousins of Jackie O who went from socialites of high society to living in squalor inside their rotting, cat-infested mansion. I resonated with Little Edie Beale— her humor, her unconventional style of headscarves and tights. I, too, was a homebody with a strange style who lived with my mom and ate weird assortments of ice cream, crackers, and pâté. Always living in the past, feeling anxious about the future, and whining about every regret I’ve ever had.

You become your name. You really do…

I just never anticipated I’d become a house.

My last name “Gable” is architectural. A type of roof— the triangular section of wall that creates an ‘A’ shape. This is where I started connecting the dots to Grey Gardens. The name of their Long Island mansion was melancholy and regal— everything I wanted my career to emulate.

The Beales’ ramshackle home had an eerie allure due to its overgrown gardens, vines, and brush swallowing the seaside estate. I thought of my surname, its pointy-ness being engulfed in natures branches. I thought of their link to the Kennedys and my distant lineage to Clark Gable. The looming aura of glitz and extravagance without access to its money.

The Beales were a mirrored image of what can happen to any of us.

I adored their strangeness. I admired their history. I loved the echo of glamour they possessed even in ruins. When I chose “Grey” to accompany “Gable,” it was in that moment… That mystical moment… That I manifested my own downfall.

When my wife and I separated after seven years, I had a conversation with her that changed how I fundamentally viewed myself forever.

I can’t remember if this was the day of our “closure” cry in the park, the day I surprised her with a bouquet that she threw in the back of her car, or the day we waited in the sterile game room of my apartment complex for what would be our last session of couples therapy... I just know that I felt shocked when she told me that her therapist and her had worked on creating an analogy about our relationship together in private.

With hesitant pride, she said our relationship was like a house.

A big beautiful antique house. A dream home she knows she wanted to live and die in. A home that was once habitable, but with neglect, now it was not. The house, though beautiful, had leaks. The pipes had burst. There was water damage everywhere. She never verified my suspicions, but I assume the house was infested with cockroaches and rats.

She avoided me in the same way she handled all vermin—by hiding in the other room, unwilling to put it out of its misery.

The ghostly pain of a spurred metal bottle-cap being swallowed tightened in my throat. I tried to regulate myself as I listened, but the moment her eyes smiled as she mentioned the sunroom, I felt lobotomized.

The house needed repairs. So many repairs that my wife didn't know where to begin. She was overwhelmed with the responsibility, but then the idea of building a sunroom became attractive to her.

It was warm. It was full of sunlight. It was a fun project to take her mind off the stress of neglecting the house. The house of her so-called “dreams.”

A sunroom: A glass-enclosed addition to a house, designed to maximize natural light, creating vibrance and a bright living space for relaxation.

A garden room. A sun parlor. Also known as a “Florida room.” The complete opposite of our damp, molded dream home. An irresponsible fantasy prioritized over a flooded bedroom.

My mouth went numb.

Grey Gable.

Grey Gardens.

Little Edie.

Big Edie.

Debutants.

Recluses.

As my mind flipped and tumbled over the mental calculus of betrayal, it slowly started to register…

If the other woman was the sunroom—

I was a house condemned.

Leaking and sinking into a gorge.

I’ve been thinking about Flannery O’Connor’s story of the young woman who gets her prosthetic leg stolen by a traveling bible salesman— a swindler who sweet talks her into exposing her vulnerability, taking the leg off, and running away with it.

A fraud. A deceiver. A man who hides condoms, cards, and a flask in the hollows of his bible.

The story ends and we don’t know where he goes, where the leg ends up, or whether she crawls out or falls from the hayloft inside the barn where he leaves her. Sometimes I wonder where my own leg ended up, then a phantom pain lingers and I can feel it walking around the piss-ridden streets of Hollywood, or thrown down in a closet laden with polyester tank tops and orange cat hair— the home of my wife’s new girlfriend.

To have a leg stolen from you is one thing. To have it gifted to someone is another. Someone strange, unidentifiable, and morally ambiguous due to the clandestine nature in which your former partner keeps them. Do they take care of it? Do they laugh at it? Do they take turns wearing and tearing it— passing it off underneath floor-length maxi-skirts, fooling their friends by insisting it’s their own organic member?

To the newcomer, it’s just a leg… Unaware that this leg held me up through funeral after funeral in my youth. A leg that got me through middle school, high school, three colleges, one graduate school, travels abroad, and gulfs of loss. My sense of self. My confidence. My self esteem. My resilience. My crutch.

Looted, wrapped in tissue paper, and presented with microscopic bloodstains that go unnoticed by the new significant other. To them, this gift is nothing more than an odd find from an antique shop with no trace of its original owner.

You can go on living without a leg, truth be told. But sometimes I envy people who were born without one— they don’t know the difference. On the other hand, once you’ve had a leg that you take for granted, the absence of it leaves a searing but familiar pain. I can remember what it was like when I had one. How much easier life was with it. How I never fathomed it would be amputated off of my body. How I can still feel it as if my nerve endings are reaching out to the meat of the muscle that was once there.

It’s a weird feeling— the acceptance of knowing your leg no longer belongs to you. You can acquire a new leg, but at what cost? You could accept fate if the leg was stolen for sport, but a ghost is now parading around town with it. Giggling with it. Accepting compliments on it.

A phantom limb: the sensation that a missing body part is still attached. A chronic condition that is often resistant to treatment. At night, the pain is visceral. At night, the pain intensifies. At night, you feel your leg again— just with the memory of it being sawed off.

Good Country People is the name of the tale I’m talking about. A reminder that appearances can be misleading— people often not being what they seem. A lot of us are like Hulga, the female protagonist, who prides herself on her intellectualism and PhD in Philosophy… Yet, falls victim to thievery and abandonment.

We think we know it all. We think we’re invincible. We think we’re able to outsmart the inevitability of pain. We hear stories about amputees and think to ourselves: “that will never be me.” Little do we know, the brain doesn’t protect us when we fall in love.

I wonder if the pain will ever subside.

Do I want it to?

Is a twitching nerve better than a bone gone numb?

When it happened, I cried until I burst a blood vessel in my left eye.

It would rupture again, months later, in the wake of our separation.

Sobbing to The Cornelius Brothers became ritual, as well as reminiscing on the day we saw the disco scene in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, that would later inspire our elopement song: “Too Late to Turn Back Now.”

I noticed the curve of her spine— as if the humiliation from reading what I’d written finally settled into her body. My sclera, stained with inky oxblood veins, remained my only visible memento of my soiled lesbian marriage.

I hadn’t experienced shame like that. Not like that day in July... Grotesque confessions— sticky thoughts, feelings, fantasies— spilled across college-ruled pages, begging to be burned in a fireplace I didn’t have. I felt stupid for leaving the book lying there. For “asking for it.”

The day my wife read my journal without permission was a death of its own. I remember hazy pale sunlight filtering through the blinds that afternoon when everything became calcified between us. I remember how quiet it was when I walked into the bedroom, not yet feeling the hardened aura of my wife’s heart that would soon swallow her indefinitely.

The room felt stale. I didn’t know it was possible to see self-destruction on someone’s face until I saw my wife sitting cross-legged in the middle of our bed without movement. She stared at the velvet felt binding of my diary, laid it closed on our watercolor duvet cover, and loomed over the quilt for what seemed like hours. No eye contact. No emotion. Just complete shock of the nervous system.

The distress was too great. I was unsettled. And when unsettled, nostalgia becomes king. I was retracing my steps. The day we met in front of the pharmacy in Target, though I often lied and said we met at Starbucks since we worked there. The day we made our first mistake, to which I won’t name. The days I needed attention, which were often most days. And then I kept hearing a familiar quote…

“Adultery, John.”

A pivotal line in The Crucible.

I remembered community college. I remembered being chosen for the role of Abigail Williams at the age of 20 in our theatre department. I wasn’t even legal to drink, though I often found myself stumbling into a fire pit on more than one occasion that year in an East Texas trailer park— which is where we’d have cast parties and suck down McCormick’s Vodka under the Halloween sky.

I remember being excited to tempt and seduce, as the role required. To feel “adult” for the first time. Though, I didn’t have much experience to draw from. Just years of being a tease to no fulfillment.

To this day, it’s my favorite role. Favorite production. Favorite moment suspended in time where I felt feral and wild. But if I’m being honest, I got it all wrong.

I wouldn’t have had the proper lived experience until about eight years later… In a completely different state. In a remarkably different headspace.

In The Crucible, the so called “protagonist” is Proctor, an older man who succumbs to his desire for a young girl named Abigail Williams, though he is wedded. This play serves as the dreadful beginning of the Salem Witch Trials, to which Abigail lights the metaphorical match and sparks the town’s destruction by accusing everyone of witchcraft as an act of revenge against Proctor for ending their affair.

I remember being naive during that production. So young, so ignorant that I became obsessed with finding a way to method act through it all. And I did, by seducing the lead actor playing Proctor in real life.

His name was biblical. A very striking one. Fitting, given the circumstances.

It wasn’t a common name, but you could find it buried in Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, if you looked hard enough. For the sake of the story, we’ll call him “Ezra.”

The weeks preceding our play were filled with rehearsals of learning safety codes to thrash on the ground, fake seizures, and scream without damaging our larynx. I disregarded the safety immediately. Swollen plum colored bruises littered my arms and knees— even catching the attention of my female college algebra professor, to whom inquired if I was going through “something” at home. I felt smug. I also felt a sick amount of pride.

The prop department created a pack of gelatinous garnet colored corn-syrup and duct-taped it to the belly of a taxidermy rabbit for me to stab onstage in the opening sequence— smearing the bloody carcass into my ivory nightgown and letting the liquid gush onto the stage.

In the story, the young girls of Salem secretly ventured into the woods at night to dance in a seance around a fire to conjure the dead and place a curse on Proctor’s wife. To this day, I have never felt power quite like I did when I climbed onto that wrought-iron bed frame, grabbed the stage knife, and hacked away until the jam-like liquid soaked my virginal costume.

To do this on Broadway is to be expected, but to rupture a jelly pack of stage blood all over your body while performing a satanic ritual in front of a conservative southern crowd at a junior college in Texas— that is a different level of gratification. A perverse level of satisfaction.

Ezra had a girlfriend, but I salivated at the idea of luring him away in order to feel kinship with Abigail. To feel her chaos. To feel a sense of control over someone.

The junior college had dorms, if you could even call them that. Cement block structures painted clown white, eerily similar to what you’d see in a county jail. Ezra lived there, and when I found out— I grabbed a cherry blow pop, put on a plaid thrifted skirt I got at the resale shop down the road, and invited myself over under the guise of “practicing” for the sake of the show.

I won’t go into detail about that encounter, but I will say we were prepared for the start of rehearsals. At the following cast party, I spilled alcohol on my faux fur coat for my amateur Edie Sedgwick costume— causing my arm to go up in flames when someone lit a Lucky Strike too close. I remember feeling inebriated and playful, all while clutching a bag of party-sized Lays potato chips— an anchor my friends threw at me to get me to remain still since I kept falling into the fire pit.

A male cast member soon approached me in the dark. I had only spoken to him with lines from our play, but he felt comfortable enough to confront me with something unexpected:

“Why do you always act like that? Why are you always so sexual?”

The tone wasn’t fun. He was serious and I was mortified.

Eight years later, well into my marriage, the inevitable draw to act like Abigail resurfaced again. My wife no longer wanted intimacy. I cried and begged and cried again. For the first time in years— I started to have compulsive thoughts about someone else. And when I started to retreat, she noticed and searched for meaning in the pages of my secret notes.

The aftermath of her discovery was traumatic. She started to believe in “an eye for an eye.” I spent weeks reading After the Affair and Healing From Infidelity to gain clarity for why I developed this fixation. When I relayed the knowledge to my wife, she had already psychologically checked out. She put on a brave face most days when I recounted chapters and lessons, but I could tell she was never going to finish the book— though she was an avid reader.

Individual therapy soon morphed into couples therapy. Therapist after bad therapist, the common diagnosis concluded we were enmeshed and codependent. We were given couples assignments like taking a shower together, spending an evening talking with skin to skin contact, attending Codependents Anonymous meetings at a nearby cathedral, and encouraging us to “make friends.” My wife, though compliant for a few days, only seemed to latch onto the latter with enthusiasm.

It started with apps— to this day, I’m not sure which ones. She stopped sharing her location. She stopped coming home. She started driving to nearby cities that were an hour away, staying out on weeknights till two or four A.M. while we carpooled to the same job each morning. Her paychecks deteriorated, rent wasn’t paid, and her drinking became chronic.

There were three women that I know of, one after the other. One even hugged me on a night out to karaoke in Temple City, a blue-collar California town with a tacky little dive bar decked in Christmas lights and lottery ticket vending machines. A blue haired woman in her forties with a kraken tattooed above her pubic area. A month later, I’d end up verbally attacking her in front of my parents when she showed up unannounced to my apartment to help my wife move out.

“Adultery, John” lingered again and again and again.

A quote not as famous as “to be or not to be,” but of the same volition. Proctor’s wife interjects it when her husband is asked to recite the Ten Commandments and forgets the one he’s guilty of.

Adultery. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

I remember thinking Proctor’s wife was a drag the first time I read the play. Now, with lived experience, I’m realizing we’re all being metaphorically recast in the roles that suit us more as we age.

I thought I was an Abigail, then I was a Proctor, and now I’ve become Elizabeth. Maybe Shakespeare was onto something…

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.”

I, too, died at 27.

No, I’m not a musician. No, I’m not well known. But 27 was supposed to be glamorous and enticing. Instead, it was the worst year of my life.

Twenty seven… The formidable age at which a white lighter in your pocket could accelerate your vehicle to the underworld. If only I had been so lucky. In numerology, “2” represents coming together or coming apart, and “7” evokes choices. Unraveling and restructuring, much like my life.

Death. Whether physical or psychological— the pain remains weighty, fleshy, and large. We often grieve others but what about the death of self? Who we were, who we used to be. Like an unformed twin being absorbed into our bodies, creating an extra limb or eye. We outgrow them, kill them, and ingest the carcass for it never to be fully digested. Cannibalistic, we are, to carry with us the parts of ourselves that couldn’t survive and swallow them.

I think about drugs. I think about the misunderstood draw they hold. Society scolds us not to reach for something so vile, but we forget to reflect why we feel the inevitable magnetism towards them.

Life is painful. In my experience, it’s excruciating. Addicts are the true genuine souls because they see the gothic nature of life. Not only do they see the realism, but they feel the mass of it… Needing warmth to soothe the wounds inflicted by this country, this world, and the broken people who were supposed to supply us with love.

I take inventory of the artists I worship. The work I consume. Plath, Cobain, Woolf, Morrison, and Winehouse… Even my bookshelf is littered with fem-cel literature from Ottessa Moshfegh and Joan Dideon, stacked below my orange antidepressant bottles.

My heroes were troubled, sensitive, and complex. What does it mean for me that the spirits I find kinship with are gone by self destruction? In order to know who someone is, you must look at their friends. But what if you have none?

I think the answer is lonely.

The saying goes: “You are what you eat.” If I consume the thoughts of my heroes, and those same thoughts consumed them— am I ingesting the same poison at my own expense?

I died this past year because the first woman I ever loved served me contempt in disguise. I died this past year because I had to initiate a separation in my twenties. I died because my person fell out of love with me. The only person I’ve ever connected with no longer felt the same. To quote them, the love changed.

In the early days of this destruction, I couldn’t see myself. With the passing of months, I am no longer blind to why the love died. At 27, I was in a major depression, unmedicated, and terribly misaligned with my purpose. I was breaking down cardboard boxes for a living, pushing carts of food product around office floors, and seeking male validation because I was starved for self worth.

If I’m being honest, I messed up first.

2 and 7. Polarity and Contemplation.

The year I met her, she was 27. The year we separated, I was 27.

When betrayal is evident and disillusionment is present, it’s hard not to feel ugly. It’s hard not to compare yourself. It’s hard to cry without heavy mucus. It’s hard when you’re not sure if redemption is smart.

I don’t know how else to describe the nature of what I went through… Organs shutting down, the hardening of bowels. Things like that.

To not be chosen by a man is to be expected.

To not be chosen by a woman is gut wrenching.

Rebirth is a swollen throat slowly deflating. An illness that subsides. A tidal wave of relief for surviving the unconscionable. Thick tissue building layers over fresh wounds. New confidence. New beauty. New compassion.

I feel pride that my heart could withstand scars of this size. I feel grateful I can check off “heartbreak” from the list of human experiences we must face. I’m a better actor. I’m a better friend. And more importantly, I’m kinder to myself because I have to be.

In astrology, the 8th house is known as the House of Transformation. Eighth house placements tend to live challenging lives. Lives full of deep changes and deaths.

My sun sign of Gemini is located in the 8th house. Who I am, who I’m personified as— is intrinsically linked to these mysterious themes. And that will continue for the rest of my life.

Finding out your chart ruler is also important in the quest of understanding yourself. Your chart ruler is the planet that rules your rising sign or ascendant. The planet of your 1st house, the house of self.

Mine is in Pluto, the planet of transformative power, the underworld, death, rebirth, extreme emotions, and depths of the subconscious.

I am ruled by the darkest and coldest planet.

Twenty-seven. “2” and “7.” The combination of the two equating to the number “9.” A new formation. A new number in numerology.

“9” represents completion. Wisdom. Compassion. A prompt to make time for yourself.

I died at 27. Today I am 28.

If you add “2” and “8” together, you are left with “10.” Wholeness, unity, and transcendence. Call it bullshit, call it witchcraft, but it’s written in the stars.

My experience is to know pain, and my purpose is to alchemize it.

I fantasize about going to prison.

Maybe colic is the culprit for that. Perhaps, as a fussy infant, I was destined to grow into a morbid and angry girl. I don’t have these thoughts periodically. They’ve been pretty consistent since middle school.

What once was a desire for a cool mugshot later evolved into a need to be permanently left alone. I think about how I’d exchange my current luxuries for commissary staples… Lotion instead of styling paste, sharpies for eyeliner, or coffee grounds for eyeshadow. I think vain thoughts of if I could live in an environment where I may or may not be perceived as attractive by guards and inmates.

I think about how selfish I sound when I admit the only reason I haven’t ended my life is for the sole fact that strangers hoarding my clothes into their Honda CR-Vs makes my skin pulse.

Colic consists of significant distress and wailing for no apparent reason. Causes are apparently “unknown,” which sounds like something shitty a male doctor made up to avoid accountability. Studies show a link between colic and difficult behavior, emotional reactivity, and depression. Beautiful flowery language for “I was built this way.” Always ascending the staircase of troubled inconsolable crying.

I think I feel resentment because too many people believe in me. I want nothing more than to let go of the rope, relinquish control, and plague my world with an indefinite conclusion… That conclusion? A correctional facility.

I find it humorous that the word “correctional” is included when this country has no intent on correcting anyone.

Sometimes I don’t know what I’m talking about. My thoughts seem so manic that an acquaintance might read this essay and assume there’s been a mistake of identity. That this has to belong to the mind of another writer. Another disillusioned girl.

Alas, they are scary thoughts… And they are mine.

My parents are so kind to me. Too kind. I’ve been bestowed almost too much freedom, if that’s even a thing. It’s a godsend they don’t hold resentment for my colicky past. I sometimes ruminate on thoughts like “could I make hair dye with Folgers?” Or “would my parents give me commissary money?” I don’t think they would. Or maybe I’m wrong. I’m not sure they’d succumb to enabling as a hobby.

Where does colic come from anyway? What makes me so terrible? Why was I born with this fire in my body? And why is it rampant twenty-eight years later?

Your skin is supposed to resurface every seven years.

Snake like… Serpent like…

I feel like mine never shed. Not once. Just a build up of excess skin. I feel dirty like I should’ve molted years ago. Maybe the frustration is stored in the cells of its giant folds.

I have known, and will always know the feeling of chronic discomfort.

It’s nobody’s fault… It’s biology, I guess.

Good thing I’m pretty crafty.

I can’t write when I’m sick.

I don’t know how else to say it.

I’m destroyed.

I’m so destroyed.

I am so destroyed.

And yet, my feverish body cannot rest. Even with the swelling of my brain, I’m overflowing with rivers of thought.

How angry I am.

How confused.

Please give me an excuse to self destruct. I will be so good at it.

I’m still waiting for her.

Still yearning for a ghost.

Still wanting her cruelty. What does that say about me?

I still see her underneath my covers. I haven’t dreamed since she left.

It’s a miracle I can sleep alone.

Life is now rotten. Life is spoiled most days. Life is a deep echo only I can hear.

Oranges don’t taste the same.

Music has no beat.

Everything in my room is cerulean.

Even the last gifts she gave me were blue.

Everything in my room is collecting dust.

Every record.

Every book.

Every blind I close.

I’m getting sick again. I’m frustrated I’m not making progress with my writing.

I have no money to join the artists in the French countryside.

My travels to Europe seem so long ago.

I didn't get sick then. I think I was happy. I also might be lying.

I am so sick now.

When I meditate, I feel the virus in my spine.

When I surrender, I can’t help but cry.

I cry heavy tears that sound like boots hitting snow as they sink into my pillowcase.

I cry and my abdomen shakes.

Somatic shakes.

Painful therapeutic shakes.

I want music to sound good again.

I fear I’ll have to regurgitate my life story to a stranger…

I only want people who know me.

I don’t want people who know me.

I want people who know nothing about me.

I fear people who know nothing about me.

There was no honeymoon. I was embarrassed about that.

We were Pell Grant kids, what did you expect? Dreaming of Capri or Bali was substituted with trolleys in New Orleans, sugary sand in Florida, and blackberry fields in Texas. Any state swollen with heat. Any land swarming with mosquitos.

I paid for my second-hand wedding dress, I paid for our brass hand-painted rings, the bouquets of dried flowers, and ultimately, another price… One more costly. We eloped on a rocky cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean… Descending down an iron staircase onto the beach of what seemed to be the first sunny day in Malibu since we’d arrived in California.

I remember reading that rain was a good omen on your wedding day. The absence of it should have been my first clue.

I hated certain zodiacs. Virgo, Cancer, and Capricorn. God must be funny since I fell for someone who possessed all three. Judgement. Resentment. Contempt. This sweltering “hatred...” When does it first surface? When does it rot?

We often reject what we need most. Pragmatism. Patience. Grounding. Traits of these “Earth” signs. Traits that made me sick to exhibit myself. Traits I would scoff at as I destroyed my own life.

I remember witnessing her tantrums in the humid squares of Savannah. I remember the hysterical fit over hot chocolate in New York. I remember sobbing under a Magnolia tree in August. I remember the cornflower blue sundress I wore that night… How the soil was caked on the train of my skirt as I sat bewildered on the large roots. I also remember a halfway house across the street; a former inmate watching me under the fluorescent streetlamp, seemingly perplexed.

Murders tend to be more frequent in the summer months, particularly in the late evenings. As I get older, I can understand why. To think that sun and vapor could be the culprit of something so permanent. To ignite split second decisions. To generate animosity and frustration out of nowhere. Flames and rain combining into one deadly cocktail.

In astrology, there are four classic elements. Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. Fire representing passion and water signifying emotions. Combined, they create a hurricane of volatility. There may not have been physical deaths in our partnership, but there were emotional ones.

These southern vacations tested our limits in hot climates. Imagine a heat lamp on a lizard at your local pet store, blasted to the hottest temperature the bulb can withstand. Now imagine adding another lizard into the tank. A tropical zone of mental warfare. A stifling and tumultuous climate. Exhaustion and comfort, simultaneously.

We didn’t stand a chance in the south.

I can’t believe it started with keychains… Or should I say “ended.” Flimsy, made of wood, and painted with the famous images of The Magician, The High Priestess, and my favorite, The Fool. The rectangles laid dormant in a wired basket with metal rings attached. Made to be the perfect companion to the key to your Prius. The gummy price stickers leeched onto the splintery surfaces, deeming them double the price of what you’d find on Alibaba or Amazon.

My wife and I were searching for something. Something holistic. We decided to shop, as all broken Americans do, when faced with that familiar “itching.” An itching that couldn’t be soothed by anything other than the familiar warmth of capitalistic spending. This “itching” would begin to intensify.

I was lonely. Chronically confused. I found comfort in the occult. By definition, “occult” translates to anything unknown. Latin for clandestine, hidden, or secret. I loved the idea of being elusive in nature, so my interests should be a mystery to me, too. Oracle decks, frankincense, and tiger’s eye stones would surely fill my bottomless cup. Or so I thought.

We were together but not together. I remember asking to hold her hand, asking for a kiss, asking to be held, asking to be heard, asking to be touched, asking to be seen, asking to be hugged, asking to be picked. To my request, all were denied. Not all at once, but slowly… Creeping, like an undetected sunburn.

When we arrived to the Metaphysical shop, we shuffled to the back of the brick and mortar to explore the divination tools and anointing oils. Rosemary, Lavender, and Palo Santo filled our noses. Slender pink Venusian candles and wax cadavers met our eyes. That’s when we saw the basket… The basket that held our fate, unbeknownst to us.

We took turns digging into what felt like slender Jenga pieces, flipping each image over and analyzing it closely to see if it resonated. My wife fixated on the image of a skeleton in armor. She wanted the “Death” card. This didn’t surprise me at all, since skull imagery and gothic archetypes were always en vogue to her.

I was drawn to the image of a nude angelic woman levitating inside of a laurel wreath. I was more akin to florals and the human body. This was known as “The World” card.

I, much to my excitement, offered to pay for our matching keychains… Hoping to restore an element of “connectedness” or “sameness” between us. Some element that was lost. Some element I was desperate to regenerate. She assured me she could pay for hers, so I didn’t argue… As my bank account was frequently overdrawn from loaning her rent money, paying half of her sky-high car insurance due to her frequent fender benders, and my own vice: nostalgic prairie dresses I purchased online.

I walked my keychain to the front of the store. I placed the object down on the counter gently, as if it were worth more than gold— as if I didn’t see its actual value when price matching on Google a few minutes prior. The owner, a sensitive older man with a steampunk mustache and a kind demeanor, wrapped my trinket in navy blue tissue paper packed into a brown bag, and barely said a word.

When we got to the car, I ripped the blue paper open and suggested we put our new keychains on right away. As if the urgency would soothe that “itch” we’d had for months like a metaphorical calamine lotion.

“I didn’t end up getting one,” she said.

“But we were supposed to get matching ones? I wanted you to have one, too.”

“It’s ok! I got a different keychain… For Trixie…”

I didn’t know it was possible to feel actual aching in the cavities of your heart… Not until I heard her name. Not until I heard my wife mention someone who caused my intuition to swell and my stomach to fill with rage. The body really does keep the score.

I can’t remember if the ride home was quiet or filled with mindless chatter. I only remember the ringing of a phone that wasn’t ours. A mysterious ringtone coming from the brown paper bag.

I grabbed the gift bag and realized the odd weight of it. Heavier than it should’ve been for a small keychain... Inside, was a phone wallet with the owner’s license, debit cards, credit cards, and cash. We did an illegal U-turn and headed back to face the gentle man. Upon arrival, the owner seemed to be in a meditative state at the register. I slid the phone wallet to him and he responded that he hadn’t even noticed it was gone. I let him know it was an act of kismet, since I had been wanting to turn around anyway to retrieve a matching keychain for my wife. I ran to the back, snagged the “Death” card, and before I could whip out any form of payment, he chirped: “Keep it!”

When I returned, I handed the surprise to my wife. She was never one to be animated, but she seemed oddly stoic in what seemed to be a magical moment.

“What does ‘Death’ mean again?” She asked.

“Transformation!”

“What does ‘The World’ mean?”

“Achievement.”

As the evening grew darker, I started to wonder if what I had told her was true… If my Tarot knowledge was actually up to par, or if I had bullshitted a vague fortune cookie answer. What if our cards meant something deeper? What if those images meant something else?

I grabbed my phone and typed in the search bar: “Death card meaning.” I then did the same with “The World card meaning.”

“An end, possibly of a relationship.”

“A culmination of a cycle.”