Chaos Makes For A Better Story

FEBRUARY 24, 2022

 
      I remembered the way adults looked down on me and belittled my existence. The unashamed glare of my peers as I walked through muted-toned hallways. The strident tone of my first boss when he made comments about my fourteen-year-old body. The way boys my age felt embarrassed for wanting to fuck me. The trust fund comments got old quickly. The rumors never got any more original. The mental breakdowns were always the result of minor inconveniences.

        I was nineteen, on “uterus house arrest” or so I called it when I began a chaotic, painkiller-induced, thirty-two-page “memoir” in 12-point font, Helvetica. I began with “childhood joy” and my “formative experiences”—the ones I could remember.

       There is a lot to be said about what we as individuals view as our “formative experiences,” the things that shaped us, or what we want to believe shaped us. Some are simple, some are life-shattering. Some are positive, some are traumatizing. I still don’t know what to make of mine.

         I was stuck on my choice to move to New York, as I realized it was a choice made in delusion. Like many of my choices, I didn’t see it until I put it in sequence. I had fun in New York, therefore, my life would be fun if I lived here. I planned two years of my life around “escaping to New York” and it wasn’t until my first night living here that I realized I was trying to escape myself, of course, and I couldn’t do that in a 400-square-foot apartment.

        I wanted to go back. My childhood was simple, I knew who I was. I was confident, and I was oblivious. I had the privilege of a great childhood. Home-cooked meals, Christmas gifts every year, supportive and understanding parents; 2 of them, together, and twenty dollars cash anytime I asked. What more could a twenty-first century child want?

        I wanted to grow up. I wanted to be a teenager, twenty-one, an adult. I wanted to have a real life. Unaware that life was real, and it was purer than any life I have lived since then.

        I have always been obsessed with my life six months ago. I would sulk, thinking about “how awesome” things were last summer, or when I was “hotter,” or when I was 10. I have been documenting my life since I was 14, and I have had something to complain about every year. I treat it like the worst year ever until the next year rolls around and all I can talk about is how great the previous one was. Moving to New York was when I became even more obsessed with my past because it truly became the past. I was starting a new life and I felt I had to hold on to the old one.

        I became overly nostalgic for the simplest things. Thoughts of the sizable cracks scattered across Washington’s unpaved roads were enough to send me over the edge. An emotional tailspin. My nostalgia was restorative, I wanted things to go back to the way they were. I wanted my easy life back. The one where I could shop daily, skip out on responsibility, and smoke copious amounts of weed. Mostly, I missed being someone in Seattle because I felt like I was no one in New York. I didn’t know who I was by the time my “old life” caught up with me.

        Myles Xavier says twenty-something trust fund transplants treat Manhattan like a playground, a do-over of their shitty high school experiences. My first year in New York was an extension of my shitty high school experience—with less funding, a higher alcohol tolerance, and ostracization from people whose validation I actually kind of wanted.

        I quickly developed an eating disorder that I didn’t believe was an eating disorder because in my mind it was simply a choice. I chose to buy designer clothing rather than food, and I chose to believe there was nothing unhealthy about that. I was “budgeting.”

        I continued to make choices while believing the things I wanted to. I chose to cope with drugs and alcohol and Raya matches. I chose to befriend people who didn’t like me. I chose to purchase and smoke a lot of shit overpriced weed. I chose to ignore my problems, or at the very least acknowledge them and then find a quick fix. And I chose to believe everything was about me because to me, it was.

        I don’t regret these choices, I believe I made them for a reason. Maybe it was to have something to talk about now that my life is subjectively boring. The dust has settled, and the years of chaos, do make a more mundane life feel useless.

        I always wanted to be a rockstar. I’m not sure I've said that before. I wanted to be a rock star or a writer. And I made my first dollar from writing this year. One dollar and thirty-six cents, so maybe I can consider myself a writer.

          I also wanted to be loved. I have always wanted to be loved. That is the way I was raised, to believe that being loved is the greatest gift. It is more important than getting your dream job or making millions of dollars. It is much greater than “success,” because you cannot put a price on being loved unconditionally.

        I spent most of my life hopelessly depressed, and self-deprecating, but conversely privileged, self-obsessed, and seeking love. When I couldn’t achieve love, I settled for attention. This was much of my life’s focus. This is why I never followed my dreams of becoming a rockstar.

        Despite my career faults, chasing love and attention brought me a lot of great things.

        The pursuit of “being loved” brought me to New York, it took me to Malibu, it brought me my closest friends, and it is the reason why I have many of my “great stories.” It was exciting, but more importantly, it was distracting. It was my version of a hobby.

        I never had many other hobbies growing up, I played soccer, I was a goalie, and I was good at it, but not good enough to consider it a career. I played volleyball because it looked fun and sexy, and it was. I played music, a hobby I thought I could stick with, but I wanted to smoke pot instead. The hobby I chose, the one that stuck, was being wanted.

        The pursuit of “being loved” devalued my home. I would rather fly across the country, for a moment of attention, than enjoy the final years of my childhood. I declared my parent’s divorce in seven words, succeeding one hundred and sixty-four about a new crush. Allowing affection to continuously take priority over the last true comforts of my young life.

         I should talk about the sexualization I faced as a kid and my naughty Instagram presence. I should explore the question “what is this behavior a result of?” But I think, correction, I hope, I know where it stems from, it’s not that traumatizing and it’s not that exciting.

        It was never an issue of confidence or lack thereof, I think it was the opposite. Maybe I loved myself so much that I just wanted someone to agree. Maybe I wanted to recreate the feeling of family, long before it dissolved beneath me. Maybe I just liked the attention. Maybe this was simply the hobby that stuck.

        It was comforting. It is how I got through the latter half of middle school, all of high school and it is how I got through my first year in New York. It was, and maybe still, is how I cope. It is not so bad to thrive off of attention, of course, it would be better to not need that external validation, but I think many of us do. I think the comfort of love and attention, or at least the illusion of being loved and paid attention to, is a natural desire, one that could even explain our attachment to social media.

        When I had a public Instagram I often used it as a “quick fix” when I wasn’t getting enough “real” love and attention. I could post something sexy and simply wait to feel the partial effects. But it was never the same as the “real” thing.

        I don’t know how to explain the real thing. Because I don’t think what I strived towards was ever real. I’m in a relationship now, my first one, one where I have supposedly achieved the love and attention I was on a warpath to receive, yet it doesn’t feel like the “real” thing either. The real thing was much more complex, it never felt owed to me, it felt earned. That’s what made it a hobby, something to be achieved, a skill to be improved. I set forth a goal to make others love me, want me, and ultimately need me.

        Three years ago, when I read what I had written in these ten days, I realized things about myself that I had never stopped to noticed. Most surprisingly I recognized my reign of terror was over. I reached the goal, I was loved. Someone loved me, wanted me, and I could even believe that they needed me. I was also “less'' depressed. I was satisfied with my life. I was going to graduate high school, and maybe even go to college. The weed was still overpriced, but it wasn’t as shitty. I could leave the hallway stares, the abusive bosses, the Raya matches, and the expert-level escapism in the past.

        But, I didn’t want to. Many aspects of my formative years were awful, but there was always something to distract me from reality. The years of chaos, make a more mundane life feel useless. I now feared there was nothing “special” about me because I lacked that chaos.

        I have routine and responsibility. Those things feel abnormal to me. I always despised the mundane and thought how boring it must be to go to school, get good grades, not do drugs, and be a virgin. Now, I go to school, I get good grades, I don’t do drugs, and I’ll never get my virginity back, but the list goes on.

        I failed to recognize these things as “growing up” or amazing character progression. I failed to recognize that these were the things I secretly wanted. I settled into reality and mistook it for something lesser, romanticizing and wishing I could restore my manic negligence. Once again thinking about “how awesome things were [blank] years ago.” Or how the chaos simply makes for a better story.