Life Experiences

Addict in recovery here. I’ve done it all sorts of ways. At first, you feel the happiest and freest you’ve ever been. All your hangups and inhibitions are gone. You feel better than you ever have. You’re horny beyond belief, and will do absolutely anything to satisfy that.

Beyond that, you are jittery, like you’ve drank 6 energy drinks in ten minutes. Your heart is going so fast that your Apple Watch sends out an alarm every 15 seconds. You jump at every little noise, like someone popped up and screamed at you in a horror movie. You somehow end up spending 4 hours trying to wipe all the tiny crystals off of your bed sheets, because you want to make sure that every single speck is used. You’ve hit up every single person on every dating app within 50 miles trying to find a single person to get naked with. By now it’s been about 5-6 hours, and if you haven’t done more by now you’re surely going to.

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I found out about the addiction on a Tuesday. It was late, around midnight, and I had taken his phone because the Ring camera was down and someone crashed their Tesla into a neighbor’s bougainvillea. There were Snapchat notifications. I opened one. I wasn’t expecting the digital equivalent of self-immolation.

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I wasn’t supposed to be a parent. Not in any tragic, infertile, pining kind of way. Just—fundamentally. Structurally. Like a building not meant to hold that kind of weight. I didn’t fantasize about names or bedtime stories or watching little league games in the sun. I never stared at babies in restaurants. I was fine. Flatline content. But I was also bored. And boredom is dangerous when it wears the mask of ambition.

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I wish I could tell you there was a single moment — a sharp turn, a door I walked through, a mistake I made — that led me into the belly of the beast. That would make it easier to explain. Easier to blame.

But it wasn’t one moment. It was dozens. Hundreds. A constellation of small, stupid, seemingly insignificant choices that, when connected, spelled out a life I didn’t even recognize.

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You never forget where your keys are. Or where you parked. Or the name of that minor character in that one episode of The West Wing. Studying? A breeze. Exams? Light work. You don’t “cram,” because you don’t need to. You read it once—really read it—and it’s there. Forever. You can recite entire passages from books you haven’t touched in years, tell someone exactly what day Caitlyn Jenner appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, and what shirt you were wearing when you saw it.

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There’s a version of my life that looks like a joke someone told at brunch.

Young wife. Older, wildly successful husband. Closet full of designer labels. No job to speak of, unless you count looking good at charity galas and knowing when to nod at the right hedge fund jargon over dinner. A walking, talking Real Housewife audition tape—minus the Botox (for now).

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I used to be a genius.

I say that with the same smirk I imagine washed-up child actors wear when they introduce themselves at Comic-Con. “Hi, I was the kid in that thing once.” Except instead of a minor role in a Nickelodeon sitcom, my legacy was an above-average ability to finish a worksheet before the rest of the class finished reading the instructions. I was a “gifted kid.” Capital G. Capital K. The kind of kid teachers talked about in the teacher’s lounge like a draft pick they were grooming for the majors.

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Love is the world’s greatest magic trick that somehow remains entirely explainable. It’s the one experience every human chases, the thing that’s been repackaged and resold to us in every movie, song, and dime-store novel since the beginning of recorded time. And yet, when it happens to you, it feels singular. Like you’re the first person to ever really get it. Like all those past love stories were just rough drafts leading up to this moment, this person, this specific and unrepeatable feeling.

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It’s strange to think that love—true, unconditional love—can be so invisible when you have it. It’s like gravity. You don’t notice it’s there until you see someone floating away without it.

The people who grow up with loving parents rarely recognize the enormity of the thing they’ve been given. As kids, they assume that all parents care, that all fathers come home from work and ask how the day went, that all mothers instinctively reach for their child’s forehead when they hear the slightest sniffle. They don’t stop to consider what life would be like without that quiet, unwavering presence in the background, like a safety net they never realized was beneath them until they saw someone else fall.

[Read more…] about What’s It Like To Have Loving Parents?

I wake up at 5:30 a.m., a ritual I have performed since middle school. My body moves on autopilot—shower, uniform, breakfast, shoes—each step executed with the precision of a well-trained soldier. By 6:30, I am on the bus, jostling for space with other students, all of us bound for the same destination: a day of academic warfare.

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