Things Men have given me
Looking back before 2024
I’ve spent the past few days trying to think of what summed up 2023 for me. Unlike last year, there isn’t some thesis that I feel like eloquently describes it. If anything, the year felt like two very separate eras, bisected by Bobby’s passing. There was the era before, when I was stressed and worried about him and the strike and miserable writing. And the period after, where I was grieving but strangely kinder with myself and my writing, and eventually settling into some tenuous sense of peace.
If anything, 2023 felt like a precursor to 2024. Next year looms large for me, because I’ll be turning 30. It’s been an age that has incited anxiety in me for several years now, namely because I feel that I’ve failed to meet certain career milestones. I’ve looked back and questioned decisions, my talent as a writer. My dad always reminds me that I’ve survived three massive industry shocks (The Weinstein fiasco, the Pandemic, the Strike), and that much of this was out of my control anyway. But still, the urge to look back and second guess is there.
So, what if I put aside my career anxiety, and leading up to 30 tried to take stock of my Twenties? What would be the story I could tell? What was the defining through line?
The answer is starkingly obvious.
Men.
Specifically, my relationships and flings and situationships and sex and texts with men. When I look back, I see less a constellation of meaningful and forgettable encounters, but a journey towards maturity and self discovery and attempting to wrestle with my insecurity about being loved. And it doesn’t end when I met Ross, because I’m me and because whatever insecurities I had about myself and dating don’t go away when I have a boyfriend (also, we’re in an open relationship). They just…morph.
So, please accept below as a brief retrospective as I look forward to 30. Something that I’ve gleaned about myself while revisiting my Twenties with men.
Here are some things men I’ve been with have given me:
A coin celebrating his one month of sobriety. I tried to refuse it, but he left it on my kitchen sink. Five years later, it lives in a drawer in my vanity, since I can’t bring myself to throw it out.
A San Francisco shot glass. A guy brought it to me, since he’d just come in from San Francisco. It was the first time and only time we’d met in person. I kept it for over a year, until Ross and I moved to our new apartment, and we agreed to throw it out.
A campaign pin for Yuh Line Niou, who was running for New York Assembly. The guy was working on her campaign, and he left it on my kitchen table when he left the next morning.
An interest in Turnstile. When he first put it on a playlist for me, I laughed out loud—it was so hardcore it was almost comical. But I kept listening to it.
It seems normal, almost acceptable, to hold onto items from past relationships. But from one night stands? Brief hour long flings with people who (for the most part) I never saw again? It seems like most people would throw them out. Why did I hold onto them? Why am I still holding onto them?
As a millennial dating in the age of the internet, I was no stranger to being ghosted. But whereas most of my friends saw it as an annoyance, it was my kryptonite. Nothing ignited my deep seated fear of never being loved more than a man I’ve slept with who ignores my texts. I would start out initially hopeful I’d hear back, but as the hours and days would wane on, my anxiety would rise inside of me. My phone became my worst enemy, every ding a reminder that I was not worthy of a reply. With an attitude like this, it’s not surprising that being ghosted was actually my inciting incident to getting on anti depressants. Crying on my couch because a guy I had bad sex with once while Rihanna’s ANTI was playing did seem like an excessive response.
I got on Zoloft, but it didn’t make the problem go away. Ghosting is a shitty thing to do, but for me it felt almost as awful and unforgivable. Why was it that my friends could push it out of their minds, shake it off, but for me it felt like a death sentence?
One of my first romantic experiences was with someone who aggressively gaslit me. It was to the point in which I questioned if our encounters had happened, or if I’d made them up. It’s this legacy that made ghosting so unbearable to me. It pressed a trigger point, tapping into a sore emotional spot. If they didn’t respond to me, it felt like the experience never happened, that it meant nothing, that I meant nothing. It was an unbearable feeling, yet it happened again and again and again.
But if he left something, be it physical or via internet (a playlist), I had proof that it had happened. If my mind was doing anxiety somersaults, I could go back to that sober coin or shot glass and remember that we had a moment. And, more than that, they wanted to give me something. Maybe the coin didn’t mean much to that guy, but he gave it to me for a reason. It made me feel special. Even if I never heard from him again, it was proof that I mattered in some small way.
Ideally, I wouldn’t need an item to tell me this. I would be able to feel ownership over these encounters, despite how they ended or if I heard from the person again. But that was hard for me. I often felt like I was swept up in the shifting tides of someone else’s interest, that I didn’t have control over where they went. I worked on this, but it wasn’t an easy fix (I still struggle with it). And so, in the meantime, I had the items they left me. Proof of an experience that my anxiety couldn’t twist. A relic from an experience that had happened, that had mattered in some way, even if it was brief and fleeting.
I love this post!