An Update, In Which Breathing Occurs

Posted by Anonymous.

So a while ago I wrote a post here about my mental illness, general disgruntlement with New York City, and my ridiculous college. (It was called "Suffocating.") Some folks in the comments section wanted to know how that all ended up, so here it is:

I found a subletter for my apartment, sold eighty percent of my clothing to Beacon’s Closet, packed up my cowboy boots and my snowboard, and high-tailed it back to Colorado faster than you can say “spring semester medical leave.”

Or rather, that’s how it should’ve happened. It is true that I left, but it was more complicated than that. I met this boy. Theme parties are dangerous in so many ways, Internet. On October 29th, I went to a Black Friday party with my hair in pin curls. We drank gin out of a bathtub, blasted jazz on vinyl and celebrated our forthcoming decline into financial ruin. There was a boy wearing suspenders and a fedora playing piano. Like, really, really mind-blowing piano. It was his twenty-first birthday. I told him that my birthday is also on the anniversary of a terrible event: JFK’s assassination. He was a piano major at the jazz conservatory at [my ridiculous college].

The day before I went to this party, I had called my parents and told them I was leaving New York, and would never step foot in it again except maybe for Passover Seder.

I am so not that girl. I don’t do things for boys, like move across half a continent. But here I am, living in Colorado, screaming about how miserable it is to be alive in front of a great shrink twice a week, auditioning medications into my system, and moving back to God Damn New York in August, to pull one more semester at my God Damn College. He’s been out here twice; I taught him to snowboard. I spent ten days at his family’s house on the Puget Sound in January, baking bread with his mother for their co-op. (Yes. It’s exactly how it sounds.) Let’s back up.

I said to him: “I’m miserable and moving away, but I’ll have coffee with you and be your friend.” He said, “Okay.” Stupid. What that ALWAYS means is “I will marry you, move to Portland, and have your genius babies. On the weekends we can go antiquing.” Internet, we had a lot of coffee. (BTW, coffee means sex.) The plan was to have a lot of coffee, never commit, I would leave and that would be that. Then we started doing terrible things like having conversations, going to Prop 8 protests, and revealing intimate facts about ourselves like “I am batshit insane sometimes because I have unmedicated bipolar disorder, can you pull my boot off because I’m sobbing uncontrollably and can’t do anything at the moment thanks.” He stayed. Even after he saw me have a panic attack about how to put on pants.

I had an ovarian cyst rupture in November, (My third, and yes, I’m on the pill for it. Look how effective that treatment is!) and he skipped an entire day of class to hang out in the emergency room with me while I got high on morphine. He read aloud to me the last forty pages of Eclipse, which I had crawled into my room to grab as the paramedics banged on my front door. I had it clutched to my chest when they loaded my into the ambulance. (He doesn’t like it when I tell people that he has recited Stephanie Meyer aloud, but hot damn, that makes a keeper, doesn’t it?)

I love him, Internet. I love him more than I hate New York. (And I really, really hate it there.) So I’m moving back, with an arsenal of legally-acquired Xanax, a team of mental health professionals already found, and my very tired snowboard. It’s only until we both graduate, which is two more years, because he is earning two degrees at once, (a BFA and BA) and I am scholastically incompetent. After that, he wants to ride a motorcycle with me across Europe. My only concern was, how would all of my Sephora Problem fit onto a motorcycle? He said, “We can get a side car.” Oy Vey.