There are subjects I know nothing about and other subjects that make up my essence. My essence is the story of a caterpillar; circa 2009.
I moved to Europe in 2017. Before that I had spent my entire life living in New York. The last decade I lived in Midtown and Brooklyn for the 20 years before that. In 2009 everything looked great on paper. I’d been at a solid banking job for about 5 years, I was engaged to my handsome boyfriend of a few years, and we lived in a water-view high rise in Manhattan. I was 25. I was also utterly miserable. I’d accumulated a bunch of debt, the thought of working this very same banking job for the next 30 years until I retired horrified me, and I couldn’t stand my fiancé. We fought so much, we had no sex life (which was pretty much the most important thing for me at the time) and I probably couldn’t give you a single redeeming reason why we were even together. The bad outweighed the good to such an extent that I wanted to literally change him into a different person (back then I thought that was possible). The idea that this would become my life was distressing. In late 2009, stress turned into acute illness and I took a sick leave of absence from my job; the leave turned into a resignation. In those 6 months, everything turned upside down. I took a sledge hammer to my life. If there was any chance for more, I had to. I ended my engagement, I left my job, and I moved back to my home town (a place I struggled to escape in the first place). My new home was a $500 per month basement apartment that was literally half way underground (bye Hudson water views ). I had downgraded to pay off my debts and to adjust my lifestyle to my new startup. At the same time, I partnered with my brother on a technology venture I knew nothing about. My role was business development, something new, something I’d never done before. I had to figure it out, I always did. Those next few years were very painful; harder than the ones that preceded it. After so much hallow emptiness, I wanted to feel something. Something good, something intense. I wanted an orgasm. I wanted many. It both was and wasn’t a metaphor. I started dating men. In those months, my sex life had objectively improved (I now had one), but the quality of my relationships didn’t. I felt cheap, used, and emptier than ever. Orgasms were fleeting. They became less satisfying. As if it were a twisted joke, some partners couldn’t even perform. There was no energy. I was cut off. I couldn’t put words to the lack I felt, I knew no lexicon for it. Had I jumped from the frying pan into the fire? It felt like it. I felt like I was dying every day. I could barely work. I was consumed with obsessive thoughts —how to control life, how to fulfill the unfulfilled desire within me? How come others had figured it out? What was wrong with me? I would try to map out logically, often through writing, a rationalization for my life, the world around me. Why was I here, and what was even the point? I was a walking void. There came a pivotal moment where I was about to start on antidepressants. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t work, I was consumed with myself. I was consumed with my lack. I dabbled with Ritalin and the like. Medicine felt like the only way out; out of my own prison. Then in a pivotal moment, I realized it was either I pull myself out of this mental state (not knowing exactly how), or I may never come off those medications. I didn’t know how I would do it but I knew I had to, I had a choice and there was no choice. #transformation #change #bitcoin
Photo from 2009.
