Sleep evaded me for days on end. I wandered the beach, and haunted the breakwater bending until I feared I’d break. I was making a name for myself, but the backstage passes and rockstar romances quickly spiralled into a pattern of dopamine and depression. Followers and famous friends became my currency, their allure beckoning me deeper into a realm where euphoria and melancholy intertwined. I soared on the highs, but behind closed doors, the neon lights faded, and I was left with a haunting silence. Like the inverse of a weeping angel, I ceased to exist when I wasn’t seeing, and being seen.
I found small pockets of human connection that I chased. The pretty boy frontman. The debonair developer. The magnetic mobster. I loved those moments, which made the ones back home in my quantum lock of desolation even more destructive. Soon, the little voices screaming “run” disoriented me. So, I did what I was best at, self sabotage. Then, the one I held in reverence sealed the deal for me the night he showed me where he saw my value. In a thought I had no worth, beyond the flesh. Mentor turned major dissapointment. A secret that ripped at the soft flesh of my stomach and conscience, entwining with the sinews of my existence until its weight became unbearable, a relentless burden that threatened to consume me whole. I started to burn my life down in the city by the sea. By the time I sold the last of my earthly possessions and boarded a plane to Europe on Christmas Day, I could breathe again. For a moment.
Finally truly untethered in the world, I ran. I ran from London, to France, to Greece, to Spain and Italy. Sometimes I stayed for weeks and doubled back to do it all over again. Other times just a few days. I slept, sometimes. Mostly I walked. I walked from Treviso to Venice. I hitchhiked from Beauvais to Paris. I clutched the waist of a pretty blonde girl from Thessaloniki to Athens. I surfed on couches and culture with no return flight in sight or mind.
Still, soon enough, the discontent crawled back in. New York was calling me. The timing was right, so I ran again, back over the Atlantic. Manhattan was my most passionate lover. I was obsessed with her. I kissed every inch of her skin from toe to tip and still could never get enough. I was head over heels, more than I ever could have been for a person then. My heart was numb, it might not have even been in my chest at that point.
The bright lights, never ending energy, music and people kept me drunk off of stimulation. I didn’t need to sleep anymore. Though, that may have been the speed. New York was a vicious lover, she ran me ragged and then slammed me against a wall. Commanding hands bracketing my throat and hips all while tender lips urged me on, making my mind blank as the pulse at the apex of my thighs demanded attention. The praise kink sending me to euphoria with each achievement I clawed to fruition.
She gave me my highest highs, nights I wished to be trapped in for eternity, and my lowest lows. Nights I do get trapped in on an endless loop when my mind tries to convince me of my irrelevance, that the space I take up on this mortal coil might not be worth the bones in my skin.
With her constantly in my ear, I missed the “run” . I missed it, and missed it, and missed it until it tattooed the very heartbeat in my chest with warning. Run. RUN. But, how could I? Even when I finally heard the desperate alarm, I’d bury my face between the thighs of this vicious, ethereal city and let the soft flesh pressed to my ears drown out anything but the breathy moans of my success. My ambition, my legacy.
On occasion I’d still leave. To Egypt, to Columbia, to Australia. Never for long enough to miss her, never long enough to run. Until the honeymoon wore off, and LA started to hold my attention. I was a fickle lover. One of my many flaws. The veil was dropped and New York and I were becoming toxic. LA on the other hand… We’d flirted, before New York and I were exclusive of course. Still, sometimes I’d straddle LA and fist his tie, rocking my hips until he was driven mad with need. Right before returning to my beautiful New York, and she, cold hearted bitch she was, loved to hear all about that little torture and tease.
She did not love, however, when I tried to leave her. I think she heard the warnings before I did. No, I’m sure of it, and she begged me to stay. When I made my decision to follow the now rabid demands I move on, she made the decision it would be in a body bag. Very, If I can’t have you, nobody can. She wasn’t successful in that, but she was in that I never made it to LA. He stood on the deck of the proverbial Empire State Building, ready to whisk me away and I never made it.
The years I spent in the heart of that city will forever be formative. Not because of the red carpets, the famous flings, the never ending chase for another hit of praise for talent and self. No, the thing she taught me, as we lay hoarse, broken and bloody, our relationship in pieces around us. Our reward for the fight to cling to what we had, what we wanted to have. Was that I couldn’t run, because what I was running to and from were both locked inside of me. My past, my scars, my future, my better.
I wouldn’t find what I was looking for in the front row of NYFW, or in a hotel I’d broken into after an unfortunate miscommunication in Santorini. Not on Sunset BLVD or the sandy, salty beaches in Puerto Rico. I wouldn’t find me. The person I’d searched the earth for. The person I’d run from. The one true love I needed before I could even begin to hope to have a healthy love of anyone else. Under layers of trauma, masking and suffocating neglect. There I was, and these external trappings wish they could have been captivating enough to keep me away.
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