how to fall in love in los angeles part 3
An ex-boyfriend recently reminded me that he started our relationship by throwing me down a flight of stairs. I am dramatic now but I used to be even more dramatic, so even though I didn’t remember it I believed immediately that it had happened, and that it had happened because I had asked him to. He didn’t have to remind me of that part— I know myself well.
In high school I used to ask everyone if they would punch me because I wanted to know what it felt like. All of the girls said no, most of the boys said no, some of them said yes but as a total joke and just as a segue into trying to get something else out of it and only one of them said yes and thought he meant it. He also wanted to get something else out of it. I couldn’t blame him. I don’t think I could give somebody something they wanted so desperately without getting something in return. My father would say that’s just bad business.
The man who threw me down the stairs got plenty of things in return, but he would have done it without those things and that’s why I loved him. A stupid reason to love somebody but we are all stupid the first time around.
There are things that are hard to say, darker things some of us want but sound either trite or worse when they leave our mouths. I tried to learn sign language at one point thinking if I could just gesture some of the wants that I had instead of voicing them it would be much easier for me. I quit after a few weeks.
At the bottom of the stairs that one night I think I felt the relief the girls at Renfrew must have felt when they made the scars under their sweaters. It should’ve been obvious way earlier. My mom showed me the movie Secretary when I was 14.
Back in rehab, I would shuffle my way past the 405 and the tents again and make it to the ground floor of the big gleaming office building on Wilshire and pass whatever version of Henry Winkler had physical therapy that day on the ground floor. I’d get into the elevator and dab at my forehead with my sweatshirt sleeve to wipe away the evidence of the fact that I had walked the 2.5 miles from campus (exercise on the day of treatment, anything close to what they defined as “moderate”(anything over one mile of walking), was not allowed).
Drugs also not allowed and tested for. I failed my first drug test because a week before treatment I had my monthly pilgrimage to my Italian grandma’s house in Oceanside. I’d count how many Klonopin I had left on the Metrorail on the way there and tap my fingers against the glass window in trepidation of the pints of olive oil and pans of sausage and plates of sfogliatelle that awaited me when I stepped off the train. I could only spit so many things into my napkin unnoticed. At least some bites had to go down and for that I had the Klonopin to mollify me until I could punish myself for it properly in the sanctity of my apartment. One such trip my count came up short and I had to dip into the bottle of oxycodone my boyfriend at the time, Griffin, had bought for me for these exact emergency measures. He figured it was better than me throwing up. I guess the ladies at Renfrew did too because they forgave the drug test I failed the week after with only a slight scolding.
“Revealing” clothing also frowned upon for reasons I’m sure you can infer. Adhering to that one was no problem. We all had things we wanted to cover up. Everyone wanted to be the skinniest and none of us were sure that we were and at least half of us had other reasons to wear long sleeves. I only had the former reason. I took care of the latter by doing things like being thrown down stairs because I guess I had already metaphorically made it to the second half of Secretary in that part of my psychological development- not that I knew that yet. I was still on boyfriend #1. Griffin had no problem buying me pills but would never do something like throw me down stairs. Months later, Marko found the pills that Griffin had bought me and took them from me in a rage. He had no problem hurting me in the way that I liked but would never do something like buy me pills. I had no problem watching him take them. By then I had no need for them.
Once I disposed of the evidence of my forbidden exercise and made it past the initial scrutiny of the scale room, I had to trudge into meditation hour which was customarily held every morning at 8:00am before breakfast. We rotated who got to pick the songs we listened to while we sat in the kind of chairs we used to sit in for Confirmation class and got led through a series of exercises meant to ease the anxiety that always came before eating. There was only one painting on the wall, Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth, and they loved asking us how we felt about that one. No matter how many times I stared at it before meditation started I still felt nothing. One morning someone chose a Billie Eilish song. I tapped my fingers against my chair and wished they’d just give us Klonopin. Meditation never seemed to work for me and it didn’t work for Emily (who I had clocked was definitely skinnier than me) either who would always peek one eye open and look at me like “I can’t believe they think this will work”, which, if you’ve ever had a pudgy middle-aged woman instruct you to close your eyes and count to 10 in your head and empty your mind while Billie Eilish sang about “one day making it out of here” 30 minutes before walking into a fluorescent white room with plastic bowls of calorie-laden junk that you were technically paying to ingest and feel like ripping your insides out about afterwards, you wouldn’t think it would work either. Because it didn’t.
What I really needed was something violent enough to distract me from starving long enough to make me realize I didn’t want to starve anymore. Feeling a “calm sort of emptiness” isn’t so lovely when all you want is the exact opposite. Emptiness never seemed to be calming for me. The silence was always deafening or whatever and this makes me think back to when I would read at parties in high school and someone started a rumor that I was snorting coke off of a bible at one such party when I was just actually reading White Oleander in a chair in the corner. I realize how this sounds (annoying) but it was my favorite thing to do and the only way I could stand going to parties back then anyways. When I read back at home in Florida the TV would always be on and someone in my family would always be clanging pots and pans around in the kitchen and my dad would always be laughing on the phone out on the white patio with all of the mold covering its little divots and the hose spraying against the glass sliding doors as he watered his orchids. The stream of water from the hose would hit the doors sporadically, at intervals random enough to be alarming. My mom jumped and sighed in exasperation each time. My brother’s awful metal music blared from his room. I turned another page. This was how I preferred it. But that’s a separate thing I guess. Maybe.
What I really want is to feel something always, to be overwhelmed. It’s hard to ask somebody to overwhelm you, and this is one of those things that can sound trite, which is why I have ended up asking so many people to hit me instead.
Maddie and I were standing in the front while Cole was playing at one of his shows last week and I started crying as I often do because some of his songs are lovely enough to hit me with a sort of violent emotion. It was a Halloween show and everyone looked ridiculous. Maddie and I were fairies. Our fairy wings kept hitting people while we danced and some girls were getting annoyed but I was too lost in my little well of euphoria to care. Brad and Rosalie procrastinated their costumes like they do every year and still managed to look the least ridiculous as the twins from the Shining. All of the guys in the band were clowns.
On certain nights like those I don’t feel the restlessness, gnawing, insatiable, begging to be met with some force. On certain nights a different kind of hit is enough. Maybe I’ve increased my sensitivity to beautiful things on purpose to make them feel as intense as the harsh ones but I don’t know how I went about doing that. In any case that’s how I am now. I have no further advice. Except maybe this:
If you happen to be on the Metrorail going south from LA to Oceanside, try to look out at the ocean. I’m sure you’ll find something beautiful enough to overwhelm you. You could even put Billie Eilish on while you look. It might help.
I take walks in the perfect winter afternoons here in Santa Monica and pass by the perfect houses and put on some of the songs Cole has written for me. They’re just demos so they aren’t perfect yet.
We go to the beach in Malibu. I read something beautiful enough to be called violent while he surfs in water that could be called the same thing. He jogs back between sets and leans down over me, covering the sun. The water droplets fall from his hair and meet the tears that always came with such violence. They mingle together and I taste the salt in my mouth. He wipes them away and I smile as more come. The sun is peeking out behind him. I feel overwhelmed. In some ways it seems like meditating.
Not that I would know.
