Love Letter
By: C. Trip
Tags: Mental Illness, Trauma, Grief, Love And Sex, Heartbreak

Something I miss about New York is that one can cry quite literally anywhere. My Greenwich Village apartment, all 350-square-feet of it, was aptly positioned just two blocks from Washington Square Park, a place that quickly became one of my favorite places to have a public mental breakdown.

You can’t beat the value of a good cry spot in New York. It’s a city where you have no privacy whatsoever, and so you find yourself relying increasingly on strangers for that courtesy. The public cry remains a firmly embedded social contract in the city: when people cry in public, you don’t stare, you don’t ask them anything (unless it’s clear they are in danger), and that is such a gift.

I used to cry everywhere when I lived in New York- on the subway, in the park, in the library. It truly didn’t matter because the social contract allowed for a private moment in the midst of utter chaos. The cry spot contract is the epitome of New York for me; an unspoken, gentle act of mercy inexplicably intertwined with a deeply calamitous city. An act, and a city, that seems callous at first glance, but ultimately reflects a complex understanding of the need for both privacy and connection.

At first, I loved living on Bleecker Street. Unbeknownst to me the day I moved in, my particular building was the one that housed the fictional “Sanctum Sanctorum,” home of Dr. Strange from the Marvel comics. People were always pausing outside my front door to snap photos, and initially, it was endearing. After the first month, it had become quite the nuisance at the end of a long workday, or a particularly hungover morning as I made my way to the corner deli for a grilled cheese and a light blue Gatorade. I probably cried in that bodega too, come to think of it.

I’ve always been the type of person whose emotions spill out with abandon, budding up through pores and streaming down my skin in jagged lines like the fountain in Washington Square Park. When things were really dark, I walked down the street and through the arch multiple times a week to cry alone on a bench. My bench was just close enough to hear the old men playing chess chastise each other for cheating, but far enough away from others to ensure my sniffles were muffled by the white noise of people living their bustling lives.

My apartment was, in a word, awful. The day I moved in, I had nothing but a small suitcase and my cat in her carrier, meowing in tandem with taxi cab horn-honks and people yelling into cell phones. The apartment had one tiny bedroom and a kitchen that also served as a narrow hallway to the living room, half of which consequently served as my room. I lived in the living room as I felt more and more dead inside, an irony that is not lost on me.

The bathroom was abysmal, and was separated from the shower, which was in a closet. The lightbulb above the rusted showerhead rarely cooperated, so most days, it felt like a humid tomb, which, depending on the day, could be both good and bad.

My roommate and I lived above four fraternity guys who went to NYU. One of them, Robby, developed an affinity for drunkenly scaling the fire escape outside my window, the smell of Southern Comfort as loud and insistent as the way he’d scream my name, trying his best to convince me to go out with them to whatever college party had the most free drugs on-hand. The only time I acquiesced, we went to a pretentious little East Village bar called “Dream Baby.” Robby got so drunk he couldn’t stand, and I got my wallet stolen by a guy I’d been flirting with while ordering a Cosmopolitan; he had a bicep tattoo that may or may not have been a dragon. Realistically, I should have seen that coming.

As you could infer, my apartment afforded me zero privacy. I didn’t even have a door to my “room” and relied on an ugly curtain from Amazon for privacy. It only partially concealed my bed, and not enough to keep my roommate’s creepy boyfriend from occasionally watching me sleep.

I was so miserable, but I was far too proud to ever admit that, and so the park bench and I became the best of friends, allowing me a safe space to feel. I re-read Wuthering Heights with my anxiety, and I listened to Melodrama on repeat with my depression. I played words-with-friends with my joylessness, and I held hands with the crushing grief of realizing the life I’d imagined wasn’t a life at all. What do you do when your solace is not a garden, but a mausoleum?

A healthy, functioning adult would seek out a therapist they wouldn’t lie to, and cultivate hobbies that didn’t involve hazy neon signs and tiny plastic bags. Me, at 22? I fell in love with someone who wouldn’t even follow me back on Instagram. Oh, the sweet, delicious drama of it all.

I met him at a party in Hell’s Kitchen (so ostentatious, no?). I noticed him as soon as he came in the door; he was 6'3 and walked in on crutches, smiling sheepishly and seemingly embarrassed to be there with a cast on. I whispered ‘dibs’ to my friend Andria, who rolled her eyes at me as I got off the couch to go talk to him. The conversation was immediately playful, something that I loved, and I began compiling data into his new, personalized file in my brain.

I learned he was from an affluent family in Chicago, and attended Princeton as a legacy. I was utterly enthralled with his accent, which over time became a running joke, as he continually mispronounced words to make me laugh. The night we met, I poked fun at his ivy-league privilege. He vehemently protested, claiming he wasn’t like the other guys I knew who played devil’s advocate in ironed jeans and starched Brooks Brothers button-ups, which made me snort. He may have been different in that he made a bracket for every season of survivor, and was astonishingly shameless about being the former president of an improv troupe. Still, I quite correctly assumed he sported his perfectly cuffed jeans over Sperry Top-Siders not only to rooftop parties in midtown, but also to eating club meetings (the somehow more demented version of sororities/fraternities at Princeton).

We ended the first night together in a hallway outside the apartment, mouths, and bodies, crammed against each other, one of those memories that still causes heart palpitations despite my best efforts. He picked me up and kissed me against the door with no regard for his shredded ACL as the party raged on the other side, and, sigh, that was it. The shimmery, wine-soaked beginning of the end; Eve had eaten the apple, and god damn, it was good.

After that, we started seeing each other regularly and went on several dates, ranging from a posh cocktail bar, to making McGangbangs together in his bed after buying $40 worth of McDonald’s. We connected and laughed together in a sweet, sparkly way that I hadn’t felt in a long time. The sex was earth-shatteringly good, and I can fondly remember using a bike lock very creatively. We’d fall asleep holding hands, and he’d let me have the lion’s share of the only blanket on his bed, one I am certain he never washed enough.

We talked about our deepest fears, our greatest ambitions, and scarring past relationships that left us rolling our eyes instead of singing along as pop music played over opening credits of Romcoms.

He leaned on me during a challenging time for his family, and being the hand he reached for made me feel important. I didn’t even mind when he spent over an hour explaining what each aspect of the Chicago flag stood for, and I now know far too much for comfort about the war of 1812. I’d bring him bags of free craft beer I’d been given from my work, and he’d make me eggs with jalapeños on Saturday mornings.

He was in the midst of applying for medical school, and I was struggling with a job that truly terrified me and stole bits of my soul every day like rats in subway station trash cans. My boss was unpredictable and volatile; from day-to-day, sometimes even hour-to-hour, she could go from lovely and supportive to vindictive, intent on personally humiliating whoever was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He became a port in a storm during the week, encouraging me to keep my head down and ignore the emotional abuse as best I could.

We would go to bars and sit in booths next to glass windows, ordering drink after drink, making up ludicrous backstories for the couples around us. We’d banter on as snowflakes continued their defiant attempt to blanket the sidewalk, knowing full well they were no match for the relentless footprints of passers-by that would inevitably stomp out their fragile beauty and replace it, little by little, with dark gray slush.

The day he got into medical school, we celebrated under covers and behind a locked door as the ice cubes melted in our whisky glasses. We danced in his room as the drunken sounds of his downstairs neighbors singing karaoke in their shared courtyard trailed through his open window. He forgave me when I shattered three of his four wine glasses over the course of a month, and I forgave him for buying a green suit for St. Patrick’s Day (and wearing it).

He’d put his enormous coat over my small shoulders, and I’d hang on his arm like the Gardens of Babylon; much like the gardens, whatever we were, whatever we had, became this mystical thing that I wasn’t sure even existed at all.

Naturally, as time went on, he became more and more “busy.” I didn’t know what changed his mind about me, but it didn’t matter, and I was determined to hold onto the good thing I’d found. As we could all guess, the more I reached out, the less responsive he became. His excuses piled up like the dirty depression laundry on the floor next to my bed, and the empty double bottles of red wine that were inexplicably always on sale at the liquor store around the corner.

Before long came the text message letting me know he didn’t want anything serious with me, and the curt, cool-girl reply that assured him I felt the same way.

The coups de main was on my twenty-third birthday, eight months after we’d met, a singularly devastating night that I spent crying in the back of a taxi. He left me at a house party, jumping in a yellow cab without saying goodbye. Shortly after, I was approached by his best friend, who informed me that he needed to “tell me the truth.” As I sat on the back staircase of a Brooklyn brownstone, I was told that my guy had bragged to him, and all their friends, about his ability to manipulate me for the last several months. He’d known how I felt about him the whole time, which isn’t surprising as my subtlety rivals that of a gun.

I turned to stone as I tried to digest the new information. His friend carried on in the background, but I couldn’t hear him. His words convoluted, running together as if we were underwater. I thanked him for telling me, gathered my things and the charred remnants of my dignity, and hailed a cab. I disintegrated in the backseat; my friend Heather cradled my head in her lap like that of a wounded animal. Andria held my hand and attempted to string together what had just happened, my sentences fragmented between sobs.

Looking back, the real MVP of that night was the cab driver. He turned around, looked at me, and said, “Hey, honey. Fuck that guy, eh?” We gave him a very nice tip.

The next few months were spent deconstructing memories in search of clues, desperately trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. When did he go from showing up at my door dressed head-to-toe in a ridiculous Santa costume, to actively avoiding my eyes as I stood alone in my birthday dress?

Logically, I knew his friend could have just been repeating locker room talk, and that maybe I wasn’t really manipulated for the last several months. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d finally stumbled upon the truth of the matter.

Anyone close to me at the time would tell you that I thought I was in love with this person, but that I wasn’t actually in love with him; I was just desperate to feel love in some area of my life. When I looked closer at our relationship, I had some gutting realizations about the behavior I’d enabled and even imagined.

He’d kept me separated from his actual life, allowing me to enter only with a password, one that he changed weekly. I wasn’t allowed to meet his friends; I wasn’t even allowed to be his Facebook friend because he wanted our relationship to remain “private,” which at the time somehow made perfect sense to me. I came over when he wanted and never saw him outside of his own schedule.

His personal therapist, sex worker, chef, and entertainment at his beck and call. It wasn’t even malicious; it was just that he had no reason to say no to someone so willing to give and ask for nothing in return. He wasn’t an idiot: he had a degree from Princeton.

I haven’t heard from him since the night I turned 23, and I do think about him sometimes. Surprisingly, I don’t even hate him, though I hope if there’s a picture in his wallet, it’s of someone he treats with respect this time around.

I also hope that any girl in his bed is given the lion’s share of the blanket. And that he bought a new blanket.

After that night, I was back to square one, in Washington Square, now hating myself several shades more than the normal grayish loathing that characterized the clouds of my day-to-day. I added spite to the mix of my longtime park friends, anxiety, depression, and grief, and it was crowded.

I wore my spite front-and-center like a Purple Heart; I’d earned it. I carried my fury with me like a sword, but eventually, the weight strained my back and callused my hands.

For a while, I was content with making him the villain and chain-smoking my Juul, thinking angry thoughts and hate-watching The Bachelor; I soon found that villainizing him still placed him at the center of my universe, sucking away at my energy like a black hole.

Looking back, it wasn’t completely his fault that I crumbled to dust after what he did; I realized I wasn’t dust, but sand in an hourglass, slowly but surely pouring down, piling onto myself until there was truly nothing left.

I was sicker than I ever wanted to admit; I was sick when I got there, the wood floors of my apartment creaking under the weight of moving boxes and the heaviness in my head.

I wasn’t ready for the reality that was New York City because I wasn’t ready to face my own reality. I was too good at pretending to be so many things, curating my perfection, even curating my ‘mess.’ As for my New York guy, it dawned on me that I knew everything about him, and he didn’t know anything about me of substance. Why? Why hadn’t I confided in him?

I’ve realized after many romantic relationships and entanglements that I try to overcompensate for the trauma I deal with. I didn’t even realize I was doing this until I moved back home, intent on ‘fixing’ whatever internal problems had caused the Victrola in my head playing Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York” to break beyond repair.

I spent so much of my adult life begging men to give me a shot at proving why they should choose me, despite my trauma. My sweetest little version of put me in, coach! I have no athletic ability per se, but I have a winning smile and a can-do attitude!

I am sure it’s because there’s a part of me that felt, and still probably feels, deeply inadequate. Somewhere within the prickly trauma that grows up through the folds of my brain like vines, there’s the idea that no one in the right mind would pick me over someone normal, stable, unmarred.

Being a complex person can be fun initially, adding intrigue, a little dark glitter, if you will. Still, I’ve watched, anxiously pulling off my fingernails, as it becomes too much for the people who signed up over time. So unconsciously, I started to create narratives to negate the undesirable parts, because maybe at my shiniest equilibrium, I would be choose-able.

Look how smart I am, how pretty I am, how fun I am, look how good I am at this particular thing, or look at how strong I am instead of…. look at me exactly how I am.

Continually pretending to be someone else’s idea of perfect only deepened my wounds, creating the climate for trauma ivy to strangle the garden I was trying so hard to cultivate. I had to be gutted to see what was rotting inside. I don’t know that I would have dealt with my issues without the insight that showed me what was inside and what wasn’t.

Much like a good old-fashioned cry spot social contract, what happened to me (and because of me) in New York was somehow an unspoken, gentle act of mercy from the universe, inexplicably intertwined with my own personal brand of calamity.

I needed that year more than I ever knew; rejection taught me that to accept ourselves just as we are, we have to curl shaking fingers around ribs, and pry ourselves wide open. We have to spoon out the decay and hold it in our hands. We have to examine each tiny shard that caused the internal bleeding, and for the love of God, we have to stop eating glass. Oh, and apples from forbidden trees, ‘cause that shit will catch up to you.

And so this is not a love letter to him, nor is this a love letter to who I was, or who I am now. This is a love letter to New York for bringing out the very worst in me so that I could make space for a garden, the spite and sadness budding up through pores and dripping down my skin in jagged lines like the fountain in Washington Square Park.