on heartbreak
(or you would think I would be used to it by now)
I cut off my best friend of 20 years today.
On my way home from visiting my brother and his family last Thanksgiving, she was lamenting her recent ADHD diagnosis over text and declaring her anguish at her whole life having been lived with a disability. My ex-bestie was a very accomplished person. She may very well have been unknowingly dealing with ADHD but she had accomplished several things I have wanted for myself and failed to do—namely keeping a man and staying married to him, getting an MFA, getting a literary agent and owning your own home. I know what it’s like to not see what you’ve accomplished in your life. I was feeling particularly orphaned that day … sitting around the dinner table everyone at Thanksgiving was paired up except me. I felt like such a deep failure as a human being. I felt the wreckages of my last relationship and a recent fallout with two friends, I decided to be vulnerable and tell my ex-bestie that she was actually amazing and listed the things she had accomplished I wish I had. I had offered her the gift I’d consider a diamond had it been offered to me in similar circumstances.
My friend’s response? She compared me to her abusive mother because I had just gaslit her life experience. I immediately apologized understanding how she could think that. She had been upset about new information that recontextualized her history and there I was just missing the memo. I get it. Sometimes encouragement is the wrong choice. I explicitly stated I would never ever say something to hurt her like that … and honestly why would I? I have a bunch of shit wrong with my brain too.
She was the last good friend I had. The last person that wasn’t biological family I could say I loved.
COVID, my last breakup, the stresses of unemployment and four years of an isolating work schedule, depression, and what turned out my own ADHD becoming more and more unmanageable had done a number on my 1:1 relationships. For many reasons I find myself at 51, with a lot of acquaintances, an ok relationship with my family but no closeness. My family doesn’t really get me that way. My acquaintances are people I meet at sex parties or bars or on Scruff. They are for laughs and sweet times. Those relationships are not appropriate for the deep intimacies of a romantic relationship or a best friend … which are the two most intimate relationship modes I’ve ever had.
My ex-bestie was like a sister. She approached me on a Tori Amos fan forum twenty years ago asking for advice on being a playwright. I had known what it was like to wander into theater blind. She was working class like me. No fancy degree. No family members on the board of theaters getting me that sweet directing gig, no mommy and daddy paying my rent while I audition. I wanted to pay things forward and I began to just pass on whatever I could to help her get a leg up, which she turned into a thriving writing career.
I was enraged she had compared me to her mother. She and I both have supported each other through our respective messed up relationships with our mothers. I couldn't help but feel the sting when she paired me with the monster under her bed … no not the sting. THE INSULT.
Looking back on my childhood there were times I didn’t know how to give shape to a feeling. I didn’t know how to have it. More often than not big feelings would knock me out, either in tears or an enraged screaming tantrum … I was often “possessed” by these huge emotions. As I’ve mentioned before when I didn’t see a solution to a life problem in my surroundings, I learned it from entertainment, so I’ve learned to get big and loud and dramatic and very very very verbally abusive when I am angry. It was a way of pushing the possessing emotion away from me and into the world. It was clumsy and cruel, but it was often the only way I could express I was hurt or upset and have it be taken seriously. I just didn’t know any other way to do it. I’ve grown a lot around this and I’ve been defanging myself. It was a no-brainer for me. I loved my ex-bestie and respected our friendship. I held my tongue and waited to cool off before discussing things further. Besides she was upset and arguing about my feelings wasn’t going to be productive for anyone. She was always tricky around Christmas having had a series of challenging events in her life for a string of Holidays. She wanted to have a quiet Christmas so I just stayed away. Besides, I’d let her reach out and I can gauge where we are from there.
But she doesn’t reach out.
After my birthday in February, I decided to send a friendly email. I just said I had no bad blood and I missed her. She wrote back and said she’d reply when she had time to emotionally process. I have not heard from her since.
In dealing with my own ADHD, I have been working through various self-care and mindfulness exercises on a daily basis. The combination of changing my work schedule, moving apartments and low testosterone put me in a 30 day brain fog I could not get out of. This affected my ability to paint, work out, socialize, have sex and do my job properly. Having prioritized healing this brain fog for the last couple months, it stunned me that at the beginning and end of the Mercury Retrograde this summer I was struck by a cyclist. The accidents felt fated. The first one I saw coming and he and I just could not adjust fast enough to get out of each other’s way and we collided. The second just came out of nowhere. I was banged up both times but no serious damage. However the last collision has soured my mood about so much this week in ways I cannot puzzle out.
The day after getting hit by the bike, I saw Jinkx Monsoon in Oh, Mary! I kept quoting her All Stars 7 Commencement Speech: “I WAS HIT BY A FUCKING CAR!!” the day of the show, excited to see her in a play I felt deeply ashamed as an upstanding homosexual citizen of New York City not to have seen off-Broadway and then several more times with original star Cole Escola (I have no idea why but I was inundated with tons of “Oh have you seen Oh, Mary!? Oh you haven’t? I’ve seen it TWELVE TIMES!” in the last year … anyway …). Me in a theater is tricky. I still take my inability to have made it to Broadway pretty personally, mostly because it’s a very hard thing to process and release. It’s very rare to find empathy and compassion from another person when your biggest life disappointment is never being eligible for a Tony Award. Even I laugh at the ridiculousness of it. I still love theater but when I walk into one I feel like I’m visiting the hot guy who “only wanted to be friends.” I just feel the rejection oozing from the walls. The Lyceum Theater has the most batshit restroom arrangement and the ushers did not explain it correctly enough for my neurodivergent mind to accept. Immediately I felt antagonistic towards the space. I was rude to the ushers and told them they needed to get it together. Fortunately the play and the performance took me away from that irritation, but wouldn’t you know I didn’t even put together that I was watching the story of a woman who was a monster because she couldn’t perform her madcap cabaret medleys. It made my sudden decision to stage door the show and meet Jinkx and the confusing emotions it all brought up for me make sense. Standing with the fans, my Playbill in hand, I began to weep. I wept for the kid who came to this city wanting to make things, beautiful things. Magical things. I’ve gotten to watch other people live this dream. I’ve had to do the work of adjusting to the reality of my life. I didn’t have what it took. I wasn’t enough. When I got to thank Jinkx I welled up with so much pride. Jinkx and the other queens on Drag Race have been a treasure for me. They helped me enjoy a performance artistry that only brought me joy. I didn’t feel resentment or envy. Seeing Jinkx just take off on Broadway in the last few years has been such a lovely thing for my heartbroken inner kids to see. A queerdo stoner neurodivergent performer with a strong belt and a big love of showtunes gets to live the dream.
In the last couple days I’ve felt the absence of my ex-besties intensely. I’ve felt the absence of my ex-boyfriend. I’ve felt the absence of my creative community. I’ve been trying to figure out what my daily creative practice looks like with this new schedule, in a new apartment, but also a creative identity that can’t be pigeonholed as easily as before. I have to get into these big brainstorming arguments with ChatGPT to get the kind of deep creative and emotional dialogue I need to have to get myself to the next step in my evolution. I cannot believe in the year of our lord 2025 with computers in our pockets in New York Fucking City that finding a person to have these conversations with face to face is such an impossibility. What good is being around all these wonderful creative people if they’re all too fucking busy for coffee? It’s impossible to build deep friendships when you have to plan a hang several months in advance.
Things with my ex-bestie weren’t great since the pandemic. She had her own set of shit to deal with and there were times I just felt she never wanted to come out of lockdown. She got more and more resistant to leaving Queens. I never expected her to visit me. I always offered to come to her. Many of my birthdays were missed over the years because she has this thing with the month I happened to be born in while I always blocked out the week of her birthday to be available for her party. I’d grown tired of offering fun stuff to do even just me coming over so she wouldn’t have to get triggered and leave the house. She kept me away. The older she got the more she gravitated to an exclusively female inner circle. I chalk it up to her mommy issues and her anxiety over a lot of the setbacks to women’s rights. I don’t resent her for that. I get it. I strongly prioritize having queer men in my life over other people and I won’t ever apologize for wanting to flood the population in my immediate vicinity with people like me to relieve me of the stress of being a freak. But still … I had suffered so much since 2018. I haven’t felt strong until maybe a year ago. I needed all the love and connection I could get.
I don’t know how to put together the image of my ex-bestie with the person who decided to leave me when I told her she was my last close friend. When I made a fumbled effort to be close and cheer her up. When I reached out twice … something not every person I’m in conflict with gets. I’m a nasty Cuban bitch sometimes and if I’m mad at you I cut you off forever and ever come back. Ask some of my exes. I’ve gotten silence. I have to respect the mystery. I could have been at fault somewhere but not known. Or perhaps she’s just gone nuts. 2025 will do that to a person.
I blocked my ex-bestie on all platforms today. I deleted all her emails from my inbox going back the span of our friendship. Rage rises and falls. As I deleted all her emails, there was a part of me that for a moment wished I could do the same with all the good memories. I wanted to condemn her as a failed friendship in retaliation for her silence. Obviously, and fortunately, that’s impossible.
There’s a song by Taylor Swift called “loml” where a relationship that was “legendary” becomes “momentary” and then “unnecessary.” When something ends despite my efforts I want to demote it. My love is tied to size. If I love you I elevate you, I put you up above and beyond. You are glorified. It’s just the way my showbiz mind works. Love is being the star. But when the love is gone, best believe I show up with the bulldozer to take down your pedestal. All I want to do it make you smaller and smaller and smaller until you are an insignificance. It shows you what I feel about being small. It shows you what vehemence I can have about my own image when it fails the grandiose vision I wanted for myself.
I’ll end with this, both times I got struck by a bike, my body dialed up all the stage combat and movement I learned in theater school. I can take a fall. I didn’t even have to think it. And one day I’ll think of my ex-bestie and I’ll be grateful we crossed paths because I will turn over a jewel in my thoughts left over from our time together. It’s hard for me though. Always feeling small I wanted big huge successes and these tiny almost invisible gifts one picks up along the way can save me from a cracked skull but I’m ashamed to say their lack of spectacle and outward display reinforces these narratives about me. Too small, easily forgotten and mediocre. People tell me this isn’t true but the last three people I loved unconditionally ran in the opposite direction from me, so I’m not sure who to believe.
At least I can take a fall.