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Category: Wyatt’s Words

  • Panic at the Discount

    Just got off the phone with my mother and weaponized her intellect towards choosing gifts. “I have no idea what these people want,” I pleaded.

    “Everyone likes cologne,” she proffered.

    Every year around this time I have what my dear friend Maggie and I like to call, “Panic at the Discount”. It comes from a few years back when, in a last minute spree of gift-giving, I had a panic attack in the housewares aisle of the Studio City Marshalls. I remember mental images of the dozen or so people I was getting gifts for flickering like my life flashing before my eyes, and then shelves of last-season’s home decor spooling like slot reels. I didn’t know if anyone would want an olive wood cutting board. I didn’t remember if I’d gotten them one last year. Everything went white.

    I soon composed myself and wandered, zombie-like, through the clothing area to the car, but the damage had already been done. And I realized that most of this was due to the fact that I could never put together as good of a Christmas as my mom could.

    My mom learned from her mom: Christmas is the time to put everyone’s differences and miseries aside and make sure everyone has one hell of a party, from ages 2 to 92. My grandmother made 500 raviolis one year (as she was fond of recalling, endlessly, intimidatingly) and cooked for three days. The extended family’s extended family had gifts, and the house looked like a Sears catalog.

    My mom continued that tradition and my dad ran with it – a tree that scraped the raised ceilings, extraordinarily elaborate and extensive gifts, and enough food to choke a horse.

    My mom relished the Marshalls runs as much as my dad would spend hours on the phone with catalog orders. It was like a game for them to see who could overdo it more. We have Christmas ornaments the size of Aztec spheres and those fuckers needed to be hung from the mantelpiece which requires 3 to carry.

    So when I reached the age of responsibility (still not sure if I’m there yet) I had big shoes to fill.

    This would be the part where I’d tell everyone I learned some big lesson that the most important thing on Christmas is family and being together, and you don’t remember the gifts but the treasured memories with people.

    And that bullshit’s all fine and dandy, but I still have gifts to buy, and I hope to god I don’t accidentally give grandma a heated blanket two years in a row.

    pictured: the one year we gave up on the giant tree and brought out the tiny one

  • If you feel like a loser, people can think you’re a winner!

    Most people are actually two people – the person in private and the person in public.

    The person in private’s more candid, describes their fears and insecurities. It’s what we consider to be the actual person.

    The person in public is a combination of masks, bluster, hygiene – a projection of who people want to be.

    We’ve been taught this is best and good, and in some ways it is. You get the convenience of being considered to be whatever you want to be. If you feel like a loser, people can think you’re a winner!

    I admire those who actually create characters that aren’t just done from fear, but from strength. Those who say that “this is who I am” – a fur coat bedazzled piano player, a busty drag queen with fright hair, Hannah Montana.

    The problem is where that character ends and the real person begins. How many of those personality traits are a projection of the person being called ugly in high school? Is the person hiding behind that mask, are they suffocating the person underneath the character?

    This is the extreme of the example though. The average person probably borderlines on the side of caution – a few closely kept secrets here, some “I don’t want to lose my job/embarrass my family/hurt people” there.

    Again – safe and prudent. But we’re still not telling the truth, are we?

    Our projected selves are falling for our projected selves, which means that on a base and real level, you might have nothing in common with the other person. It’s no wonder that divorces are so common – one financial or medical emergency and the blame starts to fly.

    In the gay (insert acronym here, my keyboard only has so much durability) community, there’s a consistent tendency to hide oneself. Many people got used to being ashamed of themselves, hiding their sexuality in their formative years, sometimes fearing disappointment, often fearing for their safety. It means stunted development, difficulty being honest and forthcoming, having to conceal what you actually want or think you want and sneaking around to get it.

    All of this seems very tiring, doesn’t it?

    For years I hid my sexuality. I didn’t know how to describe it and didn’t want to be effete, and the more obvious I was hiding it the more other people pointed it out. Sometimes it caused physical pain that went beyond the ceaseless undercurrent of anxiety. And it’s not something where I felt I was a victim – you can be a victim of a crime with a perpetrator, but there’s no one to *blame* for genetic and environmental factors outside your control. People don’t understand what it was like to come out only, like, 2 years ago. Everyone was so accepting, and I just felt so stupid for waiting so long.

    To lasso this back to the difference between a public and private person – I think it’s my mission, personally, to erase that barrier. The performance, the performance’s performance, the broken person underneath – they’re all me, and there’s no reason they should have to be separate. Further, I have to overcome the “I am this person who had things happen to me” as an identity. It in itself is a mask. We all get dealt some bad hands, and we deal others bad hands too, but we’re not just a collection of events. Humans are living, breathing, evolving beings.

    It shouldn’t take fucking up or weathering a difficult storm to get here, but if I marinated in failure I’d probably be at least slightly more obnoxious than I am now.

    I’m someone who is who I am, but who’s trying to do and be better. It’s going to take time and a hell of a lot of effort, but I’m kind of excited. Everyone else’s secrets are safe with me – but mine have nowhere to hide.

  • To be taken care of

    It’s a weird thing for me to admit, but I like being taken care of.

    Taking care of others is good too. There’s a certain joy and sense of duty in doing so.

    But there’s not a feeling of being complete. It’s depleting. You finish taking care of everyone else and you just kind of slump into emptiness.

    Of course, the pendulum swinging in the other direction is equally unsatisfying – being taken care of too much breeds restlessness and neediness.

    Finding a happy medium isn’t easy. I tend to land more on the taking care of others side of the swing – I’m used to it and it comes relatively naturally.

    But recently I’ve been indulging in the other direction, and it feels fantastic. And I’ve never been more anxious, like someone having to pee on a freeway without an off-ramp.

    I’m consumed by the fear that the floor could fall out from underneath me at any time, and that warm and cozy feeling I’ve suddenly become accustomed to could not just end, but leave me feeling emptier and sadder than ever before, consumed by restlessness, like a druggie waiting for the dealer. It also leads to a feeling of wanting to flip the equation, like being leg-deep in quicksand and evaluating whether you should just polevault out of there and be shinless.

    So the options on the table would be:

    1. Return to the default of taking care of people, enjoy feeling depleted bitch!!!!

    2. Continue down this path and become a big ol tittybaby

    3. Find a happy?? medium??????? somewhere that includes an honest assessment of wants and needs, including taking care of yourself so you can take care of others and in turn be taken care of????????????????

    No way, #3 sounds way too adult and well-adjusted, so much easier to just keep driving this car into the wall until the wall moves.

  • Gratitude List

    I despise feel good claptrap like this.

    I read The Secret once in high school and I guess it helped me through the week I took 13 AP tests, because reading it was preferable to cramming my AP Bio text into a blender and consuming the contents orally.

    Still, I resented the fact that something like that could be so *easy*, and that people would ceaselessly share inspirational quotes from that damn book as if they were gospel.

    However, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts lately (Caucasian alert!) and the host (Joey Diaz) spoke about how he’d wake up early in the morning and write a gratitude list, starting with expressing gratitude that it was a beautiful day to be alive.

    The guy’s survived prison, divorce, and years of traumatic life setbacks, so when someone like that provides advice, you listen.

    And as if the synchronicity wasn’t real enough – The Secret popped up on my Twitter feed (we are just going full-on country club this morning) and sure enough, the recommendation was to write a list of what you’re grateful for, starting with the most basic, banal things (roof over your head, etc).

    I guess it’s a good a time as any, because I have everything I could possibly want in life (a place to live, family, friends, love, car(s), and so on) and the future will just be continuing, growing, and multiplying upon those.

    I’m grateful I have a roof over my head, grateful I have family who cares, grateful I have meaningful and helpful friendships, grateful I’m loved and in love, and grateful I have enough cars to start a regional dealership. I’m grateful I have good health, and I’m grateful to be alive.

    It feels so strange and silly to say those things aloud, like sketching in an adult coloring book.

    But remarkably, I do feel better. I feel centered, I feel a little less anxious. I feel like the unyielding string of thoughts springing down my mind’s highway has reached a comfortable stop. I’m not living 30 minutes or 3 hours ahead, I’m here and in the moment.

    And it feels good.

    Maybe if I did this more often, I’d have happiness to be grateful for.

  • Nailbiter

    I stopped biting my nails because my boyfriend noticed.

    He wanted to understand why, and it was hard for me to explain. I don’t know where or why it started, but I’ve done it for as long as I remember.

    My mom offered me $100 once to stop. I stopped for 48 hours. I did not get the $100.

    A couple years ago I tried getting manicures, until I started grinding my teeth at the nail bed. In a fit of pique, I bit them all off.

    I don’t know why I do it. I think it’s a physical manifestation of the roiling anxiety that plagues me on a constant basis. I worry about everything, legitimate or not.

    If I’m going to get a parking ticket.

    If I was too mean in that last text.

    If I’m a failure.

    If I’m gonna make it out before traffic.

    If he’s going to hate me for the rest of his life.

    If lunch is gonna give me the shits.

    And so on. So I bit, and I’ve bit my nails down to an unrecognizable shape.

    My best friend would swat my hand away from my mouth. I’d stop, and then unconsciously start again.

    But it took a patient and accepting hand, who clasped mine as he noticed, to get me to stop this time.

    I just got a manicure, and for the first time since I can remember my hands approximate normality. I don’t feel embarrassed to shake hands or meet people. I don’t want to consume myself.

    I’m going to try to stick with it this time. I’m going to try to improve.

  • Why I Write

    I’m not particularly skilled at manual labor. I’m terrible at giving directions to people and vacillate between being dictatorial or mute.

    And behind a keyboard, I’m still not particularly skilled. I channel the unrelenting monologue in my head. It could be on any given topic and at any given time, and it simply is.

    Writing has helped me process both success and failure, and it scares me sometimes. I get intimidated that I’ll sound stupid, jumbled, that I’m not as good as I used to be.

    But I write because I have to, not because I want to. I’d go crazy without the opportunity to voice these thoughts, for better or for worse.

    I’m envious of those who can move seamlessly between fiction and nonfiction, and are deft enough to create new worlds as they are in describing rote data.

    I’m not one of those people. Every time I try to write fiction it comes off as a grocery list. I’m too literal, too focused on what *is*.

    So I have this outlet, though I hesitate to call it an “ability”, and if I don’t come off as a pompous prick then I’ve done okay. I’m more pitiful than pitiable, and hope maybe I could be a cautionary tale at best.

    As I look back, I see the mistakes I made, the poor choices that couldn’t even be justified in retrospect with the information available at the time. The more I write about them, the more I realize they’re common experiences, that they’re not discrete moral failures in a vacuum but threads woven into the shitty quilt of humanity.

    There’s so many things I’ll never be able to forgive myself for. But I’ll keep writing. I’ll be 100 years old, hands knurled like Albion oak, and I’ll keep writing. I’ll never be a writer, but I’ll keep writing.

    I’ll keep writing, because there will always be a story to tell.

  • Kids see ghosts sometimes

    I don’t know if I have a “why” for writing what I do.

    I’m not a writer and I actively resist being described as such. There are real writers, it is their craft and vocation.

    I scribble a few words together in notes and they’re generally complaints. So no, I’m not writer.

    What I try to do is channel a feeling, or moment, and usually because it’s intolerable for me to keep it bottled inside. Ideas are like bubbles on the surface of a simmering, particularly viscous soup. Some are small and nag at you, some are a mighty swell.

    Everything starts with pain. There’s the pain of shame, of rejection, of loss, of failure, and then they trend more obscure, but nobody wants to read about ennui.

    Then there’s usually a connection with someone who’s no longer there: dead or gone. It’s easier to litigate painful feelings if someone’s still involved with your life.

    But the nightmares start when it’s something you wish you said to someone that hurt you. And for some reason, it’s never negative.

    The even deeper question is: what would you say to someone that hurt you? Would you apologize? Would you ask them why they did it? Would you even want to know the answer, or do you just want their ghost that haunts you to go away?

    At my most unhinged and paranoid I felt presence of people who weren’t there, who died. My dad, my grandmother. Within the week each had passed there was a comforting presence and then that too disappeared. It was months of silence later when I’d get flashes of feeling like they were judging every move, that I’d left them unsettled.

    Maybe it was my own neuroses, but I have a specific memory one afternoon after many nights of poor sleep screamcrying into the phone at my friend in a parking lot that I felt like they were judging me for fucking up.

    That’s what it always comes down to, doesn’t it? Do you sleep well at night? Do the ghosts of Christmas Past/Present/Future pay you a visit?

    If I’m tired enough, I’m out, and it’s sweet dreams. But if I reach a certain level of tired, it’s curtains up in the haunted cinema.

    In the situation I’m typically powerless, and dealing with someone who’s no longer there. And it’s terrible. It’s worse than a “ooh scary monster” nightmare because it’s real, it’s a real situation, and you’re not in 2018 and cozy and in your bed, you’re a passenger in a conversation from 6 years ago and the car doors are locked.

    That’s why I write: because for years being closeted, ashamed, stubborn, and pushing things down and away just didn’t work. There was an entire interior world no one knew anything about or could understood. Realizing that others had similar experiences, and that writing was the most coherent way I could channel them, made the difference.

    So I write. Not that well, mind you. And it can be exhausting. But unlike ghosts, it’s real.

  • Good enough

    When I unpack my past relationships, I noticed a trend recently (okay, less than an hour ago) which I hadn’t noticed before, and that was not being good enough.

    I wasn’t good enough for my ex because I embarrassed him.

    I wasn’t good enough for another ex, because he downloaded Grindr to hook up with other people.

    And I wasn’t good enough for a third ex, because he was embarrassed to introduce me to his siblings.

    What does all this mean?

    It means I’ve been rejected for my looks, my mind, and who I am as a person.

    I was asked recently – why are you even still looking at your exes?

    It’s not for any means of comparison. I already know they’re not in good places. It never has turned out that way and it never will, and nobody’s been the exception.

    A part of me has still wanted to know why. It’s been a math puzzle that I can’t figure out. Like I can understand why you’d do better if you could do better.

    But if you couldn’t, then what are you even doing? What was I doing when I let you into my life?

    It’s an echo chamber where you wonder: do I blame you or myself? And I always blame myself, for thinking better of people, for setting my own needs aside for someone else’s.

    For thinking I was good enough.

    For thinking that actually mattered.

    I’m still baffled by the funhouse of fake positivity that social media is, a cone of “omg you look great!” Real life isn’t like that. It’s a room of 100 doors, all closed, while you jam at the bottom of one of them with a letter opener hoping to slide through.

    This isn’t a story with a happy ending. It’s a story of a fight with ghosts who aren’t there to respond, of unsettled conflicts and a proxy war in a vacuum.

    Why should the opinions of the deeply insecure matter?

    Because they should know better, of what it’s like to be punched down, of being marginalized.

    But they don’t. They hit harder than anyone. You may never be good enough for them, but they’re never good enough for themselves.

    And in a way it’s like trying to litigate with the dead – they’re not there to represent themselves, and you only end up dragging yourself closer to them in time and energy. There’s no use in surviving the war to consume yourself.

    Instead, you’re left with the memories of being alone in a room with someone else, of the six hour arguments defending yourself to someone you’ll never win with. How could you ever win with addicts? How could you ever be stupid enough to fall into that trap?

    How little do you think of yourself that their opinion matters?

  • 500 days ago

    500 Days Ago I was sitting in the front row of the G.L. Johnson Chapel at People’s Church trying to avert my gaze from the black piano wood box to the left of me.

    I felt my entire body slump into oblivion as I walked down that aisle and saw his face above the casket. How could someone’s entire life and existence be shoehorned into a 6×2 rectangle?

    He was always so morbid, always talked about being buried in a pine box. I hated when he talked about death but it probably prepared me for the inevitable. I wish it wasn’t so soon.

    We had so much more to talk about.

    It’s the part I’ll never get over. I lost my best friend, the person I talked to 10 times a day about the stupidest shit, everything from memes to headlines to news stories to family drama.

    This was all brought front and center tonight as I opened up mail. I was honored to receive a printout of my dad’s eulogy speech from our fine senator. I blacked out during its delivery so it’s nice that I have a hard copy.

    Reading this, I remember those stories in my head. I hear my dad’s voice telling them. I think that’s the part I’ll never get over. If I think of his voice, it gives me chills. It always carried such weight, power. And I guess it’s still hard to comprehend that it’ll be relegated to memory.

    I’m at a stage now where I only have happy memories. They’re painful in the sense that they’re memories, that they’re a stake hammered into the ground of the past, that I feel like I’m standing from a distance and can see them but they’re finite points in the passage of time.

    I think – I hope my dad would be proud of me now. I think there are some decisions I’ve made that he probably wouldn’t have initially agreed with, but would’ve understood upon explanation. There’s a certain stubbornness and definitiveness I clearly inherited for him. We both arrive at conclusions and execute them quietly, and the chips fall where they may.

    I can’t visit his place of rest. I pass the freeway exit every time leaving Fresno and I keep going. I don’t think he’d want me to be there, because I don’t think he necessarily felt that all that there was of him is there. It’s in his brothers and sisters, my mom, his mom, the extended family, the good things he did and tried to do.

    Half of me will always be my dad, and it’s not something to live up to – it’s who I am, for better or for worse. For the rest of my life the best I can do is to steer that wheel towards the better. I think that’s all he ever wanted.

  • Six months ago

    Six months ago I met a cute boy at a party.

    I couldn’t have been at a lower point that night. I’d just been dumped by my boyfriend of over a year and we’d ceased contact. I’d been on a string of meaningless hookups and a complete bender and I just missed coming home to my best friend. I’d gotten into an argument on the phone with my business partner on the way into this dingy looking warehouse party downtown. I just wanted to forget the horrible place I was in and was determined to numb with every substance possible.

    Our mutual friend introduced us, said we’d be “perfect for each other”. I was anxious and twitchy and this cute guy was completely unimpressed. I tried to cheer myself up and shake hands around the party, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I wanted to be anywhere but there. I felt like Jenny in Forrest Gump during the drug scene, or Ginger in Casino when it all started falling apart, and spent part of the party looking for screencaps corresponding to my mood on my instastory.

    It was late as all hell and time to go, and this cute boy and I couldn’t get our mutual friend to leave. The cute boy stayed for another 20 minutes and cancelled two Ubers just to wait. Our mutual gave me the key to his place and said to meet him there.

    The cute boy and I shared an Uber home in the back of a Civic. As we drove through Downtown, the skyscrapers glittering past the windows, I looked across the backseat and saw him there with some goofy grin on his face. He was trying to be coy. I wanted to take him home.

    He had the car drop him off at his place and drop me at my friend’s. That was that. I’d struck out again.

    Walking home at 530AM that morning in the rain in sandals was horrible. My mind raced a million miles an hour and I started bawling at all my terrible choices and in pity for myself as I passed the apartment I’d shared with my ex for over a year. I wanted to knock on the door and throw myself at him. Promise to start fresh, hell I didn’t know. I hit rock bottom. He never made me feel like I was good enough. I cried myself to sleep and woke up the next morning, early, hungover and pissed.

    The cute boy and I messaged each other over Instagram in the following weeks and months. He saw as I bumbled along, through dates and such, job upheavals, tragedies. He watched from a distance, like a scientist. Observing.

    I was on a terrible date one night and it happened to be by this boy’s place. He invited me over and we hung out – yet somehow, I got curved again. I drove home, furious. I felt like a fool.

    I did see him again though. We went to a concert that was magical. We started FaceTiming occasionally, which turned into every night before bed, talking for hours on end. I giggled – GIGGLED.

    We spent more nights together. We started going on cute adventures. Slowly, I felt the horrible experiences and habits of the past year fade away.

    Goddamn we look so cute together.

    When I got into a fistfight with my best friend, he came over. He held me, told me sternly about the consequences, but with warmth and compassion.

    “You take care of everyone. But who’s taking care of Wyatt?” he asked.

    I was stumped, and also floored at his gentleness. No boy had ever been this nice to me before.

    The adventures became more elaborate. He surprised me on his rooftop with an incredible display, and asked me to be his boyfriend. Nobody’d ever *asked* me before. I accepted, wholeheartedly.

    For the first time, I wanted to be better. I have someone to be better for. And I look forward to each day, because just his presence makes it better.

    Six months ago I met a cute boy. He healed my broken heart and tortured soul. He’s made me a better man.

    Six months ago I met a cute boy at a party. And my heart is soaring.