Disillusionment: Checked Out But Still Here.

Spring 2021

Part 2

When I was 28, I was going through a divorce. In any breakup, whether relationship, friendship or association, there's this final gray area of uncertainty, before you split, where mentally, you've already bounced. Perhaps it started out as a rough patch, but then it progressed into a feeling of being emotionally distanced. You're still in the room, but not really. Conversations are avoided, and when they cant be, they're never prolonged. Small talk becomes uncomfortable and awkward.

Then comes that moment of clarity. The moment when you realize, no this isn't a phase, and you're not going to snap out of it. Its never going back to how it was, and even if it did, you wouldn't feel the same. The prospect of change is terrifying, and can be paralyzing. But, moving forward is the only option, much like oxygen is your only choice for air to breathe.

So, much like leaving a toxic relationship, or a demoralizing job, I knew that my days in Vegas where numbered and rapidly diminishing.

There's another aspect of my past divorce that I don't like to revisit, but its an apt analogy. Its the period of time after the separation but before I could move out into a new apartment. For several months I was sleeping on a couch in the unfinished basement of our apartment building on McDonald Ave, near the corner of Church Ave. It was a cold winter in Brooklyn that year, and even more so for me, with only a metal storm door standing between me and hawkish winds outside. I remember wrapping myself in blankets and practically snuggling with a plastic space heater, gasping for warmth. And, as I laid there, I would repeat to myself a mantra: “This is the part that sucks.”

I was aware that I was in a bad place, and I knew it was the direct result of decisions that were made. Much like stepping out of the frying pan, and into the fire, walking through the flames was the only way to move forward. People often speak of the “price of admission” when recounting the hardships they endured to gain acceptance. Few people mention the price of the exit.

I only mention this now, because I find myself in a similar predicament. Short of winning the lottery or getting tapped to produce a Nas album, I am still months away from packing a truck or scheduling job interviews in Manhattan. But, with COVID restrictions lifting and my job about to reopen its doors, I am only days away from returning to work, and its forced social interactions. So while my heart has certainly parted ways with Las Vegas, I am still going to be very reliant on my job here, and will have to coexist with people whom I take no pride in having met. Yet, armed with a book, a journal and penchant for shrinking into basement-like corners, where a creative mind can subsist, I know I can make it through another dark cold night, reminding myself that this, once again, is the just the part that sucks.