My Very Unsexy Life

As I unpacked the fifth car-load of boxes and furniture, I hardly noticed the hot sun on my shoulders — I was on a mission. My husband and I had been living in an apartment with brown drinking water, sewage gas, and one impressively unscrupulous landlady for two and a half months, and we were finally moving out. It was early on a hot, Colorado-in-July afternoon, and I still had three more hours to finish moving things before picking up my husband from work.

As I hurried from car to porch, carrying one shelf at a time, I couldn’t help but remember how familiar this felt. This move — hurried and determined, leaving an unhealthy situation for a better one — was reminiscent of a very different time in my life.

(Three and a half years earlier)

It was December 31st, 2017, and I was living in St. Louis, MO. I was twenty-six years old, at the tail end of what had been an eight-year long, vicious, no-holds-barred brawl with my mental health. I partly credit this brawl to the fact that I had spent my twenties exploring the notion of what popular media portrays as a “sexy" life.

Like … dropping out of college to live in a van and rock climb — that was sexy, right? Living in a party house with five other climbers — that was sexy. Living impulsively felt sexy, partying on weekdays felt sexy, sleeping in a walk-in closet under the stairs felt sexy, hookup culture felt sexy.

To summarize briefly, I spent five years having the kind of “fun” that, after the fact, costs several hundred hours (and several thousand dollars) worth of therapy to unpack.

In December of 2017, I finally skidded to a halt and looked around at my life. By that time, I had moved out of that big party house into — wait for it — a smaller party house, another equally unhealthy living situation. I drank, often, and so did my roommates. I wasn’t welcome in that space, and I knew it. I dreaded going home every night after work.

By mid-December, I knew that I needed to move out. I took a chance on a three-bedroom apartment, split with two other climbers that I hardly knew. We landed the place on December 28th, and planned on moving in around January 3rd.

But the morning of December 31st, a soft, unexpected knowing arose within my heart. Quiet and pleading, it insisted:



I don’t want to start 2018 in a house I’m so unhappy in.

I want to start the new year in my new apartment.



Immediately, I knew that this was what I wanted. Moments later, my phone was out of my pocket and I was texting the landlady, asking if she would let me move in a few days early. She told me that would be fine. 

I practically flew to the ATM to withdraw the cash for the first month’s rent, loaded up my little Toyota Camry with as many boxes as it could hold, and began moving. As I hurried back and forth across town that day, I reflected on the state of my life, after almost ten years of trying to live a “sexy” life:

I was in a job with a toxic employer, still underpaid. I was in debt, and even thinking about my finances felt overwhelming. I wasn’t smoking weed anymore, but I was still drinking every day. I was numb, moderately depressed and terrifically anxious; my mental health felt a bit more like “mental hell-th” than anything.

And I was tired. I was so, so tired. On a deeper level, I knew that I couldn’t continue living this way — I knew things had to change.

As time ticked on, I felt a growing sense of urgency. Every box I hauled up the stairs felt like a piece of my old life that I was carrying into this brand new year, a year that I promised myself would be a turning point, a year in which I would make some big changes. As I worked feverishly, hour after hour, I knew I wouldn’t stop until it was all done, until every box, every bit of my life, was completely out of that old house — a house that seemed to symbolize all parts of my life that I want so desperate to leave behind: unhealthy relationships, toxic work, toxic living situation, toxic lifestyle habits.

The temperature peaked at ten degrees, and then began to slide back towards zero. The icy wind bit at my finger tips, my nose, my ears, taking my breath with it.

I kept moving.

With 45 minutes until midnight, I finished loading up my Camry with the very last load of boxes. By 11:30, I was hurrying in and out of my new apartment, face and hands numb, in total disbelief that I had done it — I had actually moved everything out before midnight. (This was no small feat, as, at the the time, I was still a semi-hoarder.)

I shut the door to the apartment behind me, locked it, and leaned against it, catching my breath. The apartment, set to 55 degrees, felt so much warmer than the biting chill I had been moving through. I relished the way my footsteps echoed throughout the empty apartment, with all of its unfamiliar creaks and noises. In this new, fresh space, I was about to spend the night completely by myself, for the first time in a very, very long time.

Breaking away from my traditional style of celebrating new years (drinking a lot of booze), I found the box with my tea kettle in it, and boiled a pot of water. I found my yoga mat and unrolled it onto the wooden floor of my new bedroom, with high ceilings and two large windows.

With five minutes until midnight, I carried the steaming cup of tea to my room and sat on my yoga mat. I didn’t really know how to meditate, so I moved through a series of stretches and silently offered up thoughts like:



Please let this year be different.


Please let this year be better.


I want to be healthier.

I want to be happier.

And so it was — alone, sober, and hopeful — that I moved out of 2017 and into 2018, a year that did indeed become a turning point for me.

In 2018, I took control of my finances, stopped drinking daily, finally got a hold on my mental health after many years of painful struggle, walked away from hookup culture, left the toxic job I had been in for a year and a half, and finally began healing the cumulative trauma of the last several years. And … I met my husband.

_______

As of this writing, I am just shy of turning thirty years old. 

As I continued to move boxes, of both my own belongings, and now, my husband’s, I was able to appreciate the stark difference between that difficult time in my life and the life I live now.



I had been living in a way that popular media told me was “sexy” — partying, impulsivity, hookup culture, having “a lot of friends”, and more or less flying by the seat of my pants and “dealing with it all later”. It is also worth noting that, at that point, I had been living in a strongly dissociated state for almost my entire life; I was rarely, if ever, actually “in my body”, as they say.

And I was miserable. I wasn’t able to recognize or name just how imbalanced my life had become, because it was what I had known since I left for college at eighteen.

The three years that followed were devoted to getting more and more distance from that life, and adopting much less sexy habits. Like going to therapy (often), walking away from drinking and substance use altogether, learning about and practicing setting boundaries, letting old friendships go, learning to ask for what I want, learning how to say no, speaking up in real time, budgeting, embodiment practices, healing my frazzled nervous system, etc. In two days, I will be celebrating one year of sobriety, my first since I began partying almost twelve years ago.

To underscore this, my husband and I, who are both almost 30, just moved into a house with three roommates so we can save money to go back to school. We are celebrating our two-year anniversary by going out to get ice cream, and then watching the Olympics (also to save on costs). We have five-dollar date nights and go to bed early. We still go to therapy, after nearly three years of going both together and separately. My idea of a wild and rousing evening looks like snuggling up with a cup of tea and watching “Call to Courage” on Netflix, for Pete’s sake. I even say things like ‘Pete’s sake’.

And … I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

It may have taken the entirety of my adulthood, but now, I feel immensely thankful to be experiencing a life that feels like it has some semblance of health, happiness and fulfillment — a life that feels like me. One which I credit to finally choosing what I would call: a very, very unsexy life.

. . . . . .