The Loneliest Year: Part Eight

October 2020

I continued to wake up in the middle of the night and sob. Before I opened my eyes, I would be in physical pain—my sadness manifesting as a hot skewer through my chest.

My therapist, somewhat alarmed, decided to use an advanced technique, and during the exercise the words “I don't deserve to be punished” arose again from my subconscious. We ended the session with an exercise where I relinquished my sadness, disappointment, and grief. She asked me if I needed to release anything else and the word “hope” came to me, so I relinquished that as well.

Afterward, I messaged Jesse from a place of absolute calm and clarity and without any expectation of a response. A voice inside told me to do it, and I trusted it. That same voice told me to reach out to Jesse’s friend who had added me on Facebook in June. Oddly enough, Jesse had messaged her for the first time in weeks on the same day I’d reached out to him. He never responded to my message, but she let me know that he was okay, and that was all I needed.

I bought a $25 ticket to an online event entitled “The L.A. Not-Creepy Zoom Gathering for People Who Want to Fall in Love,” and I left after five minutes, because I was the only gay man in attendance.

I ordered a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts. After eating six of them in one sitting, I ate a salad—for balance. Then, the next weekend, I ordered two dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts, because they were “Buy One, Get One Free.”

Soon after, I started a more affordable healthy meal delivery service called Everytable.

The air cleared a bit, and I was able to run outside again, and one morning, I composed three poems in my head while running.

I walked to a nearby ballot box and mailed off my election ballot, and I went on walks with my friends, Tina and Joey, to celebrate their birthdays.

I purchased a new iMac that I couldn’t afford, and I invested in Logic Pro X. I figured if I was going to spiral, I might as well enhance the quality of my online content on the way down, and I continued to record music and videos for more song covers.

I also started posting poems to Instagram—like Jesse used to do.

Eventually, I decided to stop my therapy sessions. I liked Kandace, but the sessions weren’t really helping, and I signed up for an online singing class “taught by” Stevie Mackey instead.

I received the Queerty Voting PSA, and the guy that Jesse chose over me in 2019 was in the same video. We were one video clip apart from each other, and it opened up a lot of hurt.

I took a day off from writing, and I tried to relax, but I couldn’t, because I genuinely didn’t enjoy any activity I engaged in.

On the same day I finished the series Just Shoot Me, I ran out of freezer pops.

I kept trying to find joy again on my own, but I couldn’t see a future where I was happy without Jesse. It didn’t even feel like depression. It just felt like I was being honest about something I'd never allowed myself to admit before: that I really didn’t like life.

I was so sad that my mom suggested that I use a dating app to find a boyfriend, which was a major arc in her character development. Later, my dad called me, and he told me that it was okay I was sad, and he encouraged me to cry it out. I was extremely grateful for both of them.

One evening, I opened a folder on my computer that I hadn’t opened in months, and I looked at photos of Jesse, and I listened to the audio clip he sent me of him singing “When the Party’s Over” by Billie Eilish. It made me happy to see him and hear his voice.

Soon after I stopped therapy, my friend, Rachel Kice, offered me hypnotherapy sessions, and the morning after my first session, I woke up early again, but the sadness was different—a dull hollowness instead of a piercing pain. Progress.

I watched a love reading video on YouTube from a psychic who predicted that my union with Jesse was definitely happening and that Halloween should be an important day for communication. If I truly believed it would happen. And I did.

Then, the day before Halloween, I found out that Jesse was dating someone new in Utah, and they were very happy together.

I tried to fathom how I was supposed to be grateful for something as cruel as life.

Jordon, the friend who told me that Jesse was seeing someone, listened to what I’d been going through, and he concluded that Jesse was my muse, and I was meant to create from this pain. I wished I could find any comfort in that. Before we ended the call, he also recommended that I look into something called The Gene Keys.

I sobbed for hours. When Rachel saw how upset I was via Zoom, she came over to my place, and she brought me Chinese food, and she gave me my first hug in months. We’d both been quarantining, and we trusted each other. After we finished talking and eating, she decided to do some energy healing work instead of a hypnotherapy session. And after she left, I was sad, but stable and calm.

Earlier in the day, I’d also messaged the guy that Jesse chose over me in 2019, and I let him know that I never had any ill will towards him and that I wished him happiness. He wrote back and thanked me, and two days later we both matched on Tinder. None of it made sense.

On Halloween, the day the psychic said I would hear from Jesse, he spoke to me once again through music while I was at Ralphs. “When the Party’s Over” played over the speakers, and it’s the only time I ever heard it outside of the recording he’d sent me.

That night, after performing a manifestation ritual, I continued my Halloween tradition of watching a somewhat scary movie while eating pizza. This year, it was I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, but just like everything else, neither the movie nor the pizza brought me any comfort or joy.

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Part Nine:

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Note from the Writer

This is part eight in a thirteen-part essay series that details my year in quarantine from March 15, 2020 to March 15, 2021. If you enjoyed this essay, I hope you'll add a heart and continue reading the other essays in the series.

Tips are not mandatory, but greatly appreciated.

Thank you for reading.