#74: Rock bottom
When you’re at the bottom and things are at their bleakest, the only thing you can do is climb back up.
It was adios to my high profile neighborhood, I was broke. Ironically, I ended up moving in the exact same rental property that my grandmother lived in off my parent’s money when I was a child…only now I had a townhouse model. If I walk outside my front door and look right, my old place is right there. Many things had changed…the old playground that I used to play on is torn down now….but some things hadn’t.
Time went on and things got worse and worse. My other friends didn’t call or hang out anymore as they seemingly lacked energy and it was like pulling teeth trying to get them to commit to a plan. I started to wonder if the true value of my life was what I did for people, not for who I was. I was incredibly lonely…it’s tough to describe, I felt more like a “thing” - a robot - than a human being. The feeling is like a cancer that spreads through you.
My latest birthday came around and I was hit with a realization: I really wasn’t getting laid. It wasn’t happening. I was still a virgin and that wasn’t right. Despite knowing full well what causes attraction and display confidence, I simply could not initiate cold conversation with strangers. This has always been my weakness and 95% of the reason I’m still celibate.
At the recommendation of someone to meet women, I took different activities such as improv (to improve my reaction and conversational skills) and a cooking class where I thought women would be. Turned out there was only one girl in improv (married at that) and I ended up being awful at improv anyway. Which sucked because The Friend and I used to be so good at it in our drama class back in high school. As for the women in the cooking class…there wasn’t one that didn’t have skin wrinklier than my balls. Somewhere up there, someone was laughing at me.
Partying was all I had left that gave me any pleasure. The problem was that I was still very awkward in social situation and attempted to use alcohol (and on occasion, drugs) to loosen myself up, shut off my brain and have fun. Which worked to a degree and because I was having inhibited fun women did indeed start to take notice, but it also killed my game. For example, I was piss drunk at a club one night and doing my thing on the dance floor when a hot brunette ran out and tapped me on the shoulder and started dancing with me. We tore it up until she finally said “You’re cute. Keep dancing.” My “compelling” response was “Thanks!” as I kept to my own thing. When the alcohol wore off later, I shook my head at such a rich opportunity to have fun with that situation and hook up with someone.
It was sort of like the artist Isaac Mendez on the show Heroes where he could only use his special power when he was on heroin. But the alcohol/drugs eventually wears off and you’re back in the same old reality as a dull person. I was on a road to self destruction.
As 2008 rolled along, I was hoping to start with a clean slate but I was thrown yet another problem. The agency that I worked through was pulling me out of the place that I had been contracting for…apparently they hadn’t paid them in months. So now I had no money coming in at all.
I went through deeper depression and thought about my situation. My friends didn’t need me anymore. There wasn’t a woman who would shed a tear for me. I was of no more value to anyone in the working world, or to anyone. In many ways I was nothing more than a ghost moving throughout the world and clinging on to life. Figuring that perhaps I wasn’t meant to be around people, I had actually considered ending it.
But then I started to think again and thought back to the time when I had contemplated my mortality. That’s right…granted my life was bad but being alive was better. Sure, I was alone in the world and maybe I would always be….but it only made me stronger than most people. And the strongest choice of all was simply to live.
I wasn’t sure if I could ever overcome my social problems, but there WAS one thing I could do well…my job. At the very least I would overcome my problems by starting there and getting that back. I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take, but I was bent and determined to rebuild my “empire” and become great once more.