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last Friday, i shared the version of my rock bottom that was easy to tell. the polished gem that i had condensed down to a bite-sized chunk, so as to not make people uncomfortable at party’s.
to read the first half of this newsletter, you can read ROCK BOTTOM take ONE below:
but this newsletter is an effort to dig deeper. to really examine the ways in which i’ve been lying to myself to keep myself safe— to protect others. the truth feeling too hard to acknowledge or hold.
this project has been instrumental to my first year of sobriety. but in order to grow as an artist and a human, i have decided to hit pause on “newly sober”. i am currently enrolled in a year long manuscript workshop/container lead by Chloe Caldwell. it started a few weeks ago, and i haven’t been able to fully engage because i’ve been too preoccupied with newly sober and its weekly publishing schedule.
i was watching The Show About The Show by Caveh Zahedi last nighbt, and it reminded me a lot of writing “newly sober”. the premise of the show is that he is making a tv show about making a tv show, and it is messy as hell. he cites people talking about each other, and then the people cited watch it and their feelings get hurt. and in the following episode, he has to cope with the fall out of the previous episode and he has to apologize. each episode is mostly Caveh dealing with the fall out of people’s hurt feelings and/or rage.
it made me feel a lot better about the work that i’ve been doing here. that, i feel the same urge to be honest and true to life, but thankfully i don’t have to navigate the moving parts of peoples’ feelings, L I V E. that this work is solitary, but i do everything in my power to be kind, thoughtful, yet true to life. that i have the people who i write about in mind, and i want to do everything i can to keep them safe. but sometimes, the truth is revealing and i am more dedicated to the truth than protecting egos.
however, Caveh’s willingness to be rigorously honest and self-reflexive, while also documenting the reactions of those closest to him, not only endears the viewr to him. but also makes the project successful: we need to believe that the narrator is interrogating and shining the exploitive light of truth on themselves, too.
his work made me feel a lot better about my life. and hopefully i’ve been self-reflexive in a way that makes this project successful. i can only hope.
however, watching Caveh also made me feel thankful that i’m taking a break. In his memoir about writing, Stephen King said that the first draft must be written with the door closed. The second draft with the door open. it’s important to write for ourselves, first. write because we have something to say, because we have to. and holy fuck after a year of writing with the door open week after week after week, i am so ready to write with the door closed. because it’s important—
i need to think less about my reader; i need to worry less about the players on the page. i just need space to write. to be.
so, official announcement:
i am working on a book-length manuscript.
which is so fuckin’ exciting. books are my favorite medium. they are personal and take time to digest. there’s more room to explain and less room to react. and, also, my dedication to it is only really possible because i am sober. prior to sobriety, i could not even write because i was too twisted out of shape as to whether or not i should or should not smoke.
now, i just write.
since the age of 23, i’ve said i was writing a memoir. which, in a way, i was: i have hundreds of pages of what i saw and thought and felt, which are incredibly valuable to me now.
because i felt the guiding light of that intention— i am finally in a workshop that will kick my ass into gear and make that dream a reality.
i know that anything i put above my sobriety i will lose, and so my sobriety will continue to be the first priority in my life. but i am excited to work on writing that is about more than one facet of my being— not just the last year of my life— and i hope to be able to say: “I have a complete manuscript” by the end of the year.
WISH ME LUCK
and please, if you haven’t already, please subscribe— i do not know when my hiatus will end, but i do plan on sending you updates, musings on sobriety, guest posts, and more. just not every week. but subscribe so that will plop into your inbox:
thank you for being here. thank you for being you. thank you for taking things, one day at a time.
content warning: addiction, drug use, emotional abuse, heavy emotional material.
please do not read if you are in an emotionally low or volatile space. take care of yourself first.
(again, for this next portion to make much more sense, please read the first part of this newsletter here)
ROCK BOTTOM take T W O
we pull up to his brother’s apartment in NOLA. his brother meets us outside, and i start chatting, as if nothing had happened at all.
all of a sudden, the mask of functionality was strapped to my face, my favorite long-standing coping-mechanism— and i am grateful to pretend.
his brother helps unload the car. we take up the giant suitcase i had packed for us back in Brooklyn and boxes and boxes of presents and everything else that we did not need but were too anxious to leave behind.
we get upstairs. i opened the suitcase and grabbed a change of clothes, asked his brother, “Can I take a shower?”
my ex-fiancé snapped, “If I have to go to rehab, don’t you need to go to rehab, too?!”
i covered my face with my hands. i said, “Please. Please just let me shower.”
his brother handed me a towel and i stepped under the hot water. i dried off, put on what i would wear to the airport.
when i walked out into the living room, his brother was seated in a chair in the corner. my ex-fiancé was on the couch on the other side of the room. i took a seat in a lazy boy, creating a triangle between the three of us, each of us taking far points in the room.
his speech had become different— more rapid— and he wasn’t stoping to take breaths between statements. he wasn’t pausing to listen.
“I’m just gonna go to the Netherlands and end it all— they have a much more sophisticated view of things and—”
i looked at his brother. he was staring at the floor. his lips were pursed, his eyes were wide.
this is when i have trouble— how do i share what happened? to tell you my truth is to lay someone else bare— to share the facts of that night is to expose another. all i can tell you is what is true.
i interjected :
you have two options: i’m either calling 911 or you’re going to rehab.
even though we had spent countless hours watching Intervention stoned, i never thought i’d be giving him this ultimatum— they were words on a screen. never words that i thought i would utter in my own life. i knew that to let him keep going, keep talking, was putting us all in danger. i never thought i could be the firm hand when things spun out of control.
we knew someone with a horrible NOLA ER experience. he said so: “Don’t you remember what happened to them?”
i said, “Right. Then you only have one option.”
words that belong in contracts tumbled out of his mouth, but in no discernible order. he didn’t take time to breathe between sentences, no pauses were rendered to listen. he said, “I REALLY AM NOT THAT BAD.”
his brother said, “Dude, it’s been bad before— but this is worse than I’ve ever seen you.”
i was staring at the ground.
after a while of trying to argue and not pausing to hear retorts, he got quiet.
“I’ll only go to rehab if Paulina promises never to procreate.”
as a nonfiction writer, using the medium of my life, i understand that memory is faulty— that feeling and time and subjectivity distort. how to craft it with integrity— to come from a place of trying to recreate rather than destroy. i only quote what i can’t forget. i write the moments that i can’t put down until they’re written, only then can they be extracted from my soul.
he was showing me who i would become.
he was my mirror.
the monster in the mirror was me.
i battled with myself: do i give him what he has wanted me to say for the last seven months— that i choose him over my deep, unyielding desire to be a mother? do i hand my life over so that he will finally help himself?
but had i not been doing that for the duration of our entire relationship? completing every task he could not finish, picking up the slack, walking the dog, doing the laundry, washing the dishes; lavishing him and those closest to him with flights and tickets and meals that, in reality, i could not afford? would i continue as i had already been— handing my life over to make him feel better? when, inevitably, it never did?
i finally couldn’t afford to.
i felt safer with his brother in the room— it was finally safe to push back. i didn’t have to protect myself with silence. i found myself saying: “Well, what about bacteria?” because bacteria breeds in our mouths and on surfaces and no matter how hard you try, it’ll grow and grow and grow.
“NO. NOTHING! NO PUPPIES NO HAMSTERS NO BABIES!”
no longer alone in a car with him: i wasn’t wrong to be afraid.
he popped a Klonopin. his motor functioning proceeded to slow and slur. he melted into the couch, riffing, “We can be free to do whatever we want, and if we don’t procreate we can be happy forever and ever—” and finally i realized what having a child represented: responsibility.
and that, in the scope of our relationship, there wasn’t room for us to take responsibility for anything but our addictions— both fastidious disciples of the bong. to open our system to a child would detonate the illusion that life is without responsibility and life could be solely fun.
but this, this was not fun. this was terrifying.
he kept weaving tales of grandeur, of life’s lived fully. he kept talking. i continued to stare at the floor. finally, i heard him say, “—PROMISE TO NEVER PROCREATE WITH ME”
i saw my chance.
i repeated myself, staring into the floor, loud and clear: I will never, ever procreate with you. I will never, ever ever procreate with you. I will never procreate with you. I will never, ever procreate with you. I will never procreate with you.
he said, “I feel like the way you’re phrasing that—” but he couldn’t hold onto the one cogent thought. his brother had work in the morning. his brother found him a bed in a rehab and he would drop him off in the morning. his brother went to bed.
and we were alone again.
he made it clear that i had ruined his life— his career. that his boss wasn’t going to know what had happened. i was on my knees next the blow up mattress his brother had set up for us. i googled his boss’s name and said, "Here’s his phone number right here.” he said, “Call him. I dare you.” i hit CALL: he was pacing above me. it went straight to voicemail.
i said, “My name is Paulina Pinsky, I am __ ____’s fiancé. And I am on my knees, asking for help.” BEEP.
he ran out of the room, flung open his brother’s door: i could hear him screaming SHE RUINED MY FUCKING LIFE SHE’S RUINING MY CAREER I CAN’T BELIEVE SHE IS RUINING—
i crumbled to the floor. sobbing. i fully believed i had— single-handedly— ruined his life— his career. he crashed into the kitchen, flung open the refrigerator door, looked straight at me and said, “You’re family better pay for this shit— rehab is rich people shit, and I sure as hell can’t pay for it. You better fuckin’ pay for it.” he ruffled through his bag, he popped a couple more Klonopin into his mouth.
he started to sway even more.
convinced i had ruined his life, i heeded his requests: he asked me to get numbers from people for him to have at rehab. he posted an IG story. he asked me to help him draft an email to his boss— his words melting together, he acknowledged the hurt i knew he carried, the one that tied him to ten years prior— the loss of his best friend.
i wrote but did not send.
doing everything i could to support, support, support— i had to, i had ruined his life.
the Klonopin worked its magic and i watched as he writhed around on the air mattress on the floor. he was finally asleep.
in the silence of early morning, i unpacked his clothing from my suitcase. i put a post-it note on each Christmas present for each family member. in silence, i continued to mother him, to care for him. i wrote notes in his journal. i continued to untangle my belongings from his. he stood up—walked into the kitchen, swaying— and grabbed a box of cereal. he shoved cereal into his mouth, most of it falling to the floor. he found the air mattress again, continued to writhe.
after i finished labeling presents and packing my belongings, i had successfully turned off the valve of my feelings. relief, he was home. i was close to home, too.
the final hour, i laid down on the air mattress next to him as his body jerked. the dog crawled onto my chest, and we breathed together. this dog i had grown to love through caring for, was no longer mine. she didn’t know it, but i did.
the hour came to a close. i kissed his forehead, his nose. the front door only locked from the inside, so i had to wake up his brother to leave. he carried my giant suitcase downstairs and put it in the trunk of my Uber.
he was allowing me to pass it to him, the weight i could no longer hold: the live-wire terror.
we hugged each other desperately— at the same time, i said: “I’m so sorry” and he said: “He is so lucky to have had you for as long as he did.”
i didn’t know what he meant. he saw something i could not, but would soon.
he may never see this moment as my final act of love for him— getting him home. choosing to follow my instinct, i knew that getting him home was to give him a chance. whether or not he took that chance was never up to me.
i got into the back of the Uber. my former-almost-brother closed the door.
without thought, i slid my engagement ring off of my finger— the marquise cut emerald that i had chosen in Greenpoint, the ring i had hinted at for months before he asked me to be his wife— and slid it into the front pocket of my fanny pack.
numb.
i got to the airport. i got on the plane. as soon as i sat down, the world went dark and i came to as we were landing at LAX. a baby was crying on the plane. the man next to me said, “Poor baby,” and it took my breath away— someone showing compassion to a baby. i thanked him for his compassion. i checked my email— i received a rejection for an essay i had written about our engagement in Hawaii. i laughed— that story, the way i wrote it had been a lie. they could tell.
when i got to Baggage Claim, Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” was playing. the dam threatened to break— i couldn’t let it. i did not blink for the entire car ride from LAX to Pasadena. another Uber. i got to the front door— when i saw my mom, i screamed. i fell on my hands and knees, crying, screaming so hard i could not see.
i made it home. i chose the road i could not see: i chose me
as always, thank you for reading. thank you for subscribing.
i will be offering Writing the Body, a workshop starting May 22. i am always available for writing coaching. i will most likely offer a summer session of the Artist’s Way. and i am always bopping around on Instagram.
please keep in touch. thank you for being here. thank you for witnessing and being a part of this journey. take care of yourself, and you will hear from me sooner rather than later.
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