Tushita

It’s hard to put into words how deep of an impact just 10 days can have on a life, and of course the dust hasn’t settled yet and I can’t say how big of an impact it will be, it could just be something like post-acid glow, but it feels more real than that. This retreat came to me in the exact moment in my life that I needed it. Everything I was hoping for I got and more. I’m not permanently changed or anything, but I now have a new set of tools for dealing with my mental afflictions and a more positive perspective on life. I did all my writing in a notebook as I had to forfeit my laptop and all other electronics. It was nice to get back in touch with writing by hand. I’m horrible at it and it made me realize I’m never quite sure how to spell the word happiness but by the end I was writing the word happiness all the time and I had it mastered. The advent of autocorrect is really going to impair our spelling knowledge as time goes on. This entry will be a mish mash of things I wrote during the retreat and more thoughts I have as I reflect on my time there and the process of reintegrating with the outside world. 

I packed up my bike and left the hostel in Macleod Ganj and pushed it up the steep hill to Tushita. After some huffing and puffing I arrived at the bottom of a huge stair case. A Romanian stood there smoking a cigarette and told me he too was embarking on the 10-day quest. He was friendly enough, a Londoner with noticeable traces of the eastern accent. He kind of had a vibe that rubbed me the wrong way though. He was already complaining about how the course was going to be too easy and trying to tell me how hardcore of a meditator he is and I was like yeah dude this is intro to Buddhism not sure what you were expecting. He also told me I didn’t look like a cyclist so he was shocked about my journey and that he’s really good at cycling but wouldn’t do what I did even on his 4kg bicycle yada yada. Just one of those people that always ends up coming across like a dick. Kind of like me but without the self awareness or humor. So I heroically carried my loaded bike all the way up this stair case, maybe 100 meters of ascent, only to realize I could have accessed Tushita though another entrance at the top off of the road. Feels kind of obvious in hindsight but you never know, many monasteries strictly forbid vehicles and can only be accessed by foot. I felt nice and winded when I made it to the top. There were way more people there than I had expected, over 90, mostly white foreigners but a decent amount of Indians too. Israelis, America, Brits, French, Dutch, Mexicans, Argentinians and even one Kosovoan. We could still talk for the first day so I was able to meet a few of them. Of course I ended up sitting at the Israeli table for dinner. Why does this always happen to me? They were kind of weird like Israelis tend to be. Towards the end of dinner we started talking about you know what. I asked them if they had noticed any kind of uptick in negative reactions when they say where they’re from as travelers. They said not really, that they only had a bad experience with an Irish guy once. I was surprised. It feels like the whole world kind of hates Israel right now. And these guys are so clueless. I tried explaining to them how the American left condemns them and also anti-semitism is on the rise globally. They don’t know anything about it. I have trouble understanding how they succeed in living such insular lives. To them, all the criticism just comes from a few stupid people who don’t understand or know the facts and everyone else is sympathetic to their cause. The guy I was speaking with, Golan, had a real intensity about him, and I was weary of saying anything to offend him because he really seemed on edge. He told me people just don’t get it. That this is really about the West vs. the Arab world. I told him that was very Samuel Huntington and he told me he just read Clash of Nations and loved it. I told him Clash of Nations is seen as an antiquated perspective in academia. He asked me to explain why and I genuinely couldn’t. I think foreign policy still is seen from the perspective of the West vs. the rest and it’s pretty hard to say that it isn’t or why it shouldn’t be. When I read it in college I actually thought it was brilliant and then the professor asked the class what they thought and everyone hated it so I kept my mouth shut. That was when I started realizing I might have some conservative views. In another college class we were discussing health care. I remember raising my hand and posing the question, “if overpopulation is such a big problem why are we so concerned about keeping people alive as long as possible?”. I was a monster but my intentions were pure, my ethic utilitarian. Anyway, I didn’t manage to convince the Israelis that the world is against them and maybe they should use that as a reason to reflect on everything they’ve ever taken for granted and their entire known reality as victims who are just too good at self defense and I went to sleep and the next day we were silent. 

We woke up at 5:30AM to go on a field trip. It was an anticlimactic way to start but circumstance called for it. His Holiness The Dalai Lama was in town for the Long Life Pooja so we went on a trip back to Macleod Ganj to see it. Honestly, it was pretty boring. Lot’s of waiting, lot’s of chanting, and a few wonderful minutes of seeing his holiness and smiling giddily with tears in my eyes. I’m not kidding, beholding him is that powerful, even if you can’t understand anything being said and it’s pretty boring. Later on I learned that Richard Gere had been in attendance and I’m really pissed I didn’t get to see him. Dalai Lama’s okay though. He’s 87 and he says he wants to live to 113 but he’s starting to look frail so I hope it works out. We climbed back up to Tushita and the course officially took off. The first disappointment was meeting our teacher. He was a monk from a monastery in South India, but he just happened to be a Brooklyn Jew. So here I am in northern India trying to escape from New York and learn about spirituality and a Brooklyn Jew is going to teach me about Tibetan Buddhism. These are the times we live in. Anyway, I decided to give him a shot. I’ll be honest, he wasn’t a great teacher, kind of weird and took too long to explain some things, went on tangents and answered too many stupid questions, but I still learned a lot and it was an incredible experience over all. More to Tushita’s credit than his. Tushita is such a peaceful environment to learn in. On the mountain edge, surrounded by tall pines, teeming with playful monkeys and other wildlife, you really feel cut off from the rest of the world. Time and the worries of life can’t touch you here. And my schedule was regimented. I’d wake up at 6:30, do some yoga on the roof, then head to the morning meditation. After that it was breakfast: some porridge with a banana and homemade peanut butter and honey and whatever Tushita bakery made us that day (yes there was a bakery and they made the greatest bread ever along with croissants and doughnuts). After all that sugar I’d usually run a few times up and down the staircase I’d carried my bike up just to get some movement for the day. Then we’d have Buddhism class. That would sometimes be interesting, sometimes a snooze. The teacher was a bit too permissive with questions and as it always goes only the dumbest people asked questions or people who wanted to show off that they’d read something that contradicted what the teacher was saying or had a tiny bit to do with what he was saying and so on. Or they’d just ask questions that the teacher had already answered or that they knew was in a sort of logical grey area and couldn’t be answered. Then it was lunch time. Lunch would typically be rice and daal with vegetables and fresh salad and the fruit of the day. There was also a never ending supply of hot ginger lemon tea that I was always helping myself to. After lunch it was time for my karma yoga AKA job. While some people cleaned the toilets or washed the dishes, my task was to sweep the roof. Fairly easy, except that it was raining pollen and that stuff was really hard to extract efficiently. Over the course of 10 days, however, I succeeded in leaving behind a fairly clean roof. Then I would usually read or exercise until it twas time for more lecture. After lectures, we would have the afternoon meditation, which was always my favorite. Typically we’d start with just focusing on our breath, and then we’d meditate on a topic such as loving kindness or compassion or forgiveness etc… Then it was dinner time, another favorite. Dinner would be a hearty soup with all the fresh baked bread and fresh butter and honey and peanut butter you could eat. Ahh, it was wonderful. I’d always have a course of bread and butter, and then one or two courses of bread dipped in the abundant and delicious peanut butter and honey. There was a library full of books on buddhism that I used to supplement my education. I was constantly reading and learning. Thank God for those books, they really helped occupy my mind and increase my understanding of the subject matter. We also had a discussion group for a few days which was a nice way to make a couple friends. And that’s how it went. The last two days were the toughest because we only meditated and my brain was having trouble focusing at that point due to its exhaustion and the building anxiety of impending release into the world. Anyway, here are the things that I wrote about as I went along. I’ve highlighted the notes from class.

My teacher is from Brooklyn.

In Buddhism there is faith and there is reason. We will focus more on reason. Buddhism is both religion and philosophy. 

Through meditation, my motivation will be to harness more love and compassion, and do away with ignorance, anger, and attachment.

My motivation is to be better, and for the positive impact to pass on to all living beings, and free myself  and them of all suffering. 

In Buddhism, it isn’t enough to just make an offering. The thing you offer must have value to you. This is how you do good and reduce your attachment. 

Attachment = affliction = suffering.

Feeling joy for others accomplishment is good karma. This is called sympathetic joy. 

Buddha reached enlightenment at the age of 35, I have 5 years!

Your motivation or intention is the most important part of an action. 

Happiness comes from doing good things for others. 

It is okay to be motivated for your own happiness when you help others, you can have more than one motivation. 

Can you say that you are the same person you were when you were 5? 10? 15? 25? 3 weeks ago? You are always changing into a different person. This is how you know you can always improve yourself. 

Some mental states have a valid basis. Others do not. 

The framework of Buddhist Ontology is:

Two Truths

-conventional truth (what we believe exists)

-ultimate truth (nothing exists)

Four Truths

-That suffering exists

-The causes of suffering

-The cessation of suffering

-The path to the cessation of suffering

Three Jewels

-Buddha

-Dharma (the teachings)

-Sangha (those who know more than you)

One of the forms of suffering is the existential suffering of always being in samsara, the endless cycle of rebirth. Negative emotions and karma keep us in samsara, as does grasping for existence. Grasping and desiring life means we will be reborn.

All compounded things (those we can perceive physically) are impermanent.

Ignorance is the root of all affliction, samsara, and destructive emotions. Ignorance leads to delusion of reality. 

Ignorance 1: The soul

The unitary unchanging soul does not exist. The self is not permanent. The soul is not separate from mind and body.

Ignorance 2: The Self 

The notion that the self exists in a substantial way. This is referred to as “self grasping”. The sense that there is an “I”. The ego. That you are autonomous and have free will. This is all delusion, fundamental ignorance. 

Antidote to ignorance: meditation.

Meditate on selflessness. This is the most important ultimate truth.

Theistic means believing in a single creator of the universe.

Nontheistic religions (buddhism and jainism) hold that the universe exists due to the actions of its inhabitants. 

After death, mind and body separate, but do not cease to exist. The mind goes elsewhere. 

Exercise: Meditate on an object you’re attached to. Analyze why you are. Will it really bring you happiness? Come to understand the harm that attachment brings. Let your mind absorb this realization. Focus completely on this harm. In single-pointed focus, return to stabilization. 

Everything I’m attached to is absolutely vital to this bike trip and I don’t see how I could possibly act like these items have no value. My bicycle. My laptop. My camping equipment. Everything I own was thought out and expensive, and hard to replace. If someone broke my bike and stole my laptop it wouldn’t be cute. And yes, they do bring me happiness. This exercise is stupid. No thanks. 

Day 2. 5:30AM wake up. 

In one day I managed to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama and attempt meditating for the first time. I also had what passes for semi-solid stool for the first time in ages. So things are looking up. After not sleeping at all last night I’m surprised I pulled through today. Hoping tonight I’ll drift effortlessly into a deep sleep and think about the days lessons and all the wonderful food I’ve been eating. The “I” is not in my body. But it’s hard to convince myself it’s not in my mind. I’m too self-absorbed. Of course I can’t pull it off on my first try, but I can sense this will be a tough barrier for me to break through. I’ll just have to say it to myself all night. There is no I. There is no me. 

To achieve peace through the silent mind, take time to meditate with a focus on positive motivations. Extend what you wish for yourself outwards to all living beings. 

Buddhist logic is focused on the empirical. Debate is the method that’s been used throughout history to establish truths. 

Buddhism is not a missionary tradition, but it is focused on teaching. 

Through the causal continuum, we can trace every mind moment backwards to our birth. The mind is experiential by nature. This means it can’t be caused by something material. This logic is used to defend the concept of reincarnation. 

The concept of the two truths is illustrated by the particle/wave experiment in quantum physics. The path of the electron is contingent on its observation. Our reality is contingent on our perception of it, thus everything we think exists does so dependently, not independently. 

Key to Boddhichitta: Imagine everyone as your mother or a beloved friend. This will help ease your judgement and insecurity. 

A table is a table because of linguistic convention. You could never truly perceive a table as a table. 

Nature is defined by things that are independently existent. A table is not natural. Neither are we. We do not exist independently. If there is contingency or parts that make a thing up, it exists dependently. 

Conception is not cause. Cause is physical. 

An independent object, if it existed would be artless and observed by all in the same without dependence on social convention. 

Realizing that dependently existing things do not exist independently is crucial. The ultimate truth it emptiness, that nothing exists independently. 

Permanent has two meanings. One lasts forever. One is unchanging. 

Consciousness is eternal, but impermanent as it is ever changing. The same can be said of matter.

The absence of independent existence, or emptiness, is the ultimate truth. 

The middle way: To not question the nature of things but take them as they are. 

Deep analysis is conventional until you ask what is it really? Then you find the emptiness, the ultimate truth.

When you search for a thing within its parts, you do not find it. 

The only healthy attachments are love and compassion.

We are always grasping at independent existence. We are conditioned to hate entire groups of people. 

Karma should be used to make day to day choices and motivations, not a map for social policy. 

Dalai Lama: If you want to be selfish, at least be wisely selfish. Find happiness by doing good onto others. 

Ignorance and self centeredness are what keep us from enlightenment. To dispel ignorance but stay self-centered is nirvana. 

Emptiness must be understood in conjunction with compassion and the law of causality. 

A thing can be said to exist if there is social convention, it can’t be disproven in observation or analysis and can’t be disproven by deeper reasoning, analyzing the ultimate truth of the object. 

Temporary satisfaction is not freedom from suffering. It only provides momentary pleasure. Ex: blocking pain of hunger with food, the cold with a blanket. But food alone can’t provide lasting happiness, nor can blankets or any other thing. This is contaminated pleasure, part of the suffering of change. 

Thoughts on Buddhism so far and Contradictions

I think this practice has a lot to offer people struggling with mental illness, existential angst, and selfishness. However, there are some ideas that confuse me and/or give me pause. 

1. Karma and rebirth

If this is true, does it not justify the caste system and the oppression of marginalized groups and wealth inequality? And under a true karmic system would being wealthy or high caste and not questioning that system or fighting to change it not give you bad karma and send you right back to poverty in the next life? And being poor, would that not make you more selfless and humble and with good karma, sending you to wealth in the next life? It feels like an infinity loop. But this can’t be the case since every year hundreds of millions more are born poor than rich. Where do all of these extra consciousnesses come from? Another world perhaps? I’m not joking because you can be reincarnated on any planet or galaxy or dimension. And did Tibetans not keep slaves? And were prisoners not treated brutally? Eyes and tongues gouged out, maimed in many cases. Not very universal love of them. Did karma justify this?

2. The Dharma

Lama Yeshe is very wise and I love to read him, but he sometimes confuses me with seemingly contradictory claims. He says not to be overly attached to Buddhism, that there are many paths and that Buddha gave different advice depending on the mental capacity of its recipients. But then he goes on to give very particular requirements for things like charity, requirements so stringent that it makes it so most people have never properly given charity in their lives. Our teacher says Buddhism is not dogmatic, but I disagree. Furthermore, he says you should love everyone equally, not just every person but every sentient being. How is that possible in practice? To ever attempt following these guidelines would make you a radical, overly attached to buddhism, which he warns against. He seems to imply this would all be intuitive were you to follow the right path. 

3. Happiness

Both science and conventional wisdom maintain that human happiness is rooted in community and relationships. The Lama Yeshe says you can’t love your friend more than your enemy. How does one make focusing on universal love not an exercise in loneliness. Who is going to trust you if you don’t play favorites? How can one be a good friend, brother, or lover to those who love them?

4. Enlightenment

If it takes forever to reach enlightenment and all teachers of Dharma recognize that this is a long process where you arrive at different stages, why do we start off with the ultimate conclusions? Isn’t this sort of like reading the end of the book before you start it? Surely in Buddhas first years of meditation he didn’t realize the ultimate truth of emptiness, he must have gone through a million other thoughts and ideas first, So why, then, are we expected to instantly part with our strong sense of self and attachment from the very onset. Is this typical? 

5. Attachment and Happiness

When trying to meditate on experiences of short lived joy, I found myself discovering a number of wholesome experiences in my life focused on friendship and community that still bring me joy to recollect. Are these not valid as fulfilling happiness? Surely this can’t be all equivalent to eating chocolate, the most often cited example of material happiness. Similarly, when thinking of objects in my life I’m attached to, I simply would not want to part with them: A pen is a pen, sure, but a laptop is expensive and I can use it to do work which could theoretically benefit all sentient beings. I also wouldn’t part with my bicycle or kindle or really anything I’ve brought on this trip. It would all be hard to replace and expensive, thus shortening the length of my trip. I’d never make offerings of any of it. Does that really make me miserly?

BUT… the rest is positive. This morning as I was waking up I thought about how nice it would be to sleep in. But we all know, you sleep in too long and you feel shitty physically and you get that sad feeling that the day got away from you. Such is leaning in to any pleasure. Watching a show on Netflix can easily take you from 8PM to 2AM without realizing it. I’ve done this kind of thing so many times. Trying to milk every little pleasure and draw it out for as long as possible. However it’s all impermanent and in some way a source of suffering. My antidote isn’t necessarily to tell myself it’s not real and detach from it, but to enjoy it in a more limited fashion, savor it and move on. Like the delicious bread with peanut butter and honey that I always dream of and look forward to. 

My meditation often brings images. Images of people I am still unresolved with and people I love easily and people I hate easily. I believe I’m supposed to find a way to love them all so that I may clear my mind. I seem to be making some progress on this front. Today I’m avoiding caffeine and instead turning to exercise for stimulation. Yesterday I had 3 cups of tea throughout the day. I’m hoping to limit myself to one or even none. Unfortunately when I leave here herbal tea won’t be nearly as abundant and I’ll have to go back to chai. There must be other teas though, I’ll need to investigate. I could drink ginger lemon honey forever though. My bowels are deliciously solid again. I can’t tell if meditation is good or bad for my knees. They seem to be holding up okay so far. Time will tell. I’m looking for a decent pull up bar to get my climbing strength back. Maybe I should have bought a transportable hang board if such a thing exists. I need to figure out how to take a shower at some point. Perhaps after lunch. And I’ll visit the library first chance I get. 

Attitude is more important than action. Action is more important than theory. 

Shanti Deva wrote the most quoted book in buddhism, basically the buddhist bible: Guide to Bodhisattvas way of life. He was a “lazy” monk who was invited as a trap to teach a lecture at the big university. He taught this text and allegedly levitated away forever as he finished. 

Patience is the opposite of anger. It’s characterized by fortitude, resilience, and forgiveness. 

Anger includes irritation, annoyance, frustration, hatred, and cruelty.

First acknowledge anger and let yourself experience it with mindfulness. Suppression is like fighting fire with fire, it won’t work. Anger comes from focusing on negative qualities. Focusing on pain, people, situations, all leads to anger. Patience is a cognitive reappraisal of anger, using intelligence. There is no vice like hatred. No austerity like patience. Anger prevents us from enjoying things, from sleep, from any peace. Nothing will make an angry person happy. One must recognize hatred as the enemy. You can’t control events, only your own mind. Like covering your feet in leather instead of covering the world in it. Anger can be fueled by discontent from undesired events or impediments to desired events. 

We’re talking Israel Palestine and it’s getting juicy. The Israelis are trying to figure out how they can apply the teachings of buddhism but running into problems when confronted with their situation. They are trying to reason with the teacher and explain their anger is justified, their violence is justified. What else can they do? It’s complicated. Retaliation leads to a mindset of anger that begets more anger and leads to eternal conflict. Our teacher comes out as Jewish. He says he had to forgive the nazis. He likes to picture everyone as an innocent baby in order to help himself love them all. Virtue is forsaken if we let adversity disrupt our happiness. 

If there is a solution, then what is the use of frustration? If there’s no solution, then how does frustration help?

In Tibetan, meditation is the same word as familiarization. The idea is to form a habit. And we already do meditate habitually, but often on negative emotions. Meditation is to train the mind positively. Anger arises despite our desires, it is reflexive. Causes do not intend to arise to bring us anger, nor does anger choose to arise. Nobody wants to be angry or suffer in any way. We can not control the conditions, only our minds. Disregarding the principle cause of anger such as a stick, if I became angry with the one who impels it, then it is better if I hate hatred, because that person is also impelled by hatred. 

Nothing remains difficult as we get used to it. Thus, through habituation even great pain becomes bearable. 

To be a Buddhist is to take refuge in the 3 jewels. 

Temporary is the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. 

Final is the Buddha within, realizing emptiness and the 4 truths.

Buddha is like the doctor. Dharma is the medicine. Sangha are the nurses helping. Sangha is other more advanced practitioners. 

Today was a great day. For the first time, I really felt the result of concentration and single point focus of meditation. Hours later and I’m still buzzing with endorphins. A quick read in a library book gave me the pointers I needed to get to the next level, primarily focusing on breathing in one nostril and exhaling from the other. This also made me realize I had to keep my mouth shut, literally, I’d been exhaling through my mouth. I also landed on a way to cross my legs, keeping the left on top and this has helped maintain stability. We had two sessions on analytical meditation. The first focused on attachment, the second on anger. I often revisited my old friendships and funny enough my old relationships from high school. I think a lot of my negative thought patterns originated during that time. Both sessions drew a lot out of me and I put all my concentrative effort into wishing love on all those I’d felt anger or toxic attachment to, for love is the antidote and love for all will set us free.  And that’s real. 

Short film idea about a meditative retreat: saved by the gong

Om mani padme hum - mantra

Om - enlightened body speech mind

Mani - Jewel (method and wisdom)

Peme - Lotus

Hum - Enlightened 

The 8 Worldly Concerns

Attachment Aversion (pairs)

Praise Blame/Criticism

Pleasure Pain

Gain Loss

Fame Bad Reputation

Think about how these opposing pairs drive our motivation in life and how being too attached or averse to any one can be harmful.

One type of patience applies to understand and practicing dharma. It takes time. My teacher for example is only 7 years into a 25 year long program and there’s a whole lot he don’t know. 

To reduce attachment to praise, analyze it and recognize that it won’t satisfy you. But still take praise and criticism into account. 

Pain makes us more humble and helps us see samsara. Pain is inevitable. It allows us to have compassion. 

Three Principle Aspects of the Path

by Losang Drakpa (Je Tsongkhapa)

This was written in beginning of independent Tibetan buddhism, after translating the Indian source texts. This period of translation and exposure began in the 7th century, during the reign of the first empire and unification. The Tibetan emperor sent someone to India to develop a script for the Tibetan language based on the Indian scripts. During this trip he brought back buddhism. Atisha was invited by Tsongkhapa to reform the degrading buddhist practice centuries later, and he wrote this book. 

I bow down to the venerable spirit masters. (Always start with an homage and respect, this gives good karma)

To be a follower of reason be:

Unbiased - listen with curiosity, check in with your experience

Effort has to be made, we have to practice the teaching to challenge our habits

Be intelligent, use your wisdom to reflect on the teachings

3 analogies of the pot (how to be a good student).

How do we fill a pot with water? It must be free of 3 defects.

It must be upright. A student needs to open and paying attention

It must not have have holes in it. A student needs good focus, attention and retention.

It must be clean. Our motivation must be pure

The Aspects

The determination to be free (from cyclic existence and its pleasures)

To become a buddha and practice compassion/altruism

The correct view, the view of emptiness

It’s a great miracle to have the time and physical and mental ability to study the dharma. Don’t take it for granted. 

Now we’re talking about death. He’s spending an awful lot of time talking about people he knew that have died to hammer in the point that everyone eventually dies and we need to accept that. He’s giving us stories from his childhood about a friend of a friends dad that died in a car accident etc… How even kids can die. So many ways you can die. It’s crazy how much time he’s taking talking about this. He says we should always be meditating on death and impermanence. Someone clearly hurt this man. He says our body is a hotel, not a home. 

Finally, he reveals that his own father died in front of him when visiting him in India, before he took the cloth. It was a sad story and a big reason for his decision to become ordained. I had sensed a kind of sadness haunting this man. I wonder if he realizes how openly he wears it. The more I learn about Buddhism the more conflicted I become. So much of it is undeniably true, but then other things I find ridiculous or extreme. They say it’s not dogmatic but I disagree. It also feels like a selfish sort of escape from life. Sure, it leads to happiness, but could everyone really live this way? And life is so complicated, and there are so many people suffering that we need to fight for. Sitting down and thinking about how you love everyone doesn’t enact change, it just removes your anxiety and discomfort about reality. I suppose that love could be passed along. I don’t know. There’s a lot more to learn. Either way, you have to fix yourself first, feeling bad and guilty and hopeless and depressed doesn’t do anyone any good. 

Today we meditated on gratitude and I got that mental high again. I didn’t do so well in the session after dinner when we meditated on loving kindness. My legs were killing me. I had difficulty wishing myself happiness and attainment of my goals because I don’t know what they even are right now. I tried sending a friend love but I couldn’t figure out what his goals were either. I hoped he’d find someone that’d make him happy. 

If you want to know what your past life was like, look at your body and life. If you want to know what your future lives will look like, look at your current actions. 

Bad karma can be reversed with regret, reliance on the 3 jewels (virtuous actions, meditation, mantras), and resolve (resolve to never repeat this action).

10 Non-Virtues 

There are 3 ways to interact with the world. 

Physical: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct

Verbal: Lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, gossip (idle chatter)

Mental: Covetousness, ill-will, wrong view (destructive) 

Karma is action, it’s causality. We reap what we sow. Harmful motivation leads to bad feeling. Good motivation leads to good feeling. 

I just learned that nuns have to take around 100 more vows than monks, that’s messed up.

Liberation is the cessation of samsara from ending ignorance. Enlightenment in the Mahayana tradition means cessation plus developing universal compassion and love, being dedicated forever to all living beings. 

All beings have been your mother or primary care giver

In debate, there are 3 different types of objects.

Evident - you can sense it

Slightly hidden - things like impermanence that you can infer

Extremely hidden - can only be learned through vetted testimony

Debate is used to gain insight of slightly hidden objects by using what is evident or previously established hidden objects. Use the mind of another to see internal contradictions you can’t see on your own (cognitive dissonance). 

Dialogue should be highly precise and focused, cutting out all logical fallacies. 

Debate can help push us into re-cognizing our beliefs and perceptions. You can analyze and deconstruct things to pick apart your reality. 

Equalizing comes from seeing the relativity of perspectives.

Spiritual materialism is being cocky and competitive about your spirituality. 

Make a regular exercise of actually imagining yourself as other people: friends, family, enemy, strangers. This will help build compassion. 

Tonglen meditation: Giving and taking. You can do this on and off the cushion. Visualize yourself taking peoples pain and send them your virtue. 

Emptiness is not a negation of existence. It’s a negation of impossible existence. If something existed independently we couldn’t perceive it. Everything exists, just not as we perceive it to exist.

According to book I read about meditation and psychology/religion, I should listen to the three B’s: Bach the father, Beethoven the son, and Brahms the holy spirit. Beethoven’s 9th and onward are his period of post-liberation, especially op. 132. Brahms sextet op. 18 and 2nd movement of 1st piano concerto op. 15. 

The joy of giving and receiving love is what every religion is grounded on. Buddhism just happens to involve less violent proselytizing and political manipulation because it asks us not to love “god” but all living beings ourselves included. It asks us to love everything while realizing that nothing truly exists in the way we imagine it, that everything is… empty. So instead of treating its adherents like mindless sheep, it sees them as capable philosophers with the strength needed to do the real work of meditating on loving kindness, compassion, gratitude, and all the other positive feelings that the mindfulness of Buddhism endeavors to promote, while urging us to address and recognize our inner demons of anger, attachment, and ignorance that have led to all our suffering. Is it perfect? No. But it’s the best religion I’ve encountered so far. 

Despite all the wonderful food and mental stability from meditation, my bowels stopped making solid stool and have gone back to semi-solid sludge puppies. This is either because of the sugar or the topical fin. Ugh. I wish I hadn’t let temptation get the best of me. I was feeling mild prostatitis as well. Hmm. I love a good medical mystery. We will see for how long it persists. To be fair I just came out of constipation mode so I suppose it’d be irrational to expect my body to immediately self regulate. But still I’m on probiotics and I haven’t had caffeine in 3 days. Something is afoot. I’m quite blessed that this is my only real issue. It’ll be upsetting if I can’t use topical fin, but min plus whatever Ayurvedic stuff I can find should buy me a few more years of hair. The motivation that justifies this from a Buddhist perspective is that if I’m going to have any luck selling my musical, finding investors and bringing folks on board, I’ve simply got to look my best. The fate of all sentient beings is at stake here. 

The meditations today were powerful. Before dinner the focus was on wishing happiness to everyone and after dinner we did the Buddhist version of confession where I finally got the purification I so desperately needed for not paying for that hotel near Mandi. I still sort of feel bad though. I’ll probably try to pay the man if I can. I have his number but no clue what I saved it as. Also the part where I had to visualize myself absorbing a beam of white light from the Buddha didn’t really do it for me. That was weird. I was also suppressing a sludge pup the whole time and worried I’d defecate myself if I relaxed too much. God my handwriting is so fucking bad! 

The next two days are pure silence and meditation. I’m excited to see how far I can push it. I’ve been a little too excitable lately, starting to think of future plans and the musical and also weirdly horny which is definitely not a good thing for meditation. Also not a weird thing considering this has been my longest dry spell in years. It’s freeing not to have that on my mind at all times. The silence has also been amazing. It’s so peaceful taking a break from my constant need to put on a show for people and be the funny guy. Even in our little one hour discussion group I quickly built that reputation despite my best efforts to be the wise and mature discussion leader. But so be it. Change takes time. This mornings focus was on sympathetic joy and once again I focused my love and energy on an old friend. Being happy for other people is hard at first, but when you push through your ego it actually feels really good and it erases the jealousy and negativity, and now I can genuinely say I wish the best for him and for everyone else too. I hope it sticks. Speaking of sticking, still making sticky poos. It probably has something to do with the mounds of peanut butter and honey I’ve been shoveling down my throat. Can’t be helped! I’ll never draw a star correctly. I’ve been trying to do this my whole life it would seem, all my notebooks from 1st grade to senior year are full of butchered attempts. So be it. 

Last night I had intense dreams about an old bully who I’ll call Jerry. Why he and my old ex who I’ll call Samantha and other unresolved childhood memories and unexamined feelings keep cropping up isn’t exactly shocking given that I’m plunging into my psyche and performing auto analysis, but it’s decidedly embarrassing. Hopefully, through meditation, I can purge these thoughts for good. 

It’s the last day of full meditation. I definitely couldn’t concentrate on the morning session, hoping I can pull it together now that I’m well breakfasted and voided. This is an intense practice. It’s admirable so many folks manage to stick with it, and I intend to be one of them after this. We had to focus on sounds this morning and it wasn’t doing it for me. Breathing is a lot easier for me. But I’ll give it another go on my own at some point. 

I’m 0 for 3 today on meditations. My mind is just way too agitated. Maybe because we’re almost at the end and I’m wondering what it is I should do after this. Also I’m losing my patience and ability to focus and my knees are hurting quite a bit so it’s hard to hold the posture. And the last topics haven’t really resonated with me. The one we just did was about how every being has supposedly once been my mother. Which is laughable and ridiculous. Even if everything is true about reincarnation, it’s mathematically impossible. I refuse to believe it. Also there aren’t that many other species that experience motherly love the way humans do. So if a person on the street was my mother when I was a bee, whoopdewoo, who cares? I was either a worker bee slave harvesting honey for her or a sex slave drone, existing merely to inseminate her with my fuzzy bee dick. This hardly engenders the warm gushy feeling.

My neighbor in meditation passed me a note asking if I was okay. I guess my restlessness hasn’t gone unnoticed. 

As my brain slips back into its old ways, and that smile I wore so easily some days ago begins to retreat, and the food doesn’t taste as good and little things irritate me again, I’m reminded that this isn’t meant to be easy. It will take constant effort, energy, will, determination, and focus. You don’t just flip the switch and love and compassion and equanimity are there by your side evermore. You have to perpetually fight just to catch a glimpse of them. And your old brain will always be there. Waiting for you to slip. To give in to the old eases of anger, hatred, jealousy, cynicism, depression, excess, greed, and narcissism. But now, at least, I can recognize it. Every time my brain produces a negative thought, I see it clearly for what it is. It’s still a huge battle to fight against it. I never used to even try to fight it. My way of thinking was that it was authentic to let whatever you feel take hold of you. But that leads to obsession. Like the teacher says, we’ve already led a meditative life, but we’ve been meditating on our negative emotions. I would see all my negative emotions through, thinking it was my minds way of advising me, that it was looking out for me. If I’m angry I’m being taken advantage of, or I’m angry at my own stupidity and need to punish myself. I feel hate towards bad people, I justify the hatred, I allow it into my body like poison. Jealousy I feel towards those who have what I want. It drives me to work harder, it motivates me. I’m sad because something is missing. The sadness drives me to find out what that is. But… as I’ve learned, left to their own devices, no matter how great their lives, humans will always find ways to be dissatisfied, and so many of our negative emotions are toxic and needn’t arise at all. Obviously things like pain are useful. If I’m touching a hot stove it’d be good to know it. But a lot of this hate and anger and sadness is nonsensical and it seeps into you and turns you bitter. I know it made me bitter. Now I have to make up for 30 years of thinking the wrong way. Of being selfish and unloving. How the hell am I going to do this? The one credit I’ll give myself is the intention was always there. I have always wanted people to be happy. It’s true. I remember when I was a kid playing soccer and we’d score a goal, I always would feel a little guilty walking back while our team celebrated. Especially if we were really pounding them. I’ve always had this sense of guilt and feeling bad for those less fortunate. Like I couldn’t allow myself to be happy until I knew for sure that everyone else was. I’d gladly be the least happy one. Like when you’re hosting a gathering and haven’t had any time to relax but it doesn’t matter because you’re so happy to see everyone else enjoying themselves. And it’s this feeling that drove me away from the life I had, partially. Yes, sometimes I fantasized about how wonderful it would be to be rich and was jealous of those who had such great lives, but I was also very affected by the human misery I felt. The psychological misery, not so apparent to the eye. New York encourages a lot of unnecessary mental suffering. It’s been a relief to be out of its orbit. In India people have so little but are never miserable the way they are in New York. But now what? Where do I go from here? Do I look for more joy? More spiritual growth? Do I find some work? Do I put all my focus into the musical or do I have more to learn? If I really believe that this buddhism/mindfulness stuff is the answer, then I should be focusing on the musical. A good part of me does think it’s the answer, but if I barely have faith in my own ability to adopt it how dare I offer it as some prescriptive solution to all the world’s troubles? Perhaps the scope is too big. What to do? 

I’ve always dismissed overly sweet/positive/affectionate people as fake and performative. But I’m learning that you’re SUPPOSED to be fake and performative, and eventually it won’t be fake anymore. What a revelation. This would be so much easier had I been brought up with religion. That’s all it is. Close your eyes, tell yourself you love Jesus or Jehovah or Allah or Krishna over and over and eventually you feel that you actually do. All of these practices tell you the same thing buddhism does: Love your neighbor, refrain from temptation, be humble, reduce the ego, tell people you love them, feel gratitude, do charity, feel compassion. These are all the things we’ve been meditating on from scratch. I think my way of showing whatever you want to call my “love” is making people laugh. Nothing brings me more joy than lighting someone’s face up with a smile. Especially if they’re sad or going through something. They don’t talk much about laughter in buddhism or any religions so far as I know. But my resolved motivation for whatever is left of my comedic career is that my humor will strive to come from a wholesome loving place and no longer born out of anger, hatred, jealousy, and cynicism. Let’s see how it goes! 

Yes, religion is the opiate of the masses. But life is suffering and the people need a narcotic they can have faith in. 

I’m trying to think of when all my negativity started. I’m exploring my childhood like I never have before. In retelling, though I’m sure few Philadelphians will read this, I will change names and fuzz up details so as not to embarrass anyone. If you saw a video of me as a child you’d think I was the most happy go lucky kid around. But in Philadelphia public school, you kind of get socialized a certain way. I know in late elementary school I started having a superiority complex as I outperformed the majority of my peers. Then I went to a more competitive school in 5th grade. By then I was already a class clown. In 2nd grade I got sent outside for making puking noises. In 3rd grade I received a detention, my first ever, for not getting a document signed and I actually cried about it if you can imagine. My friend, Beckett, taught me about sex and we’d go around humping poles for laughs. I started to delight in the forbidden. My 5th grade planner is littered with penises, naughty words, swastikas, and other things I used to find hilarious. In 6th grade I was suspended for having a book of insults about my math teacher Ms. Brunner. I’ll never forget. Patricia, who I had a big crush on, asked to see the book in Ms. Lindemeyers history class. It was confiscated. As Ms. Lindemeyer flipped through it her face turned the brightest shade of red I’d ever seen. Ms. Lindemeyer asked who was responsible and Jeff Sachs pointed right at me, the bastard. I don’t hold grudges though. Anyway, by then I had seen how being class clown had disadvantages and it forever cemented the image in my parents that I’d gladly risk my reputation and academic future to make my friends laugh. But why? Why was humor my social currency? Well, maybe it was a defense mechanism. In the Philly public schools there was a big burn or get burned culture. One had to always be alert and have a quip in the back pocket. A public diss or retort could make or break your street cred. Also, I was an outsider. I wasn’t a real Philly kid. I didn’t know know any rap songs or watch the Eagles play, my first language was French. My school was mostly Black, Italian and Irish. And this is South Philly Italian and Irish, these kids were rough. Once they heard my mom speak French to me, I had to prove to everyone I wasn’t “gay”. The best way forward was to make everyone like me, and to do that I had to be funny. It didn’t always work out. I remember receiving black eyes on several occasions when the joke didn’t land. One time I reminded a teacher to check we’d done our homework. When she went out into the hallway everyone threw their writing utensils at me. But I was a quick study and eventually became fairly popular. This got a lot easier when I transferred to Philadelphia’s “nerd” school. Here I was among many outsiders such as myself. Immigrants, 1st gens, Jews, and the smart hard working Philadelphians who were probably bullied at their schools for acting too smart. We were still a raucous bunch, however, and insult flinging was a refined sport here too. But also, it was becoming important to be popular. I was starting to like girls. I’d do anything to make them laugh. I remember when I made other people laugh I’d sigh and think such a waste that a pretty girl hadn’t heard my joke. Just a smile and eye contact from one of the elite beauties, say Patricia or Diana, and I was over the moon. 

Another botched attempt. Just 2 left today I think. Having a cup of chai to see if that helps me concentrate. I don’t know what’s happening. 

I think this period was the beginning of my need for approval and validation and set my course in life. This was also when I joined the social groups of wealthier inner city kids who belonged to the pool club. This group was controlled by two opposing alpha males, Tom and Jerry. Tom was more the cocky sports guy who made up stories and tried to keep us in awe of how amazing he was. He enjoyed finding peoples weak points and insecurities and rallying the rest of us to gang up on one person when it pleased him. Everyone wanted to be on his good side so as to avoid such an instance of public humiliation. Jerry’s dominance was more of the intellectual and cultural sort. If Jerry knew about it and you didn’t you were “retarded”. No one wanted Jerry to think they were retarded. Jerry would sometimes amuse himself by pulling someones hair and having them name 5 bands from whatever decade he was feeling more knowledgable about at the time. He was a terror. Even parents were afraid of Jerry. I became well educated in classic rock so as to appease Jerry. Tom and Jerry grew up to be the adult versions of their old bully selves, but more on that later. Though today Jerry is rail thin, in those days he was quite the little pudgester. I believe I witnessed him picking on my friend Melvin one day and I said “Jerry, why don’t you pick on someone your own fat”. This shut him up and if memory serves he stormed away with tears in his eyes. I believe I was something of a hero for that. Melvin and I even made a song on Garage Band called “Pick on Someone Your Own Fat” in homage to the moment, where the jester bested the king at his own court. Jerry saw me as a threat from then on and singled me out often. If Jerry appreciated heavy metal for its mathematically unique time signatures, I was retarded because I liked folk music. If Jerry’s dad told him about Nietzsche and now he proudly called himself a nihilist, I was retarded because I didn’t know what any of that meant. He never really changed. Though there were moment in my life when I genuinely considered him a close friend, I was always sort of submitting to him, hoping he’d think I was smart, but never succeeding in winning his admiration. He moved to Germany to study German philosophy in German. He really is a brilliant guy, despite being an insufferable egomaniac. Recently he was in town (Philly) because of the death of his father. I hadn’t been invited to the wake, but I sent him a message on Facebook saying I’d heard the bad news. We got a drink. I met his girlfriend who was quite lovely, so I figured maybe he’s a new man. He was pretty morose but we still had some decent banter. His mom stopped by from the gym. She didn’t recognize me, pretty classic. We made some small talk and that was that. After a few days I saw Jerry again at a bar with a group of folks. When Jerry saw me he berated me in a most condescending manner in full ear of the party about how I’d neglected to say “sorry for your loss” to his mother and that I must be some kind of retard and his mother was very confused about my brutish manner. He really laid it on me and I was completely taken aback. Then the conversations all resumed as if nothing had happened. The next day he sort of apologized via Facebook messenger. I told him it was fine and that I’d like to write his mom an email. He told me not to. This is classic Jerry. Instead of allowing me to right this wrong, I’m now indebted for life, this will always be his mothers memory of me. Now, why I didn’t impart the platitude? I don’t know, there wasn’t an opportune time, and I figured maybe she was tired of hearing about it anyway. But I figured wrong. According to Jerry people like to have their grief acknowledged. Me? I like to skip those boring parts and just have a conversation. If the death comes up, fine, I’ll say something. But also I hadn’t seen these people in over a decade. I’m not part of their life, their community. But yeah, that’s just to show. He pulled a similar stunt on Melvins mom. She baked them a cake and left it at their door. At the wake Jerry informed her that they threw it out because it went bad and some whiskey would’ve been more appreciated. How self important can you get? Anyway that’s Jerry. 

Jerry kept popping up during meditation so that’s why I felt the need to unpack. A lot of the healing I still need to do is rooted in things that happened when I was 12-16. It’s insane. I clearly just pushed it all deep inside and away and now that I’m prying a little Pandora’s Box is open. At the age of 13 I started getting insecure and sad. Once 14 came around I was completely depressed. But it might not have been obvious to those around me. I was still the funny guy. When I was 13 I kissed Sarah Garofalo at a bar mitzvah. Really bad kiss. Our relationship ended shortly after but we’re still friends today. After that I became enamored by her close friend Samantha, another frequent flyer in my meditative brain. Which is supremely embarrassing because I thought that was over, but no. Samantha remains to this day a huge influence in the man I became. A man incapable of love. I wish I was kidding but to this day I have not felt towards any woman a fraction of what I felt for Samantha. She turned me into a loathsome beast. None of it by intention, of course, it was all done by my own self destructive hand. I will attempt to tell the tale of Samantha to the best of my recollection, in hopes that once it lives in writing it will cease to haunt my mind and reopen my heart to romantic love. So let’s go back to 2007. George Bush’s last year in office. I had broken my right forearm at Judo practice the summer prior so in September I entered school with a black cast. This garnered some positive attention and signatures. Nothing to do with the story, just giving some details for setting. I believe it was biology class where we sat together but I can’t be certain. I’ve never had such a fortunate seat placement before or since. I always hope. Every airplane, show, wedding… but no such luck. I was instantly infatuated. She glowed. She was funny. Intelligent. And she talked to me! She laughed at my jokes. I looked forward very much to that class. My heart pounded for it, my body yearned for it. We would pass notes, whisper, giggle. At that time, most students at Masterman would have agreed that Samantha was the prettiest and most popular girl in our year. It was tacitly understood, common knowledge. And thus, it follows she would be the most coveted, have the most suitors. Everywhere she went, flirtation followed. She was gregarious and smiled and laughed easily. But I wanted all of her smiles, all of her laughs. I recall at some point we began conversing on AIM. I was hannibalsessla, she was lalasamantha. I can tell you that her “haha”s were like a special currency for my heart. Usually it was just haha or ahaha, of hahaha, but sometimes I’d be blessed with a hahahahahgaahegha. You can only imagine the joy, the immense satisfaction when I saw that. I remember how excited I’d be to see that little green dot saying she was available. I think I timed myself between messages so as not to appear over eager. The “lalasamantha is typing” message made my heart thump in anticipation. What is she writing? It stopped! Oh she must be thinking. She is thinking for me! She is writing for me! It makes me laugh to write about this now, but you need to understand the state of delusion and desire I was in bordered psychotic. I was obsessed. I was creepy. The year went on, and I felt anxious. I had to do something. My close friend Larry told me he had a crush on her. I didn’t tell him about mine. I think every boy should have had a crush on her. He wasn’t special. But this put urgency in my intention. She had to be mine. I had to get there first. I would betray Larry. 

Om mane padme hum: may wisdom and compassion take root in your heart. 

Man-tra: mind, to protect

Well I certainly made up for my days of failures by bringing my all to the fire vigil commemorating the last night. It was quite emotional and I’m pleasantly exhausted from it. A really nice way to wrap things up here at Tushita. I sang Om Mane Padme Hum for maybe an hour straight without stopping and sent genuine love to every single human I could think of including myself. It was beautiful to see the stupa lit by our candles. I felt quite religious. Something chanting while looking at an alter beset by candle light will do. I even found myself instinctually dovening like a hasid, must be in the DNA. I also gave sincere and true prayers and wishes towards the further development of my spirituality and betterment as a person. Before we lit candles and left the gompa, we meditated on the wish to share the new light and goodness we’ve acquired with our loved ones, even those who are departed. And for the first time I thought of Vovo, Pierre, and Millie. People I never truly mourned for I was so young. Their deaths were phone calls in the night. When my moms mom Millie died I was 10. My mother cried and I didn’t really feel much beyond the awkwardness of the moment and my guilty relief at no longer having to schlep to that loathsome nursing home in the suburbs every Sunday. After that my mom rented a bunch of movies from the library about near death experiences and other such themes. Pierre, my dads brother, and Vovo, his mother, died when I was a little older in quick succession. They’d already been living in Brazil some time, so the deaths didn’t feel so real. My dad was so stoic about it. There were no tears. No hugs. It was just a fact. They were dead. But surely I had loved them. I must have. I know I had. And tonight, as soon as I thought of them, tears welled up in my eyes and I imagined myself hugging all 3 of them and finally giving their deaths the acknowledgement they deserved. Finally, some emotion, bottled up all this time. I do remember hearing my dad say, in a defeated voice soon after, tout le mode est mort. Everyone is dead. My family is very small, so it certainly felt that way. And I had always wished I had a bigger family. More people to see on holidays, more warmth, more voices in and out of the house. When Pierre and Vovo were around, living just a couple blocks away, life had so much color. It was always a festive occasion. I didn’t understand much of what Vovo said and her dementia worsened with every year but she radiated love, warmth, and affection. If only they could have been younger and healthier and lived nearby for longer, perhaps those adolescent years wouldn’t have felt so dark and lonely. But I cherish the time we had all the same. 

We meditated on impermanence in order to lessen our attachment to people. Part of this exercise is to imagine our friends and loved ones and even ourselves as dead. This was a weird exercise. I wasn’t emotionally affected by death. But then I pictured them getting old. I pictured them losing their ability to move, to speak, to remember. And this was painful. This moved me to tears. This is impermanence. People are always getting older, inching towards death. You can’t freeze time, you can’t bottle it up in a jar for later. Such is life. It may be one of the hardest things to overcome, impermanence. 

Back to Samantha. For some reason Samantha got grounded for something, I forget what, and I seized the opportunity. For some days I’d been mastering the Plain White T’s hit song “Hey There Delilah” on my guitar. It was an easy rewrite. Hey there Samantha what’s it like being grounded? I believe the original manuscript is hidden in one of my planners. I took my guitar and walked up to Walnut Street to catch the 9 bus to a faraway greener more mysterious neighborhood. I forget how I got her address. I must have asked her for it indirectly or maybe I had Sarah acquire it for me. It’s hard to describe how nervous I was for the long duration of that bus ride. How badly I must have wanted to turn back. The sweating in my button up shirt, the thumping of my heart and nervous agitation waiting for the stop to come up. But there was no turning back now. I was fully committed. This was as premeditated as any act could be. I wish I could recall what thoughts passed through my head on that day. Getting off the bus, I was in a strange foreign land. I hadn’t gotten my first bicycle yet so I was a novice in Philadelphia’s geography. This place was greener and hillier than my home. I must have mapped the route out in my head. I remember repeating the name of her street over and over so I wouldn’t forget it. 

Finally, I arrived at her house. I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Should I just go for it? I noticed a path on the side of the house, undoubtedly leading to a backyard. This was more ideal. In her green grass lawn I took out my guitar, looked up at the windows trying to guess in which was her bedroom, and began to play and to sing. By now I was committed. I wasn’t scared anymore. I wanted to be discovered and the anxiety turned into adrenaline. I think her dad spotted me first. He poked his head out of the window incredulously and called for Samantha. Shortly after I saw Samantha pop her head out of another window in absolute shock. I tried to keep going but her father cut me off. I asked Samantha if she would be my girlfriend and she laughed. Eventually I was in Samantha’s house speaking to her and her father. I think her dad liked me, but he was playing up being protective. He might have offered me something to drink. I think he thought Samantha was using me as a ploy to get out of being grounded and that I wasn’t a genuine lover there to serenade her. And Samantha also thought it was some kind of joke and that I wasn’t a genuine lover there to serenade her. I eventually attained a private audience and convinced her of my sincerity. She said that yes, she would be my girlfriend. And then I left. I must have been the happiest boy on planet earth on that long bus ride home. I remember feeling immensely proud of myself as I took a shower that night, thinking to myself “I have a girlfriend, I have a girlfriend”. I really had a girlfriend. And it was Samantha. The girl of my dreams. Could anyone be as lucky as me? The next day my hell started. 

It was Monday and everybody already knew. It was like one of those movies you see about high school. Walking down the hall feeling everyones eyes and whispers and giggles. People taunting and teasing and congratulating. I saw Larry. It was hard to look him in the eye. He told me he heard. I said that yes, it was true. Neither of us acknowledged the betrayal. He congratulated me. At some point that day I saw Samantha. I had no idea how I was supposed to act. How to be a boyfriend. I’m 14 years old. I think we hugged. We did a lot of hugging. I loved those hugs. I wanted each one to last forever. She was a little taller and broader than me and when we embraced I could easily sit my chin on her shoulder and be nuzzled in her warmth. I was such a small little thing in the shadow of her perfection and I knew it and felt it and could sense that everyone else knew it too. I was so unworthy of her. I could feel everyone thinking it was a mistake and it would be short lived. Her suitors would not be dissuaded, they would try harder knowing I wasn’t serious competition. This was just in my head of course. But it was the seed of desperate attachment, of paranoia, of the fear of losing what I already barely had. A seed that would grow into a terrible ugly dark and thorny thicket. And so it began. 

Samantha had so much power over me. I coveted every moment of eye contact with her. I cursed everyone who stole my time with her away. We would meet after school and wander around looking for tiny alleys to practice kissing in. I learned how to kiss with Samantha. She was more experienced, she had kissed her last boyfriend Jason with much more success than I’d had with Sarah. There was a universe inside of every one of those kisses. We would hold hands. We would sit in parks, or in any private space we could find in the school. I would’ve spent every second I had with her if I could. But she was in high demand. I had to share her with the world. And that was hard for me. Every day I’d see her at her locker entertaining everyone that came her way. Everybody wanted a piece of her. I was terribly jealous. Instead of saying anything about it, I did incredibly immature things. If I was feeling particularly envious of her attention I would spend the entire day ignoring and avoiding her completely, hoping that she’d notice. And she would. It gave me so much satisfaction when she ran up to me at the end of the day and asked why I hadn’t spoken with her. I would lie and pretend I was engrossed in thought or hadn’t even realized. But I was elated. She cares for me. She thinks of me. My absence is noted. That’s all I wanted. To be on her radar. To exist in her brain. But no, that wasn’t all I wanted. It was never enough to simply exist. I needed to fully possess her. I wanted her love and adoration, all of it. When we were together I spoke freely and told her the oddest things. I had so many stupid things to tell her. One time I proudly told her that I could no longer masturbate to pornography because I found no other woman to be anywhere near her equal. I meant it as a sincere compliment but I can only imagine how weird she must have thought I was. Still, she endured me, she saw something in me. I still was a little charming at least. One time we were making out horizontally in my house watching Brokeback Mountain but not really watching it at all. I think we triumphantly made it to 2nd base that day. It was a landmark achievement. Because I worshipped her it was so hard to touch her freely. My hands didn’t want to leave her hips, but she guided me to the areas that were forbidden and it opened a new world of sensation. She brought up sex. I was shocked. I told her we were 14. That we shouldn’t even be thinking about sex until 16 or 17. I was a fool. Perhaps if we’d had sex I would’ve lost some of that toxic infatuation, at least that’s been the case in my adult life. We never even did hand or mouth stuff. I didn’t want to. She was too precious, too holy to degrade in such a manner. And I simply wasn’t ready. I was too young for that. I had just figured out how to masturbate months ago. I couldn’t imagine removing clothes and showing her myself and seeing her naked. It was all so much, so advanced. And besides, to hug and kiss her was already heroine to me. To look into her eyes and press my lips against hers was to pause time and transcend the earthly realm, to float out from my corporeal shackles and touch God. I had no need for anything else. Women develop faster than men at this age, and she probably wanted to try new things, while I was still happily an ignorant child wanting only her affection. I had planned out our lives together. I told her we should date throughout High School but then take time apart for college to explore other people and develop our lives, but that when we turn 30 we should find each other again and get married. I told her how inconvenient and frustrating it was to have already found my soul mate at such a young age. I told her I’d need to have sex with a million women on an island for 5 years and even then I’d still not be over her, I’d still not forget her. Well this turned out prophetic as I’m 30 now, have had a full sex life, and am still writing about her. I was mad for her. I could’ve written poetry about her. I probably did. I remember one time I went up to her far flung hamlet to meet her to see a movie. I remember when I saw her waiting for me at the stop I was so enamored by her beauty and the fact that she was waiting for me that I wanted that moment to last forever. I also wanted to see her look of concern if I didn’t get off of the bus, so I stayed on and observed. She shrugged and walked away. I got off the bus at the next stop and ran to her but never found her. This was before cell phones. I looked everywhere for her. Resigned, I walked all the way back home. To make her feel bad, I told her that my feet were bleeding. My friendship with Larry fell apart. He hated me. I don’t think I cared much. I had the prize after all. But I was a sad, sad boy. I sank into a deep depression. Samantha was supposed to fix everything, but I always needed more of her, it was never enough. And I was afraid she’d leave me, she’d get bored of me, that I wasn’t enough for her. I told her I loved her. I didn’t know it was such an intense thing to tell a woman at that time. To me it was already obvious anyway. To her it was a big deal. I forget what happened, I just remember she didn’t take it lightly. But eventually she said it back. I was starting to cut myself, very lightly. I would go home and listen to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and Biggie Smalls and AC/DC and Senses Fail and I’d knick myself with a razor to bleed just enough to feel some ecstasy and then I would play Call of Duty 2 on the computer or Rome Total War. This was how I coped. As I got sadder I listened to more emo music and Explosions in the Sky became my favorite band. AIM made everything so much worse. I would always look to see if she was online. I was always angry with her about something. I always wanted her to be sorry and apologetic to me, to make efforts to win me back. I don’t know what I was playing at. At one point that summer I told Sarah I would kill myself. She told me not to. I told her it was too late and I already had a plan. I would tie a plastic bag over my head and take some nyquil. That night I put the bag on my head to try it out and didn’t find the will to go through with it. Sarah called my house early the next day to make sure I was still alive. I lied and told her that I tried but it didn’t work because I was listening to music and the headphone wire let in too much air. That music saved my life. She was relieved. I don’t know why I felt the need to lie about attempting suicide. I think it was a cry for help. I didn’t have the balls to kill myself. But I definitely was having a hard time being alive. I broke up with Samantha eventually. I told my mom it was because she was too happy for me. My mom still reminds me about that all the time “remember how you told me Samantha was too happy for you?”. I couldn’t stand the idea of losing her because she was tired of me or wanted someone else, so I had to beat her to it. The next day at school I went to her locker to hug her and kiss her. She was confused. Didn’t you just break up with me? What was I doing? I didn’t know what I was doing. I knew only that I still wanted her. I needed her. I turned 15 that summer. I started smoking weed and drinking alcohol. The cloud of depression faded away. I was now obsessed with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. My best friend, Kyle, and I read Anthony Kiedis’s autobiography and we wanted to be just like him. I would still see Samantha from time to time. We moved houses. We moved two blocks away but it was traumatic for me. I loved the old house, but my dad wanted more space. We moved into a shitty new build that has caused my parents financial and mental stress to this day. But it was what they needed to be happy at the time. I made them miserable kvetching about it. I regret this. I must have been insufferable. I really did not want to move. I loved my room. My loft bed and my posters and my chair and my sheep skin rugs. It was my little nook. It was a tiny house and that’s why I liked it. The new house was spacious and empty and devoid of personality or character. My parents never bought new furniture. Our tiny house furniture looked small and insignificant in the new house. It never really worked. It still doesn’t. But now it’s my home. It took so many years to get there. The new house opened up some opportunities. We had a garage now. I got my first bike. I had freedom. I could go where I pleased. We started crashing Brett Blackman’s parties and drinking more and smoking more. We started hanging out with the wrong crowd. I needed it all. I needed to feel less about Samantha. At some point she and Larry started dating. That didn’t work out. We still saw each other once or twice. The last time we saw each other in a romantic sense was the summer after my sophomore year. I had just gone on family vacation in New Hampshire including a trip to Vermont where I fell in love with Vermont. I remember on the drive seeing so many lush meadows and imagining myself making love to Samantha on them all, an unwavering erection causing me to cross my legs and lean forward in the backseat. The night I got back there was a concert, the Flaming Lips and Explosions in the Sky. Samantha’s favorite band and my favorite band were playing together for some odd reason, their music was completely different. It felt like fate. So of course we went. It rained. Samantha and I passionately kissed under the rain. I was ecstatic. That night I slept at Kyle’s house. Kyle, Frank, and I did mushrooms for the first time. We smoked weed and ate an entire eighth of mushrooms while listening to Dark Side of the Moon. It was a ridiculous idea. Frank left with a guitar and didn’t come back until early morning, Kyle had a panic attack about having to move some bikes in the morning, and I “realized that I existed the whole time”. It was a profound epiphany I had. I kept repeating the phrase. And then you realize that you existed the whole time. I truly could feel that my existence had always been and would always be. We didn’t sleep that night and had soccer practice early the next day. The school year started. I remember being in a bus with Becca, an annoying jewish girl. She asked me if I had any crushes. I told her that I was hopeful about things working out with Samantha. She said “uh, nick, she’s with John”. I was crushed. John was a couple years older and maybe 6’3, a star on the basketball team. The night at the concert had meant nothing to her. Becca told me that maybe I’d have better luck in college. I forget in what way I confronted Samantha after that, but I hardly ever spoke with her again for the remainder of high school. When you love someone the way I did, it’s easy for the love to turn to hate. And I hated Samantha. I felt dead and empty inside. I courted Samanthas best friend Alyssa. We awkwardly kissed and I made a bunch of crude sexual jokes because she had a reputation for giving someone a blowjob in a shower and I wanted a blowjob too but nothing really went anywhere with her. She was very quiet and I wasn’t sure how to interact with her and I think I crossed a line with my “humor”. Then I met Olivia. Olivia was the antithesis of Samantha. Shy, quiet, petite, dark, and she was enamored with me while I saw her as a good friend. After a year of friendship my friends began pressuring me to ask her out. I couldn’t really picture myself having feelings like that for Olivia, but I figured why not. I asked her to Junior prom and we started dating. 

Everything with Olivia felt kind of forced in the beginning. I was forced to date her. I forced myself to kiss her. And it went on like that for some time. Eventually it didn’t feel forced. I loved spending time with Olivia. I could talk to her forever. I liked that she made fun of everyone and had her own special unserious way of seeing the world. All the other boys loved her. The girls were a bit stand offish and mistrusting of her due to her popularity with men. She was mysterious. She stole clothes from J Crew and Urban Outfitters. She wore corduroy pants. She was feminine in an understated way, not in the showy make up wearing way of the other girls. She lived in another green hilly part of Philadelphia that you needed public transportation to access. The story of Olivia is much longer than that of Samantha. With Olivia I developed another toxic form of male personality in a relationship. I took advantage of the power I had over her and used her as my personal therapist. I fed on her adoration of me. It would take a long time for me to realize I had done this. She found a way to use her power to torture me as well. It turned into a pretty ugly thing. We manipulated each other when it suited us, using each others weaknesses. But it lasted for so long. It continued through the duration of high school and all the way through college and its dying embers lasted years after college, with many break ups and status changes. Olivia was perfect for a sad boy like me. She’d find me in school and talk to me and cheer me up and would always have little fun stories or gifts with her. Junior and Senior year were difficult, I grew a darkness and coldness in my heart.  My grades began to fall precipitously. My parents were disappointed. I hated Masterman. It was an impossible place, a harsh claustrophobic overly competitive environment. I had been there since 5th grade. I dreaded walking into that building every cold morning and seeing those same faces. Despite being the best public school in the state and among the best in the country, to me it was an anti-intellectual authoritarian environment. The teachers, for the most part, lacked the ability to teach, any passion for the subjects they taught, and any ability to encourage critical thought. It wasn’t about being smart, it was about being strategic, going to the teacher after class, forming the right study groups, getting the good grades, it was a game and I didn’t want to play it. I stopped caring. I copied homework in advisory, I slept through math and science classes, I fell far behind. Paying attention was difficult for me and caring was even harder. I didn’t like taking notes. I needed glasses. I could never see the board. I never had energy because I wasn’t sleeping well at night. Teachers thought little of me. I was a disruptor, a clown. I had a bad reputation and I wasn’t worth their concern. I realize now that I was an arrogant white man expecting the world to give me everything, unaware of my privilege. Masterman was a Philadelphia miracle, a public school where anyone who was accepted could come and get a ticket to the ivy league if they worked hard enough, why should anyone care about me? I have had an okay life because of my privilege, if other students at Masterman hadn’t had good grades their lives could have turned out far worse. I had barely even gotten into the High School because I was involved in getting drunk on the 8th grade school trip. Jerry got so drunk they needed to pump his stomach. I was barely tipsy but got suspended all the same because Amelia, who had brought the alcohol, felt she needed to include me in the list of accomplices. This kind of behavior was horrible for Masterman’s reputation and the faculty was nervous about me. I already had basically written what was for them a school shooter manifesto about Ms. Brunner in 6th grade. I got suspended again my freshman year, this time for sexual harassment, because I drew a penis going into a girls mouth with the caption “ma dick in yo mouth” in another girls notebook. My muslim biology teacher, Nabeehah, was standing right behind me watching as I drew this image unbeknownst to me. If you ask me what was going through my mind at the time, I really couldn’t possibly tell you. I was a frequent visitor at dean Meketon’s office. He was an armchair psychologist and took great pleasure psycho-analyzing me. I didn’t mind the attention and I played into it. I remember making a show of posing in his mirror to see what he’d make of it and he diagnosed me with narcissism which in hindsight I think he was onto something. But I was just a normal kid in an abnormally strict environment. I know that now. They made me always feel like I was a fuck up. I was always in trouble for something. It’s cruel to do that to children. It gave me way more anxiety than I needed to have. How can adults force kids to take life so seriously? It takes a certain kind of sadism. Especially when we grow up watching movies and shows about high school being a lax and fun environment, to go to a school where anything you do that’s just a tad inappropriate can be harshly punished is fucked up. I can say that college was 100 times easier than high school and I learned 100 times more. Masterman only performed well as a school because of the ambition of its students, and I pray that they’ve changed the way they go about things since I was there. One time I came to school and my eyes were red and puffy because I had insomnia and I was called down to see the Vice Principle and she told me “everybody knows you’re high”. Although I wasn’t high that day, I had started a habit of meeting my friends early in the morning and smoking weed. We would smoke weed in one of the parking lots near school, we’d smoke on the roof when chance permitted it, one time we even smoked weed in the bathroom which was a terrible idea because the smell went everywhere. They caught us on camera in the hallway but there was no evidence and I told Larry and Carlos (Larry and I were friends again), as we walked down to see the principal, that we just all needed to tell the same story of finding the roach, throwing it out the window and running out of the bathroom because the video evidence would corroborate this. They put us each in a separate room to write down what had happened, our stories lined up and we were off the hook. In health class I wrote an essay about how we need to wage a war on obesity and how annoying I found fat people and that we need to eradicate them. I must have written some problematic stuff because they called my parents and my mom will never forget about it. To this day she still brings it up when we have people over for dinner. It didn’t help that all the teachers in the health and physical education department were obese themselves. One time I stole my chemistry teacher’s red flask that he loved so much and filled it with liquor from my parents cabinet and me and Aaron and some other kids got drunk before gym class. Aaron passed out in Spanish class later that day but no one got in trouble. My best friend Kyle started growing apart from me. There was a group of cool kids we’d hang out with. Everyone was getting in to drugs. We’d go explore abandoned warehouses and factories at night, or hang out on rooftop parking lots or penthouse construction sites or the banks of the Schuykill river and we would drink forties and smoke weed and some of us would snort Percoset or Aderall or Xanax and some of us did worse. Some people took a liking to opiates or stimulants of the variety that will ruin your life. And some people did begin to ruin their lives. These people made me sad, and I didn’t feel good spending time with them. They didn’t seem to like me either. Being the funny guy in such a crowd was not well appreciated. They were too hardcore and I came off like a preppy immature weasel to them. They were artists and had complicated relationships with their families. I liked my parents just fine and wouldn’t begin to identify as an artist until much later. Kyle wanted their approval and acceptance, he pandered to them and did what was needed to earn their trust and respect, and this is how the rift happened. I would get invited less and less to these social outings. I had a reputation for never bringing any weed or alcohol with me but always ending up with weed and alcohol and people grew tired of my mooching. With Kyle ever a distant friend, I spent more time with Olivia. Olivia understood me and liked me for who I was. I liked Olivia. We started telling each other we loved each other. We lost our virginities to each other. I liked going to her house because it was like another world, one I wished I inhabited. The old stone houses and towering trees of Chestnut Hill brought me to a time in America that no longer existed, one far away from the gritty despair of inner Philadelphia. There was no poverty, no smoke and trash, no homeless drug addicts, no mean hardcore people, just fresh air and wholesome folks. I was obsessed with old and green. With wood and brick. I often took Olivia to the parks in the old parts of the city near where I lived. They were little oases in the urban waste. I dreamt of living in these times. I so desperately wanted to escape the bitter reality of Philadelphia. I grew to hate it. It was the place of my depression. It represented all my shame and failures. Everything seemed to be withering and decaying in that place. If only I could go away, start anew, I wouldn’t be so sad anymore. College was the shining light in the distance. I needed a big American college with a campus and stately buildings and happy kids from the suburbs that didn’t know anything about me or the despair of Philadelphia. I wanted to immerse myself in that energy and ambition of “going places in life” and never look back at the city I loathed. I made the effort to take classes at community college while in high school to bring up my grade average and made a little bit more effort towards the end. I went to Syracuse with a full ride and Olivia went to Parsons in New York. Just close enough for us to continue seeing each other. A 4.5 hour megabus was all it took. That summer my mom gifted me a language immersion month in Costa Rica and I broke up with Olivia thinking I’d be getting laid all over the place. I didn’t get laid in Costa Rica. I missed Olivia. She always made things better. We got back together, but on the condition that we be in an open relationship. I was going to Syracuse and I was expecting to get laid all over the place. 

Apart from a few drunken make outs and one instance of awkward bad sex, I did not get laid all over the place my freshman year at ‘Cuse. I had difficulty adjusting to college. While I had so fantasized about meeting wealthy people from the suburbs and propelling myself into their world, I found I could not relate to them and in most cases I despised them. Philly was depressing but at least it was real. I didn’t really understand these people and they seemed so immature. I had dreamed about joining a fraternity but I didn’t realize you had to pay money (I didn’t even have the $35 to rush) and that the people in fraternities are some of the most horrible people in existence. I had been thinking more an Animal House type of vibe, not sketchy rich guys that wanted to do date rape and be physically abused by each other. No thanks. I had also been looking forward to what I thought would be an intellectual environment in college, where we sat on the quad and discussed marxist literature and such. This was not the case. Students did not want to discuss literature or ideas. Most didn’t even want to go to class. They wanted to party and fuck, wear sweat pants everyday and proudly crawl into the back of class late nursing hang overs. This was the crude reality I was waking up to. Everything I had been conditioned to idealize and fantasize about university life was a lie. Syracuse was a school that only cared about sports, greek life, and partying. But I was in the best school at Syracuse. The Newhouse School of Public Communications. Surely, here, I’d find my intellectual and creative compatriots. And I actually did, sort of. I found some people that shared my ideals and values who I am still friends with today. They were a tiny minority. The majority were still atrocious human beings from wealthy backgrounds that just wanted to network and get careers and didn’t really care about the world. I think that this is just what became of academia in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Instead of being a place to nourish your mind and foster critical thinking skills it became a pre-career bootcamp and an alcohol-induced celebration of excess famous for the work hard party harder culture that Americans seem to be so proud of. Had I gone to a small liberal arts college, which was my original unattainable dream, I’m sure the atmosphere would have been different. But Syracuse was the only school I got into that took the tuition exchange scholarship I had access to through my father’s professorship at Drexel, and so it was the school for me. 

Because I felt like such an outsider at Syracuse, I leaned heavily on Olivia. Olivia also felt like an outsider at Parsons, another school for wealthy out of touch people. Neither of us were where we belonged. Both of us were trying to join worlds we hated, worlds that never wanted us to begin with. I thought I’d naturally meet a girl at Syracuse that I liked better than Olivia but it never happened. Olivia’s school was mostly women and gay men so her options were also limited. We were stuck with each other. I’d look forward to visiting Olivia in New York, or she’d visit me at Syracuse. We’d see each other maybe once a month. At the end of my Freshman year I slept with someone and I didn’t like it and it drove me back to Olivia. We committed to each other again in the traditional sense. That summer I went to Israel, I worked in a fish cannery in Alaska, and I spent a week at my friends lake house in Vermont. It was a good summer. Sophomore year things changed. Most of my friends were from First Year Players, a campus organization that put on a musical every year. They were good people but they weren’t exactly my people. My other friends were people from Newhouse or my Freshman year floor. I started a satire club, The Kumquat, with a few of them and this added a lot of purpose and fulfillment to my time as a student. But still, I was missing something. During Spring Break I went on a trip to West Virginia with the SU Outing Club. There, I met students at neighboring ESF, the environmental science and forestry school. ESF would become my second home in the following years, my social life would become dependent on it. This was a revolution for me. I had been accepting the fact that people my age were like Syracuse kids and that I would have to adapt to this reality, but now here I was meeting an entire group of people that came much closer to sharing my values. Not only this, but they opened me up to an entire new world of outdoors adventure and camaraderie that would be unthinkable at Syracuse. The ESF students were more likely to be middle class, they were less judgmental, they had more depth, in many cases they had better senses of humor. They also had a sense of mystery to them. To me, they represented the real America, the deep countryside and all of its folk secrets were held inside them. These were people you could sit around a campfire with and imagine you lived a long time ago, before any of the rot of the modern world had started to take, and people were still free and wild. At least that was how I saw it at the time. I was a tourist from Philadelphia, a pioneer, integrating into a brand new culture. Not many Philly kids get to experience the authentic America, and I was doing it. The suburbanites of Syracuse were not authentic. They weren’t city kids and they weren’t country kids. They were just wealthy scum really. It’s hard to put it any other way. Only in America can people become extraordinarily wealthy while completely lacking in culture and intellect. This is a brand new phenomenon. Wealthy people used to have class and a sense of obligation to the world, they used to be our scholars and artists and poets. At Syracuse they wore sweat pants and had thick ugly east coast accents and didn’t care about anything but sex and partying. How far we have fallen. I was losing hope, but ESF restored it for me. The ESF country kids were my city kid counterpart. We were both part of America’s dying middle class and therefore had similar values and felt similarly ostracized by the out of touch and unscrupulous wealth of Syracuse. ESF kids were always down to have a fun debate and talk about the bigger ideas in life, they were for the most part passionate about what they studied and what they could offer the world through their academic pursuits. I can’t stress enough how refreshing and lifesaving it was to make their acquaintance. To put it in perspective, ESF’s most lucrative “take the money and run” major was bioprocess engineering, AKA working in a paper mill, which is pretty benign compared to the intentions coming out of the Syracuse business school.  And all of Syracuse was a business school, it didn’t matter what you studied, you were a business student. Syracuse kids made fun of me for befriending ESF students. ESF kids were thought of as smelly hippies who smoked too much weed. It was a laughable offense to want to dedicate your life to the environment, or “hugging trees”. It was like I was Jane Goodall running away from good civil company to join the apes. 

Anyway, I stayed with Olivia. The whole time. And I wanted it to end the whole time. But I was so weak. We’d always fight. She could sense that I was embarrassed about it. The relationship wasn’t really evolving in any kind of notable way. For me it was just good reliable sex and I was afraid to look for anything else. It turned into my greatest shame in life. A dark and deep black hole in my mind, in my memories, that I’ve blocked out for so long. Even trying to think of it now, I run into so many barriers. It was such a long period of time, how can I even attempt to describe it? All I know is that every day I woke up and I thought “I need to break up with Olivia” and every night before I went to sleep I thought “I need to break up with Olivia”. But I didn’t. It seems so simple now, but she was really in my head at that time, making me feel that I needed her, that breaking up with her would be the greatest mistake of my life. And I did break up with her constantly, but never enough, never fully. It always ended in some compromise or another. It was like Hamas and Israel trying to negotiate a ceasefire, a never ending mess. Sophomore year, when I met the ESF people, I remember I was in the process of breaking up with Olivia for the I don’t know how manyeth time. We stayed apart for a while, and for some reason got back together. Every time the reasons were more or less the same. When we broke up she would be so sad, I would be worried she’d kill herself. Or that she’d go around the world telling everyone how awful I am. Or that as soon as we were apart I would be miserable and realize I needed her. She played into these fears. She knew these fears well. She could also show different parts of herself with the flip of a switch. When she needed me to want her, she’d be very sweet and warm and gentle. Then, once she had me, she could feed into my anxiety by constantly badgering me with questions and making me feel like I owed her something. I knew it was bad and that I needed freedom but I didn’t know how to get it. Senior year, we made love in a park in Syracuse on a stage in an amphitheater. She walked off the stage shortly after and broke her ankle. I had to carry her out of the park. The next day she went to the hospital to find it was a serious injury. She’d have to miss a semester of school. She blamed me for it. She made a big show of being depressed, stuck at home. The guilt compelled me to ask her to be my girlfriend again. I had to make up for it. I took her to Puerto Rico. I took her to see Ira Glass. Finally, when I felt my dues had been paid, I broke up with her again. This time for good. But still, after college ended I found myself sleeping with her again. I couldn’t shake her off of me. I had to leave. I had to put geographical distance between myself and her. I went to Colorado to work in the wilderness as a sawyer. I went to California to work at a ski resort as a photographer. But I’d still text her on lonely nights. I’d think about her when I touched myself. I wasn’t finding anyone to sleep with out there. I was lonely. I cycled across Europe with Caleb. We had both applied for the Peace Corps and gotten in. The Peace Corps would save me from Olivia. It had to. After the bike trip, there was a short interlude back in Philadelphia. I saw Olivia there. I went to Paraguay. In Paraguay I thought I fell in love with someone, but I soon realized that the training environment simply replicated the conditions of high school which inspired competition and urgency in choosing a mate. After a couple months of dating her I was completely over it and broke up with her. I continued to serve for a year. I fell into a deep dark suicidal hole of depression in Paraguay. I started talking to Olivia again. I quit the Peace Corps and went back to Philadelphia. I turned 25 years old in Philadelphia with nothing to show for it and no idea of what to do with my life. I worked at a hotel as a concierge and at a DIY BYO candle making shop called Wax and Wine. I started hooking up with a girl at the hotel. She saved my life. Olivia came over one day and saw the hickeys that the hotel girl had left. In a fury, she took a bag and filled it with everything she’d ever given me, my favorite sweaters and a blanket she’d knit me, and she essentially left my life forever. At the age of 25, the curse lifted, thanks to a hickey. I am sort of friends with Olivia now. We are actually in a good place. It took a long time to get there, but we are good now and I’m grateful for that. Olivia and Samantha were the psychological foundation that set the course for who I became after turning 25 and moving to New York City. Though I still harbored some juvenile romantic ideals about women, they quickly vanished when I met my roommate who showed me what dating apps were. As soon as I downloaded Tinder, my innocence ended. I used dating apps to make up for years that I felt had been robbed from my love life by Olivia. Because of Samantha, I never wanted to feel the intensity of romantic love and longing again, which was why I took safety and comfort in Olivia. Because of Olivia, I never wanted to be in a relationship again, I was scarred for life by the torture and unhappiness and entrapment that I had somehow gotten myself used to and the impossible difficulty of escape, the years that we can so easily lose trying to “make it work”. The only possible recourse for me was to become a fuck boy. And that is what happened. For 5 years I put all of my skill, energy, and creativity into sleeping around. Nothing was happening in my career, so I filled the vacuum left by my professional shortcomings with sexual validation. More women. I wanted to have sex with everyone in New York. It didn’t take long before this started getting sad. But I kept doing it. Sometimes I’d tell myself I’d had enough, that I was ready for a girlfriend now. But every time a likely candidate emerged, I found something I didn’t like about them. I became hyper selective. At the first sign that they were liking me a little too much I started feeling the walls closing in around me, feeling the weight of their expectations, remembering Olivia. At the first bit of tension or argument, it was no longer worth it, the honeymoon had spoiled. I love the uncomplicated fun of the beginning phases of courtship and romance, and I wanted to just ride that wave forever without having to do any work or having to deal with their emotions because I genuinely did not care and it was a waste of my time. But I also didn’t just want meaningless sex. I wanted to cuddle and talk and go to restaurants. I wanted all the benefits of a relationship without the commitment or problems. I wanted the long conversations without the 2am arguments. I wanted to be loved, but I did not want to love. I wanted to be held, but I did not want to hold. I wanted to be understood, but I did not want to understand. I could calculate the amount of dates I’d probably go on with someone before it was time to end things, before I got the “ick” (usually around 5), or before they’d want to have the “what are we” conversation with me. Any time someone asked me that, the answer was “over”. In some cases I’d fall into an endless situationship where we’d just hook up regularly and never ask questions. I admit that these were the most ideal scenarios for me. I could leverage my charm to make people like me and think I was someone better than I actually was. I used logic and a cold transactional perspective to justify my actions and behavior. Some women enjoyed my brutal honesty, others hated it. I did my best to avoid love bombing or using any other manipulative tactics to make women think I wanted anything more than I did, but I’m sure I made some mistakes here and there. Since I do not outwardly appear like a fuck boy and can even be sweet, many women projected onto me the idealization that I was a Nice Jewish Boy and were inevitably disappointed when I was not said Nice Jewish Boy. My sex life wasn’t unique or particularly problematic in New York, because of nouveau feminism and no one having time for anything hook up culture is prevalent and totally fine. I ghosted people. I learned this tactic from other girls during my first year. They would ghost me and it felt horrible, so I’d take it out on some other girl and ghost them. It’s a cyclical thing, you are snubbed and you take revenge, we pass it down to each other. It was about ego more than anything else. I hated getting rejected even though I felt nothing for these people. It’s also something that you can just get away with in New York. Just as many of us would rather order food on Grubhub than make a phone call or physically enter a space and speak to a human, many of us can ghost someone and never fear running into them again. In the infinite multitudes of New York, you’ll always be anonymous. And in some cases, ghosting is much better than sending someone that same cold canned break up text you’ve sent a million others before. Do we really ever believe them? “I’m just not ready to date right now” “I think you’re great, but….” Who cares? At least with ghosting you can let your imagination run wild. Surely they died in a car crash. So I ghosted. I had a roster. I always tried to keep a minimum of three concurrent partners. This way if any one should end I wouldn’t feel desperate. It’s called diversification. This is who I became. With every year my heart grew colder. I thought it was making me stronger, but in reality I was losing myself, corrupting myself. I was investing so much energy into maintaining my sex life, I lost focus of my priorities in New York. Dating apps are a serious addiction. You have to swipe and swipe and swipe to get suitable matches. The matches themselves give you a little high. But then you need to find ways to talk to them. Some shitty forced conversation, desperately looking for something to relate to. How was your weekend? You have siblings? It’s pathetic. But even in this pathetic conversation, every time you get a response that’s another little high for you. Eventually, once you’ve had an appropriate amount of empty back and forth you can propose a date and from there it’s easy. You meet. You have some drinks (this would be next to impossible without alcohol). You take them to your bike and say “this is me” and then you kiss. Then you figure out whose apartment is closer. And then you figure out if you want to do it again. The only good part is the first kiss. I never stopped getting a fluttery feeling when I leaned in for the first kiss. I don’t know why. Maybe the tension and build up. Even when you’re so confident you know it’s going to work, there’s always something in that first kiss. It’s the ultimate high, validation that the date went well, that your performance was suitable and some other human finds you likable enough to lock in an embrace and press their lips and tongue against yours and you feel each others warm bodies under jackets in the cold New York night and you could maybe stand like that on the sidewalk for a half hour just wanting to live in that moment forever. It was a high I couldn’t stop chasing. It’s the only part that feels like true romance. After sex, the magic dissipates. Things get sticky and complicated. You throw the condom in the trash can and you look at her and that’s when it starts ending. Is she going to ask you to leave when you try to cuddle? Are you going to tell her you have an early morning because you realize you don’t want to spend the night? Is she going to look at you with beady loving eyes and say that was so great and you already know you’re going to have to break her heart? It’s over before it starts. It always is. Take me back to the beginning, back to that kiss. Over and over and over, I tried to relive that feeling, that little moment of uncomplicated bliss. And now I’m 30 and I’ve finally stopped. I’m finally becoming a human again. And I might even be ready to actually love someone. I never stopped wanting to be loved. But I never really knew how or why I should ever love anyone. If I could achieve that, it would really be something. Writing down the story of my life has helped me realize that my sadness has come from constantly seeking happiness in things external. Now that I know the joy that lies within, I can always take shelter in myself. It won’t be easy, but it’s a new tool, and one that I think is going to play a huge role in my mentality for the rest of my days on Earth.