Quarter Life Crisis
“Rugged Fox is on life support,” I told my good friend Amy yesterday over spiced walnuts and non-fat cappuccinos.
“It is atrocious. For months now he has been lying in a fluorescent-lit hospital room with parched lips and only female nurses attending him.”
I paused, dramatically, and took a sip from my coffee. Wiping the foam from my lips, I continued, “I fear that if I don’t write something witty and quick I might… Meryl Streep I can’t believe I’m actually saying this… I might lose him.”
Amy reached out her hand and put it over mine. “Have another spiced walnut,” she said, “it will make you feel better.”
It is true, for months now I have been suffering from a serious case of writer’s block. Constipated, I have tried everything in my power to unblock myself but nothing has seemed to work. Although you can’t see me right now, you must trust that I sit behind this laptop with cramped shoulders and an overwhelming fear I might watch another day go by without any words to show for it.
Like any attractive struggling writer, I have managed to come up with a myriad of excuses to account for my artistic absence. I have listed the top three reasons below:
#1 SGBS (Sad Gay Bitch Syndrome)
There is no question I have fallen prey, yet again, to this nasty Seasonal Affective Disorder. I swear to Meryl I might as well take this website down for the six months this city is cast in grey. Like the Dementors in Harry Potter, the winter in Vancouver sucks the life right out of me; it is hard to be fabulous when you can barely muster enough energy to get dressed in the morning.
#2 The Restaurant
I made the official decision two weeks ago that I would not use my job as an excuse to miss out on the rest of my life. The transition from serving to managing is similar to that of being a casual drinker who progresses in to a heavy alcoholic. One week you are working twenty hours, and the next you are logging sixty.
#3 Netflix
For $7.99 a month, this darn website has quickly become the cheapest and most dangerous addiction in my life. I might as well have started shooting meth the second I pressed on the play on the first episode of Breaking Bad. 5 and ½ back-to-back seasons later I kid you not my apartment looked like a scene from Trainspotting. The garbage reeked; the sink had caved in under the dishes; and the only piece of edible food in my fridge was a tiny green container of sweet-and-sour sauce from McDonald’s.
Although all these factors have kept Rugged Fox’s word count at zero, it didn’t occur to me until last Friday that that they are merely symptoms of a much graver root cause. I am having an identity crisis. All these years my life has been 90210 and now it is suddenly 24601. Jean Valjean be damned, I don’t have the slightest clue who I am anymore.
The Rugged Fox of years past would not put nearly this much effort in to thinking. He would zip up his cowboy boots, throw Pacey around his shoulder and chase happy hour drink specials across the city. Now, my cowboy boots are dead (both heels snapped in a dramatic strutting accident), Pacey has been retired (my doctor said he was giving me lower back problems) and apart from two profiles on Manhunt and Fred2Fred which I cannot seem to delete, my trampy online presence is gone.
I don’t know how better to say this but the entire situation is totes tradg.
Last fall, I could not bare the sight of my own closet. In two months, it had become a graveyard of all the fashionable pants, cardigans and summer v-necks that my body used to call home. Like Blanche Dubois, I would scream and weep each week that I tried to fit in to my supermodel Club Monaco cerulean blue jeans. With blood-shot eyes and snot pouring out of my nose, I rolled around on my hardwood floors, the waist of the pants lodged half-way up my thighs, screaming “You are dead to me skinny jeans!” Dead to me!”
In the history book that is my life, 2012 will be the year filed under the chapter cleverly-titled “Death of a Gay Man.” Without thinking twice, I stripped the carpet up from underneath me and knocked my life down one bottle of red wine at a time. I changed jobs and cheers-ed some of my best friends goodbye. It is hard to suspend someone and then invite them to go for drinks after. I changed my address and moved nine stories closer to the sky. I got a boyfriend and then after one embarrassing late-night and hangover too many, woke up alone. I did not want to write, because I was afraid of the person I had become.
The good news is that 2013 is all about new clothes, new friends, and a new me. After scraping through the trenches at work, I am finally becoming more comfortable and confident with my position. Although it is difficult given my schedule, I have realized that it is not impossible to meet new people. At Christmas, I bought a new bag to replace Pacey. His name is Hunter and he is from Germany; he is beautiful. In terms of relationships and body image, that part of my life, as always, still needs work. You will be happy to know that I have given up chicken parm and started drinking skim milk at dinner instead of wine.
Who knows? Maybe Rugged Fox is just starting to grow up and this is what it feels like to be an adult. For the first time in a while I can genuinely say I am excited for what happens next.
