When I was nineteen, I went to Japan. My dad, with whom I have a terrible relationship, paid for it. “You should see the world,” he said. On that trip, I met a guy. My dad facilitated my first sexual experience. I never forgot that.
**
In Tokyo at the time, there was an exhibit called LOVE. L-O-V-E. Love in large, capital neon letters. This was 2013, when I still believed in museums. I loved them, the way I loved stationery and systems. I loved that they were clear places for exploration. I loved that someone went out into the world and came back with the things that they thought would speak to me. I didn’t know how museums worked.
The main thrust of the exhibit was a letter from an ex-lover. It was part of a multimedia project curated by the French artist Sophie Calle, whose boyfriend had ended their relationship with an email. It said many things and ended on a sentence that would later become the title of her exhibition.
“Take care of yourself.”
I walked into this spacious, white room, with projections and lights. The other students on the trip bounded forward with glee, taking in all the sights, but I remember thinking, “If this is about love, I should pay attention.”
I walked up to the podium, where hundreds of pages were stacked, and took the top page. It was a two sided paper, a copy of the email, translated into Japanese and English. I took this letter, folded it into my pocket, and flew back to Boston. I tucked it into my special little baggie, a care package I had made for myself when I went off to college. It included a picture of my baby brother, a list of all my life’s goals and desires, and my social security card.
**
This doesn’t go the way you think it goes. The biggest battles are not between person and God or person and fate, whichever you prefer. All of it, I think, is self v. self. As my friend Garrett says, “Life will continue to show you who you are.”
**
A year later, I went to acting school. One of the fundamental pillars of becoming an actor is mastering the monologue.
A “good” monologue has several components.
One: it is active. A monologue is not something that describes. Rather it acts. You speak for a reason, to a person, to get something from that person. A “good” monologue is active.
Two: it has a clear beginning, middle and end. It may meander, it does not need to present a singular point, but it has to start somewhere and end somewhere else. A “good” monologue is a journey.
And three: it is only a moment. There was a whole life before you began to speak and life will go on after you stop. A “good” monologue is never just a speech.
I was living in a tiny apartment with two roommates in Hell’s Kitchen at the time. I would sit in my room, on the floor (because I refused to get a mattress), and periodically, I would read this letter out loud.
I have been meaning to write and reply to your last e-mail for a while. At the same time, I thought it would be better to talk to you and tell you what I have to say out loud. Still, at least it will be written.
It was delicious, this monologue, because it was real. The stakes had actually happened. It was laden with subtext, subtext I found so vague, and therefore, full of possibility. I had no idea what had happened. But the twists and turns of the dialogue, the overall logic, the pathos, I understood it, even though at the time, I had never been in a relationship. Every time I read it, I cried.
**
A few months ago, I started seeing someone. Let’s call them K. K was someone I had met through a mutual friend. This friend thought we would get along, but K and I both said “no.” We didn’t agree. We fought against it. But our friend brought us together, and shortly after, we started hanging out.
About a month in, we started triggering each other. Things that had happened in past relationships were coming up, patterns from our old partners, wounds we still held in ourselves. Two months in, I went to LA. We had a week of intense back and forth - “y’all talk a lot” my Gen Z sister said - where we dove into family and trauma. Later, we would delve into open relationships. It was painful at times. We were defining things in order to define ourselves.
As you have noticed, I have not been quite right recently.
As if I no longer recognised myself in my own existence.
A terrible feeling of anxiety, which I cannot really fight,
other than keeping on going to try and overtake it, as I always have done.
On my flight back to New York, I thought I was really going to end it, even thought to tell K, thinking it would be some kind of relief. But before I did, I thought I should read the letter one more time.
When we met you laid down one condition: not to become the "fourth.”
I stood by that promise. I thought that would be enough,
I thought that loving you and your love would be enough so that this anxiety -
which constantly drives me to look further afield and which means I will never feel quiet and at rest or probably even just happy or "generous” -
would be calmed when I was with you, with the certainty that the love you have for me was the best for me, the best I have ever had, you know that.
I landed at JFK at 6:30 in the morning and went straight home.
**
Four: it is urgent. It must be spoken. You may not want to, you did not expect this, but here you are, and you have to go through it. A “good” monologue is urgent.
**
When I got home, I couldn’t find my special baggie, with the picture of my brother, with my hopes and dreams, with my social security card (I still haven’t found it). I panicked.
I went on my computer and to only my surprise, “Take Care of Yourself” by Sophie Calle was an international sensation. By the time I had encountered it in Tokyo, it had already traveled around Europe for several years. The thrust of the project, of which I had no idea, was that this email, from her ex-lover, was so jarring and confusing, that she didn’t know how to process it herself. But being an artist, and perhaps not a man, she disseminated the missive to strangers and sought their opinions. She courted lawyers and opera singers and Talmudic scholars to help her make sense of what had happened, what was happening. It had already been psychoanalyzed by so many people, so many years ago.
I had forgotten about this part. The whole reason for the project. Or I had never known it. I thought the letter had been written just for me.
**
Perhaps she had the same question I did. Was the letter about love or betrayal?
**
I saw K later that night. We went to dinner, an unintentional double date, with K’s friend R and R’s husband A. They were the quintessential heterosexual couple. Opposite, aligned, in love, bickering. I always think that when I meet a couple, especially one that has been together for a long time, that I will learn something. But I only saw two people in an act of their own creation. It wasn’t illuminating.
**
My self vs self battle is that I always think I have something to learn. That I do not know or I cannot trust what I know, because how could I know? I didn’t put on the exhibition called LOVE. I did not prance forward to take in the photos and interpretations of LOVE. I am the person who took the letter and placed it in my pocket and read it over and over again for the next ten years, trying to understand it. I am the person who sits at the computer and hears the ding and gets the email.
**
But then I remembered that when I read it, I am reading as if I am the lover doing the leaving. That I find romance in my leaving. It’s romantic to be unable to stay. I find my own torture romantic. “Darling, I’m sorry, I just have to go.” It’s better to be the one leaving, and find it so hard to do so.
**
But maybe I am just doing what actors do. Seeing things from another point of view, generating empathy. Empathy so strong that we no longer understand if we are reading the letter or writing it.
**
But maybe what I really knew was that love was not enough. And that I found it beautiful. That something so deep and exalted could be just a facet of a life and a person and their choices. When I read the letter, I am drawn to the person who arises at the end, the person who, despite love, is pushing themselves through, like a face against cellophane. Self vs. self. It seems you have to choose yourself.
It was a great relief.
**
I have never lied and I do not intend to start lying now.
**
In the movie The Substance, a middle-aged fitness instructor, played by Demi Moore, is given a choice. Inject a mysterious yellow-green liquid and become a younger version of yourself. You must switch between bodies every week, but as long as you do, you get to live both lives.
Some critics said it was too on the nose. “Feminism! The beauty standard!” But I was struck by the premise of self-love. I had never felt so called out and viscerally. The film, with its sharp sounds and in-your-face visuals, said, “If you do not love yourself, if you split yourself into two, you will die.” Or if you don’t die, you will transform. Not into one or the other, but something entirely different.
I guess the best case scenario is if one side learns something and brings it to the other. If, for example, the twenty year old version, during her week on, does a bunch of good things and eats healthily, then when she switches back, her fifty year old version would feel the effects. Both people would thrive. There is a version of the movie that is not a nightmare, but a dream. But then I guess it wouldn’t have been a horror film.
**
One of the interesting things I realized about K is that they are proud of the things I find hard to accept in myself. Intelligence, my own culture, my so-called eclectic music taste. I like the way they carry those things, even though I’ve struggled with the way I carry the same ones.
When I met them, it was like meeting myself.
And I said, “No” to them. Several times.
** Take care of yourself.