This is not a happily ever after.
Though that’s not to say that my epiphany that evening at camp amounted to nothing. In fact, it changed everything. That experience was the seed that would grow into a rapid evolution when I returned home.
Things shifted so quickly I had a hard time finding the end of this story. I ended up writing several versions as life carried on…
In the first draft I talked about the end of my friendship with Jessa, which was as sad as it was sudden. After deciding I was going to quit drinking, I realized I didn’t want to be around other people when they were drinking heavily. So when Jess texted me the week after I got home from camp inviting me to a party weekend for her 40th birthday, I replied that I couldn’t go, that I didn’t want to drink with her anymore. Seconds later she responded, calling me an asshole and blocking me everywhere. That was the last of our correspondence, a shocking cap on the most intimate and intense female friendship of my life.
Because the tenure of our friendship so perfectly paralleled the beginning and end of the end of my marriage, it seemed fitting to end the story with the end of our friendship. But then I reconsidered, because this isn’t a story about friendship. At least, not primarily.
In my second attempt to sort out the ending, I thought I would write to the sexual empowerment I gained as a result of the events in this book. In that ending I described hooking up again with Gavriel. I wrote about how a couple weeks after I got home from camp, before I quit drinking for good, I went to a wine tasting with a girlfriend. I texted him from the bathroom to see if he was free later and he agreed to pick me up downtown. We went back to my house, then walked to the beach and smoked a joint while drinking a stupidly expensive bottle of wine I’d just stupidly purchased. After ten minutes or so, I was so fucked up from the wine and pot that I had to lay down on the sand. I couldn’t move or even open my eyes, only mumble a plea for him to go back to my apartment and get snacks, which I spit out, and then my bedding, because I got so cold.
The next morning, I woke up in my bed with sand in my sheets and the vague memory of him fucking me the night before (I rebounded quickly enough to lay there). Thoroughly hungover and teetering on a shame attack, I decided to change the narrative for myself. Waking up with sand in my bed, I postured, was a funny anecdote. And fucking him was a victory. He’d given me a ride home, taken me to bed, and left before I woke up. It was pleasure on-demand, no strings attached. I thought that would be a good ending. Look, dear reader! I’ve taken control of my sexuality. And look how much I’m enjoying myself now. I’m so liberated.
But then I quit drinking and could see that night for what it really was: mutual opportunism. We used each other. And I’ve already told that story, again and again and again. So, while the last few years have certainly been personally and sexually empowering, that, I realized, wasn’t the scene to illustrate it. And anyway, this isn’t a story about female empowerment. I mean, that’s not all it’s about.
Non-monogamy, I decided, is where I should end the story, which was the notion behind my third attempt at the ending. In that version I described how, some time that autumn, Marin and I made up. And then Viktor and Marin and I made up, and then Viktor and Marin and I had a threesome. I thought that would be a good ending, one that proved I had learned to do nonmonogamy well. That with a bit of patience, communication, and sometimes forgiveness, all relationships are possible.
But that wasn’t the truth of the matter because the threesome was not good. I mean, parts of it were great, but as soon as Viktor started fucking me, Marin left the room abruptly. Semi-begrudgingly, I went after her, and found her poised in the middle of my living room, just standing there, naked. When I asked if she was okay, she told me it was fine, that Viktor and I didn’t have to stop. That we shouldn’t have stopped, even.
The whole thing left me thoroughly confused about boundaries—hers, his, and mine. Which might have been a good ending for a book that deals with consensual nonmonogamy, actually; a final thought about the importance of honesty and clarity and self-awareness and communication.
However, on further reflection, I realized that a threesome with a couple that had been the source and subject of so much heartache and confusion for me was not an example of highly functional nonmonogamy. It was just me doing the same thing and expecting a different result…again.
So it is that all my attempts at closure led me to the real ending: the beginning of learning to be different.
Shortly after my drunk night on the beach with Gavriel, still ashamed and mad at myself and resolved to fix it once and for all, I set a goal to have 100 consecutive days of sobriety by the end of the year. Within the first couple of weeks after I quit drinking, my outlook changed so much that I realized it was probably for good. I regained so much so quickly and realized that quitting altogether was the only way to be truly different. Alcohol had taken so much from me—my dad, my best friend, my self-worth. I didn’t want to waste any more time or energy thinking about it. I wanted to know what life was like without it. Who am I? What do I want? What are my needs? I couldn’t answer these questions authentically when I was racing through a fog, trying to outrun and outdrink the things I didn’t want to feel.
Also: who might I become if I stop doing things I don’t believe in? There is only one way to find out.
At some point after I quit drinking, I realized I’d been using men and sex the same way—to avoid what I didn’t want to feel. This was never more evident to me than a few days before the 2020 election. I was gripped with anxiety, having heart palpitations, completely unable to focus, and overwhelmed by a near constant desire to masturbate. It was the first time I understood how these things are wired into our brains. Whatever the vice—sex, food, drugs, television, gambling, booze—it’s how we manage overwhelm. It’s a shortcut to self-preservation. This is addiction, I know now: the compulsion to escape your feelings in a substance or behavior despite adverse consequences and diminishing returns.
I’ve learned over the past several months that my vices aren’t just booze and sex, but cigarettes and pot and social media and spending money. These are my escape hatches to salve discomfort and pain and the “fuck it” thinking that still lingers. The problem is, avoiding the truth does nothing to change it, just like slapping a band-aid on a cut doesn’t heal it. Real healing takes time and tending. It can only happen from within.
At the time of this writing, Jack and I are still married. Neither of us can say why we haven’t filed yet for divorce. I guess there’s just no pressing reason to. We still love each other, and we like each other, too. We see each other multiple times a week and co-parent with ease. Our houses are less than a block away.
Last week he stopped by to drop off some mail he’d collected for me. We talked for a bit. I asked if he wanted to stay for dinner with Asher and me, but he said he had a date.
“Okay. Well thanks for this,” I said, waving the envelopes in my hand. I reached to give him a hug.
“You’re welcome, baby,” he replied. “I mean, Minda. You’re welcome.”
I am learning to tend to myself now, and the little person inside me whose needs were unmet. I finally understand what Dianne meant all those times she encouraged me to stay with myself. Now, as I continue to practice my ability to stay, even when it’s uncomfortable—especially when it’s uncomfortable—my fear of abandonment is diminishing. Learning to live in reality isn’t necessarily making my life easier, but it is making my life my own.
Chapter 49: The Beginning is the End is the Beginning (Epilogue)