Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!(9)

    Dan looked at me with concern, but it was concern that I needed. I needed someone who didn’t know me to be concerned for me, and it seemed like a more straightforward transaction to pay someone to do it.

“Okay, so, back to the Enneagram,” I said. “So, how you enter this world determines your natural disposition for the rest of your life? Is this astrology-adjacent?”

“I don’t view it as that, no. But if you are hesitant about diving in further, then we don’t have to discuss it at all.”

“You have a medical degree, right?”

“I do.” He nodded, smiling. “I’ve also trained as a researcher, so a lot of the research I’ve done on the Enneagram with other scientists and other researchers is something I’m very familiar with. If I didn’t think it held any merit, I wouldn’t be writing about it or talking about it.”

Okay, calm down, big guy is what I wanted to say, but I felt at that point he had gotten a full dose of my cynicism, and the truth was that I did want to hear more.

“Obviously, there are other factors, such as nature and nurture, along with all of the events that happen throughout your early childhood and throughout your life that will shape who you become as a person,” he said. “But that anger, sadness, or fear will remain deep in your subconscious, and will dictate how you react to things in your life that don’t go as planned.”

    Dan asked me about my parents’ marriage, and I told him it was functionally dysfunctional. That my parents were hard to take seriously as role models, but that my aversion to being married wasn’t about my parents’ marriage. It was about marriage in general; it seemed outdated.

“I consider remaining unmarried a victory,” I told him. “If I had married either of the men I’d thought about marrying, I would be divorced…therefore ending up as just another statistic. Conversely, remaining married to the same person your entire life seems not only boring, but also like becoming just another statistic. It feels like marriage goes hand in hand with, well…running errands, or baking.”

“You don’t run errands?” he asked, slightly confused.

“I try not to.”

I worked hard to maintain eye contact with him when I took breaks from rambling so that he would understand I was serious, even if some of the things I said sounded ridiculous. I was serious about getting help for my ridiculousness.

“Sorry, I know you’re married, and it’s not an insult,” I told him. “I just prefer to not do what everyone else is doing. I like to be in the minority.”

“No offense taken,” he assured me, smiling slightly.

“I think I’m more cut out for short flings, or long-distance relationships, casual encounters. I don’t think I have what it takes to remain interested in someone long term. The word ‘marriage’ has always felt to me like the end of fun.”

    “Okay,” he said, leaning his head to one side.

“I don’t like constraints or restrictions of any kind. I don’t like feeling boxed in. A one-on-one beach holiday with someone of the opposite sex is something I’d like to avoid at all costs. I’d rather be alone.”

At this point in my life, I didn’t know if anything I was saying was true or if I had manufactured all these thoughts to protect myself—I’m assuming it’s the latter, but the truth of the matter is when it comes to men, I haven’t been that impressed with my choices.

He asked me why I thought marriage represented the end of fun.

“I get bored easily, and I also go at things in a wildly immature way.”

“How so?”

“Like a little girl. Everything has to be the most, or the best, or dangerous, or a risk. I take everything too far. I don’t know how to just be still, unless I’m lying in bed binge-watching Peaky Blinders or if I’m at a long, leisurely lunch, anywhere pleasant in this world. Then I can sit for hours, but that scenario involves Aperol spritzes and other people who feel as passionately as I do about Aperol spritzes. This is why I can’t meditate.”

“Because of Aperol spritzes?”

“Because I like extremes. I think I’m an extremist.”

“Tell me about that.”

“It’s the ‘everything is a possibility’ phase that I live for. I don’t ever want another person making the decisions about where I go or what I do, or to be sent down a particular runway I haven’t approved. I want to change runways all the time, and I don’t like answering to others. I don’t like feeling trapped, or having to get approval to go on a trip from anyone. I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it. I’m completely fucking spoiled.”

    “Okay, talk more about that,” he said.

“I feel like I’m always running a million miles an hour, and that I’ve covered a lot of ground, and I like that my life is so full. I’ve had so many adventures, but there are never enough. There’s too much to see, too many books I haven’t read, and too many people that need help. I do feel grateful. When I stop being grateful for something, I usually end it. I stopped doing stand-up because I burned myself out. I did too many shows and too much traveling and wrote too many books in a row to be grateful. It became rote. I was becoming devoid of the joy one should have when walking out to a crowd of thousands of people. I grew impatient and irritable, and I felt icky having those thoughts in front of people who had paid money to come see me, all the while dying for it to be over so I could just hang out with whoever was on the road with me. I didn’t enjoy being on the stage as much as I enjoyed walking off it. I liked the sense of accomplishment—and all the great luxurious things that came with it—but once I realized my heart wasn’t in it, I felt like I was ripping people off, and I was done.”