Unwifeable(76)

I am thirty-six years old. I have $279 in my bank account. I have no job prospects. I have no romantic prospects. I have nothing. And it feels like such a relief.

I am a phoenix, just like Courtney Love’s psychic predicted, starting over from ashes once again.



* * *




RETURNING HOME AS an adult woman is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. It is awful and beautiful and extraordinary and like being given a time machine to understand some of the keys to surviving my childhood.

As a sober woman, I am now able to give myself something I couldn’t when I was just a child growing up in my family’s unpredictable household: compassion.

Seeing my dad yell and scream one day, set off by his cup being moved slightly, I react so differently as an adult. I still jump. I still feel scared. My insides still freeze. I still feel afraid. But I no longer absorb it like a sponge. I no longer feel like it is all my fault. Returning home helps me give so much love to the little girl inside me who didn’t have anyone watching out for her so many years ago. I think about what Sherrye the therapist told me, about connecting with that little person inside of me. I’m starting to get it now. It’s starting to make sense finally. You can re-parent yourself. You can give yourself what you’ve always needed. You don’t have to define yourself by the scars of your past.

In order to keep attending AA and Al-Anon meetings, I withdraw fifty dollars from my ever-dwindling bank account to purchase a used, barely working bike off Craigslist so I can cycle around the city and make meetings. At every single one I attend, I tell my story, and it feels so different from the ones in New York, where, despite the emphasis on anonymity, many people still discuss their very high-powered Manhattan-specific jobs in theater, in media, in PR. This kind of thing never gets brought up in San Diego. The pace feels so easygoing and languid. Like, you can actually feel how close the ocean is, and we are all so peaceful just because of it. There is nothing transactional about any conversation. I don’t want anything from them. They don’t want anything from me. We are just trying to be better people.

I also find out, now that I have been gone from the Post for a few months, who my real friends are. Anyone who has ever worked in a job where you can do something for people—like provide press or perks or whatever—knows the experience of what happens when you leave that gig. Folks who email you all the time acting like you’re besties often disappear entirely when you are no longer a “favor friend.” And other people, ones who you never imagined would be there for you, suddenly come out of the woodwork, revealing what they care about: you.

One person who I never expected to speak to so much during this time is my friend Taylor Negron. He’s passed away now, but he’s a comedian you may know from The Aristocrats or Fast Times at Ridgemont High or any of his other seventy roles in movies and TV. I first met him when I did a character actor profile on him for the Post, but we kept in touch afterward, and during my time in San Diego, we talk on the phone frequently.

Every time we do, Taylor effortlessly improves my mood and corrects my perspective.

“This time is a gift for you, Mandy,” he says. “Don’t you see, you’ve been so addicted to drama and chaos all your life without realizing it, and now that’s all gone. It’s you and your family and California. Take a walk outside in the San Diego sun, and see if you can get addicted to a flower. I’m serious. I want you to actually try it. Take a walk, and just find a flower and appreciate it. Think of all the excitement you can get from it and feel that peace.”

I do that, and a sense of calm and appreciation bubbles up that I haven’t experienced in a while. It feels a little like . . . wonder. Like the kind I had so much of as a child. At night, I sleep in my mom’s study on the ratty old pullout couch and cuddle next to my dad’s guide dog, who, like all guide dogs, is a special kind of angel.

One day, when I check my email, I get a press release that reminds me of another time.

Amma, the Indian hugging saint whom I first profiled in the Post so long ago, is coming to New York for her annual visit to see her followers.

I may not have the flash of the Post anymore, but I still have the connections. For the hell of it, I decide to email Arianna Huffington, Courtney Love, and Jane Pratt to give them all the personal cell phone number for the swami who handles media and can hook them up with a personal guru visit, skipping lines that stretch for hours—just in case they’re interested.

It’s a strange instinct to have, but I find that those are sometimes my best ones to follow through with and act upon. At least in sobriety they are. About a week later, the butterfly effect begins.

I’ve rekindled Jane’s memory of me from a year before when I applied for a full-time gig, and a few weeks later I get the call. Finally, they do have an opening. They want me to come on board to replace Cat Marnell, who quit months before. I do a test piece for them on deadline about how to achieve the appearance of “just been fucked”–style makeup and hair. Two days later, I am hired.

I’m going back to New York again, this time a completely different person.

I’m thrilled and in awe of this unexpected and exciting turn, but I’m also nervous to leave what I’ve built in San Diego. There is so much peace and softness and authenticity in my life now. I don’t know what will happen when I return to the city where everything went both so right and so wrong.