“But I love you” said the knife to the wound

“Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.” - Edgar Allen Poe 


“I don’t know how to express that being with someone so dangerous was the last time I felt safe.” - Astrid, White Oleander 


Not having a secure and safe place to call home has played an enormous role in all of my choices… since I was a kid. The feeling of homelessness is a big part of Third-Degree Mother Hunger.


I moved to Los Angeles with my twenty-four-year-old boyfriend about a month before my eighteenth birthday. I came into my early twenties here. For years it was the only place I felt at home. If you have demons, LA doesn’t judge you but welcomes you with open arms and a warm hug. I moved in and out of Los Angeles 4 different times. 


I grew up in Texas, in Catholicism & Conservatism. I was an outcast, a black sheep, deeply unhappy. My first suicide attempt was at 16. I felt like I didn’t fit in, like I was so different from everyone, like I didn’t belong (a tale as old as time, right?). Rebellion is part of my nature and in what I thought was an attempt to go against authority structures I fell into a criminal crowd. My closest friends were all drug dealers and I was part of a ring of credit card fraud. I found camaraderie in the underground world. We all came from abusive, broken families. We all knew what it felt like to be alone in the world- we all knew pain. As a young runaway girl, I felt like these “tough” guys would protect me and keep me safe. And for a while, they did. But people in these kinds of circles get arrested and go to jail, they overdose and die, they get shot and killed. It’s not a sustainable life. 


Stuart was part of a different world. He came from a good, loving family. He graduated from SMU. He was sweet. He wanted to be an actor and was waiting tables saving up for his move to L.A. I met Stuart at a fraternity party. We were the last ones standing and together we watched the sunrise, naked, from the backyard pool. We started dating. Mostly we had cocaine in common. We both loved cocaine. Stuart also hated my parents and I really loved that about him. I didn’t know about L.A. but when he asked me to come with him I saw it as a way out. Everyone told me I was crazy and not to go. I didn’t care. 


We stayed with Stuart’s friend, Hayes, at his three-bedroom house in Hancock Park. Hayes was a trust fund baby. He and Stuart were Sigma Chi’s together at SMU. Hayes loved cocaine, too. We arrived a couple of weeks before Christmas and on Christmas morning we woke up to Hayes and our coke dealer chillin' in the living room together, drinking champagne. None of us had jobs, all we did was party. Beer for breakfast, mushrooms, whip-its, cocaine. This was our daily game. 


Somehow I got into FIDM, a Fashion Design school, and Stuart got a job waiting tables at a fancy club in Santa Monica. Hayes and I started messing around behind Stuart’s back. I felt guilty and started having bad mushroom trips. Eventually, everyone we knew knew Hayes and I were fucking around, and after at first denying the allegations, I finally admitted it to Stuart. I thought he would want to break up but instead, he wanted us to get our own place. So Stuart and I moved out and into our own apartment in the Miracle Mile. It wasn’t working and not long after I moved out of the apartment with Stuart and into an apartment with a friend, let’s call her Selene, whom I met at school. Selene was smart and gorgeous and we both had the same mean-mommy, absent-daddy wounding. We were both competitive and loved attention from guys. And yes, we both loved cocaine. The cocaine thing, as you may have already caught on, was the main theme happening in all my early relationships. Pain and cocaine, cocaine and pain. 


Selene and I lived together for about 3 years (with an array of different third roommates who I would share a room with because I could never afford my own room.) Selene introduced me to my next boyfriend, let’s call him Henry. Henry worked for William Morris and was a kind of trust fund baby in his own right. He was mostly living off his mom and dad. At first, I didn’t like him but he wooed me with what seemed like his endless stream of credit and our matching addiction to chaos. We both grew up in chaotic homes. I remember Henry telling me the cops would be called to his house because his parents would fight so badly. Henry and I broke up and got back together all the time. The Trauma Bond was strong.


At one point Henry’s parents cut him off and told him he was spending $300,000/year- so if he wanted to live that way, he was going to need to figure out how to make that much. And yep, you guessed it, a lot of that money was spent on cocaine. Cocaine and martinis. That was our thing. We’d go out for sushi, order a total of 3 or 4 martinis each, eat a couple of spicy tunas on crispy rice, and take turns going to the bathroom to do bumps. Afterward, we’d go out and take shots at some bar until the bar closed, and then we’d go back to his apartment for the afterparty. We did this every week. It’s literally a miracle I’m alive. I think about this a lot whenever I look back. A miracle. 

After Henry, it was Constantine, my lover from Vienna. Constantine was truly a lover. The best lover I’ve ever had. No cocaine in this relationship! A level up. We met because we moved into the same loft in the Arts District downtown at the same time. He invited me out to lunch and that was it- two weeks later he told me he loved me. More than anything I used to love being loved. I chose guys based on how much I could feel they liked me. Constantine was a digital artist and in town from Vienna on a work visa. He was sexy and I projected my foreign elopement dream onto him. A month or so later he invited me to move to Berlin with him. Of course, I said yes. He bought my ticket, of course, because of course, I still had no money and no car. I packed up my two bags and moved to Berlin. Constantine and I lived in Berlin together for 3 months. It was rocky. The itch came for me, my mood swings were intense, the language was hard & I had no friends. 


My Papa (grandpa) was dying and I moved back to Dallas to be with him. After he died I moved back to Los Angeles with the $1000 he left me as a parting gift. Living at “home” in Dallas was unbearable. I couldn’t do it. I’d rather live on the street (and have felt that way since I was a teenager. I still feel that way.) I moved in with a friend I met at the denim company I worked for in downtown LA. It was a tiny studio, and she kicked me out after a few weeks because I came home blasted out of my mind one night. I could tell it scared her how fucked up I was. As I was online looking for my next passageway to I didn’t know where a friend of a friend messaged me. He asked how I was and I told him I was moving to Portland. I had decided Portland sounded like a good place to go. He told me to come and live with him. (You can’t make this shit up). He picked up my two bags and I met him later that day at his apartment in Santa Monica. Let’s call this guy Bobby. Bobby was a close friend of one of my good friends (and also one of my cocaine dealers) and let me sleep on his couch. He told me something I said, I don’t remember what exactly it was, really touched him one night and made a difference in his life. (When I used to get high, deep messages would come through for people.) I was touched that Bob was touched. He had a sweet heart. He also had some serious addictions. Pills and crack. Yep. Turns out Bob was smoking crack. I found his crack pipe in his bathroom when I was looking for toilet paper. 


The crack scared me so I had been avoiding Bobby and going to happy hour’s with my friend Mickie. Slowly I just kind of casually moved in with Mickie. I had been staying with him most nights and I only had my two bags. He didn’t ask me to move in, it just kind of happened. I think he felt sorry for me and didn’t want to kick me out on the street. Mickie was like a punk artist type. He made me laugh and we would go to happy hour and then back to his place. We would paint on each other and draw. We rescued a hamster and named her Penelope. She had been attacked by a cat and only had three legs but she was fierce and we both loved her dearly. We made obstacle courses for her. This bitch would jump off the side of the coffee table and one of us would catch her. She was wild. We couldn’t decide if she was trying to end it or if she was just an adrenaline junkie. We took her to Kansas with us. Mickie was more open-minded than most people I knew at the time and he happily listened to my rants about hating society and how messed up the government was and all the things. We were like two kids playing together. He was a graphic designer and had a job in Kansas City that needed his physical presence which is where I got the idea to find a farm in Kansas. I needed a place to live and I wanted to learn about growing food so it was like two birds with one stone- although I really don’t like that saying. 


After years in and out of L.A. I left to go live on a farm in Kansas (I wrote another essay about that whole experience) and then came back AGAIN. It was my fourth time back in LA and this time it felt different. I was less interested. It all felt so empty and boring. I missed farm life and thought maybe I could find a farm to live on in Malibu. I typed in “farm” on craigslist, searching for options. I found one ad: “Come Live on An Beautiful Sonoma County Apple Orchard”. I clicked on the ad. “And learn how to grow cannabis”. Perfect, I thought. I was trying to combine my Matrix Identity, “Cool Party Girl”, with my love of farm life. I wasn’t at all ready to go full “Spirit Warrior” and figured this could be a way to get past Total Identity Annihilation) I sent in an application (which required a photo, red flag number 1) and received a call minutes later. A man named Matt asked me questions, I answered them, and in under an hour, I had a plane ticket to the Santa Rosa airport in Sonoma County. I left two days later. Ba da boom. 


Matt picked me up from the airport in a black SUV. He had on 90’s sunglasses & jeans, and big brown curly hair. We hugged and it felt weird. As we drove away from the airport I wondered if he was going to sell me into sex slavery, or maybe just kill me. When we got to his house there were chickens and guinea’s and I felt this was a good sign. Another girl had just arrived the day before and she seemed unbothered which I felt was another good sign. We all went out for ice cream. It was all going to be ok, I decided. Matt was another trust fund kid. I know, what are the odds, right? His dad was some big wig at Disney. I think it’s an 8th house placement I have in my natal chart. I forget which one but it’s something to do with other people’s money and assets. Anyways. Matt had tons of money. On our first trip to Whole Foods, we spent $700. It was amazing. Food was part of the deal. Food and rent + a weekly stipend was the work-trade agreement. It sounded great to me seeing as I had no money and no car. No money and no car is another HUGE theme in my life if you haven’t already caught on. No money, no car, two bags- that should be the name of my memoir. This is a theme (theme, pattern… whatever you want to call it) I am still in the process of healing, to be honest. It’s been a long road that leads me back to past lives, poverty vows & just bad karma, I think. Break those old vows, people! It’s so real. Ok, I digress. So for me, this whole Sonoma County deal seemed like a dream until a week goes by and there has been no mention of a day off. When I ask about it, Matt replies “This is an all-encompassing job.” … I reply by saying, “Excuse me? What is that supposed to mean? I need a day off.” He tells me we’ll discuss it later. Meanwhile, Matt’s drug dealer, let's call him Thomas, has been visiting the house and giving me the eyes. Thomas asks for my number and I give it to him, with no intention of responding, an old move of mine to avoid the straight-up, uncomfortable “No.” (Luckily I can happily deliver an uncomfortable "no." these days.) On one of his later visits to the house, Thomas asks me why I haven’t been responding to his texts. I'd been experiencing that same familiar itchiness that had been plaguing my existence and recognized this kid (he was younger than me) is a drug dealer and can get me drugs. So I ask him for coke. He doesn’t have any coke connections (cocaine is not a big thing in NorCal) but he does have Adderall. I had never been into Adderall but I take the Adderall anyway because I am desperate. Later that night the kid non-violently rapes me. The next morning I go out to breakfast with him because I’m desperate to get out of the house. While at breakfast Matt texts me, kicking me out of the house and I move in with the kid rapist. This is the beginning of a 3-year descent process that will end with my nervous breakdown. Which led me here so it’s all ok don’t worry.