Oh Where In The World Is Sugar????

Hello readers,

Yes, it is I, brown sugar, still alive and well. Sorry I haven't updated my blog in over 6 weeks (yikes!). I didn't realize it until Ganesh commented on my previous post. Part of it is interviewing for new jobs (gonna hear if I got my dream job or not Monday morning-send some good luck vibes to me), another part is trying to meet new people in the wake of people moving on with their lives away from CA.

Also, to be honest, I have been toying with the idea of shutting down the blog. The "Happy One Year" essays were a way to begin the healing process that I had been avoiding, and now that it is complete (the essays, the healing is starting to begin), I'm not too sure where to go with the blog. As you may remember, I was supposed to meet up with BP in NYC. It happened on a windy afternoon by the Staten Island Ferry during his cigarette break, and basically, it just made me sad to see a medicated BP who wasn't as vibrant as the man I once cared for all those years ago. I guess me playing with this idea of shutting the blog is a way to close that chapter in my life. But then again, I adore the community we have here and have had the honor of meeting some of you IRL and calling you genuine friends. Without this blog, I don't think I would have met them.

Sure, I still have some random encounters with folks (like the guy who proposed to me 20 minutes after meeting me and another proposal from a guy who thought I was Yemenese-don't ask me why these proposals are coming, I'm just a quirky brown girl with a weird fashion sense and a strange obession with Bollywood. But, hey, at least my mom is thrilled), but I don't know if I have any other stories to share. Guess my life is pretty boring apart from that.

No, this is not a declaration of a blog shut-down, but I just wanted to share where I am at. Who knows, I may start posting more next week (especially if I get the new job). Just wanted to say that I am here and still working on things and who knows, I may be back in full force before you know it (or not). Until then, I look forward to reading (and commenting) on your wonderful blogs and appreciating the community we have.

-b :-)

Happy One Year-Section 3

Well, I finally got the nerve to publish the last part. It's been hard since a lot of things I'm going through right now, mainly with my career,is related to this post. There is a lot more, but honestly, I'm glad to be sharing this portion with you. Thanks!


Happy One Year-Section 1

Happy One Year-Section 2

The time between BP’s departure from my life and my graduation six weeks later was a blur. I passed my comprehensive exam, completed my clinical internship, and had three job offers in my hand by the end of April. Yet I don’t remember anything from that period, as if I was stuck in a haze while I went about doing what I needed to do. What I do remember is calling BP, holding my breath as I highlighted his name in my cell phone, pressed the dial key, and held it up to my ear to only let out a sigh when I heard his voice mail.

I did not to attend my graduation. I no longer felt connected to the degree I earned, only thinking about what my next move should be. I remember wandering around NYC, taking the subway to random stops, thinking of whether I should make this place my home. The city was beautiful, caught up in that cusp between spring and summer where the city air was warm and smelled the way it would before the humidity set in for the summer. I still remember sipping a cup of ice tea at Battery Park, staring at a hazy image of a distant Statue of Liberty thinking.

I needed a change.

I decided to move back to California.

I left NYC on a Tuesday morning and RJ drove me to the airport. Driving into Queens on our way to JFK, I looked at the Manhattan skyline getting smaller on the passenger side mirror and said a silent goodbye to the city that gave me so much.

******

Within a matter of weeks I got a new job, a new apartment, and a new life in San Francisco. I decided not to pursue becoming a therapist since I felt that in spite of my training, I couldn’t help someone so close to me, how could I help my clients? Back in CA, I got reacquainted with old friends, made new friends, and even began dating again. I also tried to embrace my new home in very much the same way I embraced NYC, by getting lost on their public transportation and discovering new pockets of the city. Yet that same sense of adventure wasn’t there for me as it was in NYC. On one excursion to Dolores Park, I felt my phone vibrate in my jean pocket. It was BP and I hadn’t heard from him in five months.

“Hey babe, I’m walking along York Avenue right now. You wanna go to Barking Dog for some pancakes and talk?”

“Um, I don’t live in New York anymore. I’m in San Francisco now.”

“What? When did you move? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I moved after graduation. Anyways, I thought you wouldn’t care if I stayed or left.”

“I wish you were here, so much has happened.”

I sat down on the grass facing the San Francisco skyline, forgetting about the wind on the hill, as BP relayed to me his tumultuous time since I last saw him.

Even before my departure from NYC, BP began to descend into a sea of confusion. AK moved out of the apartment to live with friends and with him, the weed was gone, too. BP threw himself back into his work, spending long hours in the office working on his particular projects. But when work got out, he became restless. Nights he would wander, go to strip clubs, visit call girls, and began to drink excessively. He was spending exorbitant amounts of money on his exploits, along with making trips to Atlantic City, gambling his money, snorting coke in the bathroom to keep up. He would then spiral down, spending hours in bed, depressed and zoning out in front of the television for days on end. His mood and behavior became erratic. Eventually he began to miss work, with his projects declining, his project manager called him in for an evaluation.

“’Either you get help or you get out,’ she told me. I was asked to go in for a psychiatric evaluation. Sugar, I got diagnosed with bipolar.”

I remember my heart sank as I sat on the hill while my brain was abuzz, going through what I know about bipolar, the manic behaviors, and the signs to make a diagnosis. It was so apparent, why had I not noticed it before? As BP shared his therapy and medication schedule with now daily meetings at AA to work with his addictions to coke, weed, and alcohol (did not want to go through the less strict Narcotics Anonymous), I was overwhelmed with guilt. How come I didn’t notice it before?

I left the hill at Dolores with my soul lost among the fog. I was wrought with guilt that in spite of my limited training, I should have seen the signs, connected the behaviors. I wished that I were more forceful in helping him, persistent in my interventions. Perhaps I was so caught up with my own recovery, that I ignored his. All these questions filled my brain.

******

For the next couple of days I carried the conversation I had on the hill with me. I went over little moments from our relationship, both bad and good, trying to make a connection. I was grateful for the help that he provided me through my own personal struggles, but maybe I could have given him more. But then again, I did, so it wasn’t on me that I tried. The regret and the anger both were swarming through my mind.

All these thoughts swirled in my brain before finally I had to call BP. I needed to ask him questions, to clarify my role in the relationship, and more importantly, to see where I went wrong.

“BP, I am so sorry. I can’t believe that I didn’t see it…the signs,” I cried to him on the phone.

“No, Sugar, please don’t think that it’s your fault, it’s mine for not listening to you. I know you tried to help, to get close, but please don’t blame yourself. I’m so sorry for the way I treated you. I’m on my way to being fine, you’ll see. You’re inspired me with your recovery and you’ve moved on. I’m glad. It’s kinda funny, in a way, your caring and your love saved my life.”

“No, BP, you saved mine.”

Happy One Year-Section 2-UPDATED

03/17/07 NOTE: I was re-reading the post (and the wonderful comments) and I realized I forgot the brief paragraph introducing BP's roommate AK (it might have been lost when I was pasting it). Thanks for reading!
BTW, if you have HBO, I would encourage you to watch their insightful series on addiction.


Days before I met BP, I was walking along 5th Avenue, heading to Union Square to hear Jhumpa Lahiri read from, at the time, her latest paperback novel The Namesake. I walked slowly along the street, my legs and brain heavy from working two shifts. As I approached 14th Street, I noticed a small cardboard sign with the words “Tarot Readings by Psychic Joe-$3” propped up against a concrete wall of a store and a deck of tarot cards being shuffled by the man himself. I laughed to myself when I saw the sign. After weeks of therapy, I thought maybe some astrological direction could help me out of the abyss of emptiness that surrounded me.

I sat down on the sidewalk, forgetting about the dirt on the ground, intensely focused on the reading before me. While I realized that sometimes these readings aren’t logical, I was searching for something illogically magical, at a bargain price, by an amusing character trying to make a buck.

“You’re going to meet someone within a month. He’s not ‘Mr. Right’, he’s not ‘Mr. Right Now’, but he’ll be good for you. He’ll be in your life for six months.”

I remember scoffing at his prediction as I handed him his fee. Since when have the “love predictions” come true for me? I asked him for some metaphysical direction, and instead he was pointing me to a man to solve everything. I remember writing down his words in my journal, more as something to pull up to amuse myself when the month was over and there was no “Mr. Right”. Little did I know that almost a week later I would find myself in a cab with my friend from Philadelphia, on our way to a bar in the West Village to meet up with her college friends.

*****

Psychic Joe’s prediction didn’t come to mind after the confession that night over calamari. In days, BP and I became that inseparable. We spent many evening sharing whispers and kisses in the cab on our way to various restaurants in NYC. Usually our evenings ended with us walking hand in hand along the East River Promenade, with Randall Island blinking at us at a distance, before he dropped me off to my apartment. It was autumn and the crisp air invigorated me, the changing leaves capturing my emotions. BP never spent the night; I wasn't ready to share myself with him and he gave me my space. Later that Halloween, we were invited to a couples party where we had to dress up like our favorite lovers. BP and I appropriately picked Annie Hall and Alvy Singer, characters who we would later muse reflected the essence of our short relationship.




I continued my therapy and BP was there to provide the support when therapy could not. For one of my classes, we would convene once a week to discuss our cases at our respective internships with our professor. As my fellow classmates would share their cases, we would all discuss ways in approaching the case. One evening, a student shared a case where her client confided that she had been sexually assaulted and sought therapy to cope. My eyes started to get moist as my classmate shared the case, sounding very familiar to my own story. Impulsively, I got up and left, unable to hear the case or the approaches recommended. When BP came to pick me up from school after my frantic phone call, I ran out and wrapped my arms around him, releasing my tears on his waiting shoulder. BP held me tight as we got into a cab and headed to his apartment, where he spent the evening wiping my eyes and feeding me dinner. Later that night, I fell asleep in his arms, feeling the warmth of safety around me after a long time. I felt alive.

I made BP the light of my dark world. A month into the relationship, I introduced him to my best friend JR and RJ in NYC after work in Chelsea. I remember sitting across from JR as he eyed BP over his matzo ball soup, trying to read his face. When BP got up to have a quick after dinner smoke, JR looked up at me and asked: "Is he treating you right? Does he make you happy?" When I answered with a nod, JR shrugged his hesitant shoulders. "I don't know sugar, he just doesn't fit right with you. But as long as he's treating you well, I'm happy." Although I was confused by his statement, it was much more important for me to get his blessing, after all he was the only "family" I had in NYC. Other friends from out of town, coming to visit NYC, also met him and had the same reaction: "there's something up with him" and "I don't know b, I never pictured you with guy like him". I ignored their comments, thinking that I know him better than anyone. His friends, on the other hand, appeared to like me and would joke around and call us the original "Beauty and the Geek", a comment we would, in private, laugh at since BP was the real beauty taking forever to get ready while I would be the geeky one reading as I waited for him.

One of those friends was AK, a friend of BP’s from Penn State, who had fallen on hard times. He was in debt and had recently got kicked out of his apartment in Jersey City. AK was trying to get his life back on track after losing his job and had began a job working at a car dealership in Manhattan. Three months into our relationship, BP offered his couch to AK until he found a place of his own either on the island or New Jersey. It was supposed to be two weeks. BP also wanted to cap his stay since AK was a “pothead” and he didn’t want to get wrapped up in that again. BP smoked out heavily during college and it died down when he attended graduate school. And considering his past abuse with alcohol, he did not want to be a part of that addiction again. Or so I thought.

It was two weeks that turned into three months.

*****

As winter gave way to spring, I noticed BP's behavior change gradually and he became more distant. BP was always someone that was particular about his appearance, ironed shirt and pants, hair combed. Before AK moved in, we would spend our mornings getting ready together, including me picking out his shirt for the day from his closet. Eventually, BP would wear whatever was on the floor, whether it was washed or not, and take a hit before work. He would begin his day with a hit and end it with a blunt, ignoring that I was by his side. One evening we found ourselves in Murry Hill to meet some of his friends and during the party, he called his "guy" to drop off his stash at the corner of 35th and Park Avenue for him to get high. Even on the morning of my birthday, he didn't want to celebrate with me instead choosing to spend the day in New Jersey smoking out. I ended up celebrating my 26th birthday with my best friend and his partner watching "Hotel Rwanda", wanting to also share the day with him, too. While he was my world, the weed was the top priority in his life. I kept quiet, not letting BP know how this was affecting me. I was afraid to lose him and be alone again.

*****

AK had also started to pick up on how his marijuana use was affecting our relationship. On the evening that "Melinda and Melinda" came out, BP, being a huge Woody Allen fan, bought tickets the first evening show. I was excited to have an evening out with BP since most of our evenings were spent in, eating take out while AK rolled the blunts and I just sat there. When I got to the apartment, BP was dressed, ready to go, standing by his television.

"You know what would be fun? Watching this movie stoned. AK, roll me a blunt."

"BP," I pleaded, "please just for one evening can you not smoke out? Please?"

I was sitting on the couch, and the coffee table between BP and myself contained their stash. AK walked in from the kitchen, obviously listening in to our conversation.

"Sorry BP, I smoked the last bit."

I looked up at AK, knowing full well that they had a full stash in their coffee table drawer which I could see and BP could not.

"Fine then! Sugar, let's go!"

As I put my jacket on, I nodded towards AK, silently thanking him for letting me have this one evening.

*****

When BP and I began dating, I had started becoming more involved with the desi community in Queens through my clinic. Nevertheless, I decided to spend my free time with BP, cutting myself off from a potential community of support and activism. I made BP my world. As he was smoking out, I was hoping for him to look over at me. I was searching for the BP from the beginning of our relationship, looking for that light. Instead I found BP sucking the life out of the relationship with every hit he took.

I was worried about him. While I still had the support of my therapist and my work to prevent me from regressing back into my living corpse state, BP had no support, aside from me. I brought up my concern to my clinical supervisor, a substance abuse counselor herself. Usually personal matters are only discussed in relation to the client that you are treating, however, in this case, I needed a professional perspective. According to research, while marijuana is not considered an addictive substance, but for some, depending on how they treat the drug, he or she can become dependent on the state that being high causes. I discussed BP in supervision as a case study, sharing with my supervisor the client's history, behavior pattern, and his relationships with others, mainly myself. In the end, she encouraged me to help BP seek treatment, and possibly a psychiatric evaluation, so that we could get to the bottom of his addiction.

I remember after the meeting walking to the subway station, reflecting on the time that BP and I had spent together. Those three months before AK moved in, when BP was taking care of me, were the best months I ever spent. It startled me to think that this whole time he may have been suffering from something else and me, being a therapist-in-training could not pick up on it. The three months since AK moved in were tough, with BP falling deeper into his addiction and I knew I had to do something, not so much for the relationship, but to help BP.

*****

BP and I met up for Thai food on the Upper East Side. On the way to restaurant, I rehearsed what I was going to say to him. When I sat across from him, I noticed that he needed a hit, considering I made him meet me right after work. I saw before me a man that had transformed from the night on the other side of town all those months ago. The attentive caring man had turned irritable and antsy with his hands tapping out the moments until he could get into a cab back to his apartment. I took another breath, preparing myself to make a promise to be there for him, much like he promised me.

"You're wrong Sugar, wrong! I don't have an addiction. I'm stressed, work is intense and smoking calms me down. You go to therapy and make stupid necklaces as a stress reliever and this is my stress reliever. If you don't like it, then we can stop this right now!"

BP got up and left. No one was there to wipe the tears from my eyes.

It had been six months and two weeks since Psychic Joe's prediction.

Happy One Year-Section 1

NOTE: I’ve been mulling over the past couple of days on whether I should post this or not due to the personal and painful content of it. I’m not an expert prose writer, but I felt compelled to write this after an interesting call last weekend and I was not planning on sharing it. I decided to go ahead and post it more as a part of my healing process on this anonymous forum than anything else. Also, a situation with a friend left a group of people I adore confused by my behavior, and maybe writing this can help explain it more for myself why this is a pattern in my life. Anyways, I tried to keep it short, but it turned into a much longer piece, so I’m breaking it up into parts and posting over a period of time, in between less personally intense posts.

Section 1

It was Oscar Sunday, on an unusually sunny morning in the Inner Sunset, ironically the foggiest part of SF. I had just gotten off the phone with my best friend in NYC after spending a half-hour discussing our predictions for the event (best dressed, not best movie). Afterwards, as I was tidying up my apartment, I hear Mozart’s Symphony No. 5, my ring tone, playing and ran to the phone. I picked it up to see my ex’s name flashed across the caller ID. Usually, I’m shocked when I get a call from him since he is one of those people who is not a fan of any “communication”. But he actually surprised me by returning my phone call from the night before when I tried reaching him while I was re-watching “Manhattan Murder Mystery”. I had called him at 11pm that Saturday night, forgetting that it was 2am in NYC.

“Hey Sugar, guess what? My One Year is coming up on March 9th. Who would have thought?”

One year sober, who would have thought? BP, the man that gave me so much, but took so much away, the man that made NYC so special for me, yet so disastrous, will be celebrating his one year.

And I’m proud of him.

****

I first met BP at the beginning of my second year in NYC in 2004 through a family friend who went to school with him at Penn State and wanted to introduce me to him. I remember first seeing him standing in the threshold of the bar, inhaling the last bits of his cigarette against the noisy August night of the West Village before he entered to join us. He was skinny (105 lbs to be exact) and was dressed in a white long-sleeved stripped shirt tucked into a pair of khakis. BP looked like a little boy wearing his father’s clothes. I was introduced to him and immediately was not attracted to him. He smoked, was a “corporate bastard” from Wall Street, and just didn’t fit the image of the artsy boys that tend to go for. I even got annoyed that he didn’t know how to use chop sticks and ended up giving him an impromptu lesson when the group ordered sushi and it came with no forks. Even though we were sitting next to each other, after the chop stick lesson, I didn’t talk to him for the rest of the evening, instead chatting with my friend to catch up.

The following evening, I was out with the same friend and we eventually ended up a club where BP happened to be with the group from the previous night. I wasn’t feeling the music at the club, me being more of a Brit-Pop sort of girl, so I sat at the edge of the dance floor, drinking my Bacardi and Coke to, hoping the buzz will make the music more bearable. BP wasn’t much of a dancer and sat with me as he sipped his club soda. We both began talking, me commenting about the music and he shared the “wild times” back at Penn State. I remember thinking “oh, he’s just someone to talk to for tonight” not realizing that the dancing group kept looking over to see if there was any chemistry between us. BP invited me out to the smokers' patio for a cigarette break and, even though I don’t smoke, I welcomed the opportunity for a new group of people to watch.

BP lit his cigarette and took a drag while I tried to look through the haze of smoke.

Then BP randomly asked me: So, what’s your sign?

Me: Huh? What is this, 1972?

BP: No really, what is it? Hey, I just wanna make conversation.

Me: Uh…Pisces.

BP: Oh, really? I know a couple of Pisces. You guys are some of the nicest people on earth and that’s why people walk all over you.

I gave him a nervous laugh, knowing that he was speaking the truth about us astrological fishes.

We spent the rest of the evening going in and out of the club, with him asking me questions about what got me interested in studying therapy, my teaching experience, being a Californian in NYC, again, trying to “make conversation”. Before the night let out, we exchanged numbers, thinking that for me that it would be another friend. In NYC, while I loved the anonymity, recently I had started feeling incredibly lonely in the sea of people. I was lucky to have my best friend from CA on the island, but with him in Harlem living with his boyfriend, and me living by myself in a tiny studio on the Upper East Side, we barely saw each other. BP lived around the corner from my school and he suggested that we grab dinner some time. At the time I was working three jobs and going to school, so having dinner with someone new seemed like a welcomed break from eating yet another slice of pizza as I poured over case studies, my evening ritual.

*****

A couple of weeks later, BP picked me up in front of school. It was a warm September night and I was waiting outside, standing under a street light, trying to read a book. I was in jeans and a t-shirt, with my curly hair wrapped in my usual bun, perfect attire to have dinner with a friend. I didn’t hear BP come up behind me and was startled when he tapped me on the shoulder. He laughed as he leaned down to pick my scared book off the ground and handed it to me. Through his giggles, he asked whether I was craving Mexican or Italian; apparently he made reservations at two restaurants, not knowing what I would like. I immediately got nervous since I never thought that this was a date, just dinner with a friend. But I decided to go along with it, after all, it had been a few months since I had a dinner date, plus I could, over a free meal (hey, I was a poor grad student) could kindly tell him that he just not my type.

I chose Mexican and we walked across the street to the restaurant. During the meal, I complained how the food wasn’t authentic (I am from CA, after all) but I was also enjoying the conversation we were having. BP was born and raised in Philadelphia where he was an only child in a Bengali family. He got into his Wall Street firm through a friend and enjoyed the feverish pace of the stock world and the lifestyle that came with it. I also learned that he had been arrested for a DUI five years ago, went to AA for a year, and had been sober since then. Only recently had he started having the occasional wine with his meal. With me getting my degree in counseling, I ignored his confession of drinking and was more interested in hearing more about his recovery process. What was it like to be in AA? Did you complete the 12 steps? How did your family react? All these so-called “shrink questions” that he answered with tremendous candor and it piqued my interest in him.

During dinner, he got a call from his boss, asking if he had left the office. I would later learn that his boss, and all his co-workers, were excited that he had made dinner plans with me, considering he hadn’t been on a date since he began working there a year before. His boss was afraid that he might have blown off dinner to do more work on a project. While that phone call confirmed with me that this was a date, I was strangely excited by the fact that someone wanted to have dinner with me, a bookish, somewhat quirky girl who had a secret of her own. .

As BP was walking with me along Broadway to the M79 bus stop after dinner, I kept on glancing at the little man next to me, surprised that I wanted to spend more time with him. A little bit had to do with the fact that for once I wasn’t spending a lonely night in the Big Apple, but that there was something intriguing about him in the way he carried himself. Here BP was a recovering alcoholic, making a new life for himself after going through a recovery process. I needed a taste of inspiration for the things I was dealing with.

As the weeks went on, BP and I found ourselves spending more time together. Another dinner here, a party in Jersey City there and we found each other getting closer to each other and it scared me. I never shared with him my secret, but it was obvious that I was in my own world when we were together. On one of those warm evenings, he took me to Hoboken to see the Manhattan skyline and there BP confessed, with the lights of the city illuminating behind him, that he liked me and wanted to pursue a relationship. Instead of being elated, I panicked. It wasn’t fair to him that in my state, someone should start a relationship with me. I was just too damaged that I felt that no new person, even BP, could support me with that, in spite of being lonely.






*****

Two months before I met BP, I was sexually assaulted by a stranger in the back of his car. As with many victims of sexual assault, I was traumatized, shaken. Not only did I lose faith in others, I lost faith in myself. I felt violated and became distant and hypersensitive. This, compounded with the fact that I was in NYC, far away from anyone I knew, made my suffering a very solitary experience. My best friend and his partner RJ were amazing and were there for me, but I needed more. I put myself in therapy to deal with the trauma, but therapy is only an hour and there were still 23 more hours in a day, 167 more hours till my next session, to still deal with. I don’t remember ever crying about what happened, not even in therapy, instead I became more withdrawn forming an invisible barrier around me. I thought of telling my mother, but decided against it, scared that her over-protective side would come out and she would make me move back home, not letting me out of her sight. I thought I needed to be stronger and threw myself into school and took on two more jobs so I could avoid reliving the event in my head. Also, I wanted to show the people who knew what happened that I was alright and I moved on from it. Outside, I knew I appeared fine to my classmates and professors, but inside I was falling apart. It was analogous to my apartment at the time, where there was a mess inside with items strewn on the floor, but I could just close the door, lock it, and no one would know. I even contemplated suicide, but after remembering what a friend’s parents went through after her own suicide a year before, I knew I could not put my parents through that sort of grief. I was a living corpse when I met BP and yet he saw something in me, a sparkle perhaps. I was exhausted from putting up a front. Even though I wanted something new, bringing someone new into my world while I was working through things just didn’t sit well with me.

I decided that I had to tell him before it got too far, before either one of us became attached. I invited him out for some midnight calamari at a restaurant on the Upper West Side, wanting to tell him everything. I picked up on the fact that he was a little bit nervous when he emerged out of the subway, especially since I pulled him out of bed to meet me so late. As we sat down, I took a couple of breaths, trying to prepare myself for the confession. After the third deep breath, I began to tell him what had happened to me, how I was coping, and why I could not invite anyone new into my dark world. I kept my eyes focused on the tea mug in front of me, letting it warm my clammy hands, causing a weird sensation. I never looked up at him as I told him more than my therapist knew, more than anyone knew about what happened that night. BP got every single painful detail. As I relived the event, my emotions becoming stronger, tears forming in my eyes, finally feeling something after many weeks of feeling numb.

I heard BP lean forward and felt one of his tiny hands around my shaking hands, while the other wiped the tears streaking down my cheek.

“I’ll be there for you.”

I felt drops of life seep back into me. Little did I know that I would come alive only to have it evaporate six months later...