When I’m away from you, I miss your touch
You’re the reason I believe in love
It’s been difficult for me to trust
And I’m afraid that I’ma fuck it up
Ain’t no way that I can leave you stranded
‘Cause you ain’t ever left me empty-handed
And you know that I know that I can’t live without you
So, baby, stay

I had an appointment with my psychiatrist yesterday, in our appointment we talked about balance in life and I had a moment where everything made sense. Let me give you some back story.

I go back to work the first week of April, after 9 long months of panic attacks and agoraphobia it’s finally time for me to get back to what I love. I’ll need her to sign off on my return to work, so we discussed schedule. I said for the first few weeks, I’ll work 3 days a week, and after that I’ll work 7 if they’ll let me. She was fine with three, and gave me a hard time about 7. “we’re finally starting to find some balance don’t lose touch with it now.”

She asked why I wanted to work 7 days a week, and until that moment I’d never known why, but I figured it out.

I found immense success in what I do at a very young age. Started as a barback at a great bar at 18, became a bartender at 19. Left there and went on to be lead bartender somewhere else at 20, and beverage director at 21. I was on tv a couple times, I was Mass restaurant association bartender of the year, I was in the herald, the globe. I was doing it. I got into a relationship 10 days before my 21st birthday. The first year and a half of that relationship was not my first priority in life, work was. I was making a name for myself, and making obnoxious money while doing it for my age. I was living the dream. As that relationship got more serious and I got a dog, things began to change. I was always trying to get out of work sooner, spend less days at work. I was working 6 days a week, usually 12 hours a day. I wanted to stop doing that so I could spend more time with my dog and this person.

As I slowly began to experience burnout from work, and a greater desire to spend time with my dog and partner, I started slacking at work, and ultimately got fired.

Getting fired is about the shittiest feeling there is, or one of them at least. I wasn’t worried about finding another job, my resume had only been growing, and I had plenty of friends in good places.

Unfortunately getting fired made me spiral a bit, leading to a summer of agoraphobia. This would be the first of two times I experienced it in that relationship. She hung tight and never gave up on me or stopped believing in me. Ultimately after some shitty months, I got a job working for a guy named Tom, Tom taught my brother how to bartend. I had always hoped to meet him and even before I did this guy was an idol of mine. Tom had me do my stage on a Friday night at Gustazo in porter square. It went great, and Tom and I immediately hit it off. Working for him was the happiest I’d ever been, he was teaching me so many values, not just for what we do for a living, but for how to be as a person in society. How to care about people and care for people. Tom is one of the smartest, and kindest guys I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. We had big plans, and then covid hit.

Of course when covid hit restaurants closed, no one knew when we’d open again or what to do in the mean time. During that time Tom had some family stuff going on and through what I consider to be a series of unfortunate events, Tom moved west, to California.

Some days I tell myself I’m gonna go meet him out there, other days I wish he’d come back here. Regardless of where, I miss working with him, and being able to learn from someone so good at what we do.

Back to the important parts of the story. So I found “balance” in life. I was working, but not a crazy amount, and able to spend time with my partner and dog, we even bought a house. Things were good.

Truth be told this whole time the workaholic in me was never pleased. I slowly found myself getting back to that place where I always wanted to be working.

So much so that I remember the exact moment I knew that between my panic attacks and my addiction to work and success, my then fiancé was done with out relationship. We had decided that even though we were getting married in December we’d wait until may to honeymoon, and we’d go to the Kentucky derby. One night we were sitting on the couch and she said “can we do a mini honeymoon, we’ll leave the night we get married and go to Portland Maine for a few days?”

My response in hindsight couldn’t have been worse. I said “I’ll see where I’m at with work when we get closer”

I didn’t see it then but that conversation was the end of our relationship. Despite the fact that we spend several months together after that conversation, things never felt the same.

When that relationship ended I became so tunnel vision on work and how I could work more. Bartend 6 days a week and consult for a restaurant was my answer. I was never home, never not busy.

I realize now that the few months leading to this episode of agoraphobia were me trying to right my wrongs.

As if I could work so hard and so much, and become so successful, at least I didn’t lose that relationship for nothing.

This is where you see the broken part of me. The part that has closed out love, and any chance of it happening, intentionally, to protect myself. It’s not to protect myself from getting hurt with love, it’s to protect myself from getting hurt with work.

In the bear Carmy has a quote where he says “no amount of good is worth how bad this feels”

That’s how I felt that day I got fired in 2018. Like however good that relationship was, it wasn’t worth how bad getting fired felt.

My psychiatrist asked me to promise not to completely close out the possibility of a balanced life, or a relationship in the future, she went as far as to ask me if I wanted a relationship in the future.

The relationship I was in for those 6 years was the only thing that made all the anxiety go away, it was the only thing that lifted the elephants foot off my chest, made the pressure feel less.

I want a relationship because I want someone to make the anxiety go away, but I want to be successful in hospitality more, and I’m not certain the two can exist together.

I do the same thing I told you that I never would
I told you I’d change, even when I knew I never could

Where the skies are gold not gray,

J.