Some Assembly Required

This post originally appeared on Slop Sandwich and is being republished with permission.

I didn't sleep the first night. My mind was moving a mile a minute, circling itself and the apartment in a way that felt very close to being newly born.

How did I get here? Why did this happen? Where can I go? When will it end?

But the most frustrating was:

Who am I going to be?

I would like to start off by saying I am good in a crisis with other people. I am great at reacting as long as I am not the one having the strongest reaction; when I was six, my friends' mothers called me Florence Nightingale because I was good at consoling my friends when they were hurt or upset. But when it comes to my own pain, almost nothing—and no one—can help. There is no way out but through the hard stuff: the grief, the mourning, the quiet afternoons spoiled by sudden tears. The feeling and the not-doing of it all was the worst part of my boyfriend's leaving. We had reached an agreement for a temporary stasis of our relationship: two weeks without contact and him sleeping on anyone else's couch but ours.

I was nearing the one-year anniversary of being diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and in a matter of hours, all of the nightmares my therapist had spent months preparing me for were coming true. I patiently searched all possible social media outlets for any sign of life from Matt as the hours waged on. Look at me, I'm seeing a photo of him at a bar after his show and I'm not throwing my computer on the floor or crying. Carlos will be so proud of me. I couldn't wait to tell him, but it'd have to wait until after my rent check cleared.

Excuse me—OUR rent check.

What if he leaves you? What if you wanted to leave him at some point? What would you do?

I didn't know the first time or the fourth time or the seventh time he brought it up and I certainly didn't know now. But Carlos (my therapist) would be pleased to know I'd handled the rapid deterioration of this partnership with a can-do attitude and a sense of humor.

Like when Matt said: I don't know where I see this relationship in six months.

And I responded: Nine months into our lease?

I laughed and he didn't even crack a smile. That's how I knew it was really over. He couldn't even joke about our relationship being over – that's how over it was. And it must have pained him to see me laugh through the pain, because it just proved an unspoken truth that permeated the foundation of our relationship:

I was funnier than he was. And he couldn't handle it. He could, however, handle the breakup. And I couldn't.

That night I didn't sleep but I thought about it.

So the first morning without him, at 5 AM, I strapped on some sneakers and ran 20 blocks to the river. And screamed at the top of my lungs for a half hour. I sobbed very loudly and no one stopped, which was great. My alarm went off and I walked calmly back home, vomited, and went to work. Living in large cities my entire life has taught me how to cry in public spaces.

It has also taught me that I am not special; this story is not unique in any way except for the details. It took 99 days for our relationship to fall apart once we moved in together. IKEA has a return policy of 90 days.

If we had been brave enough to cut the cord right away, I could've healed my heart on a tropical vacation. Or maybe an investment piece for my wardrobe, because nothing says "living well is the best revenge" like a "timeless" white leather jacket. Especially when you're dating someone whose parents pay his half of the rent. Instead, I spent ten days running around the city in tears, writing stand-up jokes like, "I'm glad he left before we had a pregnancy scare because I loved him too much to have his abortion." (I didn't say they were good jokes.)

My parents had me out of that apartment so fast it made me wonder if they knew this had been going to happen all along. In two hours, they disassembled five pieces of furniture that took me and Matt two months to put together. My mom spent two weeks on the phone with IKEA negotiating a store credit. "This is the closest anyone in this family's ever come to a divorce," she said. "Thank goodness we didn't tell your grandmother."

My grandmother, Maria, is 94. She and my grandfather were married for more than half a century. When my grandfather was dying of Alzheimer's, he used to call for "Patty" – both the name of his mistress and his favorite daughter. As a teen, my mother babysat for the former AND the latter. I come from a family where relationships do everything but end. They strain and buckle and collapse but nothing between a man and a woman has ever been legally dissolved by a Salamone. Whatever helped sustain my family's relationships – whether it was God or money or love – was not working for mine.

Despite the longevity and apparent happiness of familial marriage, my parents have never, ever pressured me to get married or have children. In fact, they're happy to call both institutions "vastly overrated." Parental pressure was rooted in areas like "self-reliance" and "fiscal responsibility." I was supposed to be independent and making moves towards becoming my own person; I was supposed to take responsibility for my own life.

Growing up, I ran towards normalcy and away from anything that made me different. I wanted life to be pretty basic and identifiable and predictable the way most other kids' lives were. (Or seemed on the surface.) I rejected the fact that I was special, even though most of my attempts at assimilation failed miserably from the start. I wanted to be one of the aloof jocks in my recreational sports leagues, but I bawled hysterically when my team lost the championship two years in a row. I wanted to design a shirt at a birthday party with puff paint and sequins, and I ended up ruining the texture of the shirt by using too much glue and paint and turning it into a monstrous swirl of cotton and glitter. I saw my friend get rejected for the lead in a play and I wrote a four-page essay to the director about how mistaken he had been.

As my mother would say, I have a heavy hand.

Experiencing that many emotions and opinions so intensely at a young age led to an eventual stoppage – I was rebuked, put down, discriminated against, and rejected dozens of times by the age of 16. All of those inspirational tales about teachers seeing the potential in a misfit student's ambition? They were all bullshit, as far as I was concerned.

I felt weary and I was tired of answering questions about myself. Being rejected for being yourself does not make it easy to believe in your own cause, and after a certain point, I began to wonder if everyone else was right. Maybe I was doing it wrong. I had so much passion and energy for my dreams and future, but I was stuck in the present. The present, where I was "annoying" and where the only people who saw anything remotely special about me were my parents. At sixteen, they were not to be trusted.

How could they be right when the rest of the world had gone out of their way to prove them wrong? If no one else saw anything remarkable in me except them, then it was because they had a home field advantage.

My mother has a few different philosophies, but a regular go-to has always been: "Most people suck."

Being myself was proving to be exhausting. Instead of pushing my parents for drums or guitar lessons (which were at the time too expensive), I got a boyfriend. And then another. And because of the rule of threes – one more, named Matt. In between boyfriends were affairs, hook-ups, crushes, one-night stands, emotional internet relationships – anything, really. Men, especially the men I was attracted to, were very easy to hide behind. They were all talented in their own way, and respected for it by our peers.

It is perhaps here I should mention that while my parents believed I was "special," they also dissuaded me from pursuing the activities that I thought made me so. They wanted me to be special in a safe way – in a way known to them. I was their first child, and it must be terrifying to watch someone you love pursue something you know nothing about. Or worse – something you know will lead to pain and heartbreak and rejection. I can only imagine that they thought they were doing me a favor by placing me on a more "traditional" path.

Much to their chagrin, if I had to take the traditional path I'd be taking it with someone else. Unfortunately for me, the men I was leading down this path had no desire to travel down it with me.

Each of these relationships were drawn and quartered in their own good time. Fate would intervene (I'd suggest we write something together!) and they realized I wasn't just a well-dressed groupie with her finances in order (they said no). Once again, I was "annoying" and I had dreams and passions that were as big as their own. I was usually too much for them, as I had been for dozens of people before.

I thought it would be safer to pursue my talents through them, but they were not interested in a joint artistic process. Any idea I had about disguising my own talents by using theirs was given a veiled dismissal when I approached them outright, or was sent to live in the vague, far-off future.

Of course there was one occasion where my artistic drive guided a joint project between me and a then-boyfriend. And it (hopefully) lies in ancient internet ashes, along with the idea that I might ever be a songwriter. Because of course the one pitch that would receive any follow-through would involve clarifying that I sang "yearning" and not "urinating" on a demo tape. Of course.

For all of the blame I can place on the men who left (TMWL), I have to say that after a certain point in every relationship, it was much easier to drown my own wants and desires in the Name of Love than actually pursue them. It was easy to give up, even when my own dreams of glory played on in the back of my mind. It was easy to be the girlfriend and to take care of anyone else but myself.

Why? I am smart and funny and terribly ambitious but afraid to fail, again. Dating a bunch of people who were frequently failing at their own dreams justified my decision not to pursue mine for a long time. There was the musician who couldn't get a band to stay together for longer than six months, the comedian who was genuinely terrible at improv, and the actor/writer who spent 40+ hours a week doing free shows in the basement of his theatre company. I watched all of them struggle and cry out of frustration when they bombed auditions and took rent checks from their parents.

After spending a summer watching Guy #2 repeatedly bomb in the basement of bars, I decided to sign up for an improv class at the Upright Citizens Brigade. My justification was simply that there was absolutely no way I could be any worse than this kid. The breakup had been so tumultuous and angry that I could see no better way to get back at him than by becoming better at the thing he loved the most – improvisational comedy. It just so happened that it had been a dream of mine to pursue a comedy career as well, and my dreams finally had a spark.

On my first day of class, I met Matt. We were friends and until seven months and three levels later, we were more. Almost as soon as we became a "Thing" he dropped off the comedy radar to concentrate on acting and writing – which was great for my comedy career. No distractions! No competition! I could have my career, he could have his, and together we'd help each other find success and happiness. Hooray!

And then I found myself doing less and less improv and going to more and more abstract theatre performances. I was proofreading his scripts and running lines with him and my comedy had, again, taken a backseat. After years of being afraid of my own art, it was easier to date the talent than be the talent.

Eighteen months later, we moved in together. The day of the move, Matt had a dress rehearsal for a play that was opening later that week and he wasn't able to help much. My parents drove in from Jersey and helped me lift boxes and boxes of my stuff – and his too. There is a level of shame I never hope to experience ever again when you realize the box that ripped open in your father's arms contained your boyfriend's underpants and comic books.

I was mortified and they knew it. But they put on a good face and listened to my ideas for paint options and how to get more light in the bathroom. The next week, I hopped a train to Jersey to meet them for an IKEA date. Matt was supposed to come but he ended up needing to be at the show earlier than expected.

My parents walked me through IKEA and helped me figure out which furniture pieces would go best in the space. They watched me pay $800 for a pink couch I loved ("The only thing I was told was not to get a pink couch. But they don't have orange! And look, it's kind of purple!") and for a massive dresser to house our clothing and a beautiful, definitely Swedish kitchen table with drawers and bright yellow chairs.

It was good furniture for a good life with someone I loved very much.

Weeks later, after I moved back home with my parents and teen sister, I was staring down a glass of Pinot Grigio that was colored with Cuarçao. "Your mother likes the color," is all my father said as he handed me a drink.

"I knew that he was not the one for you when he missed moving and he missed furniture shopping," my mom said.

"Ma, you know it's not like that – he had a rehearsal and a play he couldn–"

"NO. I don't care what he had," she banged her fist on the table. "He let you down. He led you on. He used you in the worst way possible. I hate him for what he did to you."

"I know."

"I want you to listen to me. You are better than this, okay? You are beautiful and smart and funny, and you deserve someone who's going to treat you that way."

"I know, Ma."

"No, you don't know! You don't know because you let him do this to you. And I hate that and I'm sorry. I'm sorry you're in so much pain. And I will do everything I can to fix this."

When you are broken and have been rejected for being yourself by someone you deeply love, any kind of emotional response in your favor will generally leave you in tears. My mother has given me that kind of love my whole life but it took me ten years to hear her.

I have a postcard my dad sent me when he was stuck abroad after 9/11 that reads:

Dear Jennifer,

I saw this lion in the library and it reminded me of you! I hope you will always have the courage to take the next step, and not just the safe one. I know you will!!!

Love,

Dad

It was those words I had in mind when I told Matt no more breaks. It was that lion I became when I screamed at him days after, when I called him a coward and a liar. Reserves of strength I had previously used to take care of others were now available to me, and I was strong everywhere. I was strong in my pain, and then in school, and then in a wedding where I was the only bridesmaid without a date, and then onstage.

My pain became my fuel, and I truly believed I was on the upswing until my birthday, which was a party filled with my friends and their partners. I cried all night at a friend's Harlem apartment.

The next day I took a train back home. My dad picked me up, our dog in tow. The act of opening the car door sent me down a tearful spiral, and I wept quietly with my sunglasses on. It was the same way I had months before, where I had disappeared into the general background commuting of the city.

But there was no hiding it from him.

"I thought you were getting better. You seemed to be doing so well, and I get worried about you when you get like this." (I am a full-body crier.)

"I know, I am. I really am. It was just a bad day, and it happened to be my birthday. That's all."

He gave me a big hug when we got home and let me cry on him. And the next day he referred me the "best Creedence Clearwater Revival song of all time, 'Someday Never Comes.'"

It's a song about losing someone for no good reason because most of the time, there is no good reason. The "why" is rarely more important than the act of leaving itself, and what matters next is what you do with the remains.

The day Matt and I decided to go on break was the last day of a major improv festival, the Del Close Marathon. Thousands of performers see more than 500 shows in a marathon of improvised comedy all around New York City over the course of 72 hours. My first crying spell on the subway happened on my way to stand in line for the last hours of shows.

I waited on line for three hours in the blazing hot sun. I spent two of those hours on the phone with my best friend analyzing the future of my relationship. I was sunburnt and sweaty; my phone was dead and I couldn't find any of my friends. My relationship was in shambles. But they let me in for two of the last shows: one of which was Adsit & You!, an interactive audience set where an audience volunteer performed with improv genius Scott Adsit.

As I crawled through the theatre towards a seat on the floor, they began to ask for volunteers and almost no one volunteered. Without thinking, my hand went up, and thirty seconds later I was shaking hands with Scott Adsit.

Four hours and thirty seconds after my relationship kicked the bucket, I did one of the best scenes of my life onstage with one of the most celebrated improvisers in the world. And even though my life was about to collapse, some primitive part of my brain knew exactly what I needed at that moment – and it wasn't an advice column, or therapy, or a song – it was to show the world how I could be without anything to fear.

I walked onstage with one thought in my head:

Fear no man.

I did not love myself more than these men until I left them. The love was in the leaving