When Will I Love Myself Enough to Shut Up?

A Sunday recovery roundup about old resentments and bad ambition.

I had a dangerous run of negativity this week, starting last Friday night when I initiated a pretty useless shit-talking session with a friend who still works in what's left of The Media Industry. Most of our discussion was (again) centered on an old Esquire profile that ran in early 2017, which I can let not bug me 364 days out of the year, but on that night, it did.

He worked there at the time, and I expressed my displeasure with it six years later, even though he nor anyone else within earshot asked for my opinion. By the end of the conversation, my forehead was sweating.

Now that I'd officially thrown a rock into the volcano, the pain from this carried into the next day when a sober writer I'd just met over email mentioned that he'd known some of my recovery background because he'd read the same Esquire story and inquired if I still lived in Florida. Uh-oh.

"I do not live in Florida and haven't for seven years. I'm in Los Angeles, was actually in LA at the time of that story as well.

And tbh I am very touchy about the Esquire piece--that is most definitely NOT my story. That was a gross betrayal by an author who was ill-equipped to handle my early recovery with the kindness and sensitivity it required. Resentments are killers, so I've worked very hard to let that go. I'm 90% there, maybe, but that's on good days."

"90% there" was my way of trying to assure this person that I was not a throbbing psycho, but the whole exchange felt off.