I’m killing myself slowly.

It was around 8pm on a Saturday night in early March. I was in bed, watching my umpteenth rerun of “The Golden Girls” on Hulu.

That was when I noticed a missed phone call from One Medical, my ke. My iPhone was set to send all unrecognized calls to voice mail. Needless to say, this was one phone call I should have answered before the second ring.

Early Friday, before I made my commute to work, the one that feels like a living documentary? Yeah, that commute. I stopped by to see the phlebotomist at One Medical’s DTLA office as ordered by my physician. Nothing out of the ordinary, unless you factor in the day I slurred my words after a family lunch. (I don’t drink) How about the interview where it took an effort to get full sentences out while I was in Atlanta? (No one noticed that but me.)

It’s been nearly six months since I’d had my blood check for all those damn demons of mine. The results were predictably bad. Why else would the nurse practitioner call me on the Saturday night after my blood was drawn? No suspense here. What for? I’ve written about my stratospheric A1C and triglycerides readings before. After steady declines, it only took me a few months, but I’m back to a 13 reading (A1C) and over 1200 (triglycerides). After speaking with the nurse practitioner for a few minutes and reading the lab results, I reclined on my bed, took a deep breath, and said quietly:

“I’m killing myself.”

Was it intentional, this act of self-murder? I don’t know. What I do know is that all I can say more often than I care to admit is, “I don’t care.”

I thought after Dad’s passing that some magic window would open and I’d find myself on a new path. We’d spent so many years making sure he’d never feel like a “sick person” because of his Alzheimer’s, my siblings and I literally hit the Pause button to give him our undivided attention. That hasn’t been the case. Even my younger brother moving on and out of my apartment didn’t manifest itself into some giddy “Space Unicorn” moment.

No, I’ve opted to kill myself because I can’t handle the loneliness and anger that has me in a vice grip. I turn 53 this year, single, not caring to mingle, and determined to live out some “Leaving Las Vegas” agenda. I will literally eat myself to death. The truth is, though, I don’t know if I really want to die right now.

My family, extended and otherwise, is a shambles right now. We’re a microcosm of the world, never happy, always critical, and aggressive in terms of how we express our feelings. We eat. We criticize. We eat some more. We laugh for a bit. We eat a bit more. Someone gets hurts feelings. Someone leaves. Eat. Speak. Repeat. We are better is small groups, but it has to be a certain combination of temperaments. I can weather it just fine on some days, but most of the time I find I want to be left alone. That mindset has been the catalyst for some serious health issues.

I’ve felt broken for a long time, a total relic in this modern age of “Notice Me Now!” Flirting with pancreatitis is not romantic, neither are the signs that my body is no longer coping with inactivity are visible and painful. I’m in trouble, folks. I don’t think I’ll withstand another episode like the one 10 years ago where it felt as if I was in the throes of a heart attack. I want to send out a search party for my will to live and to care about life, myself, anything. It’s been gone so long, I don’t even know if I’d recognize it, but I know it exists. Will is what keeps us from falling into the gaping maw that appears so inviting, but is only out to destroy you.

I’ve been staring up at this mountain of issues, feelings, and tasks for so long. It’s all I have been able to do for years now. Wedged in between are this selfish rage, apathy, fear, and other wickedness. Sigh. I have seen a doctor. Meds are being replaced with other chemical life preservers. Anti-depressants are back. A visit to Overeater’s Anonymous is in the books. The search for the appropriate therapist is also in full motion.

I know how this may look and sound to some people. I can’t worry about it. More, I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. No one wants to look weak or vulnerable to the people they love. Yet, at what point do you be strong for the person who needs you the most? Yourself. At what point do you stand facing your image in a mirror and say “I love me?”

That’s what I intend to find out.

Filter for your thoughts?

In case you haven’t noticed, being in a reflective mood is a big part of who I am as a person.

I’ll pause for the rolling of your eyes, dear reader.

Yeah, I think too much. I think too much about stuff that is hardly ground shaking anymore. I, too, suffer from that illness of wanting to make myself seem so fucking interesting. So much effort has gone into curating a self that could be deemed “fabulous” or “fascinating” by others that I now question whether it was worth it. Losing Dad last month has allowed for a sense of clarity to take over. Revisiting all of our struggles together, the endless array of pendejadas I’d craft just to piss him off. And for what? He forgot them all due to his Alzheimer’s. However, what took over was something totally real and true. Each time he smiled, I knew we were in a good place. We laughed and lived out some of the best years of our lives together with respect. It will be a gift that will keep on giving.

These many years of trying on and shedding personas were exhausting, for me and everyone around me. The irony? Going back to my OG self now makes the most sense. Take out the chaos and “big feelings” and I have a nice rack of lamb to offer the world. That’s what brought me back to Dad. With him, I discovered that life doesn’t need an excess of adornment. It needs to be tended to with care and purpose. You nurture the best part of yourself and the people you love with sun and air, not artificial light, filters, and the prism of a stranger’s validation. Why it’s taken me so long to figure that out has more to do with what I thought I wanted to “see” in myself and the world.

Born a preemie, I guess I was determined not to fade into the background since day one. I had to see what lurked outside the safety of Mom’s womb! Haha. Once I started going to school, it became apparent that I had a voice and the power to be heard. Shyness be damned, the first person I made laugh in kindergarten was a revelation! I was aware of what made me different from the other kids. In the end, my early interests would dictate much of who I would be as an adult. It happened organically thanks to the people who remain my role models, at home, school, the library that was my second home. Then, I started to doubt my own singularity.

When I think about our mania to be noticed today by being considered an “influencer” or a “public figure” on social media, I can’t help but marvel over how it is also doing us such harm. It’s just a setting, for crying out loud. Creating a false persona took real skill in “my day” and we could not depend on a filter to cover the flaws. To bear witness to the elements of sameness projected by people all over the world today scares the shit out of me. We seem less inclined to break free from the pack to fervently embrace this culture of uniformity. Copycat beauty is not a celebration of individuality, which contradicts a generation’s determination to eschew the context of the past. Many parrot the importance of fluidity in their lives, but they swirl around the contained space of a very specific and packed fish tank.

This concept of curating an authentic life is also just another variation of “keeping up appearances.” And whoever coined the term, “adulting” should be ashamed. We live in an era that invents so many terms and slogans to validate confusion and insecurity. Most people can’t even commit to a simple meet and greet because of their lives being so “hectic.” Yet, they still want to be praised for doing the things you’re supposed to do as an adult! Argh. But yeah, planning and taking photos of yourself at brunch and Coachella will take it out of you. This doesn’t apply only to the millennials, either.

Sigh. I’m rambling here, I know. That I’ve grappled with the same insecurity of being ignored and feeling irrelevant for so long is one of my biggest failures. The trigger point from childhood, when I stopped letting my own true self exist for fear of being labeled “different,” cannot be allowed to be pulled. Opting to create an exaggerated self with the threads of what made me different wasn’t any better, either. Dad wasn’t always enamored of my colorful self, but he admired my voracious need to read, watch films, go to the theater, and articulate what I loved about what I was watching or reading. (Except “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” He tore a companion picture book in half and threw it in the trash.)

I digress.

Dad believed in the power of words and I have found comfort and solace in recognizing that part of him. I know I won’t fade into the background anytime soon. My will to speak and write is too strong. However, the point is to allow our words to count. Empowerment and courage will forever exist in words, even in a fish tank.

Having the courage and will to express myself is what will get me through this next chapter without him. Nostalgia has also proven a great source of empowerment, lessons that were buried only to resurface as I contemplate my own future. For example, when I was a kid, visiting the family in Tampico, the tíos thought it would be great to get me on a horse. I was about 4 or 5. Tío Paul was so proud to see me ride. Instead, he saw me fall off, which wasn’t unusual for me. Graceful athleticism was left out of my DNA stew.

I didn’t get back on that horse. I often wonder what life would have been like if I just got back in the saddle again.  No filter, either. It speaks volumes to me today. I don’t need a horse anymore, but I do know I won’t be staying down if I fall. I’ll just dust myself off and keep on moving forward as my singular self. Witnesses welcomed, but not required.

 

From the mind of an Hermana Coraje…

“I’m glad I cleaned the house today,” she thought in her best Lady Macbeth fashion. “Too many damn cobwebs. Out damn memories.”

She’d contemplated burning some sage but settled on removing old totems from the past as being enough. Finding the photos of “that other family” triggered this latest “limpiada,” a lesson taught by her mother.

“The best way to get rid of the past,” her Mamá Coraje once said, “is to believe it never happened at all.”

Rewriting history was a family skill so well-honed, even Orwell would blanch out of shame. For the Coraje women, lies were irradiated truths. Truths were best regarded as lies told by those who only wanted to destroy their gossamer veneer of perfection. The singular male Coraje — the son or brother  — seemed to lack the focus required. He was a man-boy with feet of clay, desperate to be liked and loved, lacking integrity and grit.

Adept at creating her own reality since youth, this particular Coraje sister didn’t even break a sweat at the effort anymore. Ignoring events, people, the color of her skin, her family’s lower-middle-class reality, it didn’t faze her in the least. She chose to dance on the jagged edge, to remain a beautiful liar en pointe. Yet, the years were now revealing their own subtle truths, manifested in her stick-thin figure and the frozen look of bitter disappointment on her face. Whatever beauty or character was erased now.

It was seeing a photo of her mother with her American-born cousins that triggered this bolt of divine inspiration as she finished cleaning. She’d send the found photos to their original owners. It would be easier to simply place them in the trash.

“La basura se junta,” Mamá Coraje would say about people who had lost their use to her.

Another pair of trembling hands would soon hold the plain manila envelope she’d carefully filled with photos covering several years from what was now a different lifetime. The note? Benign in its phrasing, but packing a wallop that would reverberate beyond several area codes: “I thought you could use these.” Its simplicity was almost too perfect! Minimum effort for maximum damage, this bread & butter note written with the same intent as a “Thank you” card or a grocery list.

Would she know that sending this package would elicit feelings of anger and rage? Would she know that emptying her house of what was once treasure would be deemed callous and heartless? That the question of “Who does this?” would be muttered via texts and phone calls and several lunchtime conversations? The frozen smiles captured in these wrinkled black & whites and torn color images belied something she would never allow herself to acknowledge: her own feelings of malignant envy.

As la Hermana Coraje transported the sealed envelope to the post office, she reflected on the scorched earth demeanor of the Corajes. It was a cold feeling, cold and lonely and terrifying in its power. Was this too much? Had she gone too far? But she caught herself before any rationality or humanity could take root. Gripping the steering wheel of her sensible Japanese car, a trace of a smile revealed itself as she accelerating on the gas.

“Sick, Tired, and Scared.”

“The most important thing I want to express to people is that I’m not cured. I could probably relapse in a minute. Who knows? It’s just a weird disease that sneaks up on you and all of a sudden you’re boozing at the bar, or whatever. And it doesn’t have to be because of you or pressure or this-or-that. It just can be.

The most important thing is that I didn’t want to set myself up for failure and be like, “Look at me!” I wanted to write the book that I needed when I was suffering. ” — Kristen Johnston, actor

I won’t even try to gloss it over with a layer of shiny wit, dear readers.

I am truly sick.

My diabetes is worse than ever. My cholesterol has hit a number that even scared the staff of my doctor’s medical team.

I’ve written about this before. All of my friends have heard the tale before. I had to admit to myself that I’ve been playing Russian Roulette with my health for the better part of a year. I know I went too far. I’ve known. My insatiable thirst for sugary drinks? My getting up more than three times to urinate during a given night, having to witness a small mountain of foam in the toilet each time? The numbness on the tip of my right-hand thumb, which mirrors the nerve damage I have on my right pinkie toe? All signs of diabetes left unchecked.

Given my unpredictable mood of late, I was literally given a “time out” by my boss. I was given a day off. Another red flag, but one that motivated me to sit down for blood work at One Medical. It was time to do something. Anything. It was months overdue. I was told by the phlebotomist that I’d get my results in about a week or so.

I received this email 24 hours later.

I’d just visited my shrink when I received Dina’s note. After the first two reads, all I could see was the words “Blindness,” “Kidney Failure,” “Heart Attacks” and “Strokes.” I felt nothing as I sat in my car in that parking lot off Wilshire Blvd. I turned the ignition, put the car in reverse, drove off the lot… and went straight to 7-11 to buy a Super Big Gulp filled with Fuze Raspberry Iced Tea for the trip home.

A new shade of anger has set in. Anger that I am in this square. Again. I am angry at myself. Again. I am sick. Sick, tired, and scared. It sounds like an ambulance chasing law firm. The office of Sick, Tired and, Scared. I can only imagine their rates.

Alan asked me earlier last week if I was looking at death as a means of avoiding dealing with a few situations in my personal life. Of course, I said, “No.” But as I write this diary entry now, I realize, some truth exists to the question he posed. Yes, I would rather be dead than have to deal with what is happening in my life at the moment. I don’t know this person I’ve become. I know the behaviors very well, but not the individual. When did fear and anxiety become my defining characteristics? How did I let myself become so afraid that I’ve immobilized myself?

When I began my career in the film industry, if doors were closed in front of me, I’d either knock them down or find another way in. I don’t do that anymore. This is beyond complacency. What I feel is a form of terror. I’d prefer leading myself to a stroke, heart attack or worse than to deal with a crisis point. That is suicide.

Friends of mine have lost loved ones this year to health issues that we are able to control. It isn’t just a question of age. We know eating better, taking a bit of exercise, and thinking healthy are the sure-fire ways to live a healthier life. Genetics only account for a portion of the reason for illnesses like diabetes and heart disease. We can get BETTER. But it takes focus and control, two things that people like me, who live with an addiction to poor food choices and insolence, struggle to engage.

This anxiety, which has only been amplified thanks to the Trumpist Age, cannot swallow me whole. I haven’t felt so alone as I do right now, even if I do live in a crowd. Taking solace in knowing just how MANY people are desperate at this moment isn’t enough anymore. But, I do know who I can trust with these feelings, even if I’ve worn out my welcome with this story. I dig my heels into the ground the minute most people offer me advice to “get better” or “smile” or “stop reading the news.” If you knew how much I love shoes, such behavior has no place in my adult life anymore. I’m not a child and being stroppy about anything in this life is beyond idiotic.

This self-destruction must end in a way that doesn’t require my mortality. I need to get my shit together. I need to start thinking healthy again. I need to at least LIKE myself again. Otherwise, this diary will live on as an obituary or a cautionary tale. Take your pick.

I will be seeing my physician this week to review the lab results and put together a medical strategy that will play a role in getting my numbers to safer levels. I am tracking my food intake on the Weight Watchers app. I am being proactive. This doesn’t resolve the bigger issue that is a key reason why I’ve lost control, though. I’ll begin with this first truth, this first salvo in positive thinking:

It isn’t betrayal, my wanting to tell the people close to me, that I want to change my life before this situation kills me.

Act II

Being a child of the 80s, the message of having it all seemed so easy to process. You went to school. You received a degree. You landed that dream job. Life was set. Easy peasy. Right?

Sort of?

I went to three schools, no degree. I did land a dream job, several. Life has been rather complicated thanks to my lack of financial restraint and other demons I have yet to truly conquer. But I’m trying, dammit. I’m trying.

I made a comment to my boss about making it only to “the middle.” Of course, he was annoyed that I am inferring that all of my hard work as a producer since 1999 only carried me as far as his company. That’s not why I meant. Not in the least. I’ve never felt more creative or expressed myself as well as I do as an interviewer these days. Hell, I tend to get a hug after every interview these days. Even from the men.

So what the fuck? Why do I feel like the sky is falling every damn day?

I’m single. Who isn’t?

I’m fat. Who isn’t?

My dad is dying.

Is it too late to change careers? Am I lying to myself thinking I can set up shop at the Vogue offices of London or Mexico City?

Can I go back to school and finish that damned degree once and for all?

My dad is dying.

And no one in my family has been able to think about life after Dad yet. Not even me, but the task is something I am grappling with now. I have questions, too. Is it going to feel like a house of bricks crashing all over us? Will it be followed by a sense of relief? Will it be followed by the sound of siblings running to the four corners of the world? Will we finally be able to be civil with each other and not let our toxicity spoil the soup? Is it all too late for that to happen?

I hear their not so hidden anger in the constant stream of critiques and judgments that dominate our dinner table. I sit and marvel these days, thinking, “These are the people that have my back?” Still, how can we shield ourselves from any sort of attacks when most are happening from within our own house? Dad wouldn’t want to see us this way. Mom doesn’t like it either, but she’s ground zero at times.

Our entire narrative has been penned with our Dad as the central figure. We do our duty, giving Mom a much-needed break where we can. Yet, how is it possible that I feel guilty for not wanting to be around any of them, that I am kind of hanging on to a thread of sanity right now. I should go back into therapy, something to diffuse the atom bomb that I carry in my brain right now. I am eating to stay silent, but I feel my body is in full revolt right now. It is literally slowing down. Every move, every reaction, it’s life in forced perspective.

And that’s not supposed to be the Mexican way. Oh no, we’re supposed to that warm, united front of good humor and great food. Allow me to dispel that concept. It is total BULLSHIT. You had to be that group when the family lived in the hacienda, where great swaths of land dividing us from other families and communities. You know what makes the Mexican family survive? A lot of us drink and eat… to forget the lives we can’t seem to leave. While it feels great to see that sentence, yes, it is followed by a strong wave of guilt.

I think about putting such distance between me and my LA life a lot now. It seems like I want to pioneer a life that doesn’t require facing the past or a present that only makes me wince.

So, what’s going to be the narrative of my Act II? It starts when the lead character, Me, reaches out for help. That’s what I am doing, reaching out for help and guidance. I can’t do this alone. No one can. The time does arrive when you have to release the side of yourself that stops you from harming yourself and others in the wake of the blast of an emotional bomb.

It’s here.

 

A Report On A Few Days in Springtime

The woman crossing Atlantic Blvd. on the cusp of East L.A. smoking a cigarette. Did I mention she was pregnant?

The sounds of Dad shuffling across the living room to get a good seat and listen to the family chisme being dished out in big, heaping soundbites.  He’d call this “the Beautiful Noise” in life B.A. (Before Alzheimer’s).

Nancy starring as the G’rilla from Manila at the BBQ rig for our last-minute family brunch.

Neto acting like he had Dengue Fever, but oh-so awake and eager to contribute to the chisme and chatter on such topics as “Why the new Roseanne series is ‘relevant’ or a ‘piece of shit.'”

Buying a foulard at the Versace boutique in the Design District in a bid to honor the great Gianni while having the clerk whisper to me that he is also an actor and model.

Being asked at Estefan Kitchen in Miami if I had a reservation for a late lunch even though entire place was nearly empty.

Discovering after interviewing great Nicky Jam that we have a lot more in common, like our battles with being members of the clean plate club.

Reuniting with Gin-Gin and getting ridiculous at Versailles in Little Havana over plates lechon and picking up where we left off, the true mark of a touchstone friend and savior.

Meeting two teen girls from NJ at LAX before our delayed VA flight to NYC and chatting like we were BFF’s while being surrounded by soap opera legends from GH heading to NJ for a fantasy weekend. It was no BFD for the girls yet it was for their moms as they texted them with pics, OMG!

Watching a sumptuous revival of My Fair Lady at Lincoln Center, feeling emotional at listening to this glorious score by Lerner & Lowe, thinking how Dad saw the original production with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews during his life as a young man in the U.S. and understanding why he loves theater as much as me.

Sitting watching Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, desperately trying to suppress the emotion swells as Harry and his son Albus fought their way to understand each other, just like how I fought with my Dad.

Sharing some of the most important parts of my life with Nan in NYC, hanging with Karen and Stevie and hearing her effortlessly become one of this group storied group of friends who mean the world to me.

Powering through sleep deprivation and jet lag and failed not to “fag out” before interviewing several of my screen heroines on a Sunday afternoon in Hollywood, especially the wonderful Candice Bergen.

Even as life deals you some difficult moments, you have to stop and look around you to acknowledge the wonderful that still occurs. And that’s good enough in a world that is all about the hustle and flow.

Be good enough. And laugh when you can, dammit.

Escape

I wanna fly like an eagle
To the sea
Fly like an eagle
Let my spirit carry me
I want to fly like an eagle
‘Till I’m free
Oh, Lord, through the revolution

— Lyrics from “Fly Like an Eagle” by Steve Miller Band

The buzz of optimism that started out my year is morphing into something closer to pessimism and sadness. It isn’t as dark a place as 2016 or 2017, where I was systematically killing myself with food and rage. What I feel now is different as I do want to embrace the beauty and goodness that is still very much a part of the world. But I want to take my leave, to escape to a space that is nurturing and not so damn empty and cold.

I’ve written about that sinkhole that is my solitude at times. It widens and closes up in an instant, usually at my command. It can let it edge me to the brink of being swallowed up whole, like a sleepy Florida suburb. Yet, somehow, I always manage to move far enough from its reach in the nick of time. Perhaps it is my will to witness the good that is still possible, of never losing the hope that things are never as bad as they seem.

Then something like this happens:

 

From cunt attitude…

… to fat loser

… to fat bitch.

Mind you, I did laugh at the exchange pictured above as I was in the middle of a pedicure. Backstory: I rejected someone I met on the dating app Chappy because the texting went from benign to odd and ultimately profane when I began to feel a lack of compatibility. In the end, this individual lost the lid to his cookie jar of insanity, going from zero to “cunt attitude,” “fucking asshole,” and “fat bitch” in a matter of minutes. I blocked him and continued to read my news feed of the day.

As I reflect on this moment, I don’t seem to feel anything, just “Oh, well. That’s gay dating in L.A. for you!” Many of my gay brethren have this story and more to tell. Yet, I can’t help but feel that my time in Los Angeles is coming to a close. The city reminds a lot of New York in the 1980s when being rich or poor were the only way to properly have “The Experience.” It feels like Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles has abandoned her mission and is only catering to the young and beautiful and desperate to be noticed and in the “know.” Wasn’t that me 25 years ago? Did I mature my way out of “The Experience?”

Maybe.

I think of escape now as a means of taking back the adventurous spirit that was so much a part of my youth. I used to dream big, but now I’ve downsized said dreams into what makes sense in my life today at 50. I used to want to run away from what troubled me. It didn’t work. As we all know our troubles will follow you until they’re reconciled and purged from your self.

Some of my on demons have been banished, but not all.  What dominates my mind now is the reality I won’t have the chance to engage in another long-term relationship. It’s been eight years since I broke up with my last significant other. Despite some interesting yet unsatisfying interludes, a new fella just hasn’t made his appearance yet. Some relationships I sabotaged myself, but it’s been quiet these last few years. And, yes, it is possible he may not show up at all. Would that be the end of the world? I don’t know anymore since the era of polyamorous and open relationships has gained striking momentum and acceptance within the gay male community. My own rigid thinking on this reality is starting to waver a bit. As much as I am not a fan of the “cake and eat it” lifestyle, what other recourse do we have? The man waiting room now feels like the one from the end of “Beetlejuice.” Will my options improve elsewhere? London? Mexico City? Sheboygan? Albuquerque? Maybe? Probably?

Time does feel a wee bit different to me now. Its speed is faster than FloJo at her peak, man.  And, I spend so much time looking back, I’m always crashing into things that could have been avoided in the first place. Looking ahead, I really just want to accomplish one more good dream. I don’t need to change the world, but I do want to add one good thing before it’s truly over.

Escape isn’t always about moving to a new destination. It can also mean to leave the space you’re emotionally inhabiting, too. Best part? The ticket is free.

When I’m feeling weak
And my pain walks down a one-way street
I look above
And I know I’ll always be blessed with love
And as the feeling grows
She breathes flesh to my bones
And when love is dead
I’m loving angels instead

From “Angels” by Robbie Williams