By Robbie Poteet
I am not okay. I haven’t been okay for a while now.
I feel like a cliche writing about this, especially when there are so many other things going on in the world, but this is my story and I want to talk about it.
I recently went through the worst relationship experience of my life. Beginning in true fairy tale fashion, one of my best-friends turned into a lover. One great day ended with him kissing me and sending an electric wave of euphoria throughout my body that I had never experienced. It was one of the most unique connections I’ve ever felt. I didn’t have any of my usual body insecurities, I didn’t feel need to put up any false fronts to impress him, and I could just be me. I went into this relationship without any guards to protect myself.
Forward to few weeks into my fairy tale and I began to unearth the skeletons that my prince charming had been hiding. Now, I know that is a juicy sentence that makes the ears perk up but the point of my writing this isn’t to bash my brutal ex-boothang, but to help you understand how I began to come undone. Anyone who follows my story knows that I haven’t stayed in one place long enough to make a solid home for myself. I haven’t been a part of something since I was in college and since moving to LA I have forged that sense of community that I have been longing for, that unfortunately we were both a part of. When I began to see signs of anger, alcoholism, and sex addiction in my partner, I was terrified to lose everything that I had wanted for so long.
I remember after one particularly rough Friday, I was incredibly sick but I had made it through my work day and all I wanted to do was go snuggle up in bed with my guy. When I finally got to bed I was met with aggressive sexual advances that I couldn’t reciprocate. This memory is so prominent in my head because it was the first time I betrayed myself to keep the peace. My lust filled lover had genuine anger in his eyes when he yelled me “I don’t usually have to work this hard!” He then revealed to me that he has taken a pill that amplifies your sex drive and that he was used to staying up all night on Fridays and fucking. Did I get out of his bed and tell him to go fuck himself? No. Did I get myself out of that situation and slam the door on my way out? No. What I did was lay their and cry myself to sleep in the dark.
This went on for about two more months and I didn’t say anything. What could I say? I was too ashamed to tell anyone. I could hear all of my friends being mortified that our beloved friend could act this way and even more shocked that I would put up with it.
This isn’t about him though. This is about me. Why didn’t I run?
I have always had a weird relationship with men and I’m no angel. Plenty of people would describe me as a man eater. I’ve toyed with many guys to appease my own ego and I’ve used men to get a spectrum of things, from paying for dinner to letting my use their yacht to throw a party. Terrible? Yes, but what the fuck did I know.
Over the past 6 months I’ve retreated into myself and I’ve taken a really hard look inward, which has included therapy, a lot of reading, being exposed and vulnerable (GROSS), and a real desire to understand and change. I never really learned what it meant to have a partner, let alone WANT one. Growing up, I lived with my father and he ran through women faster than George Clooney. I can’t tell you how many times I came home from school, was handed a bag and told that I could take whatever would fit inside. I’d wander off to my room and ponder which of my power rangers would accompany to wherever we were going. Mom was no role model either. When I did see my mother, she was always with a different man. I would start to like one, but the next thing I knew we were gathering up all of his stuff into black trash bags to throw out on the lawn and changing the locks to her house.
I didn’t see healthy relationships growing up. I thought the chaos of love was normal and I never saw the point. I would see people get married and slide into what I viewed it as a life of mediocrity: gaining weight, slowing down, and generally sinking into a stagnant (little did I know that is just what healthy consistency looked like) lifestyle.
That is incredibly hard for my to tell you for two reasons:
1) I don’t want to be pitied. I hate when I talk about my past and people give me those “pity eyes” or look at me like I’m wounded.
I am tough as fuck. I can endure some tough shit and bounce back: It’s hard to be afraid of fire when you’ve already danced in the flames. I’ve seen a lot of people destroyed by a lot less and never recover. My resiliency is one of my greatest strengths and I am forever thankful.
2) It doesn’t paint me in the best light.
Why do I want to share this? I think it’s important talk about! I wonder how many other people are in the same boat as I am: hiding deep wounds and living an inauthentic version of themselves. I want to be better. I want to DO better. I want to promote healing and positivity, because life is hard. We all have our baggage and trauma, but what you do with it is everything. I don’t want to continue to play with people to feel like I could find love if I wanted to. I want get out there in the heaps of people and sort through them to find my partner in crime!
I want to tackle my issues head on and learn from them. I don’t want too be so caught off guard by a genuine connection with someone that I throw myself to the wolves to try and make it work. I think Ru Paul says it best, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?”
For the first time, I think I understand the saying.
Loving another person isn’t giving them everything you have. Sometimes loving people is saying no. Sometimes loving someone is speaking up. Sometimes loving someone is speaking up and saying “your behavior is not okay and you need to self evaluate.” Not everyone can see themselves clearly and sometimes people need a hand to get out off whatever they’re going through. Now more than ever we should have a social responsibility to the people in our lives to help create awareness. Obviously, in a kind and respectful way - Delivery is everything. Most people I’ve dealt with are receptive.
I don’t know that you can do this unless you love yourself enough to know what you will and will not put up with. I think we need to have our own back to stand firm on how we will be treated or spoken to. We need to know create and hold our boundaries. Trust yourself because if something feels wrong, the odds are there is probably something wrong. You are a coherent being with enough life experience to know what is acceptable. All of our feelings are valid, and we need to understand ourselves enough to know why we feel certain ways. It’s a lot of work to be that level of strong with your sense of self, but why the hell wouldn’t we do it? I’m stuck with myself for the rest of my life. I want to be tight with my inner child.
Anyway, my recent experiences have pushed my to tear down some firm walls and now I’m feeling more like myself than I ever have. I am working towards not being afraid to put who I am out there for the world to see because I’m getting comfortable with me. I think I needed to go through this to start chasing some big dreams I have.
That excites me far more than showing people who I really am and I know I'm going to be okay.