When There's No Adult In The Room

getting a Real Job, when two recovering addicts find each other, the fine line between fucking shit up and fucking over yourself

me at April’s @gayshamecomedy- come to our pride show 6/15 at Union Hall in BK! photo by JT Anderson.

HIIIIII! first of all to subscribers: I so appreciate you being here and i am SO SORRY I haven’t posted for a little over a month somehow! the reasons behind my radio silence are twofold; one: when I first joined substack I rapidly became hyperfixated on it in that classic adhd way. So for a brief but delightful period of time, posting was easy! I couldn’t wait to post; in fact, sometimes it was hard to wait what felt like a reasonable time in between posts! BUT- in a pattern I’m sure some of you are familiar with- once the hyperfixation settled, my usual avoidance impulses TOOK THE FUCK OVER. but if it helps to know, even though I haven’t been posting, it doesn’t mean I do not care. Trust that I have spent WAY MORE TIME agonizing and punishing myself over not posting than it would have taken me to continue to be posting.

But, as I said there’s also a number two. I have truly been super super busy lately because I started a new freelance gig ( running the @whenshappyhr IG account if anyone wants to follow,) but also I’ve been super consumed with applying and then interviewing for Real Jobs. like the kind with benefits, where they want to know where you are every day and you have to tell someone if you’re sick and there are things like an “employee handbook” and “company-wide holidays.”

i know this world is normal and standard to many, but for me it has been weird and scary to be applying to these Real Jobs. I feel very mixed about the whole thing. you see, I’ve worked for myself for over ten years and there are so many things I love love LOVE about that, but lately after MANY years of unwillingness to even CONSIDER giving it up- unless it’s for something I would clearly want to give it up for, like being staffed on a tv show, duh- I’ve taken a turn. I’ve been wondering if my love and fierce commitment to owning my own time and doing my own damn thing is actually causing and creating more stress in my life than reward.

In an interview for a fancy tech job a few weeks ago, I was asked why i was applying- what was the appeal for me of this particular job? Having been doing my own thing for years, having never before worked in a corporate setting; why this, why now? After stating all the obvious reasons why This Job appeared to of course be the one magical, mythical, perfectly aligned job for me, I sussed out the vibe and also threw out there some things I wouldn’t normally say: my husband and i are both self-employed writers and small biz owners, we have two kids now and live in new york city and it’s maybe not possible for us to stay here if something doesn’t change, and recently following an extensive and unprecedentedly bad period of financial stress in our family, I arrived in moment of new recognition like….wait. fuck! there’s kinda no adult in the room here.

The thing is, there’s really not, not in those traditional ways you often see “adulthood” performed by friends from middle school whose lives you only spy on Facebook. Neither of us has a 9-5. Neither of us currently has employer-based healthcare. (sometimes we do via the Writer’s Guild, but not right now because unfortunately you need to make a certain amount of income as a tv/film writer per time period to keep it.) Neither of us knows what a 401k is, and even though we do indeed have the aforementioned two children, we have not yet written a will (although we do regularly talk about how we need to write a will, but clearly these conversations would not be legally significant in the event of our unexpected deaths.) Neither of us drink enough water or exercise, neither of us has ever had a “yearly skin screening,” neither of us has PTO- if we don’t work, we don’t get paid, which has admittedly led to some very questionable choices, such as me remotely seeing clients for therapy when I am absolutely, disgustingly sick with Covid. i know, i know, that’s terrible, I KNOW.

When I speak about my marriage and I say there’s no adult in the room, beyond these career elements, what I also mean is that my husband Basil and I are both long-time ex-smokers, and when we’re suddenly confronted by a Potential Cigarette on an especially warm summer night, it is highly likely that one of us will look at the other, eyes gleaming wickedly and exuding a wordless dare: should we be bad and have a cigarette? Should we? Even though we are both over 40 and know better and are addicts and have children and would like to live long, meaningful lives? And it is all but guaranteed that the other person’s eyes will join the askers in their wicked gleam, screaming ABSOLUTELY YES, or duh, or i was just going to say the same thing, god I fuckin love you.

When i say there’s no adult in the room in our relationship, that’s what I mean. Neither of us is the person in that moment who says aw babe, obviously I want one too, but we shouldn’t. Historically when money is tight (although to our credit we have recently become sooooo much better about this) if one of us is to express desire for pizza, the other will immediately affirm and encourage the irresponsible procurement of pizza.

I love this about us, actually. Sometimes i wonder what it would be like if my husband was a different kind of way, easily pragmatic and disciplined and practical in a way that I am not. Occasionally I imagine what life would be like married to that other kind of person, a person who’s nature it was to curtail my devilish impulses and help me say a mature and pragmatic NO, rather than a youthful and rebellious HELL YES. sometimes i wish he was that person, just for a second, and sometimes I wonder if he wishes the same about me. But I know in my gut that deep down, that would never work. Definitely not for me, because I would NEVER have married that person. When someone tells me to be good, it makes me want to be so fucking bad. I have a real adolescent streak in that way, and I think so does he.

It makes sense. We’re both addicts and alcoholics, people who notoriously don’t like being told what to do. We also both have super long-term sobriety- me 14 years and him something crazy like 21. (He was a tiny baby when he got sober, and sometimes my addict brain reflects on this and literally thinks, poor guy, he didn’t get very much time to enjoy drinking, as insane as that is. ) But it’s common that even when you remove the drugs and alcohol, you’re left with a lifeling case of the constitutional fuck-its. maybe especially when you remove drinking, remove smoking, remove having sex with a ton of random people that are very hot but very very bad for you, it’s like….we gotta still be bad somehow. right? but what if that badness- expressed through shittiness with money- actually makes you feel so much more stressed, so shitty about yourself, creates so much more anxiety than it does pleasure? are there ways to be bad that don’t actually hurt you? or are the things that are bad so fun and electrifying because they hurt you?

i used to think this sort of constitutional, fundamental drive to fuck shit up meant we were forever fucked, like as people. but lately, as we’ve finally been making some small but meaningful changes to try to turn our finances around, i remembered that what has always worked for me in creating meaningful change is actually locating the desire within myself. if i’m doing it for you, or for capitalism, for my parents, for my kids even sometimes- i feel hot with rage. If i can find the part of me that wants to make the change because i know it is right FOR ME, that changes my experience of it completely. the lie that I’ve sometimes told myself in the past is that that internal, self-actualizing desire simply isn’t there, but it totally is.

the WORST part of my life pre-getting sober- the thing i reflect on the most and feel sooooo grateful to be free from- is how I used to feel looking in the mirror. Even a quick peek would evoke a certain shame and embarrassment, deeply assaulted by my knowing that how i was living was garbage , and knowing that i was the only person responsible for keeping that going. what finally got me to get sober and stay sober wasn’t a traditional rock bottom moment- it was more what we in the 12-step life sometimes call an emotional rock bottom. i just couldn’t stand to feel that way looking in the mirror anymore.

anyway…there is some kind of connection i’m circling right now between my experience finding the willingness to get sober many years ago, and my recent, newfound willingness to try to make some different, responsible financial choices. i mean there’s the literal fire under my ass that we need to cover our life expenses or we would have to leave new york city- and that helps- but i think it’s also that i don’t want to look at myself in the mirror anymore and feel that rush of shame. shame is so powerful and so often we feel it and don’t deserve to- but in my experience there are times when its sudden presence is so useful. it pops up, coating me in its thick, sickening heaviness, showing me that something isn’t right.

this is a very scattered, end-of-day, ADHD-meds-worn-off kinda post. (I warned you that some of these would be literary and some would have more diaryish/early aughts Live Journal vibes and I MEANT IT!)

i’m actually going to be starting one of these fancy adult Real Jobs extremely soon. for a short time only, but I’m curious to see what it will be like. and if after the contract is done, rather than look for another if i go back to choosing my “freedom,” i’d like to know that it’s because i’m really choosing it and think it is the best, healthiest choice for me, and not just because the tiny teenager inside of me wants to fuck shit up.

i don’t have a neat bow to tie here, no real landing place and my brain feels like scrambled eggs. but i’m glad to be back and i’m sure I’ll have an update for you from my new grown-up life very soon. pray for me that no one says they have “a case of the mondays,” it which case FORGET EVERYTHING I’VE SAID, i’d need to quit immediately.

xoxoxoxoox ELY