Dear Reader, Pay Attention and Laugh More: Opal the OG Therapist Quits to Become a Beekeeper, I Want to Be Alone, Loving Without Attachment, How to Be Sexy, and A Quick Pause in the Tape

PSA: If you are a new reader, and you would like to get the most out of this Art Project/First Book, please start with this post, read_me: How to Read My Substack and Get the Most Out of This Free Book: The Four C’s: COVID, the Cartel, Conspiracy Theories, and Cryptocurrency.

Dear Reader,

I promised to keep this as 1:1 as possible. Until there’s a chip in my skull, this is as close as we get—but yes, I did say I would surrender.

I need to interrupt the book cadence for a minute to breathe. Two reasons.

First: I hate leaving threads hanging. I’ve teased Opal (see: Opal, a Blanket, and My First Real Therapy Session) and the handoff to Rose. It’s been gnawing at me. On my way home from the office this week, it slid into the edge of my mind: Opal deserves a farewell. She and I had a blast. Honestly, she started my healing.

So that story is yours today. Happy Friday.

Second: my last post dug deep into memories I’d never accessed. As I stitch the Four C’s, I see it clearly: the main characters were haunted. It’s made me hesitate before reaching out to some critical characters for interviews. Am I triggering something here I’m not ready for? Am I disturbing their well-earned peace?

Don’t worry, I will not abandon this project—I just need to build myself into a big enough container to carry it. Strategy takes time, and I don’t want to rush this.

We in the Four C’s were all blindly running into spirals the main character gladly shepherded us through. To give us grace, it was during 2020 lockdowns and riots. The world was anxious, depressed, unmoored.

I see now I was running from the pain about Wulf and me. And myself, too.

I escaped into work, video games, studying tech, and first-time dating. Nothing serious came of it. I was so avoidant, I never even went on a second date the majority of the time. Wulf processed everything upfront, while I didn’t.

Trusted people weighed in on my last post. One said it was hot and heavy. Homeboi said it was a lot to process. Others loved the thrill. All acceptable realities. That rapid-fire passion is what happens when I write 1:1—the way my memories jump between those little dividing lines? That’s literally how my brain files them. I’d always wondered as I read books: What was the first draft like, before the editor and the world told them what to say, and who to be?

And even at 19 minutes of reading time, that post barely scratched the surface. Fortunately, I only promised you the snippets; the prelude, not the actual memoir. When I stitch that beast, it won’t be forgiving. It will take years.

It will demand I sit in each pang, silence, and fragile moment. It will remind me we take everything for granted. It will also honor the beauty of survival strategies: how they bury pain until you’re finally equipped to feel it. The body is truly miraculous, isn’t it?

Conclusion for today: I need to sit with the Wulf chapter a little longer. I’m close. I just realized how much love and respect we had—and I didn’t know it then. Not until I lived through a second divorce.

Snakes grip and tighten as they trust you. If they feel safe with you, they may never let go.

My second marriage? Not the same species. A rushed, whirlwind projection. We placed each other on pedestals and worshiped what we needed most. We were tired. We needed escape. We thought we met because we were soulmates, but we only met on the same pain frequency. We did not love ourselves; we only knew how to achieve and perform. When we couldn’t meet the fantasies we invented, we punished each other with the skills we’d already mastered.

Wulf and I didn’t do that. I could sit here today and try to re-write the story over and over, but I won’t. There were ugly parts of it, for sure—and we were ultimately not right for each other, but the love was heart-breakingly real.

I believe you don’t know if you love each other until you face the moment you potentially have to part. It’s easy to love when you’re getting something. Afterward is the test.

Wulf told me to keep writing (see: Marriage 1 Bonus Chapter) even if I called him a groomer, a pedophile, an abuser or the worst thing imaginable, if it set me free. If that was my truth, he would stand by me, proudly (and he’d extort me for money if I ever got famous, ha). That’s love.

I stood by him when he had nothing, when his health cratered, when even his teeth checked out (I recently dreamt of the time I held his hand in the dentist’s office as they pulled the last of his back teeth out), when he dwindled to bones…120 pounds at over six feet—while he poured poison into himself. That’s love. Incorrectly done, and enabling. But it was the only love I knew how to give at that time.

Sometimes the deepest love doesn’t last forever. It makes you become something greater than you were. I won’t rush past that to force the next chapter. I won’t force a daily deliverable.

I admit now: This project demands something of me that I want to rise with serious intent to. It’s demanding patience, deliberation, and a true test of my emotional capacity.

Artists know the feeling: it overwhelms. You marinate, then cook. Time suspends.

It’s love that transcends attachment and possession. I picture Wulf spending Christmas with his new partner this year—recent, but real. It makes me happy. For years I feared he’d end up alone. While I was with company, I gave him secret phone calls wishing him well, only to hear him “just fine” sitting with our two dogs and cat, watching TV. “Just another day”, he’d say. And I’d wipe away tears in the bathroom, and go out to meet my friends, family or whomever my partner was that given year.

Imagining someone else caring for him the way I did brings me comfort. Imagining her bringing him some hot chocolate and putting on a movie makes me tear with joy.

As for me?

I want to be alone. For the first time in my life, I feel safe in my body, and my life feels peaceful. Please, don’t get me wrong—I’m not going back to being lone “aliferous” wolf. The beautiful friendships and community I have built have allowed me to heal, and I need people: My Lotus Girls, Brilliant Coworkers, Divorced Chicago Boys, PTSD mates, Creatives, they all keep me grounded.

But in terms of romance, maybe someday, but not today.

I’m not The Last Romantic pining for it. I’m retiring Lover-Girl, and leaving her in the past. I’m The Last Romantic falling madly in love with life itself, and all its little intricacies.

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And now: Opal, and the Best Medicine of All, Humor:

What I loved about Opal is that she let me be funny in therapy. Other therapists labeled the jokes a coping mechanism.

Did I fend off bullies with humor?

Did I crack jokes to diffuse family tension?

Was I dodging feelings with puns?

Maybe sometimes. But they missed something essential:

With all the feelings available, why would we voluntarily sit here and be sad the whole time?

Laughter belongs with the hedonistic greats. The serious, belly-shaking kind. One a day is my apple.

When we started, Opal and I named the work: abandonment and rejection wounds. I’d neglected myself for years to avoid them. I tried every survival strategy: avoidant, anxious, drowning sorrows. I didn’t know how to work through it.

Even Autistic Suki can’t interject here and break the fourth wall to fully explain the hypnosis/IFS session where I met my soul. I told Opal she must be a witch. I don’t know what she did, but something healed.

How do I know?

About two months in, I was loving therapy so much I’d booked twice a week and stretched every session. Opal became solemn toward the end of one of our sessions:

“What’s wrong?” I said. “Business slow? Not enough psychos? Don’t worry Opal, I can refer… me. We haven’t even gone through all of it yet. I have more stories up my sleeve!”

She laughed. Then: “I have news. The timing is awful because you’re making so much progress—you’re a rockstar, really—but… I’m leaving therapy.”

“Leaving?” She looked maybe a few years older than me. “Opal. You won the lottery?”

“No. I’m going to work on a farm. As a beekeeper.”

“What the fuck, Opal?”

She smiled. “I think someone here can carry the work if you want to continue. But honestly, you could also take a break. That’s how much I trust your progress. You don’t need me anymore.”

I cocked my head.

“How do you feel?” she asked gently.

“Like you’re abandoning me,” I smirked. Then I stood, didn’t ask for permission and hugged her, tight. What I felt wasn’t abandonment. It was joy.

“Opal, you just proved witchcraft is real and demonstrated that it’s legal to change your life mid-stream. I want you happy.”

She teared up and thanked me for trying therapy. We can’t keep in touch—laws are laws. Fucking ethics and compliance. Else, we would’ve grabbed a beer. Well, I guess a non-alcoholic one, now (I’m still sober, biddies, and still more fun than most).

And before I left, I told her something I’d never said out loud to a therapist: that in dating, I often felt either objectified or quietly dimmed. Like certain people didn’t actually want me to shine in my own skin. My gut knew it, even if they didn’t overtly express it. It knew it in every text or affection withheld when I went out in a nice dress or socialized. In one session I blurted, “Fuck it—I want to do it anyway. I just want to be me.” Shine, that is. Be fully seen. Allow myself to feel sexy and confident. At least for myself. Opal didn’t flinch. She smiled like a coach who knows you just crossed a line you can’t uncross.

It warms me to imagine her now, with her mushroom tattoos, a halo of curls, humming among bees on a farm somewhere. A break from the looneys like me. Focusing on herself. As she should.

Therapy taught me to love myself. Only then could I love others without clinging.

On my way out she said, “Don’t forget you’re a badass.”

And I told her, “Yeah. A real sexy one.”

There’s sexy me getting that sexy apple. Don’t forget to laugh today.