Transitional Fall

by Rachel Williams

It all began in June, actually.

I forced my mistress (who wasn’t really a mistress, but I wanted to give him a name that was more fun than ‘that guy I’ve been seeing casually once every other week for six months’) to help me build the Ikea wardrobe in my new closet-less bedroom. It was one of the last times I saw him.

That Ikea wardrobe is now falling apart because when my mistress built it, after I falsely promised I would help, he told me that it would be excessive to nail 40 nails into the back panel like the instructions requested. At the time I agreed, so I told him it was fine. However, when I recently shoved my winter coats into the wardrobe, where my thin linen pants once lived, the back burst open from the weight of the clothing. I realized that the universe was slapping me in the face with a metaphor: there simply wasn’t enough space for whatever it was we had built together.

After I ended things with my mistress (by sending the uncomfortable “hey, don’t want to see you anymore” text) I met New Jersey Boy.

If you live in New York City, you know that New York to New Jersey is a long distance relationship. But, I was willing to do it (because he was driving to me every time, except once when I took the train to him because he was making me a ribeye). We just had that chemistry, and I really thought, “this is it, my karmic reward for all of the meh dates and relationships I’ve had in the past few years.” cohol in general, which begged me to question why I was drinking in the first place. During the month, I was sleepier at bars and didn’t stay out as late and had a harder time talking to strangers or friends of friends, but I was still there and doing it. And then I could wake up on Saturday and enjoy a yoga class or a coffee date with a friend without the dread of a hangover or just pure exhaustion. It felt like taking alcohol out of the equation gave me a chance to rebalance my life. I t could be awkward, like when people would ask why I was doing it, I wasn’t sure how to say “I feel like drinking was ruining my weekends”

That was until he came over to hang some paintings. If you haven’t noticed, I love making the men I’m dating do my manu labor. The paintings were just never hung right: one was crooked, one kept falling off the wall, and another we couldn’t get the an gle right to even get it on the wall in the first place. All it did was confirm what I wasn’t letting myself admit, that deep down, despite the chemistry and the ribeye, I knew this wasn’t it.

I know it sounds so elementary to be using these metaphors, but apparently, I needed it spelled out from the universe. During, and after the time I was seeing New Jersey Boy, I also was participating in “Sober September.” This is where I probably should’ve been focusing my energy all along.

Sober September meaningfully impacted my life, in a different way than my search for Bob the Builder. I decided to do it because I began to feel extremely neutral about al- aren’t great for me either. When should we decide to end things, after we’ve seen the destruction or before we see it coming? I’m not quite sure what the answer is, and it may vary, but I am really proud of the courage I had to choose myself and my own well-being. And I’m happy to, like this season, transition into a different version of myself, one that hopefully won’t be bursting apart any time soon.