Last weekend, I went to a party. Specifically, my niece’s 11th birthday party.

I'm the sort of person who would rather spend a month in solitude with my devices locked in a safe than attend something as benign as a party. And I confess that despite devoting this year to the cultivation of mindfulness, I spent the whole event deeply enmeshed with a party-sized bowl of Dot’s Homestyle Pretzels, in pursuit of an endless chew or resisting the achingly tropic pull to chew endlessly. While my niece was opening presents, I was ensconced in the playroom, hiding from an inanimate bowl of seasoned pretzel twists.

I am 32 years old.

I have been doing this self-negating, self-estranging tightrope walk across the pretzel vortex since my mother installed me in her boyfriend’s apartment, where I spent ample time alone while she was at work or the “opera.” Since my stepmother’s brain aneurysm ruptured and her head was cut open and sutured back together like Frankenstein (her personality was similarly altered). Since my father avoided home unless he was accompanied by a glass of clear, pungent liquid. Since I decided that it was time to take matters (etymologically derived from mater, Latin for mother) into my own hands. Since I began coping with chaos by denying my deepest longings to be fed and cared for. Since I learned to reject the things that I need. Since I was 11 years old.

I expected to wake up the next morning as a morbidly obese man with a pinky ring. This is my experience of body dysmorphia and Francis Bacon’s paintings; both capture the reality of distortion. We see what we imagine, and what we imagine becomes a reality; my perception is fractured in the areas where I am cracked.

Rather than rifle through snack cabinets and hunt for free samples, can I be with this feeling of displacement? How many Friday nights will I spend with 94% Fat Free Healthy Pop as my ally, my inoculation against this feeling of alienation? Will the lonely food rituals and workout ceremonies I constructed to protect myself as a child be the pattern that shapes my blip of existence? Am I really not in control of this life? And if so, what then?

I have no career, no partner, no offspring, no house, and a long list of fuck ups and regrets that probably looks like everyone else's. As Oedipus said after murdering his father, sleeping with his mother, and blinding himself in exile and ignominy, I look about myself and all is in ruin, and I say life is good. Now that I've gone off the rails, can I finally quit this charade of pretending to be a normal human being?

Yes.