“Until we believe we are worth loving, we’ll continue the cycle of pain, sadness, and destruction, hurting everyone we encounter along the way.”
– Keith, creator of The Pillow Talk Project

It happened when I was living in New York City on the day I lost the scarf my ex gave me. Colombiana debuted at movie theaters and one of my close friends decided we’d go out to see it. We joined colleagues at a nearby bar for cocktails, and then we headed to the cinema. I’d already had two Long Island Iced Teas and another clear liquid that tasted awful. But what they lacked in taste, they made up for in making me numb.

The problem wasn’t that after the break up I couldn’t feel, it was that I felt too much, which was new for me. I’d always prided myself on feeling everyone was replaceable after surviving my first love.The truth was revealing the truth, and I was willing to do whatever necessary to avoid seeing and feeling it.

After the movie, we went to a Mexican bar that has since closed down where the waiters were drag queens. We had three more drinks, and the bartender offered us another one “on the house.” My friend and I stared at each other suspiciously. We both needed a bit more liquid courage, so we drank until we saw the bottom of the glasses. I said I wanted to dance and we headed to a club.

At some point, the world wouldn’t stop spinning, and the numbness started to catch up with me. In a disconcerted haze, I stumbled out of the club and around the corner. I threw up before passing out. I was never so happy to feel cold concrete.

I needed to avoid the pain that was bubbling to the surface. It was a darkness inside me that threatened to extinguish my light. But it eventually caught up with me. And then a stranger saved me. I don’t remember his face or what happened. I can only say it was a “he” because the person had to have picked me up and carried me. I don’t know much. Only that I’m still alive and feeling.

I woke up the next morning asleep on a small bench in the coatroom closet of a restaurant locked from the outside. Hours later, I’d managed to find a way to escape the building by jumping to an adjoining roof, shimmying down a rope, and then squeezing through the small window of an office building still under construction.

Until we believe we are worth loving, we’ll continue the cycle of pain, sadness, and destruction, hurting everyone we encounter along the way. But luckily for all of us, that doesn’t have to be where the story ends.

After that adventure, I realized something about myself: I was talented at appreciating the beauty of everything and everyone else but me.  Although I wasn’t addicted to any drugs, I needed another emotional fix.

I needed someone to hold me, look into my eyes, and tell me they couldn’t live without me. Of course, the people who were demented enough to say that were just as fucked up as I was. So we would be fucked up together, until one of us got better — and it was almost never me.

In my own dealings with people at that time in my life, I learned we all thrive on being able to create categories for other people to occupy. But we never realize that we’re all connected. We’re all addicts in need of a fix. And when we get it, we become drug dealers in the business of providing a temporary escape.

Whether it’s being addicted to love, sex, money, fame, drugs, or alcohol, once we get our fix, we become courtesans, angel investors, agents, dealers, bartenders and pimps. We’re not inherently bad people. It’s just that some of us have to take the scenic route and repeat a few of life’s lessons before we learn perhaps the most important lesson: in order to truly love anyone else, we must first know what it means to fall in love with ourselves.

Until we believe we are worth loving, we’ll continue the cycle of pain, sadness, and destruction, hurting everyone we encounter along the way. But luckily for all of us, that doesn’t have to be where the story ends.