Foreword

Earlier this year, I wrote a series of pieces that all circled the same uncomfortable idea; maybe you should leave, maybe you should start over, why do you keep givng to people who don't give a shit, maybe you should stop trying to fix what refuses to change.

Those essays weren’t advice. They were questions; ones I was pondering for myself. And at the time, I didn’t have clean answers.

This piece is not a continuation of that series so much as a report back. What happened when I stopped chasing people who had already chosen distance; what I learned when I took my own advice about chosen family; and what clarity actually looks like when it arrives quietly instead of triumphantly.

I don’t write about this often. Most of what we do here is practical and topical; help you can use. But once or twice a year, it’s important to say the quiet part out loud. If the holidays are hard for you, this is for you. If they aren’t, you can skip it without missing anything, except, perhaps, a deeply human story.

The Holiday Blues

Every time the holiday season rolls around, I get incredibly melancholy. I don’t have the greatest relationship with my family; a phrase which here means a bad one. I don’t really speak to my mom because she never allows me to grow up. I moved across the country to be closer to my dad, and I still don’t talk to him because he refuses to grow up.

For a long time, I thought the feeling I had during this time was loneliness, and that’s not exactly true. Throughout my life, there have been opportunities where I could have been with people, but I didn’t take them. This year, I’m realizing the feeling isn’t just lonely; it’s abandoned, betrayed, and rejected. If you’re spending the holiday season alone, you’re probably feeling many of the same things.

Why am I not good enough to be loved and have people around me during the holidays? Why do bad people have people around them? Who do I have to be to be worthy of love? What did I ever do to deserve this?

If you relate to that, let’s talk about it. Because truthfully, the answer is that we did not do anything but be ourselves.

Woe Begone

Until this year, this emotional state was an echo locked in a box. I’d just deal with being raw and thin-skinned for ten percent of the year. No biggie. Clearly, I was unlikable, like my family said, and one day I’d do enough to be worthy of love. Just keep trying and smiling until your teeth shatter from the tension.

But this year marks a pivot.

This year marks the point where I decided to stop trying with people who had already defected; people who left me in the trenches of life alone and then acted confused about why I stopped calling for backup. That moment comes for everyone eventually, in their own time, and apparently mine arrived at thirty-seven.

I am looking at the next chapter of my life now, and I’m asking myself a very simple question:

Do I want to sit in this loneliness for the rest of my life, trying to win the affection of people who are determined to reject me?

No.

Hell no.

Fuck no.

Hell the fuck no.

I do not want that to be my story.

And the harder truth is this: I didn’t fully understand that’s what I was doing. I thought I was being patient. Compassionate. Mature. Emotionally literate. What I was actually doing was hovering at the edge of other people’s lives, hoping they would notice how much effort I was making not to need them.

Being a psychologist does not grant me special wisdom over my own life. It gives me tools. Language. Awareness. But I am still living inside a meat-puppet body, flooded with electricity, chemicals, memory, and longing; just as human and just as fallible as everyone else. Insight does not cancel attachment. It only makes it easier to name.

And that distinction matters.

There is a profound difference between being alone because life is transitional and being alone because you are clinging to relationships that have already told you who they are willing to be.

At some point, continuing to reach out stops being hopeful and starts being self-abandonment. At some point, grief has to turn into discernment.

The Moment of Clarity

I was expressing my frustration about moving across the country and not seeing anyone for months at a time to my step-mom, who has always been the best thing about my father. I was explaining that I understand being odd means you have to cultivate things that draw people to you; I’ve done that. For example, you’re here reading this.

In reply, she said a truth so plain and necessary that it made sense to my gut, heart, and spine before it ever reached my mind.

She said, “Well, become useful.”

My entire soul shrank under the weight of the realization: these people do not see me as useful, or valuable, or whatever they require to justify care.

Real talk was what I needed. Painful, yes; but good, like resetting a dislocated joint.

And then something else shifted; not just internally, but practically. I decided to lean into the people who already see me as useful after all these years of hard work. They exist. They’re just largely not related to me.

Taking My Own Advice

I’ve told people for years that you can build a family out of the people you find through life. Chosen family. Intentional family. People who show up not because they’re supposed to, but because they want to. This year, I finally took my own advice.

I did many things toward that end, including moving to South Carolina. I had to move because my previous house was deemed unsafe for human occupancy. But beyond that, I needed help. The people in Michigan who could or wanted to help were dealing with their own lives, their own limits. So I thought, why not get better weather and give my dad a real chance to embrace me as I am, for once.

He didn’t.

But rather than sitting in that disappointment, I made a plan of action; even if it was just one step. I went through everyone I knew and asked a very specific question: who is yearning for an interdependent relationship, and who can actually make room for me in their life?

So back in September, after just five months in South Carolina, I called my ex, Bubby, and asked if he would come down and be a family with me.

I needed someone I could trust. Someone who, despite his own mental health challenges that made dating hard, had always been unmistakably clear about one thing: he wanted me happy and fully myself. I needed someone who openly needs me just as much as I need them. Someone for whom I am not a nice-to-have or a distant obligation, but a presence that actually matters.

I needed someone who gives a damn if I live; not just someone who would cry if I died.

I needed everyday care. Proximity. A witness. Someone who wanted to be around me so that holidays could be a celebration of closeness, not a high-anxiety performance.

And I was right.

A Happy Holiday, Finally

As I write this semi-journal entry, I’m sitting poolside in the sun at a gay resort in Augusta, Georgia. Music playing. Nervous system calm. I’m relaxing in a way visiting my parents has never allowed. There’s no screaming. No public humiliation. No eggshells. No confusion about whether my presence is tolerated or resented. Just peace. Just companionship. Just being allowed to exist.

We exchanged gifts over the month and had a few things to open on the day. He got a Switch OLED with all the bells and whistles, plus enough games to last until next Christmas. I got a collection of useful things I would never buy for myself but am already using. He’s a great gift giver.

It’s not perfect. We’re both autistic, and he has BPD. It can be a struggle. But even through instability, I know he has my back. We’ll keep figuring out how to live together because that’s what family does.

Even when he got overwhelmed on day two of vacation, I caught myself thinking, I would rather deal with this. And I meant it. Rather than being alone at the resort, at home, or with blood family who failed to value one of the greatest resources they had.

I Am: Buddy the Elf

On Christmas Eve, Bubby and I went to see Elf. It was my first time watching it. I cried.

Because yes; I too came from the North Pole to New York City looking for my dad to love me and accept me no matter how different I was. Buddy gets the happy ending. I don’t think I ever will. And that made me sad.

But it also clarified something essential.

What I want is not rare.
What I want is not unreasonable.
What I want is not too much.

I just want to connect with my people.

I don’t want hearing damage from screaming in my ear four inches away.
I don’t want to be yelled at in public.
I don’t want to be told I can’t bring my family to Thanksgiving.
I don’t want to be attacked by drunk in-laws.
I don’t want to be hate-crimed at my birthday party.
I don’t want to be looked at with confusion or suspicion.

I don’t want what’s being offered.

There is nothing I can do to change their minds. I know a deathbed or a crisis might soften them someday. I know loss might suddenly grant compassion. But that is not good enough. Love that only arrives under duress is not love I am willing to wait for.

A Moment of Honesty

I’ve been fighting suicidal ideation for most of my life. But it’s been especially rough over the last two years. Nearly every move I’ve made in my personal life during that time has been about keeping those thoughts at bay and giving myself a reason to keep shining. Just because others don’t see my value doesn’t mean I don’t. I still want to die at one hundred or later, and I’m still planning to make that happen.

Having Bubby here has helped me in more ways than I can count. He’s here to help me think, stay out of my head, make sure I eat, monitor my meds, and also just lounge; to let my walls come down.

This experience reminded me of something and taught me something else.

This is possible for me. Not just possible; there are, in fact, people who are willing to do this with me. That realization is why, after some Thanksgiving drama, we decided a resort and sunny weather were the best Christmas we could imagine.

What’s been happening to me is that people have been failing me. Repeatedly. Loudly. For a great many reasons. Ultimately, they just don’t care. That’s not a moral failing; it’s probably them working through their own issues. But I need to go get my joy with people who actually want to give it.

And I am not alone in this reality. Which is why I write these blogs.

Your experience is not rare. Even successful people. Even psychologists. Even articulate problem-solvers. Even those who look like they have it together are struggling to keep their heads up. We are all made of the same electrolyte water; all yearning to be absorbed.

But we can do something different.

I did.

I stopped chasing people who had already chosen absence.
I stopped confusing endurance with love.
I stopped begging for affection from systems that profit from my silence.
I chose proximity with people who care whether I wake up tomorrow.

So now I’ll ask you the same thing I had to ask myself:

What’s next for you?

Not in theory.
Not someday.
Not when they finally change.

What is the next real step you can take to build a life and family that actually want you in it?

You don’t have to answer me.
But you do have to answer yourself.

And if this season is breaking your heart open instead of filling it, maybe that’s not cruelty.

Maybe it’s clarity.

Afterword

I want to be clear about why I chose to name my fight with suicidal ideation in this piece.

On December 23rd, I learned that someone a lot like me lost his battle. His name was Lamarr Wilson.

I didn’t know him personally. I didn’t follow his life closely. This wasn’t parasocial grief. I knew him primarily through his work; technology, toys, pop culture, curiosity. But I saw myself in him. And I know there are a lot of Black men in midlife who are like us; thoughtful, creative, capable, outwardly functional, and quietly struggling every single day.

That loss landed hard.

Earlier this year, in one of the few fruitful conversations I had with my dad, he admitted that he too felt abandoned by the people who should have cared for him; at the same age I felt it. That’s when it became impossible to ignore the pattern. This pain is far more universal than it should be. It moves across generations. It hides behind competence. It waits for the quiet.

And it isn’t just Black men.

It’s men.
Women.
People who aren’t the chosen ones.
People who do their best and still end up alone when it’s dark, when it’s quiet, when stress is highest and the holidays amplify every absence.

That’s part of why I called Bubby when I did. I didn’t want to go through another dark and quiet season alone. Being an orphan due to death, I figured he wouldn’t want to either.

And you don’t have to either.

Christmas has passed, but New Year’s is coming. If there is even one person on this planet who gives a damn about you; truly gives a damn; I implore you to go to them. Sit next to them. Hold them. Let your nervous system borrow theirs for a while.

Remind yourself that life is still worth living.
That joy still exists.
That you are still deserving of it.

I don’t know who you are reading this.
But I want you to live as much as I want myself to live.

Please keep holding on.