By the time June arrived, I was mired in a gloomy funk.
But then I got a bit of a respite…
…something so purely joyful, for a week I forgot about the final entry and all of the open wounds that had kept me from finishing it:
The Emmy’s. Being Valerie’s date.
Valerie was up for two Emmy’s this year for the final season of a cooking show she had hosted for 14 seasons. The nominations weren’t her first. In 2019, she had been nominated for two Emmy’s and had won both. The night should have been a celebration but was instead tainted by someone who should have been supportive but wasn’t. As a result, Valerie had earned the award but not been able to enjoy her moment. She had taken home the statues but not the happy memory.
I was absolutely hell-bent on seeing to it that this year was different. I was locked in on just one thing: Valerie having a moment that was just about her - her talent, her work, her achievement, her recognition – and getting to enjoy it.
I wanted her to have a week where she could be proud of herself and could just bask in something that was hers and about her knowing that her having that moment was what I wanted too. And it was. I wanted that both for her and because her having it would make me happy. I wanted her to know that; but more than that, I wanted her to have a week where she felt it… truly felt it… and knew it was true.
We all deserve to have moments that are just ours. We all deserve to have people around us who truly rejoice right along with us when we have them. I’ve written often that, to me, love is caring about a person independent of oneself. Wanting the best for them. Being made happy by their happiness. Hurting when they are in pain. It is seeing someone’s light and wanting to see it shine brightest – and feeling truly happy when it does.
If you don’t feel deep, fulfilling happiness seeing people you love succeed, you’re doing it wrong.
Suffice it to say, I was all the damn way aboard with the boyfriend assignment for the Emmy’s.
Leading up to the week, there had been so much static in our lives, so much noise. There had been all the public attention to our relationship. I had been wrestling with my own shit. Valerie had just come off an exhausting book tour and was wrestling with her own things. We had seen little of each other. The combination of all of those things had been wearing on us both.
We weren’t exactly well positioned for unbridled joy. A couple of days before I flew out though, we were on the phone and I told her what I wanted for the week: for us to push everything aside and just be in the moment... to just live in the moment and nothing but the moment.
She agreed and that’s what we did.
We just blocked out everything – everything. We ignored the static, and blocked out the distractions, and just lived the week… And, let me tell you, it was fucking glorious. It was among the happiest, most fun weeks of my life. It was profoundly, deeply, truly joyful. It was just pure, unadulterated happiness let to bubble up and gather on the surface until it washed over us.
The actual Emmy’s awards ceremony was split over two days. That meant two days of getting dressed up, two red carpets, two awards ceremonies. The events, as you can imagine, were as ‘public’ as an event can be. They were televised live the first night and streamed the next. Throughout the ceremonies, cameramen circled tables and closed in for closeups. The whole thing was so ‘exposing’ so to speak… but the experience for the two of us was somehow private.
The moment was Valerie’s alone. The experience of sharing it was ours alone.
We just submitted ourselves to inhabiting the present so fully, it quieted all of the world even amid the din of photographers yelling, bulbs flashing, and people bustling all around us.
It was just us. Even in a crowd.
Ironically, the moment from that week that became the most public was a product of just how fully we had blocked out everyone else.
The day of the first awards ceremony, as we were getting dressed up for the event, Valerie and I shot a little before-and-after video. It had been my idea. Valerie edited the pieces together and posted it on Instagram and Tik-Tok. It was deliberately silly and goofy. We messed up the first shot and that made it better.
It was not high cinema, but it did earn the highest possible rating from my teenage son: “OMG, that is so cringe…. I hope my friends don’t see this.”
That silly little throwaway video ended up getting seen something like 15 million times, and ‘liked’ over a half-million or something. We were just entirely immersed in the joy of the week, and a video we shot literally on our way out the door was probably seen more than all of the published pictures combined. Go figure…
Whenever I think of that week, I flash back to the video. The reason is because of the way Valerie looks in it. Not her appearance, not how she was dressed. Her expressions. How she was feeling and how that read through.
Valerie has an entire spectrum of smiles that ranges from the ‘competition smile’ – the one required in the pageant of an industry sitting in constant judgment – to the ones that come from deep within: the at-peace smile, the contented smile, the ‘in love’ or ‘loving you’ smile...
When I watch that silly little jump-cut video what I see are smiles at the very peak of that range: pure happiness. Pure unadulterated happiness. Just happiness down to the soul allowed out without restraint or because it couldn’t be contained. If you go watch the video and key on Valerie, you’ll see what I mean.
In writing this, I’ve realized just how fully we were in the same place. I don’t mean just how happy we both were. I knew that. I had always just been focused on her happiness and the context. She had been through a long, incredibly hard stretch in her life. The week had been a break for her from all of the things that had long gotten in the way of that and sometimes still did. It was good to see her happy to her bones.
What I hadn’t realized was just how much the same was true for me. I was happy to my bones after a long, hard stretch in my life; and it was a break from the things that had long gotten in the way.
Only, in my case, those things had all just risen up anew to get in the way. They had sunk their teeth into me and held on right up until I left for California, and they would be waiting for me at home when I got back.
The Emmy’s were a respite, but back home waiting were all the wounds I had reopened dating back to my childhood – a period I only remember like a string of Christmas lights: bright pops of color separated by intervals without any. Moments, incidents, scenes. Nothing in between.
The only pictures I have from my childhood are in box that I’ve only opened once, and only briefly. I received it not long after my father passed away on my son’s birthday five years ago. It has sat atop a bookcase gathering dust ever since.
In that box is my childhood. In it is me. The me I once was. The me before I grew into things I needed. The me before I needed them.
Maybe it was time to take the box down from the shelf and make peace with the kid inside.
But there was my writing block to deal with and it was almost summer and Valerie and I had plans. We were going to spend all of July together in Los Angeles. My son was going to come out for half of it.
Just like when I sat down to write the series which I now couldn’t seem to finish though, while I might have had a plan in mind, the universe had another… and just like the first time around, theirs led headlong into things that hurt.
If I didn’t know the universe loved me, I’d think it hated me.
It was a long summer. I’ll cover it in the next entry, and then we’ll land this thing.
“So you keep pushing on, you hope it won’t be long
‘Til you can find the child you were
And find a way to get along”
- Florence + the Machine, “Light of Love”
You’re an incredible writer, and I deeply admire your courage—whether you dove into those dark places willingly or not. It takes so much strength to confront those shadows, and most of us don’t do it by choice, which is why we often miss the rites in the process. But you’ve shown up, and that’s powerful. As an Evolutionary Astrologer, I’ve been writing these past several months about this massive sea of energy we’re all feeling, forcing us to face our deepest wounds and making it hard to follow the desires of our hearts. And I completely acknowledge how much more intense this must feel for you, amplified by the illusion of social media—especially in the entertainment industry, where every feeling, every possible connection, becomes a spectacle for those who consume the dish. Even the slightest hint of romance can crack open Pandora’s Box, sometimes just to show us where we need to make space for happiness. Keep writing. Your vulnerability and your words are a gift, and they remind us that we’re all navigating this collective journey together. You’re doing the work, and that’s something to be proud of. Keep going.
Yes a born writer and lucky for all of us you shared your table with us 😊