the Old Man in his kitchen
Featuring: The Old Man who lives inside of me, yearning for a table full of people I trust, rupture & repair, Christine McVie & Stevie Nicks, isolation and connection.
I have held grudges, and I probably always will but I am trying to do it less. I try to honor the stubborn Old Man inside of me that I know only wants to protect me, no matter how bitter the cost. I want to honor him while also knowing that healing, forgiving, and changing is all possible and almost inevitable in a lifetime (this next part is important) but only IF you allow space for it. Whether or not you allow space for that is entirely up to you to discern and creating this space invites potential for 1) repair or 2) disappointment.
The Old Man inside me lives alone. This could be related to the fact that he has forgiven no one and believes everyone will take advantage of you if given the chance. Disappointment, deception, betrayal, heartbreak are his biggest fears. He sits alone in his dusty kitchen, eats microwave meals he buys at self checkout, wears hoodies and headphones and masks so no one recognizes him and tries to talk to him in the grocery store. In fact, he speaks to no one for days on end if he can help it. He takes photos on film cameras, but only black and white film. It is depressing to look into his kitchen window, down from the dusty window sill, the dishes from his solitary meals piling up in the sink. He is alone but he says “I am safe, if you were smarter you’d be like me” . If you are too afraid of being disappointed, betrayed, deceived, let down — this is what happens to you. You can never get close to anyone. He isn’t wrong though, this does bring the chances of his fears coming true to zero, no one can ever hurt you if no one can know you.
The same Old Man whispers in my ear in the coffee shop: they hate you, don’t put them in a position where they have to pretend to be nice to you, if they don’t initiate anything then leave them alone, don’t look at them, don’t smile, they want nothing to do with you.
He is friends with my depressive mood episodes & my social anxiety & my addictive tendencies. These three are great collaborators and manipulate the Old Man extremely well. But I know the Old demented Man is mostly, in his own confused way, just trying to protect me.
I am grown up enough now to know just because he is old that it doesn’t mean he is wise.
Up until very recently, I listened to him very closely. I did not recognize him as frail, depressed, lonely, afraid, and demented. For a long time he was wise to me, he was experienced, he had solid answers when I felt confused and I believed listening to him would keep me safe. And it did. But it kept me isolated and afraid of connection and that created new & different anguish.
When I listened to him, it ended friendships. Simple misunderstandings became betrayals, as if in anticipation of the worst, I was ready to hunker down and slam my windows closed and board them up at a moment’s notice. The Old Man taught me this when I was small. When I was rejected and misunderstood by my peers and even a few teachers for looking different because of my trichotillomania, or when I was called the f-slur or the r-word, ugly or stupid or whatever cruel word kids could hurl at me or whatever perceived defect they could point at— that is when the Old Man comforted me, telling me to keep to myself and I would be safe. I threw myself into my writing. I wrote endlessly in middle school (short stories, attempts at a novel, and so much poetry) , wore my headphones and listened to music. In a sea of kids in a lunch room, I willed myself to disappear. I went somewhere else, sometimes to the Old Man’s kitchen but also lots of other places, people and places I dreamed up and wrote about, anywhere but where I was.
Things got easier with my peers as we all grew up but my fear of rejection, disappointment,& being misunderstood kept me shut down in many ways until after college.
Being groomed as a young adult, being assaulted by a college boyfriend, and other relational and emotional injuries of various sizes reinforced it. Alone is safe. It didn’t matter if it was romantic or platonic relationships, although I had a stronger preference for having few friends and instead being a serial monogamist.
“Separate before they hurt you”, was the Old Man’s motto and if I didn’t, I would always hold my breath waiting for it to happen. After you’ve sat in the Old Man’s kitchen for so long, there is a part of you that will always expect other people to hurt you. His demented ramblings start to become fearful prophecies that you are doomed to fulfill because you believe them.
The sunlight trickles through the Old Man’s windows and you get tired of being in the stuffy dark kitchen. You dream of a big dining room table with so many friends, the sunlight pouring in and spilling all over the floor and the faces of people who love you. The table is so full of food and so many people that you have to borrow silverware and plates and glasses and serving implements.
In recent years, I’ve had a lot of grief around some very important formative connections. One is over, at least for the foreseeable future, due to repeated rupture in the same relational place without any real, intentional repair. The other ruptured and now it is repaired, but only because I had room for it and I, with great discernment, made that choice intentionally. I took a chance that scared me and the Old Man. It paid off.
The first connection was complicated and passionate and it sometimes worked, at least creatively, very well until it didn’t. Nearly every slightly before my time but timelessly cool record I know is because of them, and nearly every youthful Atlanta music connection they have is because of me. So it goes, I guess.
My life is changed forever by this connection.The real grief I’ve had was about who I was when the connection began, how young and trusting I was. I think about the ways I would’ve treated the person I was then, and how different that is from what happened. That person was newly confident, just starting a band and freshly out of an emotionally abusive relationship. This version of me was strong and tough, but they were also very naive and not very discerning and easily manipulated. They put up with a lot because they believed it was the price of love. They were still drinking copiously, pushing their pain and guilt and confusion and sadness down by day. When the sun set, they would release it all like a fire hose at the behest of the bottle. There is me before this connection, several iterations of me during this connection, and me after it and they are all different people, for better or worse.
I am hit with pangs of anger, not about the other person necessarily but about the dynamic. There was a power difference that now, as a 28 year old, I am able to appreciate in ways I couldn’t years ago. I miss the good parts of this connection but I know now with great nuance the prices we both paid for that good. I put my faith in another person like a God, and expected not to be disappointed if I just believed enough. If I just kept trying. This is a giant simplification in many ways and it only reflects how I feel about it at this very moment. How I feel about it is always changing and shifting shapes, colors, and angles in a strange emotional kaleidoscope. I’m equally grateful for it and twisted up about it. I have felt every feeling about this time in my life that a human can possibly feel & I think I always will.
Something about the nature of this connection and its final ending rendered the Old Man speechless. On the day it ended for the last and final time, I came knocking at his kitchen door. He didn’t say, I told you so! He said nothing at all. He sat quietly while I crumpled up and cried on the peeling laminate floor of his kitchen. He knows I loved hard with all of my heart and I knew the potential cost. I took a big chance and it failed, despite the glorious and enticing rise of it all. Maybe he knew I needed to strike out from him, in defiant young adult fashion. Maybe he’s getting soft. Regardless, I needed to know going to the exact opposite end wasn’t the answer either. Love with no boundaries and no limits, infused with a power dynamic is as devastating as the Old Man’s kitchen. Just in a different flavor, at another end of the spectrum.
The second connection is another creative connection, one that had power struggles and disagreements, but also deep belly laughs, late night talks, borrowing each other’s clothes like sisters. When we drove each other nuts , we would always repair the rupture because she was and is the Christine McVie to my Stevie Nicks. Recently, we had a big misunderstanding (to put it lightly) and I was ready to batten down the hatches, I prepared for the worst. I grieved it like we would never speak again. The rupture was deep, I was devastated. I cried on the phone to my moms, I tried to make sense of it with my boyfriend, my therapist, countless friends before I finally saw something new, thanks to my friend & collaborator George. I said & believed melodramatic and fearful things like “it’s over, she’ll never talk to me again, she hates me, resents me”. Please know that as I said all this, I was not replying to her texts saying she loved me and was thinking about me. When you’ve visited the Old Man’s kitchen enough, you don’t trust anything after a rupture.
George is my triple Virgo friend, an amazing lyricist, an amazing person, sharp, funny, and he is wise. He is wiser than the Old Man in his lonely kitchen, and he challenged the black and white photography done of the situation by the Old Man.
And all of a sudden, it hit me.
I will always live with endless relational ruptures if I don’t get brave enough to also allow a chance for relational repair, and/or for more data to make a decision. Within reason of course, believing in people like Gods creates different issues and giving someone endless chances with the same rupture over and over is unwise.
There is somewhere in between the dark kitchen with boarded windows and the wild, manic, drunken & deluded whirlwind I went to out of defiance of the Old Man.
I am tired of sitting in a dark dusty kitchen, crying my eyes out. I want to be in the sunlight, I want tables and tables of friends and cakes and NA beers , vinyl records on my record player selected by those invited to my place. I want the people there to be people I trust, that doesn’t mean they always understand me 100% of the time or that they don’t get their feelings hurt or do something as human as overreact every once in a while. The people there are those who, after a rupture, try to repair in whatever way they can and allow me this too.
So Stevie & Christine got coffee, cried, held hands, & said they were sorry. An hour-long conversation, one that I told myself might never happen, became one of the most healing experiences of 2025, definitely in the top 5 for the last 3 years. Imagine the shock of the Old Man. I love when he’s wrong.
We can only sit at this big table together if there’s room to be human, if there is room for repair after rupture, if there is room to be disappointed in each other from time to time. I know the Old Man had only good intentions to protect me, and I know he is scared and lonely so I will visit him, but only for a day or so at a time. I’m sure the three collaborators who manipulate the Old Man will snag me back here even when I’m not wanting to visit, but I know I can step out the door if I want to. I know the dream of a full table of people I trust is worth going past the fear. I have to remember that.
Here’s a few things:
Here’s a playlist of songs that connect to this substack piece
My friend & collaborator, George, has a beautiful record out (give it a listen)
I’m playing a solo set at Kingdom Tattoo in Decatur on 11/13, deets to come on Instagram soon
Trio show 11/22 :) deets on the Instagram