THE BIRD KING, CHAPTER 3 (MAY 2015)
okay, look. at this point i’m just going to confess what this whole bird king thing is about. here, on THE INTERNET. for you.
when i first moved to NYC, i was at the top of my game. the energy of the city in summer, my recent success as a designer, and my youthful idealism coalesced into a grand IDEA – that i should find someone great to marry and then marry them. i truly believed that if i pursued a person and loved them hard enough, we would be swimming in romance and our lives would be complete.
and so i found someone. we rushed hard and fast together into a thickly cinematic mutual infatuation. however, as reality set in and our incompatibilities manifested, i didn’t see breaking up as an option. we had made promises to each other, even if they were blind. i also had a major lack of healthy boundaries and self-worth. i thought the right thing to do was to stay, even if i didn’t want to. so i surrendered to being trapped in a false version of myself... like wearing a mask.