Dumb Things That Have Happened To Me, Part 1

Or, The Time I Accidentally Broadcasted My Relationship Trauma On National Radio Through a Ten Year Time Delay And No I Am Not Making Any Of This Up

So, I guess the title might have you guessing, but allow me to explain. It's not as ridiculous as it sounds, but it is still kind of a ridiculous confluence of events to even happen at all. For some quick context, I moved to Pittsburgh in 2006 to attend college there. I was raised in Philly, across the state, and took the very first opportunity I had to get the hell out of dodge. I lived off-campus with a couple friends, and largely because of my own undiagnosed AuDHD, that flamed out spectacularly. I eventually moved out to an apartment by myself in 2008, though through no choice of my own, which is unfortunately one giant, stupid story for another day.

I'm sorry, but this is just a long story by its nature. It’s worth the yarn, though, trust me.

All of this starts in the autumn of 2008, when yours' truly had just moved into his own palatial 1-bedroom apartment, nestled neatly in a holler at the foot of Phipps Conservatory and CMU's campus. Looking back, the apartment was a little ridiculous on its own face—the entire holler once housed a population of 200 Italian immigrants, who were all originally the residents of two towns. My apartment was the repurposed, 1920s-era Italian grocery store they had. My 'bedroom' was separated by the very distinct cutout of a deli service window! It was slapdash, it was patched together in every way, but man, what a wonderful apartment for what became a very sweet window of my life. I only paid $400 a month, which at the time, my part-time job with my college paid for tidily.

I felt like a king in his isolated Scottish castle, seeing everything he needed, except one crucial thing: a queen. I had two awkward romantic relationships under my belt by this point, and honestly, I had learned a lot about what to look for and what not to look for. Both of those flame-outs were long-distance relationships, and I think the one thing that had rushed like a churned buoy from the turquoise-black ocean was this: "DON'T DO LONG-DISTANCE RELATIONSHIPS, DUMMY!!!"

Of course, like most 20-year-old AuDHD young adults, I was terribly rejection-averse and found so much comfort in the internet. To be fair, the internet was still stinky with a certain kind of optimism right before the 2010s, and we were all still very busy thinking about all the ways it could connect us together. It was still a very starry-eyed idea in that way. At the time, there had been a veritable Cambrian explosion in dating websites, all hoping to carve a slice out of that early internet monetization cash, which often came in the form of 'top-ups' (like a pre-paid phone), and not yet the ever-present subscription. Every dating site catered to a different niche. I didn’t really feel like I belonged in any of them, except this one goofy one called "The Adorkables." It was targeted at dorks, I guess.

I thought I would look for women in Pittsburgh, but back then, those sites didn’t have a lot of people on them (despite all appearances), so they’d connect people from all over the place. J was one of those. She was just my style. I was used to no-replies on my messages, so I braced for impact. Within a day, she responded. We talked. I remembered the bright orange buoy in the awkwardly-placed metaphor from earlier. We talked more. I remembered the buoy again. We kept talking, and then, I lost my place and we just kept on talking from there.

We dated, and two tumultuous, awkward, pre-aware, joyous, gushy, risky, and just downright stupid years later, I came tumbling ass-out of what was about two weeks away from being an engagement and cross-country move to Minneapolis like I was a Chicago cop testing out a dangerous slide. The year was now 2010. Dazed, confused, and blinded by the light of day, I wandered, a box of mementos under my arm and a growing, gnawing tumor of depression parked somewhere in my craw. 'Heartbroken' doesn’t adequately describe my state at 22. I was freshly graduated from my 'why the hell did I even get this' degree and just trying my hand at doing full-time work.

To set the scene, I went from speaking to J on the phone every evening (hey, it was a long-distance relationship I wanted to continue into a close-distance relationship—it was the best way I could think of to keep the fire lit in the pre-smartphone era) to basically sitting in this apartment by myself. It’s wild—in one summer, it went from feeling like my castle to feeling a bit more like a cage. I was surrounded by memories of J, because my environment had to really turn into a shrine to her to help me stay attached and focused. I was committed to J, for what felt like a very long time in what are just pre-menopausal years. So, I turned to work, and bikes, and a lot of social stuff to try and survive—literally!

I got a job right as I graduated at an agency that a friend worked at. Honestly, I was unmedicated and didn’t know how to work in an office yet, and kinda screwed the opportunity up by just not having enough follow-through developed quite yet. Plus, I was deeply depressed, unmedicated, and where my only source of dopamine was bicycling as long as my body would go before it gave out. It was a poisonous mixture, and it got me fired in the summer of 2010. I went home, now with nothing to occupy my time and mind, and saw what was a cage turn into what was then a prison.

I spent all my time at home, only going out with my college friends occasionally when my best friend Steve would drag me out; occasionally doing so literally. I couldn’t even make art, it was like a tap being turned off from the source; no more water could come out. It was just an emptiness. I credit Minecraft with saving my life at that point, because it was something to pay attention to that managed to keep my mind enraptured with a cascade of little tiny tasks after little tiny tasks. During that period of unemployment, it was all I could do from walking into the Monongahela. God, if I rode my bike past that fucking jail one more time I was going to just pedal as fast as I could into a concrete column. The crushing weight of failure was so constant, it was a companion alongside every single thought I had for months, and I am not exaggerating, I mean, every thought!

I don’t remember how it happened exactly, but at some point, the president of the agency I interned and did part-time work at during college reached out to me and offered me a job. Remember that ocean buoy? Well, there was the second one— "WHEN SOMEONE OFFERS YOU AN OPEN HAND IN THE STORM, TAKE IT." So, I took it, and he hired me to his agency. Slowly, my fortunes changed through this lifeline. I made new friends, one of whom drew me to a borough outside of Pittsburgh called Millvale. That friend (a rosy gentleman farmer named Tom Walker) helped me get a beautiful apartment in a newly-rebuilt factory. I was living the dream of every teenaged boy, with a factory apartment, and two new bikes, and a procession of women interested in shaking this old oak tree. I started to come alive again, thanks in part to therapy, which I only took part in because of browbeating.

To be honest, my first therapist was also a real dickhead; he did a lot more harm than good, but the one positive thing was that he got me medicated for depression for the first time in my life, and it was making me realize that the 'amorphous blob' of hurt that represented J’s exit wound really needed to be treated too.

On a winter evening in 2011, I was hanging out with my agency’s president (Bri) on a Friday after hours (a relic of an earlier time where the internet was always faster at work, I guess), and I made the comment that I didn’t really do much culturally anymore. My agency’s president offered, "Hey, come out to the Rex with me and my wife this evening, we’re going to this event called 'The Moth' where you have to go on stage and tell stories if they pull your name out of a hat, you should come." It was a novel concept, I was lonely, and Bri was a father figure, so out we went.

The Moth's whole thing is that you’re not supposed to prepare an actual speech to read from, and just speak off the cuff if you’re chosen at random. I honored that, and just mentally filed away my talking points—the theme was ‘love hurts,’ and we were supposed to tell stories of heartbreak. Then it hit me, uhhhh. Did Bri plan this? I don’t understand. The timing was ridiculous.

I was just one person in a crowd of over 500 in attendance, there was no way they would ever pick me.

Oh. They picked me. Shit. Uhhh. I turn over to Bri and his wife, and they’re both wearing shocked expressions that no doubt matched mine. So, shaking like a leaf, I walked up to the stage that housed just a lonely microphone on a stand, and behind it, a balding, golden-haired man around my age playing an upright bass. The upright bass was a gentle (then forceful) reminder of the time limit per speaker, around 5 minutes.

So, this was my first time standing in front of an audience since I was in the 7th-grade play, which did gangbusters for my popularity with other kids, let me tell ya. I thought the entire walk up that I would just freeze, stumble over my words, and rush off the stage, but much to my surprise, words just started flowing out like they were honeyed, ambered tokens, each one piecing cogently with the next. I told a tidy story about how I had (ridiculously) flown to Minneapolis without J’s knowledge to try and win her back, and against pretty tall odds, I was the winner for the evening according to audience reactions.

It was a big dopamine rush, the audience was very supportive, and all in all, it was a great evening. I filed it away as one of many, and continued on with my life. A year later, a client of my agency’s poached me with a crazy salary offer that I would have been irresponsible to refuse, and that brought me to Philly, where I reside now. I met a new girlfriend, we got engaged, then we got married, and bought a house, and then the pandemic happened. That’s a lot of life in between, to be clear, this Moth event was a silly story at best that lived on as a podcast recording somewhere deep in a vault.

Now it’s 2020, and the world is ending. My wife and I are going strong and experiencing a surprising renaissance in our relationship due to the isolate-in-place orders. I am bored out of my skull and right at the height of having just consumed every possible piece of media on planet earth. I go through my spam emails, as one does every month or two, and by sheer chance, I happen upon an email from someone at The Moth that had been routed immediately as junk.

They were asking if I would consent to them picking up my Moth speech from back then and rebroadcasting it on NPR affiliates nationwide on Valentine’s Day. UHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Listen, I said yes because I kind of didn’t remember what I had talked about back then. I had assumed it was a lot more general. But when I asked for a copy of the audio just to hear it before I agreed, I immediately was teleported back to the stage on that cold February night. It was wild. I was simultaneously embarrassed that 20-year-old, lovesick Mitch would do something so stupid and everyone I grew up with will know what a spaz I am and a little proud of how much more emotionally mature I was than how I had remembered. I remember standing out in front of what was then an abandoned tire shop in my neighborhood and making the decision to say yes; I had the thought that if this crazy string of events had gotten this far, who am I to stop it now?

And, so, that is how I accidentally broadcasted my relationship trauma over national broadcast radio. Pure cosmic coincidence. No idea who needed to hear it, or why, but my first public therapy session became public domain, and that will forever be really fucking cool in a special way.

By the way, if you’re curious, I did hear from someone I went to high school with who ignored me then. She said she had no idea I was so sensitive and kind. To be honest, that was the biggest dopamine hit of them all. Didn’t mean much 'cause I was happily married, but we’re already talking about time warps here. I think it’s okay if 15-year-old Mitch claims a W here for himself.