Growing up I was always extremely over weight. Mounds of fat piled on my midsection as flabby arms jiggled on my way to the fridge to reach for another snack to make me feel less alone. This feeling of loneliness I have has been present since I can remember. No matter how many loved ones I have around me, I still feel a strong sense of isolation. And for the longest time food was the answer. I could eat my way through any feeling and somehow escape.

And one day, Clarence bought a piece of property in my mind that wasn’t for sale, and started setting up camp. I believe Clarence was there much before I noticed him but around the age of 24, I could no longer ignore him. I had been sober for a little over a year and began to fully grasp just how my mind worked. There was a boy, the closest thing to a relationship I ever experienced, although he was far from it. Well when word came that he was in a relationship with a boy from Massachusetts, I started to notice Clarence in a way I hadn’t before. He would tell me throughout the day if I didn’t push myself past my limits, I would forever be abandoned and would never have love. He would have me grab fat around my body and displace it, showing me what I would look like without the lard. He had me googling rib removal surgery so I could have a smaller circumference. Clarence came not when I was pushing 220 lbs, but when I had made it down to 167 lbs, without amphetamines, all my mind’s lonesome self. Three hours a day spent at the gym in Bushwick. A whole day going by without putting a single calorie into my mouth. At my smallest is when Clarence flared up and could not be silenced.

I was in a yoga studio somewhere between Midtown and Chelsea at a breath work class, something I never imagined my 24 year old self would ever do. Where was the sexy 6’ 2” European model with a 9 inch cock offering me a bump of cocaine? I was in my second year of sobriety and I was seeking clarity. So I embarked onto the MTA to journey to a small room with a small group of strangers to lay down and pump oxygen into parts of my body that usually don’t get it. This wasn’t my first time doing breath work, it was my third. The second time I did breath work, I felt a body standing over me who my friend I took to the class, afterwards identified as her dead father visiting me.

In this breath work class, I experienced something gut wrenching and life changing I will never forget. After feeling parts of my body go numb and tingling, a sensation I can only compare to when you accidentally do too much ecstasy at a musical festival in Sydney, Australia, I saw a face levitating above me. Keep in mind my eyes were closed. I don’t know if this face was a younger me, an older me, a visualization of God, or a complete stranger, but it was male in nature. I had no mind altering substance in my body. This completely came from deep oxygen breaths pumping extra throughout my body.

This face levitated above me as I laid there with my eyes shut. Then I felt something holding my wrists firmly to the ground. I could not move them, the force was stronger than me. I was being held back. I tried to fight but to no prevail. I was completely paralyzed by this power who was holding me captive. All I kept hearing was,

“Just let go.”
“Please stop fighting! You’re exhausting yourself.” “Release and all will be okay.”
“You aren’t in control.”
“Just stop!”

At the end of the session, I felt the instructor touch my ankles and ask if I was okay. I guess the session had ended and all the other people were already sitting up with their eyes open and I was being held to the ground by an imagined spirit.

Terrified and confused, I put my coat and shoes on and proceeded to turn my phone off and find the closest Outback Steakhouse to eat some comfort food and digest what happened.

For a few months I had been wearing a Rose Quartz chakra opener around my neck. I purchased the necklace at a cute shop in the West Village in hopes of unlocking some power to self love because I couldn’t take the pain of Clarence anymore. He was suffocating me. I slept with it on each night. When I woke up the next day, it had fallen off my neck. I scrounged to find it within my sheets, only to find it had broken in half. I almost chalked it off to a cheap stone purchased from a gimmick crystal shop just hoping to help someone pay their rent....until the next day in a hot yoga class.

Keep in mind, before the hot yoga class I had only eaten a Quest bar, drank a ton of caffeine, and done 2 SoulCycle classes, so what proceeds was fueled by over exertion and malnourishment. During the hot yoga class, the instructor informed us each move was to allow for the heart to be more open. This particular class, the room is pumped with heat with no lights on, just candles burning on the edges of the room. And since the class with in Soho in downtown Manhattan, the matts were close to one another. You could practically feel the people around you sweating. As the music flowed loudly and I moved into a new position, I felt my heart pounding faster and faster. I tried closing my eyes but I saw a light. It kept getting brighter and was calling me to look into it. I shook my head and opened my eyes because I couldn’t tell what was happening. Was I about to faint? For what felt like an eternity, but was probably closer to 3 minutes, I debated falling into the light or avoiding it entirely. Still to this day I wonder what would’ve happened if I chased the brightness.

Out of fear of disrupting the entire class, I excused myself outside to get some water and feel a little cool air. I escaped the faint. Once I returned to class, I took it easy, mainly just staying in child’s pose to breathe and wrap my head around the events of breath work, a broken rose quartz chakra opener, and a near encounter with the light.

Something or someone was trying to tell me to let go. Clarence was suffocating me and I couldn’t continue to let him win if I wanted to continue to live. Clarence still visits me often but I often tell him to fuck off, or try to ignore him. When I can’t ignore him completely, I go for a run or drown myself in music to overpower the strength of his voice.

Clarance is deceptive and tells me the reason I’m still single at 25 is because of how my body looks. Clarence wants me dead. He doesn’t want me to eat. He doesn’t want me to take rest days. He wants me to take Connor’s SoulCycle class in Chelsea and then power walk to Monique’s RSM bootcamp in Soho, only to not eat dinner and desperately prowl Grindr for validation.

Clarence wakes me up at 3am to google a botox upper lip flip or a laser treatment that can break up my fat cells. Clarence has me researching how to count macros and keeping a food log of every morsel I put in my body. Clarence yells at me to run longer even when me knee is screaming in pain and 1600mg of ibuprofen cannot numb it out. Clarence is not my friend and he is not nice.

Clarence hears my stomach growling and tells it to shut up because if I eat I won’t ever be loved. If I ingest any calorie, it will go straight to the rolls in my stomach and further me off the path from finding love.

I found out one night at dinner with my father that his mother’s father’s name was Clarence and he was not known to be a nice man. I chalked this off as a coincidence but I thought it was worth noting, since the first law of thermodynamics exists (energy is neither created nor destroyed), so when someone dies it goes somewhere right? I don’t know if I believe the voice in my head is part of the energy that made up my Mema’s father but it is quite perplexing.

Clarence is my mind’s way of finding control for the loneliness I feel that’s been exacerbated by all the abandonment and rejection over the years. The first guy I ever sexually played with was in 8th grade and he never mentioned what happened again. The first guy I kissed on the lips and messed around with when I was 18, texted me a slew of messages the next day that what we did was wrong, no one could know, and it could never happen again. The guy that would take my virginity freshman year of college would excuse me of raping him the next day, via text message he sent from the bedroom next to me (he was my roommate). Pretty great precedent and standard to set for my future love life.

I won’t bore you with details of all the men I’ve slept with or gone on a dates with, in hopes that one might stick around and be the partner I’ve always idealized. It’s boring at this point. But the final one, a diagnosed Narcissist, blew out the candle of me giving a shit to try. I’ve tried to manipulate so many men into loving me so I could somehow love myself. Because if I could get him to love me and stick around, then maybe Clarence would leave me alone and I could eat in peace.

I do know sex is not the answer to shutting up Clarence. I learned this about 2 years ago as I was crying into a pillow while someone was inside of me. Granted, a month or 2 prior someone in my family suggested I look into conversion therapy, because hey, if it worked for a politician’s relative, it should work for me right? After a few dozen strangers piled into 2 months, I needed new sheets and knew that it wasn’t the answer.

The thing about Clarence...no matter who I sleep with, who I go on a date with, how much muscle mass I gain, how much body fat percentage I lose, how much food restriction I endure, how much physical exercise I do, he’s not satisfied. I can never bring enough to the alter to satisfy him. He always wants more.

I deleted all my dating apps nearly 3 weeks ago and let me tell you, Clarence is screaming and hollering, like a ‘Bama fan at a national championship. He won’t settle down. But I refuse to fall prey to him anymore. He can’t have me. He didn’t help me find love so why should I listen to him anymore?