Oops! I Did It Again// Part 1
I Forgot I Don't Exist
“No hotties lol,” I texted my friend Yasmine. “But tbd people are still arriving.”
I looked up from my phone and scanned the room again, looking at the faces of the men. What is wrong with me? I thought. I am at a meditation retreat to practice non-attachment and I am looking around to see if anyone is bangable? I looked back at my text and laughed. It seemed so shallow, so trivial, so me.
I had just arrived at the Vipassana meditation center in Jesup, Georgia. I had wasted no opportunity to check out the guys unloading their cars in the parking lot, the group of men standing near the registration center, and the volunteers working the men’s check-in.
I had a feeling I was going to meet someone there. Plus, anytime I am single, I am on the lookout for a new crush, ever since the boy in kindergarten who captivated me with his perfect cartwheel. I remember looking at him as he stood under a tree, and this energy of affection and excitement stirred in me. Now, thirty years later, I was waiting for that same feeling.
“You're the hottie, that’s why,” Yasmine responded.
I laughed. Yasmine knew I would turn in my phone and be unable to contact her or anyone else during my retreat. I told her goodbye, that I loved her, and sent her a GIF of Ilana from Broad City screaming. As I turned my phone off, I felt this excitement in my chest similar to the feeling I get when I take a hefty dose of psychedelics and am waiting for them to hit.
This was my fifth retreat, and I knew how the check-in process went. I approached the registration desk where a volunteer was waiting to collect my belongings. I felt relief handing her my phone. The silence was one of my main reasons for being there. As a stutterer, it was nice not to have to talk for ten days. Other people may find it torturous; for me, it felt like a vacation.
Leaving the registration building, I passed a beautiful man. I spoke too soon. He looked like white Jesus— barefoot, long-haired, and handsome. I thought of Depeche Mode and how, for so long, I had been searching for a man to be my own personal Jesus (Reach out and touch faith, queue Personal Jesus).
In that moment, I remembered I was ovulating. Great. I will have a few days of being an absolute horndog, and then I’ll chill. Thankfully, the women and men were split up and only interacted with one another on the first and last days. The meditation hall was the only shared space, but even there, the men had a separate entrance and stayed on their side of the room.
I felt giddy as I walked from the registration building and looked around the property. I was familiar with the layout: the modest buildings, the path to the dining hall, and the trails through the woods. I recognized the South Georgia landscape—the tall pines, scatterings of palm fronds, and the dry, dirt roads. I had already done two ten-day retreats at this center, but it reminded me of the property I grew up on in Conway, SC.
Walking back to my room to unpack before dinner, I noticed a woman walking down the path ahead of me, her arm extended in front of her holding her phone in the air. I realized she was taking selfies and videos of herself. I laughed. It must be her first time, I thought. Then, I felt this surge in my body, a sparkly feeling. Then, a few intrusive sexual fantasies played out in my mind.
Fuck.
I rolled my eyes at myself. We did not come here to objectify women. As I passed her, I turned to look at her face. She was still looking at her phone and didn’t notice me. She had glossy lips, and she looked like an actress. Why was I so intrigued? Why did I feel all of this lust? And why did it feel like a part of me was a salacious teenage boy who had just discovered masturbation?
Let it go.
I walked back to the residency hall and entered my room. I felt at home in my small space. I recognized the blank walls, the small bed, and the modest bathroom with the single-stall shower and plastic curtain. The space smelled of vinegar and had a nice, clear energy. I made my bed and then sat on it. I must have been a monk or nun in a past life because I feel so content in my solitude, silence, and the modesty of a simple space.
Sure, part of me can be bougie, comfort-seeking, and over the top, but this other aspect of me is like a quiet, simple old man. I vasilate from feeling like the wise one and the horny teen, but do these two masculine aspects of myself have to be separate?
I heard the gong, which meant it was time for dinner. I walked to the dining hall, made a plate, and sat with my new friend, Camille, who had driven me from Charleston to the retreat center earlier that day. We had met on the online rideshare board, exchanged a few texts, and became instant friends on our drive. There was something familiar and warm about her. Although I only knew her for a few hours, I knew we would be lifelong friends.
It was her first retreat, and I didn’t want to share too much about my experience with her. Still, I tried to give her practical advice: take advantage of the walking trails, you’re only going to get fruit for dinner, eat a bigger lunch, be patient with yourself, and use cushions under your knees.
After dinner, everyone returned to the registration building. I had waited outside for Camille. The room was almost full when I entered. The space had been split up with half the chairs on one side and half on the other, and then there was an aisle down the middle, like at a wedding. All the men were on the right and the women on the left. There were around 70 people total. Walking down the center aisle towards an empty seat in the front of the room, I could feel people looking at me.
After I sat down, I turned towards the back of the room to see if Camille had made it in. I also wanted to see if I could glimpse Jesus. As I turned around, I noticed the faces of five men staring at me from their side of the room. I smiled and tried not to laugh. Was I flattered? Sure, but it was nothing new. For the majority of my life, I have gotten unwanted, as well as wanted, attention from boys and men.
At thirteen, I got cat-called for the first time at a gas station, and it’s happened ever since. However, it doesn’t happen now like in my teens and early twenties, but I also do not strut around wearing heels with miniskirts—at least not outside of the bedroom. An older friend once said, “When you get older, you become invisible. No one looks at you anymore. It’s like you don’t exist.” I wondered how many years before I became invisible.
I didn’t see Camille, but I did see The Woman who had been taking selfies. She was staring at me. I smiled at her. There was something European about her; she looked like someone in a Renaissance painting. Then, I glanced back to the men’s side again to see if I could find the Jesus-looking guy, but he wasn’t there. Maybe that’s a good thing he’s not here. I don’t need distractions.
After registration, the women walked together to the meditation hall. No light pollution or cloud coverage existed, and the stars were bright and sparkly against the inky black sky. We would wait to get called into the meditation hall one-by-one, find our cushions, and then as a group, we would do an intro to the technique, take a break, and do an hour-long meditation. Then we would go into silence until the evening of Day 9. As we walked towards the meditation hall, I noticed The Woman. I slowed down enough for her to catch up with me.
“You’re very pretty,” she said in an accent I couldn’t place.
“Thank you,” I said, smiling. “So are you.”
She smiled, and then we walked up to the meditation hall, where everyone was quiet. Is she flirting with me? I wondered. Is she interested in me? Fuck. Is she my crush?
As the women stood silently waiting to be told what to do, I overheard an older woman say to the center manager, “I volunteered to ring the gong in the morning, but I don’t know where to go.”
I had watched this woman volunteer for this job during registration. I had felt called to volunteer for it, but I didn’t want to wake up every day at 4 am and walk around the dark campus, ringing this bronze gong, so I hadn’t raised my hand. “We will find someone else to do it,” the course manager whispered back. This was my chance.
“I’ll do it,” I whispered.
“Have you been here before?”
“It’s my third time,” I said. We coordinated how to exchange the gong, then I looked up at the sky and laughed. Fuck. I had slept through the morning meditation session from 4:30–6:30 am in past retreats, but I knew I wanted to go all in this time.
The course manager called my name, and as I entered the meditation hall, I smiled at Camille. Then, without hesitation, I turned, smiled, and winked at The Woman.
Really, Carley? I thought to myself. Openly flirting with a woman here? I rolled my eyes at myself as I entered the dim, familiar space. Then, something shifted in me. So far, I had only been in the registration building, the dining hall, and the residents’ hall. As I entered, I remembered the energy of the space.
The meditation hall is a dimly lit, large square room with a scattering of cushions covering the floor aligned in rows. It reminded me of the church I attended in my childhood—not the aesthetic—there were no red velour pews or stained glass—but the quietness, the sanctity. There were no statues of Buddha, no altar, no sign of any religion, but it was a space where people went to find God. It was filled with love, surrender, and good energy.
I giggled as a volunteer led me to my meditation cushion. I was in the front row as expected. I was an “old student,” meaning someone who had attended one or more courses. All old students were put near the front of the room. This was not to indicate status. I have never asked, but I believe it’s to give first timers some grace by hiding them in the back and to also use the old students as role models for others, which knowing myself, and how many cushions I used, how much I moved and turned, I wasn’t sure I should be there and would have been more comfortable in the back of the room, ideally leaning against a wall.
Instead, I was front and center. I quickly sat down on my cushion and tried to make myself comfortable. The assistant teachers, one man and one woman, were seated on cushions at the front of the room. The setup was familiar to me. I had done courses in Indonesia, Portugal, and Massachusetts, too. I loved their familiarity and predictability, that no matter where you were in the world, you could take a course, and the schedule, discourses, and teachings were all the same.
When they started playing the audio chant of the teacher, who has since passed, but left behind his chants, discourses, and videos, I felt relief in my body and remembered past courses. I was happy to be there.
As I closed my eyes for the first meditation, I couldn’t stop thinking about The Woman, the winking. I noticed my thoughts, What am I doing? Winking at a woman? Why am I such a horndog? I haven’t felt that energetic connection with a woman in so long, why now? And I know I am ovulating, but what’s the purpose of sexual attraction to women? It’s useless in procreation, right? So, men got nipples and I got a 24/7 invisible hard on? What is wrong with me? Absolutely nothing.
I was ovulating and I just had to ride it out, metaphorically, knowing it would pass. During the first hour of meditation, I thought about sexuality and how I had been taught to be ashamed of my sexual desires. Isn’t sexual desire in a woman a sign of good health, like having a regular menstrual cycle? Shouldn’t it be seen as positive? And not something to try to suppress?
I realized in that moment how I still expected myself to transcend this human experience of desire and sexuality. I still saw it as a sign of “daddy issues,” or that it was something I should overcome. I had been taught that it was something I could heal my way out of, but why would I want to heal my way out of horniness? Why would I want to transcend one of the most juicest, pleasurable aspects of the human experience?
I kept trying to focus on my breath, but all these ideas rolled through my mind. I allowed them. I knew the first few days were when the mind was the most scattered. I thought about another woman I had a crush on at my second retreat. She would strip down in front of me in our small room. I thought maybe she wanted me to make a move. Afterward, I became friends with her and realized she wasn’t attracted to me; she was just a hippie.
Halfway through the hour, my fantasies subsided, and I was hit with reality. I thought about how I forgot to tell my neighbor that I buy eggs from that I would be gone for ten days and how I forgot to tell my friend who was petsitting that the oven was difficult to work (I will later find out she telepathically got the message). I remembered that because they were not dry, I had to leave most of my comfortable clothes and panties in the dryer and pack my skanky underwear, which gave me wedgies, and my least favorite pajamas instead. And then the chanting began, and the hour was over. Jesus Christ, I thought. It really does feel like the first time.
That night I went into my quiet room, brushed my teeth, and climbed into the twin bed. I lay in bed, wondering where The Woman was staying. Is she nearby? Is something going to happen? Am I going to kiss her at some point? Is this just a fantasy? Or is this going to happen in the future? Why do I feel so connected to her?
I didn’t sleep well that first night. I dreamed I missed my alarm, didn’t ring the gong, and got in trouble. Nothing new. Since childhood, I had struggled to accept disappointing others. Then I woke at 3:55 am, rolled out of bed, put on my jacket, grabbed the gong, and went out into the still black night. I walked around the campus, ringing the gong, looking for deer, and thinking of the T Rex song Bang a Gong. (You’re dirty sweet and you’re my girl).
That first morning, I went back to sleep instead of doing morning meditation. While I was sleeping, I dreamed that I was at my grandmother’s house and that she was sitting in her recliner staring at me. We sat there momentarily, her looking serious, me waiting, and then she said, “We are so disappointed in you for sleeping through meditation.”
I woke up and walked to breakfast, laughing. Of course, that’s my dream. In reality, my family does share their disappointment in me. They tell me they can't believe I do witchcraft and that it’s the devil’s work (about tarot readings), and that they wish I didn’t use obscenities on Facebook (I do say fuck a lot). They don’t read this newsletter, but I am sure they’d also be disappointed in it, too.
I also thought about how much I had internalized the Christian expectations of my youth. I believed constantly that a man in the sky was always watching and judging me, and that his son had died for me, and for what? For me to be hungover in church? Now, I had applied the same guilt here. I can’t sleep through meditations! The Buddha died under the tree to save me from my attachments! I laughed out loud to myself. It was clear I had transferred my Christian guilt to this practice. I smiled at breakfast, thinking of this.
I was excited for my first full day of meditation. For the first group meditation sitting, I arrived, sat, made myself comfortable, and got ready. I closed my eyes, noticed my breath, and then allowed my mind to go blank, like a movie screen, and waited to see what came up.
Since I hadn’t done a meditation retreat since my breakup last May, things that had happened since then came up in my consciousness. I had memories from living in Boston last year, moving back to Charleston, and the post-breakup darkness I was in last May. I had thoughts of the lovers and crushes I had since then, some funny, some neutral, some very sexual.
God, all these men float in my mind all day, I thought. This is wild. I need to organize them. Yes, I need to organize them. Let’s count them out. As I started, I knew how many there would be. Seven. I laughed. Immediately, I thought of the Eagles. In the song, Take It Easy, Glenn Frey sings, “Well, I’m runnin’ down the road tryna loosen my load, I got seven women on my mind. Four that wanna own me, two that wanna stone me, and one says she’s a friend of mine.”
I knew these lyrics by heart. I practiced counting to this song in my childhood. I knew Jackson Browne had written the song, but Glenn Frey sang the Eagles’ version. Not only was I obsessed in my childhood, but I had also watched their documentary a few years ago, which taught me so much about their history and also caused me to have sexual fantasies about a young Glenn Frey.
Now, in my mind, I imagined the seven men lined up: the first in the lineup was the ex I dated for two years, who I thought would propose to me on a European vacation. The second was the college crush I interviewed for my memoir, a writer who lives in California. I had felt nervous to talk to him, and once we were on FaceTime, I was pleased to feel that sparkly tension of a crush again for the first time since the end of my relationship.
The third was the FBI agent I had a fling with that helped me heal my sexual trauma; the fourth was a guy I had been in a situationship with in the fall, an older man who was quite the character. The fifth was a guy I met at The Windjammer, a beach bar on the Isle of Palms in September. He was in town for a friend’s bachelor party and had approached me and said, “I am not hitting on you, but can you tell me what the best bar is around here?”
He was funny, smooth. We danced, laughed, and made out. At the end of the night, he pulled out a Magnum condom, or golden ravioli, as I like to call them, and said, “I am going to take you on the ride of your life.” I laughed at him. “Not tonight.” My sister was visiting. Otherwise, I would have taken him home with me. We stayed in touch. He was planning to return to town for work, and I had promised him a date.
The sixth was a friend with benefits who was now a friend. He showed up in my life and my mind’s eye, shirtless. We had a few fun, no-strings-attached encounters, but now we were just friends. We talked about writing; he gave me advice on marketing in a helpful and not annoying way. I didn’t miss having sex with him, nor did I feel like there was any awkwardness in our friendship now. It was nice.
The last one, the seventh guy, was the hardest to think about. He was the most recent. In a lot of ways, he was my dream guy. He had come into my life in the fall, and we had this intense connection. I felt tethered to him in a way I couldn’t explain. The physical connection was electric, but there was also something loving and caring about it. I fell for him hard, which all felt predestined in some way.
I had known I would meet him before. “Another guy is coming in,” I kept saying. Then he showed up, and we collided like two waves merging. I surrendered to him, to love, to it all. Then, in January, after only a few months, he told me his head and heart were not in it and he couldn’t do it anymore.
I understood. I cried. I laughed. I knew that he was in my life to teach me non-attachment, and I knew that going into the meditation was my opportunity to release him and finally let him go, but was I able to do that? Was I ready to do that?
The chanting started, indicating the end of the hour.
Motherfucker, I thought to myself. I just thought of sex and men for that entire hour. I laughed and remembered to have compassion with myself and to try harder next time.
As I walked to my room to nap, I thought about all the men. What kind of woman am I to have all these men in my life? On my mind? I thought about how, back in the fall, I realized that during the summer, I had sex with three guys. That’s not too many, I had thought. Three a season is only twelve a year, which would mean that in one decade, I would have sex with 120 people. I started laughing. It could be more?
What would you call a woman like this? I wondered. There’s the term Lady’s Man, but Man’s Lady didn’t work. There was also the term Womanizer, but Manizer sounds like a corrupt pharmaceutical company. I wasn’t a player, I wasn’t committed to anyone, and I was honest and open with everyone. Was there not another word other than slut or whore?
Then I remembered that I didnt come to the retreat to redefine cultural definitions of sexually liberated women, I was there to release attachments.
That first day, my brain was scrambled, and I allowed it. I also allowed myself to nap. When I could muster it up, I stayed focused on my breath for a few minutes, but then my mind would wander away. I just had to accept it all and be patient, but another part of me was dedicated to doing the retreat correctly. This other voice said, You better focus, bitch. We’re here to get enlightened.
The theory is that Vipassana is the practice the Buddha used to become enlightened. Now, every time I go to a retreat, by day three, I am sure that I will become enlightened before the tenth day. I know this is ridiculous, but I can’t help myself. I get so locked in.
I understood the practice better this time. The technique of Vipassana allows you to be present with and aware of your body. The idea is that the entire body comprises vibrations, that the body is temporary, and that there is no need to be attached. We are not the identity we made up; instead, we don’t really exist. (Honk!) It’s all an illusion of attachment and suffering. If we could get to a place of understanding via this technique, we could transcend that reality and experience that we are not this “I” and then become enlightened and reach Nirvana. (Queue Come As You Are)
Every time I went to a past retreat, I was in crisis. Although I had known there was a potential for enlightenment each time, I had never understood that process. The potential of enlightenment was so far away from me. Enlightenment was for real spiritual teachers, saints, and men. It was impossible, but I would still work towards it.
At my last Vipassana course, I had talked to two women, both devoted practitioners of the technique.
“Why are y’all here?” I had asked them.
“I am here to reach Nirvana,” one had told me.
“I am here to become enlightened,” the other had said.
What? I thought, trying not to laugh. I had wanted these things, too, but I did not know they were possible, nor did I admit them to others or myself.
“Why are you here?” one of them asked.
“I’m just trying to decide if I should break up with my boyfriend,” I said, laughing.
But in this retreat, there was no decision to be made. I was here to surrender. I was here because, like every other time, I had felt the call to fill out the application, save the dates on my calendar, and show up and check in.
I wondered what would happen in the next nine days. Would I be able to release the exes? Would something happen with The Woman? Would I get clarity on my book? Would my ego dissolve? Would I get closer to enlightenment? Would I have a full-on psychotic break?
Then I climbed into bed, laughing. Why get married? Why have children? A partner? A family? When can you do this? Be silent, alone, horny, and hungry in a twin bed in voluntarily solitary confinement. I laughed, but in a way it was true. I knew it was exactly where I was meant to be.
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK (OR MONTH!) WHO KNOWS!
Currently:
What am I doing? I am setting up my days and my life to be a published writer. I am editing the book. I am walking on the beach. I am dreaming bigger. I am practicing gratitude. I am being present. I am trusting the process.
Who am I doing? No one at the moment! I am attempting to remain celibate until I get a draft of the book ready to submit to publishers, but I have a new crush, and that’s exciting!
I did tarot readings last week for Hart, a local jewelry company, which was amazing! I can’t believe I get paid to do something I love so much. What a gift. (DM or email me to book your reading!)
I also had an Akashic record reading with my friend Claire at Aster Holistic, validating my purpose, vision, and path this lifetime.
What am I writing? I will have a draft together by Easter that is submittable to publishers. That is exactly three weeks, so I better get on it.
What am I reading? I just read The Tell by Amy Griffin, which I cannot recommend enough. Please read it.
What am I listening to? Ram Dass Here and Now on Spotify.
I fucking love yall!
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Love it & you and so relate. Beautiful sharing.
I enjoyed reading this Carley, thank you for sharing. So relatable, all of the "unspiritual" stuff that goes on in our minds and bodies as we try to awaken.