Giving up on the glitz and glamour of Hollywood was one of the hardest chapters in my life. Fully penetrating the industry, my first two years were on Madonna’s personal team. Maybe if I had been like most and wound up fired, I would’ve exited promptly. However, that wasn’t how it played out for me. I left, on my own accord, to continue my pursuit towards my dream, but not without stamps of chaos and messiness. Unlike the polished outcome of a multi-million dollar movie production, my story was quite uncomfortable to watch. No matter what I ingested, the red dress never quite fit: my own Requiem of A Dream.  

Less than a year after leaving Madonna’s personal team, I found myself working for a CEO in the film finance industry. Not as many conversations with producers and creatives, but more so zooms and dinners with business moguls in need of tax breaks. Six months into that position, I quit despite the financial security it provided, all because the various levels of pain that emerged. 

My heart was plagued by emotional pain of varying degrees of grief. My beloved grandmother had died recently and my love interest had turned out to be unrequited. Oh, and my body was in a physical pain I couldn’t bear to explain to others. I’d just limp to Equinox on East 63rd or on Hollywood Blvd, as I journeyed back and forth from The Plaza in Manhattan and my Wifey’s condo in Los Angeles. My boss was the spawn of Bernie Madoff and Anna Delvey, but had a hell of a Rolodex and even better lawyers. 

Despite a looming ex-business partner’s warning to not take the job over coffee at Saint Vincente’s Bungalow in WeHo, I journeyed on, thinking this could’ve been my next ticket. Within 2 months of being on the job, I got my own air bnb on the Bd de la Croisette with a beautiful view of the yachts parked for the year’s most coveted film festival. I had more breakdowns between work events in that bathtub than I’d care to admit. And I didn’t make it to a single screening. An old friend from college even had to sweep in for a few days to keep me from flying out early.

I left that role without a plan, only a month later to find out the homophobia in certain parts of my family had yet to die down. After a stressful visit to Charleston to secure a bit more time of familiar financial security while I looked for my next job, I spiraled into mania & psychosis. It took me a while to recover, a process that involved pushing away a lot of memories. But unlike the time in college that was caused by an abuse of prescriptions as I so desperately fought to fit into the elite of NYU’s bisexual student body, this time was quite different. There were no psych wards or benzo detoxes, just sleepless nights and endless days in bed, replaying terrorizing recollections. 

A few months after I quit the CEO, an Oscar-winning director called me begging me to take a job he gave to someone else a few months prior after FaceTiming with me. Memories don’t remember dialogue as well as a script supervisor, but he said something along the lines of, “I knew to hire the gay white guy but I wanted to give the black girl a chance. I was wrong. Goldie I need you.”

The intense negotiations through the recruitment agency didn’t pan out and truth be told, my heart was already in another place. 

As other opportunities for intros to Hollywood’s next A-listers emerged, I panicked because I had already driven back to Georgia. I kept thinking about returning to LA, but I didn’t. Even after struggling to find work in Atlanta, when opportunities came up in Manhattan, I still turned them down. I just wanted something different.

It wasn’t easy and still isn’t, but my bubble had already popped. If you know me, my addiction to the allure of celebrity started as a toddler when I’d run away from home claiming I’m going to Los Angeles. I was in Lake Park, Georgia.

As I recovered from yet another mental breakdown, I thrived at two humbling jobs in Atlanta: folding towels at a gym for minimum wage and then a position at a startup where I was basically a housekeeper. Both have since reached out to ask me to return. I guess us Southern Gentleman are good at hiding our internal demons. Throughout both positions, I kept oscillating between crying myself to sleep and blacking out alone, just to escape my thoughts for a clock tick. 

As my time as a housekeeper was coming to an end, my body started to give out completely. I remember hobbling down a hallway in a high-rise in Buckhead to train a girl to take over a client for me and she asked me what was wrong. I simply thought it was siatica and brushed it off to her, “Let’s just get through the next hour.”

After four hours of struggling to drive to my hometown to see a family chiropractor, little did I know what my immediate future would hold. I could only eat laying down. I wasn’t able to walk or sit for more than a minute without having to lay down flat to calm the nerve pressed against my herniated disc. The pain shot down my left side, debilitating me. For the first time in my life, I physically was unable to be independent.

The first two weeks in bed I contemplated suicide yet again, and then I just decided to embrace my predicament. An orthopedic said I might need surgery but my mom and other peanut gallery members balked, so I tried the pain management route, without opioids. I experimented with nerve medications, muscle relaxers, physical therapy disguised in a contraption labeled as spinal decompression, and two epidural steroid injections. Nothing gave me relief. As I lay in beds, couches and trunks of SUVs, I couldn’t help but wonder why my body failed me after my mind and dreams had already given up. 

I sought surgery, attempting relief. Promptly after coming out of anesthesia, I texted an old lover to remind him I existed, and he immediately FaceTimed me. I couldn’t pick up. Attached to an IV, disheveled in a hospital gown, and altered from a cocktail of medications, I replied with a text. After no response, when the next Percocet hit, I decided to return his FaceTime. I never did hear back from him…a redirection that seeking attention from men wasn’t satiable any longer. 

Relief came, but of course not on my timeline. What I hadn’t understood was that healing required a gentle return to life. And though my bubble burst, I realized I could create my own: not one tainted by the allure of tabloids and social media, but one built on choices that lead to peace. While these decisions aren’t glamorous, they brought me to touch grass. I could finally feel all the things I had pushed aside for years in pursuits of my dreams.

After a treacherous year, during which one of my closest friends and I stopped talking, and when I finally gave up the search for Mr. Right, I found direction while slowly walking toward a pond wearing a back brace. My Vizsla ran circles around me as tears streamed down my face, uncertain of when I’d be able to run again. But as Plato licked my hand, I smiled, grateful I could walk once more.