9 Year Blog Anniversary: All The Stars that Glow
Hello hello!
Welcome to this year’s blogiversary!
On this day, 9 years ago, I launched ‘The Oolong Drunk’. Since then, my life has forever changed. Starting my blog, I have made many incredible friends, have had many wonderful experiences, and above all else — spilled a lot juicy tea. Every year on my blog anniversary, I ‘spill the tea’ in that year’s drama that I experienced as a tea blogger. This has led my creativity to take me to many incredible places which includes a sinking ship, or a de-railed train.
However, what did year 9 bring as far as drama? You didn’t think this post would go without drama, did you? Being this pretty, fabulous, and popular all of the time brings luggage with it.
So what are we waiting for?
Let’s dive in!
Late at night, I’ll go up to the rooftop of the parking garage of my apartments. I’ll look at the Colorado sky and watch for planets, and now and then, I’ll track the airplanes above me and see where they’re going. One night, I thought I saw a UFO as I watched a string of light hover over my apartment (it was just a string of starlight satellites, by the way).
For my year ahead of me, I had several things lined up: I’d be going to teach a workshop at the PDX Tea Fest, I’d be traveling to Washington DC to visit friends, and I’d be flying to South Carolina to see another friend. I also lined up a tea educational class at Trident — my favorite tea shop. However, while staring into space and thinking about the expanding universe above, I was inspired to take more action: Sell tea.
This year, I did something I’ve always wanted to do. I released a pop-up shop and did it as a blog fundraiser. Given my blog’s platform rise in cost, I figured there would be no better way to raise funds than to sell tea. Earlier in the spring, I sourced and pressed a tea, got tea-cake wrappers made, and got custom blog pins made that had my favorite teapot, and blog’s slogan on it. This project took over six months of saving, investing, and planning. The prospects of my pop-up shop were looking great and after a lot of hype surrounding it.
I was thrilled at the thought that I could sell enough tea to not only self-fund the shop but also fund my blog for the next few years to come.
After sourcing last-minute tea pets to sell in the shop, I had everything ready to go. With one click of a mouse, my pop-up shop was LIVE, and I was ready to start selling tea!
Initially, I got a large group of orders from friends and colleagues alike. However, after the first week of the pop-up, sales dwindled, and it was coming time to put things to an end.
In one final push for marketing, I recruited several colleagues to help spread the word. These particulate colleagues weren’t random. These particular people were tea shop owners who have asked me over the past few years to help promote them in some capacity or another. Some of these people asked for a tea review. Some have asked me to take photos of their products. Or, creators who have asked me to share projects of theirs to my story, to help them reach a new audience. One of the people I asked, was Connie.
Connie and I go back.
Connie owns a tea shop, has a beautiful husband and child, and lives a privileged life. Connie launched her tea shop with incredible innovation, and quickly thereafter, she sent me some of her tea with the intent of sharing photos of her product on my social media page. After receiving her package, I tried her tea. To my surprise, it was incredible. I took photos, reviewed her on my blog, and continued to drink her tea.
Eventually, some of my followers started to hop on the Connie bandwagon. And, I started buying from Connie too. Every time I posted a photo or review of Connie’s teas, I had a small influx of followers who messaged me — telling me they ordered from her on my behalf.
I eventually met Connie in person and built a great camaraderie with Connie. We eventually built a friendship, and I even got to meet her in person. She joined my blog’s talk show, and I continued to promote her.
However, in our three-year friendship, I didn’t ever ask for support from her, until I launched my fundraiser.
I sent her a message and asked her to share the announcement of my fundraiser on her Instagram story.
She replied, “I won’t share it on my business page. I’ll share it on my personal page instead.”
After struggling with a way to reply to her, I angrily replied, “As an FYI, I’ll no longer promote your shop on my blog’s page. I’ll only do it from my personal Instagram from here on out.”
Connie replied, “I don’t understand the FYI. The shop’s page is for my shop’s official business. I don’t want customers to get confused and believe I’m a part of your fundraiser. I want to support your blog personally, so it’ll go on my personal page.”
She then continued, “Why am I choosing to use my own public account considered not sharing that support back? Don’t you feel that’s judgmental and transactional?”
In the most professional way possible, I’ll be telling you, the reader, that I lost my shit.
I'll tell you what I told her: “That’s gaslighting.”
I took a huge issue over this.
Why?
I took issue with this because she accused me of making her business personal. But, I’m here to tell you that she made her shop personal. She made her business personal by profiting off of the narrative that she’s on the queer spectrum. She made her business personal by accepting unconditional support from the queer community, she made it personal but financially profiting off of her minority status, and she made it personal by sharing her personal life on her business’s social media pages.
I supported her unconditionally for around 3 years. She made a lot of money form my blog, and received a lot of free marketing from me. The very moment I asked for supprt back, to help raise funds for the same blog that helped her make money, she made it conditional. And then, she then gaslit me.
I deleted every photo, post, video, article, and review of her tea from all of my platforms…
Late at night, when climbing to the rooftop of my apartment’s parking garage, I’ll often stare at the sky and wonder about the big picture of life. I’ll often think about the purpose of life on earth, and when I do, I often think about how we’re just on a big rock with gas, spinning and rotating around another ball of gas. However, what happens when you can feel the Earth spin?
For me, I started to feel it spin.
This became a massive problem.
Earlier in the summer, I flew to Oregon to spend time with a few close friends. We drove up to go to the Portland Tea Fest, where I taught a class on how to describe the tasting notes of tea. After an enjoyable weekend with my close friend, he drove me to the airport in Portland as we parted ways. After going through security, I boarded my plane and flew back to Colorado.
While on the airplane to Colorado, I realized that in mid-summer, this was the last time I’d be getting to see any of my friends for the entire year. While looking out of my airplane window, a wave of panic overcame me.
My heart rate spiked as I became dizzy and nauseous. Eventually, I laid down on the floor of the airplane and vomited all over myself while over Salt Lake City…
After the flight landed, I was the first to be rushed off the plane as paramedics met me at the gate and took me to an emergency clinic.
Ah, yes, I’m the special person that had an incident on the plane.
Like I said before, being this pretty, fabulous, and popular comes with its own set of issues.
While lying in the hospital bed with a heart rate of 180/60, I realized that I had a problem. Not only was my heart rate high enough to send me into cardiac arrest, but who would be there for me if I was I had a heart attack?
All of my friends reside in other states. I haven’t been home, and haven’t had any connection with most of my family since coming out of the closet at nineteen. I had taken a break from dating, and I didn’t belong to any community either, so who did I have? All of my friends are in relationships, and they have somebody. So, why couldn’t I?
That’s when I decided to put myself out there again and try to make new friends. Above all else, if things failed, I still had planned a trip to fly out to see other friends out of state. I still had a safety net to fall back on.
This is where Phillip comes in.
I met Phillip at some point after coming back from the Portland Tea Fest. Phillip and I met at a gay club in Denver. After hanging out with him all night, we decided to follow each other on social media. At that moment, he asked if he could follow me from his drag account. I felt honored and without hesitation, I said yes. I love watching drag performances, so how cool was it that I became friends with a performer?
Phillip and I started messaging each other back and forth. And eventually, we started texting back and forth. Phillip and I had a lot in common, and before long, I had a new best friend.
Shortly thereafter, I started making other friends, too. As I continued to go to the club, I met other drag queens through Phillip, and before too long, I was an ally to the drag community. I began seeing people who knew me and started to feel recognized. For the first time in a long time, especially with my sexuality, I started to feel even more accepted for who I was.
However, after a few months of my newly-found community, the new started to wear off. As I went home at night, the feeling of being alone again started settling in. I’d go to bed alone, I’d wake up alone, and I’d spend all week alone. Waiting all week for the weekend to come, was too long. As I looked around, all of my friends (old and new) had a spouse or a partner. Out of all of my friends, I was one of the only ones who was single. To help fill this void, I picked up dating again.
After getting back on a dating app, I started having great conversations with a lot of wonderful guys. However, when the mention of a date came up, I started running into the same response: Oh, you live by Boulder? I’m in Denver, and you’re 20-30 miles away. You live really far.”
At first, I was amused by it. 20-30 miles didn’t feel far for me, especially since I drove from Boulder to Denver every weekend to the gay club.
However, after several months of matching with guys, I kept hearing the same thing. For one of the matches, one of the guys said, “That would be considered a long-distance relationship and I don’t date outside of Denver.”
I kept asking myself, “Why did you match with me then?” I wasn’t shy about where I was from, and it even said my location/distance on my profile.
After running into brick wall after brick wall, I decided to ditch the apps. Instead, I started talking to some of the other guys who were also a regular at the club. After talking to more guys in person, I started running into the same reaction: “Oh, you’re up near Boulder? That is so far from here, I’d never date anyone who lived that far.”
It became defeating. After spending the rest of the year attempting dating, nothing has happened.
However, this is where I’d lean more into my friendships. Dating was shallow and began to negatively impact my self-image and confidence. However, one night, Phillip invited me out to a Drag Bingo that he was hosting. Without hesitation, I drove back down to Denver and went. When I walked in, I saw Phillip and felt immediate relief. I didn’t talk to him about any of the issues I was having, but just the thought of being around a friend was all it took. After going to drag bingo, we went out and met other friends at the drag bar.
However, as time went on, my friendship with Phillip started becoming one-sided. Some of my other friendships in Denver also began to feel one-sided as well. However, all of this came to a head when Phillip came back from out of town. He said we could hang out after coming back from Florida. However, after coming back from Florida, the story changed.
I asked him if we could hang out, and he replied, “Well, I’m doing a show tonight.”
I then replied, “Well, I can come down again.”
He responded, “Well, to be honest, you just live too far.”
After staring at my phone and trying to come up with logic behind his response, I replied, “What do you mean? I’m driving to you.”
Phillip replied, “Well, we can’t just do anything spur of the moment. It would take too long for you to drive down. I can’t just come over, either. You not being in Denver is really hard.”
After spending months and months facing rejection from dating due to me not living in Denver, I thought I was safe when it came to friends.
I never thought I’d be rejected by a friend, for the same reason.
I was crushed.
I like my town. I live near my work, I live near nature, and the city is only 30 miles away by car. If something as shallow as a 20-mile distance is keeping me from my potential friends or my potential life partner, then would I want that person in my life to begin with? What if l lived in Denver, and something happened where I had to move outside of the city limits? Would my social life end then? Isn’t it better to find out now that all of my connections were conditional, instead of waiting until I was too invested after the fact?
Yes. Better sooner than later. But, having to face this reality still hurts regardless.
I immediately cut ties with Phillip, and stopped going to Denver on a regular basis…
I went back to the rooftop of my parking garage and looked at the night sky. My vertigo became worse, and my feelings of isolation instantly came back. When they did, my vertigo quickly came back and was stronger than before.
I laid there and watched the stars spin as I rotated in place.
However, this created a worse problem when my birthday came around.
I ate my birthday dinner alone. I drank tea in my apartment alone. I went and got dessert at a restaurant, alone.
I had spent the last four birthdays completely by myself, and the thought of spending another birthday alone ended my night with a panic attack.
Once I calmed down, I realized that after moving to Colorado three and a half years ago, I was back in the same spot:
I was still mostly by myself. I was still lonely and still felt isolated.
However, I still had one sliver of hope left: I still had the planned trip to see another friend out of state.
Unfortunately, as time came around to visit this friend, I got sick with COVID-19 and went back to the ER due to my inability to breathe.
My safety net for connection failed.
However, despite everything, I was determined to not let my panic win. I was determined to get back up, and not let the gravity of my loneliness get to me.
After recovering from COVID-19, I messaged one of the Denver friends I had made at the club and asked them out to tea.
To my surprise, he said yes.
While waking up, the room spun more than more. I was disoriented, and when I got out of bed, I couldn’t stand straight.
With my head hanging down, I bear-crawled to the bathroom and pulled myself up on myosin. I reached into my medicine cabinet for my Dramamine, took three, and crawled over to the toilet. I hung my head in the toilet and waited for the Earth to stop spinning.
After falling asleep with my head on the toilet, I opened my eyes and realized that most of the spinning stopped. However, as I slowly stood up, my head weighed my body down like a bowling ball as fatigue filled the void that the dizziness left.
I walked over to the couch, sat upright, and took deep breaths. My stomach was on the floor, and after sitting for over an hour, I realized that I was going to be late for my tea date. I didn’t want to give in to the black matter that filled the void in the universe.
I had to overcome this.
I threw on some clothes, grabbed a jacket, and headed out the door to downtown Denver.
While pulling into my parking spot, I looked down at my phone and saw that my friend was just twenty minutes away. I walked on the sidewalk and headed to the tea shop.
While crossing the busy downtown street, I looked up and saw a couple with their newborn.
I started getting dizzier, as I looked over to my right and saw a gay couple holding hands while walking down the sidewalk. I started getting more nauseous as I looked to my left and saw a group of five people in their twenties who were all talking over each other and laughing.
Then, the thought hit me: What if the friend I’m meeting downtown, rejects me for not living in Denver? I’ve met countless people here before this point, and every single one has rejected me for the same reason. So why would this one be different?
My lungs began to tighten as my heart rate spiked. As I looked up again, I saw a couple holding hands while walking past me. The sight began to make me hyperventilate as my head began to spin so fast that it nearly brought me to my knees.
I walked over to the side of a building, leaned on the building, and threw up. My heart rate continued to race as I broke out in a cold sweat and began to shake as I crawled back to my car.
Once I made it to my car, I started the engine sped out of my parking spot, and continued to speed back home.
The further away I got from Denver, the more my heart rate slowed. As I drove on the interstate, my lungs began to open up again while my shaking slowed to a halt.
Then, I got a text from my new friend.
“Where are you? I’m here.”
I then froze up and realized I just ditched this potential new friend.
I wiped more vomit off my face as I replied, “I’m sorry.”
I sat my phone down on my passenger seat and cried for the rest of the drive home…
As I laid on the roof of my apartment’s parking garage, my head began to spin so much that I began to levitate off the ground and float up into the sky.
As I floated into the sky, I looked around and noticed that I had the entire universe around me. I looked in the distance and noticed that the universe was still.
There were planets of various sizes.
There were comments passing by.
Oh, look, over there! It’s Saturn’s rings! They’re surprisingly flat.
Then, as. I looked up and around, I also saw that the stars that burned the brightest were also surrounded by the empty void of space.
I started to become comforted by the idea that I was floating above in outer space. Just like the stars above, maybe my light is just shining bright in a void that surrounds me.
However, as I reflect on my 9th year in tea, I was not always surrounded by a void. When I launched my blog’s fundraiser, dozens of people supported it. It made my light shine. When Trident Booksellers in Boulder asked me to help host a tea-tasting series with them, my star shine burned even more brightly. When a potter gifted me a tea pet and tea cake out of the clear blue for my birthday, my star kept burning bright. When various tea companies reached out to me to collaborate with them, and when I sold out a class at the PDX Tea Fest, and when I got to spend a weekend in Oregon with my best friend, my star burned the brightest.
The things that kept my star burning bright were spread across the country like how stars are spread across the galactic map. It kept the view of the night sky bright at night. However, when I returned home, I returned to the dark void that surrounded me. I realized that the more I tried to seek that light here at home, the darker my surroundings became. Although I can make it work in other lifetimes, I can’t seem to make it work in this lifetime here at home.
Loneliness has won.
Maybe if I wasn’t abandoned by my family after coming out of the closet, things would have ended up differently. Maybe my life wouldn’t have been projected across several different states across the country, and maybe I’d have a place to visit and call home. Maybe I wouldn’t have spent nearly every birthday and holiday by myself over the past decade by myself. Maybe I would actually see a greater purpose to the meaning of life, instead of being weighed down by the heavy feelings of loneliness on a daily basis.
But, that’s for the universe to know.
In previous blog anniversary posts, I was on a train crashing into a canyon. I was also on a ship that was sinking. But, no one wants to be on a train derailment. No one wants to be on a sinking ship. So, I decided to quit sinking and decided to quit crashing. Instead, I will just float in space until I figure out how to come back down to earth.
As I float in-between the silence in the expanding universe above, maybe my light will reach someone.
Maybe someone will see my star shine in another lifetime.
There’s a song quote by St. Vincent from her 2018 song ‘Slow Disco’, and I will end this year’s anniversary post with those lyrics…
“I sway in place,
To a slow disco.
There’s blood in my ears, and a fool in the mirror.
And the pain of mistakes, couldn’t get any clearer.
Am I thinking what everybody’s thinking?
I’m so glad I came, but I can’t wait to leave...”
~Cody Wade
The Oolong Drunk
“Blissfully Tea Drunk With…”
Thank you Trident in Boulder, for Tea Salons. It was one of the only few times I got to drink tea with other people in person this year. Also, thank you to everyone who supported my blog fundraiser this year. Thank you to everyone who sent me tea, and thank you to everyone who believed in me.
Last but not least, thank you Luke, MacKenna, Kayley, and Karissa. I hope to be as beautiful as you all one day.
You are all the only reasons why I stayed grounded, and kept me from floating away from Earth this year.
Click the Links Below to Read Previous Blog Anniversary Posts:
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