Page 2 of Heartsick & Lipsticks
“Are you okay?”
No.At this moment, I felt anything but okay. I had no idea if I’d made the right decision by taking my mother into my home. It wasn’t me or her that I was worried about. It was my six-year-old daughter, Bella. I was a single father and had sole custody of her. She could be traumatized by this.
Over the past month, I’d spoken to a dozen child psychologists who were all at the top of their field, and each one assured me that there was a healthy way to navigate the very unique situation I was in. They explained that there could be a lot of learning opportunities in this if I handled it correctly.
I still wasn’t totally convinced. If at any point I felt that this living arrangement was becoming detrimental to her, then I would place my mother in a nursing home. There was no wiggle room on that. I’d already found a place and secured a room for her.
My head kept telling me that she should go there from the start. But another part of me, my gut, the instinct that I’d lived my entire life following, told me that bringing her into my home was the right thing to do. Normally, I trusted my gut. But in this case, I wasn’t so sure.
“I’m fine,” I lied, then disconnected the call.
I’d known this day was coming for weeks, but now that it was actually here, I felt entirely unprepared. That was not a feeling I was used to. I never walked into a meeting, a party, or, hell, even the grocery store without a game plan. I was always two steps ahead of every move I made.
My brain never stopped analyzing situations and considering every possible outcome. If my internal thoughts were a search engine, I would constantly have forty pages open. My mind was never quiet; it was never calm, and I liked it that way.
I was always ten steps ahead. Always. Things did not take me by surprise. Never caught me off guard. I considered every possible outcome for any scenario and how I would handle myself in each case. I was in control.
In therapy, I learned that was a coping mechanism for my life. In my early development, I had no control over anything. Not my environment, my school, or the people I was surrounded by. At any moment, my entire life could change. In the blink of an eye, I was forced to change homes, schools, teachers, and friends.
As an adult, I’d worked hard to have stability. To never be in a situation where I had to rely on someone else. I had zero expectations of people because I’d found that was the only way not to be disappointed.
This situation was completely out of my control. There were too many variables. I had prepared to the best of my ability, but in reality, I was going in blind. There wasn’t really a blueprint for how to navigate this.
The dashboard lit up, and I answered the call coming through and saw that it was Ariel, a producer at the media company I owned. I didn’t want to speak to anyone, but I knew if I ignored her call, she’d just keep ringing me.
I answered. “I’m in the hills; I might lose the signal.”
“The numbers are in. Duel is number two!” she exclaimed excitedly.
I’d recently started a podcast called Duel Point of View. The format was simple; it was a he said/she said call-in show where my cohost, Selena Grace, and I doled out advice on everything from romantic relationships, friendships, careers, to home renovations. Nine times out of ten, we disagreed on the answer, which was what made the show entertaining.
I’d completely forgotten that the rankings for the first quarter were being released today. Hearing that I’d forgotten was unsettling. I was usually on top of things like that, but the past few weeks I’ve been distracted.
“Okay, thanks.”
“Okay? Thanks? Nick… It’s numbertwo.”
Number two was not number one, and in the immortal words of Ricky Bobby, “If you’re not first, you’re last.”
I never celebrated mediocrity. What was the point of doing something if you weren’t going to be the best and come in first? The standard I held myself to was the secret to my success. It was how I’d started as an intern at a local radio station at fifteen and owned that same station by the age of thirty. It was how I’d built a media empire and had a net worth in the billions by the age of forty.
But I was also the leader of this ship and responsible for keeping the morale of the crew high. My staff all worked their asses off; it wasn’t their fault I’d failed.
“That’s amazing! Everyone’s worked so hard.”
“Yes,wedid.”
The emphasis she placed on the word ‘we’ did not have the desired effect. I had an incredible team of people around me, but I’d learned at a very young age that I was on my own. It was a lesson I carried with me as an adult.
“I’m gonna lose the signal. I’ll call you back.”
I disconnected the call as I turned into the parking lot outside the prison. The last time I’d come here, I’d had to take the bus because I was only eighteen years old and hadn’t had my driver’s license or a car. I worked part-time at the radio station and part-time as a security guard. I was, for all intents and purposes, homeless. After aging out, I spent a year couch surfing with friends. I didn’t have a dime to my name, and the only people I considered family were the men I still considered brothers, who were just sixteen and fourteen at the time.
Now, over twenty years later, I was pulling up in my Tesla SUV. I was a self-made billionaire and media mogul. I owned a beautiful, multimillion dollar home in one of the most sought-after neighborhoods in San Francisco. I was a father to an incredible six-year-old who was my pride and joy.
So why did I suddenly feel like that scared, worthless, unlovable eighteen-year-old again?
Was that the reason I’d agreed to take responsibility for my mother?
