I hate waking up alone in a cold empty bed in a room I don�t remember ever entering in what could be any number of places around the world.
It�s the worst feeling I�ve ever felt, and I have it a lot � mainly because one night stands make me feel guiltier than lying to my mom did when I was nine and I was putting the blame on my siblings for something I�d destroyed.
I didn�t think sleeping alone was so bad at one point in time. Yeah, when we first started out, I got scared sleeping in a strange room in an even stranger country, but it wasn�t so bad because most of the time we shared rooms or one of my parents were with me, so I wasn�t really alone. Once I got used to the idea there would be a constant change in where I slept each night, it wasn�t so bad anymore.
And I ended up fine with the idea of sleeping in a room I�d probably never be in again once I woke up the next morning by myself.
Even after the morning of the day after my sixteenth birthday, when I woke up hung over and with a girl barely spoke English lying beside me, it didn�t keep me from sleeping alone most of the time.
Then again, the only time I ever woke up beside someone, I was so hung over I couldn�t remember the girl�s name. Or maybe I never knew it to begin with.
It wasn�t until I got my first girlfriend � first serious girlfriend � that I realized how much I hated waking up alone. I just became accustom to waking up to someone familiar lying beside me. I liked it.
And when she wasn�t able to sleep beside me? When she attempted to get a life of her own?
I tried to be faithful, I really did. It just became so hard with all the temptations around me� and certain people encouraging me to �test out something new� because I was only eighteen and �shouldn�t be so tied down already.�
So I sometimes woke up beside girls I barely knew.
It would have been bad for my reputation for me to just ask a girl to sleep with me without actually� sleeping with me. Plus I was a horny teenager, so I cheated.
A lot.
But it wasn�t so bad in the end, I guess. She�d been cheating on me the entire time anyway, and she didn�t even seem to have any remorse over it whereas I ended up beating myself up after each new girl.
So when everything came out into the light and we finally parted ways, I guess I really didn�t care. It�s not like I lost much.
Except now I didn�t have a familiar body to wake up next to and now I needed it. I craved it. My head ached when I opened my eyes and found myself alone.
When I�m busy and working, I guess it isn�t so bad. I never have much time to dwell on how pathetic I am before Kevin or someone bigger or louder is beating at my door telling me I have five minutes before we�re leaving and I needed to get my ass out of bed.
At home�
I just wish I could share it with someone.
But that would imply I�m looking for a relationship and I�m not. I don�t have the time, patience, or energy to correctly maintain a relationship with anyone who has their own life.
I don�t want anymore tag-a-long girlfriends, who want to become sexpot starlets by using my contacts and attempting to blind me by fucking me every night of the week after I came off of the stage.
I still know what they�re doing. I�m not stupid�
I just hate waking up alone.
I met this guy a few months ago in Chicago. After introducing me to this girl, we got onto a topic that led me to confessing I hated sleeping alone, but I hated one night stands almost as much.
He agreed with me.
That�s when he told me that girl I�d just met wasn�t his girlfriend like I�d assumed, but a childhood best friend of his he�d recently reunited with to work on writing some book about a string of kidnappings that happened in the seventies � the culprit hadn�t been caught and they were jet setting across the country after leads in hopes of piecing together the puzzle.
But that�s not the point that stuck out to me.
One day he�d approached this friend of his and confessed that he hated sleeping alone more than anything else in the world.
And ever since they�ve been sleeping together. No sex. Just sleeping in the same bed so they don�t have to wake up alone every morning.
It probably helps that neither of them were involved with someone else, and they�ve known each other for twenty-something years�
But I want someone like that.
I can�t though because I don�t know any girls who�d do that for me without me having to have sex with them first or without a romantic relationship or without telling the world that I have to be gay because I sleep with a girl but refuse to have sex with her.
So every morning I wake up alone or I pick up some random girl and half-heartedly fuck her, so I hate myself in the morning place of being lonely.
But I can handle hating myself much better than being lonely. I�m used to it� I did sell my soul to the devil when I was thirteen.
Or Lou Pearlman. Same thing.
I don�t know why I�m even writing you this. Why am I bothering to reply? You didn�t leave me a name or anything. Just a random PO Box number in San Diego.
I haven�t even been to San Diego lately! How did you get this under my hotel room door when I�m in the middle of Atlanta? It�s probably some mean joke the band or one of the security guys is playing on me, but I�m still replying.
Yes, I�m still as gullible as I was when I was a little kid. It always seemed to work out for the best then, so why not now?
Maybe because I�m a public figure whose every move and thought are placed under a microscope by millions of self-conscious and not so self-conscious females that believe they know something about me.
But I�ll probably, against my better judgment, have this mailed to the address provided by the end of the week. Maybe even when I get off the plane�
Why?
Because no one has asked me what my biggest fear in life is without expecting me to say something easy and obvious like �sharks� or �flying.� Maybe that�s what you were hoping I�d say, but that wouldn�t make sense. Why would I need to write you back if you were just looking for a one or two sentence answer?
Or maybe I�m doing this because people have yelled at me too much today for doing everything wrong, and I�m tired. And everything is falling apart.
Everything.
I don�t know how to stop all the pieces of my life from crashing onto my head and killing me all in one swift blow.
My biggest fear is waking up alone because then there isn�t anyone there to tell me I�ll be okay and to keep me from screaming just to break the silence.
Because I hate silence too.
It makes me think my life is over.
It might be.
Sincerely,
Nick Carter
- currently sitting on a plane heading towards LA, waiting to crash