More #GolfIsLife Content | April 27, 2025

Flannel Diaries
Apr 27
3 min read

“Golf is the loneliest sport. You’re completely alone with every conceivable opportunity to defeat yourself. Golf brings out your assets and liabilities as a person. The longer you play, the more certain you are that a man’s performance is the outward manifestation of who, in his heart, he really thinks he is.” – Hale Irwin

In the novel She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb, the main character, Dolores Price, loses weight by imagining all food is covered in mold. So she basically starves herself to lose 100 pounds. The reason she gained the weight in the first place is because she was sexually assaulted as a child by a neighbor and found comfort in food. After a failed suicide attempt, she’s institutionalized for seven years, and that’s where she sheds the weight.

The book came out in 1992. I was in high school, and for some reason, that part of the story always stuck with me. I was thinking about it again today—could we do that with people? If we don't want to think about someone, can we just mentally cover them in fuzzy mold? Repulse ourselves enough to stop remembering them?

In a way, I think we already do that. After a falling out, we latch onto all the bad memories to justify the distance. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” right? But memory is rarely accurate. It shifts. It softens. It distorts. Sometimes we rewrite entire stories just so we can sleep better at night.

I’ve kept a journal since middle school. I started because I was beginning to understand I was gay and needed a place to pour all my secrets. Journals became that quiet vault for my inner life—everything that couldn't be spoken out loud. When I was in relationships, sometimes I wrote about women I had crushes on, ones I’d never act on. I’ve filled pages with unspoken moments, private thoughts, and contradictions. Some of it’s messy. Most of it’s honest. All of it is mine.

My friend Kimi thinks I have a great memory. I used to. Now, it’s like trying to pull data from an old hard drive that’s overloaded and out of date. What I can’t remember, I’ve written down. I’ve chronicled every meaningful moment—and plenty of meaningless ones. Most of it’s from my vantage point, which means it’s probably biased as hell. But whose story isn’t?

Now that it’s been five years since that forced time of isolation during COVID—and we’ve been out here living our lives like a global pandemic didn’t kill millions of people—I’ve realized something. Life feels way more complicated when we have to keep functioning inside this capitalistic mess. That feeling of contentment I found during the quiet? It’s constantly challenged now. Just participating—in other people’s drama, in our country’s chaos—takes energy. It takes real effort to hold onto that peace.

And at the end of She’s Come Undone, Dolores doesn’t get all her answers wrapped up neatly. She just finally accepts her brokenness. That life isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about learning how to live with the questions.

How do I live my best life without measuring myself against everyone else? Because that’s all we’re taught: to measure ourselves. But isn’t that just chasing something that’ll never satisfy?

We’ll always feel like we’re lacking if the bar is set by someone else's highlight reel. And honestly? I hate that. I don’t have time for it. I don’t have the energy for it.

There’s so much judgment out there. It’s exhausting.

The second half of my life isn’t about proving anything to anybody. It’s about growing. About shaking the fuzzy mold off myself and learning new things. Staying curious. Staying alive inside.

What else am I supposed to do? Pretend I’ve already lived all there is to live? Push myself out to sea on an ice float?

Nah. I’ll keep living my best life. Because eventually, death comes for all of us.

Might as well like who you are until then.

And I think—finally—I do.

Thanks for being part of the story. ❤️