Dear Lover

 Dear Future Partner,

Can you hurry this up a bit? I've spent years collecting moments that keep ending with,  "I can't wait to tell them this." 

I want the kind of love where I will stop what I'm doing because you've walked into the room. Where I still lose my train of thought because you've smiled at me. Where I scream out, "Wait don't move," because the lights caught your face in that way it does, and I need a photo because you look so damn beautiful. 

I hope we never stop fancying each other. I hope years from now, I still kiss you halfway through conversations, still reach for your hand because it's there. That I still look at you across the room and have ridiculous thought of "There they are, the person I somehow get to call mine." 

When life gets ugly, don't ever think you have to become easier to love. Come to me angry, come to me exhausted, come to me with tears halfway down your face and words that don't quite exist yet. I would never ask you to be less. I want the kind of love where we'll know each other so well I'll notice the tiny shift in your smile before anyone else, you'll notice just when my last smile's just a little bit forced. 

We'll become fluent in each other. Collect stories no one else will ever fully understand. I want private little worlds, inside jokes that start with one look, memories that don't need explaining. I want us to remember the taste of our first kiss, not because it was the best one, but because somehow after all those years, we're still trying to outdo it. 

So dear future partner, I'm ready whenever you are, if you could show up soon so we can embrace this.

Sincerely, 

A Hopeful Lover Girl

Jibaro

I hope that I finally meet the one that gets it 

that I am both a woman in power and a helpless princess.  

It's called range.

This is the conclusion from my last attempt. Buckle up bitches, it's a lot. But alas most posts where I am a real human are:

I don't want a toxic relationship. To be fair, I'm pretty sure like no one does, but like I feel like people hear that, and they think, "Okay, she just wants peace, maturity, healthy communication." No. Okay yes to all of that, but hear me out:

I would like someone who feels like my best friend, but I'm also wildly attracted to. I want someone where we're like, roasting each other one moment and then 10 minutes later we're discussing our childhood trauma in a Target parking lot sharing an ice cream. That's the dream, right? Well fuck you if it isn't, because it's mine.

I'm not sitting here saying I need someone perfect. I don't need someone perfect, I need someone weird, because I'm weird. Do you know how like just how freaking exhausting it is having to pretend to be to be normal around normies? To have to gauge how reeled in I have to remain to be liked? I don't even know any more if I care about being liked, but the plight of the bullied eldest daughter, healing and all that crap.

 I need someone that I can look at, and I could say something absolutely fucking insane and they don't look at me and get concerned, they look at me and they go, "Yeah fair point." See, that my friends is romance. I need the kind of connection where I send a random thought, I can just send you a text and I'm like, "Do fish know they're wet?" And you respond not with "What the actual fuck?" but like with a 6-paragraph thesis as to why they perhaps do. That right there. That's my soul mate. Some people they want butterflies and that's great, that's fair. But I want someone who makes me laugh so hard I forget what I was mad about. The kind that makes your abs hurt and that's worth way more than the abs themselves Maybe not way more, it's definitely comparable and who needs a ripped gym bod anyways. I want a real person.

I wasn't even planning on using my dating profile, I told myself that it was time for a break and some more healing. After what happened in December, life still felt heavy and I wasn't sure that I was really ready to jump in just to get hurt all over again. And yet, on a random Friday lunch break, something told to just take a look at my messages. And there he was, with a profile that told me that he too wasn't ready to jump. A few messages later and a trust fall of an invite, we met at a restaurant that I knew had good food and we could carry on a conversation. Before I knew it, I never wanted to stop talking to him.

The second I said, out loud, to a friend that I liked this one, the world fucking turned on its head.

He liked me, but he hated himself more and there was no competing with that. No matter how gently I held him, he was always reaching for the parts of himself that he wanted to destroy and I mistook that war is something that I could win, while simultaneously believing that I have healed so much that it was most definitely not what I was trying to do. I thought that if I loved him loud enough, if I kissed every scar as if it was sacred, if I slipped between him and his ghosts with my bare hands and a hopeful heart that eventually he would choose life, and in choosing life, he would choose me. And a person drowning in their own reflection cannot see the hands reaching for them from shore. So, he existed the way he knew how; in fragments and apologies and promises spoken with sincerity and brokenness all in the same mouth. He would hold me like I was something precious and then disappear inside of himself. I spent so long trying to understand how somebody could make me feel so adored and abandoned in the same breath. In the quiet moments when the world loosened its grip, he would look at me with this kind of tenderness that makes poets out of ordinary women. But excitement for another's existence cannot outvote self-destruction and that is the grief that comes with being with someone who cannot stand the sound of their own name. Because they will offer you flowers while setting fire to the garden. They will swear that they never meant to hurt you, and they will mean every word and somehow sincerity will not stop you from bleeding.

I decided that I'm done feeling anemic. Before I moved, I sent him my new address. This means that he has always known exactly where, and when, and how to find me, yet we seem to keep dancing around each other when it comes to meeting up to give each other our stuff back. He has a pie plate and my great-grandmother's pie server. When he messaged me to end things, I refused to be hooked into the "why don't you love me" bullshit that a lesser, unhealed version of myself would have been all too happy to wallow in. Fuck you, I'm worthy. I have been the entire time. And I'm all done being punished for liking you.

Sometimes wishing someone would come back is also to realize that it would require a multi-leveled attempt at repair, beginning with a sincere apology in the form of a blueberry muffin from the only bakery that I like them from (the one I took him to for breakfast), and other parts that I truly believe that they simply do not hold the capacity for. 

And yet, a girl can dream that someone, at some point, is going to care enough to try. The Hallmark Channel can go fuck itself.

Seriously, do not, I repeat, I will eat an ocean with a fork level, do not, hurt me. Do not present yourself to me as a 3D-printed version of every dandelion and eyelash that I have spent my life wishing for in a person, make me really excited to get to know you, and then expect to have a good time when you do. There are parts of me that you will never be allowed access to again. I feel like I'm standing here, alone, holding a basket filled with my heart, brain and every good feeling in the universe. I admit nothing, but if I wanted to give them to you, I would hate you for being like everyone else.

I do recall saying out loud to more than one person that his dick was so beautiful that I wanted to knit it a hat. 

After several attempts to reconnect long enough to hand each other the stuff and walk away, as he was the one to proclaim it's what he wanted, I told him to throw it out and that at some point that I would drop his stuff off if I am ever in his neck of the woods. You read that correctly. It was never about the pie server.  It was control. He knows he could get to me and that he would make me chase him forever because it meant something. I woke up feeling so ready to be done knowing him - although that isn't what it really is. For another time.

This margarita tastes like Dixie, one of his dogs, could be dismembering my cat Eleanor right in front of me and I would have such radical acceptance in the circle of life that it would be completely fine.

I am so sick of being made an idiot of for his sick entertainment that I told a grown-ass man, who should be able to act like it, to throw away the one thing I own that has been used at every family gathering since my earliest memories. It wasn't just a pie server to me. Those memories aren't going to leave me, unfortunately I got more than my green eyes from her. Maybe one good thing about having the abandonment issues that I do is because I've actually been abandoned and the art of letting go has never been a lesson I never wanted to learn, but rather one I had to from the fiery pits of whatever the fuck this is.

However, as self-aware as he claims to be, the narrative, "Hey, I have hurt this person intentionally, and repeatedly, and knowing how important this thing is to her, I should give it back." is magically gone from existence.

And this is where I am at:

Keep it, use it for pie, use it as a murder weapon, jack off to it remembering how great that strawberry rhubarb crumble pie was, shove it up your ass, I now no longer give a single fuck.

Don't get me wrong. There's always that last 30% holding on for dear life. BUT, that dumb fuck who fumbled me can go anywhere that I'm not, forever. Or until he can appropriately apologize. But alas, I'm afraid he will spend an eternity in Hell sleeping in wet jeans before that will even cross his mind. Feelings are dumb. 

Now I want a blueberry muffin.

***************************************************************************

**The title comes from an episode of the show "Love, Death, and Robots", the last episode of season 3. If you watch it, and don't understand it, you have never had your heart ripped out and vaporized in front of you by someone you were excited to give it to.

**edited 8/4/26

A Different Kind Of Hangover

 

https://youtu.be/QnuXyEHQNFI?is=UE-OOx8jUR0-rmBR

I sometimes feel a little sick when I post something really raw.

Like still after all these years.

Not right away usually. It hits a couple hours later. That prickly chest, the why did I say that, refreshing to see who saw it or said something, finger rehearsing the delete option.

I grew up being so used to my every thought being ridiculed or questioned. Labeled as strange and weird as if they're bad things to shun from the village. I most certainly would have been lobotomized back when that was a thing. Too independent to be tied down to tradition. Too curious to just take everyone's word for it. Too loud, too mouthy, the try hard, too quiet, too slutty, not slutty enough, selfish bitch, all labels pasted to me by others who had absolutely zero interest in actually knowing who I am because that was easier. 

When in reality, was I being dramatic or did I just tell you what happened?

It's called a 'vulnerability hangover' and once I understood what it actually was it stopped running me. All it is, is my body thinking I'm in danger. For most of human history getting judged by your people meant you didn't survive, so my nervous system and primitive brain still treat showing the real me as a threat. But nothing bad ever actually happens. Nobody exiles me, the feeling shows up, peak, and leaves.

I definitely recognize that I still have patterns of avoidance with people trying to get to know me that I am terrified will leave me. Basically, if I give a single iota of a fuck that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, regardless of what capacity, and I can see myself doing that, I immediately will fuck it up on purpose because it means leaving will hurt me and I have no interest in hurting anymore. Ever again.

No, really guys, the first thought in my head the second I start feeling that way is "Never again." 

And I do anything and everything in my power to stop feeling that way. Even if it meant I go on a bender or I invited a completely random stranger into my bedroom. Now, it means that I contact every single one of my friends and make them all listen to me whine for hours about how much I really like this person and how I am convinced that they've done XYZ and I have to move on with my life, because fuck them. To be honest, it absolutely did not help that BOTH meds that were the perfect combination holding me together, two weeks ago decided to completely quit me. Like, I was taking them and had not missed a single dose, but because I went out and drank with a friend a couple of times in the same week, which is out of the normal for me, I'll correct that to say current me versus old me, but one of the times was for the same reason that it used to be. If you know you know, and if you don't, then you should probably be grateful that you don't. 

Hell, I'll even be mean. And I don't mean a little mean, I mean I will take the center of you as a person and make you sorry for shit you did when you were five. 

And unfortunately, that's how you know that I like you, I feel like I have to protect myself from you. But that's the other caveat to growing up as a people pleasing pain in the ass who was trained to believe that the only way to ever make anyone like her at all was to completely abandon myself. I was surrounded by people who made me feel completely invisible unless I was doing something for them. So will break myself before I ever allow another person to feel that way and I never get anything back in return.

But I read a thing on the Internet that said that the love that we give isn't about the other person and everything about who we are. After I stopped feeling absolutely attacked by that, I have adopted it as my entire personality now.

I love you whether you like it or not. Fuck you.

I don't know how I am ever going to find the love of my life with this kind of behavior but at the very least it has certainly culled the weaker of the herd. And this is why going back to my very first blog post on here, I still wholeheartedly believe that a Mr. Perfect Delivery is exactly what I need because otherwise I'm going to keep sabotaging. But at the same time how is anybody supposed to find a "spark" when they punish you for liking them? A sentiment from my recent attempt I kept having to go back to. Was what I said nice? No. Was it meant to be? Also no. Could I have handled things differently? Perhaps. Maybe I shouldn't have bluntly stated, "You know where to find me when you're done being stupid." But IYKYK. The plight of the first-born daughter, solving your problems the first time, and all that shit. It kind of did feel like I was having a temper tantrum, but I digress. Not really though, because the never-ending rock tumbler in my brain is still ruminating about it and probably will be until I die. If there's anything to learn about me, is that when you start behaving like I don't matter to you when I care about you at all, and you come to me with a problem you need to talk through without even bothering to ask if I can receive it, you're going to have a bad time. Straight into the "Why TF did I say that?" barrel. My dad has looked at me in the face, pointed to the new guy I was introducing him to, and told me that "I have to be nice to this one", more than I care to admit. But at the same time, I treat everyone the same, and I match energy, so put up or shut up. Mathilda really liked that one, though. She's off crying in a corner while I'm trying not to reach for other vices. 

I shall remain in my papier mache tower surrounded with hot chocolate moat filled with piranhas until my dying days, and I will eat an ocean with a fork before I ever let another person's bullshit make me feel like I'm too much because they're inadequate.

And that's what I've learned recently, I have created a band, a tribe if you will, of people who love me for exactly who I am, because I love them for exactly who they are. It's not that I care whether or not they leave or whether or not they like me. It's that we've all bonded together over pretty much the same things and we are whole people, separately. There are no judgments for oversharing, bad days are listened to, demons are hugged, and generational trauma is high fived. My heart that has taken so many hits it is filled with more craters than the moon can rest for a minute when I'm with them. I have spent 44 of my 45 years on this planet not having any idea what it felt like to have somebody actually show up for you without question. Where the only question is where and when, rather than what was in it for them. I have finally found ME in other people. 14-year-old me that never thought I would live to see this day is so grateful to be alive.

That's the part I prioritize as the truth..... It always passes. And what's left after it clears is the truth, my truth, my voice authentically sharing in only the way I can share it. My experience, my sense of humor. My perspective. Which was never even the thing making me feel sick in the first place, the exposure was.

But here's the thing, exposure is temporary. Always.

So, I'm not going to stop, ever. In fact, I'm only going to get more expressive, open, grounded, and curious. I'm all done chasing after what isn't choosing me. So, I'll keep feeling the hangover and post anyway, every time. Because I know that it's survivable and I'd rather do that than go back to being quiet.

To My Madness

My Dearest Mathilda, 

I think it's time that we had a talk.  I know that you want love to find you. But you're just going to have to wait your turn. Even if it means that it never comes. You have helped me build a lovely little library from which you reign. Over time, you might just have me believing in myself yet.

My sweet girl. Our secret desire to be someone's muse, their soft spot, their dream come true. What's good for them. Oh, to find a love as other worldly as you are. My tiny chess player in a world playing checkers. The one who loves me gently from the deepest wounds. When they think, we are going to zig, we zag. And then when they think we're going to zag, we Zorg just to keep them all on their toes. What an alchemy of senses it would be if we were able to find another like us. 

You are quite the saucy little minx. One with a secret need for emotional depth that rivels yours. Oh, what a comfort to know that one day, maybe you will be wrapped in arms that make you forget everything that happened before you were in them. To be in orbit of such a wonder as yourself. You have created for me a 3D printed version of every dandelion we ever wished on, and I have been such a shit. And no, that was not a suggestion that we sink back into ourselves again. 

You asked me once if you annoy me. Slipping it into a sentence like it was weightless, and something in the casualness of that question told me it had been building since before you came to fruition. I wanted to dismantle every version of whoever taught you that we needed to be less. Because the only thing that comes close to too much, is watching someone edit themselves out of their best in the name of comfort.

To be a devil in a blue dress such as yourself for a day. What a wonder it is to watch as you use the curve of the U in SLUTTY as a lackadaisical afternoon hammock. Frankly, life is so much better when you're at the wheel. Even if we do have to wander the halls of our old vices to do it. I was amazed that it all smelled the same. A little less driven by the monkeys in Jumanji. A little cozier. The green velvet chesterfield is a nice touch.

You stick up for me in ways that most refuse. Mostly because they know you're the only one I will listen to. I have accepted that you are fully aware of what is best for us. Last night, for example, you took care of us by deleting the entire folder that housed memories I no longer needed to harm myself with. With a gentle, "Time has proven its point," every beautiful picture of a date night gone sour, every recording of the abuse, every screen shot to verify that even on our maddest of nights we couldn't have made that person up if we tried. Temu Jesus. Erased, with a proverbial FUCK HIM. Like a best friend knocking the phone out of your hand to stop you from texting an ex something or other and yelling at you that not only do you need to stop bedazzling and making pillows out of other peoples red flags, we need to stop trying to swan dive down a person's throat. That fucker was sure as shit not magenta and our ass is too big to fit. I get it now. The more you're helping me heal the more we realize that not only was everything we are feeling justified, but we have also way underreacted.

This might just be a letter to my madness, but we've gotten along much better once you told me your name.  Thank you for allowing me to be softer the more I realize I don't have to worry about others abandoning us as long as I don't abandon you. You know how I love my cliffs. Thank you for that. The past six months have felt like I needed this to work its way out of orbit. We are healing. It's not linear, and I'm a pain in your asshole more often than not with my ways, but I love you.

Forever. Always.

Me

Pickle Dip

I'm sitting here 

Eating dill pickle dip

I'm remembering 

The grand adventure we went on

The first time

Our first fight

Star Wars day meant nothing

To you

That should have been the 

Last red flag

The wonder at another person 

Making me a sandwich 

In the middle of the woods

Dill pickle dip 

And cucumbers

Ham and swiss

On the really good bread

Manifesting moose and bears

Getting lost 

Yet still finding our way

The steady crunching  

Bbq Humpty Dumpty chips

And my heart in your hands

Shallow conversation with depth

I'm pretty sure I tossed 

My brain out the window

And left my heart with you

Random cool rocks 

Tent farts

Or nature's bug repellant 

Breakfast sandwiches 

With the squirrels 

Acid on a mountaintop.

Libraries 

With green velvet couches

And a globe-shaped bar

Ice cream and Disney

Cribbage and mules

Date nights turned nightmares

Messy

Rubbing shoulders and bjs

An astounding number 

Of uses for jalapenos

The stars and Mexican food 

Margaritas and queso

Magical

Beach combing and synchronicity 

Engaged with a soda tab

Comfort zoned

Us

So in love

I still am

It's like you're right there

Matching

Capable of so much

You could hold a masterclass

Destruction 

It was definitely you

Hindsight 

Spare me

I never wanted 

To have to unlearn you

I don't know you anymore

Did I ever

My best friend

And I'm still never 

Going to call you again 

No matter how many things 

You record yourself 

Wearing what I bought you 

The name of the game was always 

I paid

One way or another

It isn't just a song

In another life

Whatever fuck that means

Dear Sprinkles

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/18AruoPxBM/

I felt like i lived every second of this video. 

Dear Sprinkles, 

I forgive you for not feeling the same way I do, for not being moved by the thought of me as I was by the thought of you. Although you made me believe that you did.

I forgive you for not being anxious to see me, for not counting the minutes until you were with me. I forgive you for not shouting my name to the wind, asking me to come back.

I forgive you for not thinking of me when you saw a flower, when a butterfly passed by, or simply when the moon was healing the universe.

I forgive you for not noticing that on more than one occasion I dressed up for you, for making my life hell just for wanting to look nice enough to exist fully for a minute. For getting angry with me for "making myself look like a doll", when I just looked like a functional adult. For not noticing that my eyes couldn't leave your face and my heart wouldn't stop beating at the mere thought of you.

I forgive you for all those times you chose to stay away from me claiming it was just so you wouldn't hurt me, not knowing that doing so caused more wounds. For making me listen to your incessant whining and obsession about not getting your way, when acting like yourself was the exact reason you weren't getting it. 

I forgive myself for thinking it was you, for dreaming of you by my side, for feeling like it was you I'd been waiting for. I forgive myself for giving you my thoughts, for having dedicated my sleepless nights and more than a few verses to you. Edited by you, of course. Otherwise, it was fine (to you) to make me never want to create another damn thing again. I learned quickly that my brain held World War 25. I forgive myself for not expressing more anger every time we created and you tore it apart out of whatever you call it; jealousy, fear, just being weird - who the hell knows.

I forgive myself for giving you my art, for shedding tears in your name, for longing for your skin, your hugs and kisses. I forgive myself for searching for myself in your gaze and waiting for you to call me yours. For believing you when you did and then not standing my ground when you subsequently took it back before the air you breathed the words out could leave the room.

I forgive myself for having mistaken myself for your person. For all of the times that we would think so closely that it was if we were inside the other's head. For believing in magic, and the wonder of an us. If you loved me, really loved me, it wouldn’t have sounded like chaotic absence. Love does not study where to wound, does not rehearse silences, does not leave someone bleeding into the bottomless chasm of your ego.

All I had to do was tell one person who you really were, and my eyes were taped open. Your own best friend knew what you were capable of, "What if he killed you?" Using my abuse against me, the last straw. "Your mother said you were crazy." 

Not one time in the existence of my 45 years on this planet, has every person I know congratulate me when a relationship was over. Until now.

Love. It doesn't drive you to brink of insanity and drop you off. It does not ever leave you wondering what just happened, because what do you mean that you're leaving me where I stand on our date night because I gave someone I know a hug? What do you mean you're packing your shit and leaving for the seventh time because I asked you what you were planning to do with a 12 pack of ginger ale that has been next to the bed, my bed - not yours, for three months?

If you loved me, you would not have needed my confusion to feel powerful, or my longing to feel chosen. So, if the word love ever passed your lips, it must have been wearing hatred’s hat. Because only something that partially despises you would stay while destroying, touch while withholding, promise while erasing. Cheat while claiming you were in love.

I don’t think you loved me. I think you loved what I gave and hated what I needed. And boy, did I give this my all. Every plan I made so that your kids would have a special memory of you, flipped on me by you as doing it to make myself feel superior and hijack your relationship with your mother. Whom I pray one day she will stop being such a pile of clay when it comes to you. I hated you every time I heard you talk to her, like a four-year-old having a temper tantrum.

You took everything that I loved about myself, and you murdered it with a smile. And that is not love that is consumption. Yet there were times that if loving you killed me, then I welcomed death, if it comes with your voice.

I thought time with you would save me from facing myself. If I could just love you right, be patient enough, small enough, perfect enough, you'd stay. It was a never-ending path of eggshells and Legos, hidden by the breadcrumbs I dropped during our best moments, praying we'd find our way back.

I made your brokenness my religion, your distance - my proof I was never enough. Every time you pulled away, I didn't see a hurt boy protecting himself. I saw everyone I have ever loved leaving me all over again.

So, I performed.

The good girl who made sure to never ask for too much. Who swallowed her needs like razor blades to keep the peace. Who built herself up before you existed in her orbit and then pretended she was fine with you turning into Godzilla and undoing years' worth of work. Who bent herself into shapes hoping "this time".

Maybe this time...

She'll finally be chosen.

I stayed silent when I wanted to scream, smiled when I was breaking, made myself convenient, easy, undemanding. Because confrontation meant you might leave. I knew it was killing me and I never stopped wishing it would. The visions I would wake up with. Praying you'd leave so I could pack your stuff and be rid of you. Not seeing a way out other than to remove myself from the planet.

And leaving would confirm what I already believed; that I was never worth staying for. But all that anger I feel towards you? It isn't about you; it was rage at myself for staying when every cell in my body begged me to leave.

For making myself so small I disappeared. For abandoning the little girl inside me who needed me to finally choose her. She's furious at me. For choosing you; another emotionally erratic, addicted, unavailable, to then all-consuming man instead of her.

For believing you when you said my love was your medicine. I see it now. You might have been the villain I needed all along. You ran from intimacy because the closeness was never real, a mask you held until your arm got tired. I chased it because your absence felt like death. Since we're being honest, it still does.

Two wounded people. Same pain. Same rusted armor ready to battle. I'm not running anymore. You cracked me open enough to finally see I was only ever trying to outrun my grief. But when it's the size of King Kong, well you know the rest of that plot. I just had bigger things to focus on, and you were something I was already used to.

The shame that comes with feeling not enough. A lifetime of inadequacy. Screw every last bit of it. I'm choosing her. The little girl in the pink dress. The one I left behind every time your disrespect was louder. They say that every cell in the human body is replaced in seven years. It is comforting to know that one day I will have a body that you have never touched. 

This isn't goodbye. This is me coming home to myself.

Sincerely, The Bitch Who Turned You In.

P.S., maybe we really are still on that mountain top.