How many days has it been now?
I’ve lost track.

YOU+ME=WE
YOU-WE=I
I-WE=YOU
I-YOU=END/FIN/FINALE/FINAL BOW/CURTAIN

That’s my attempt at solving the equation of an US that doesn’t exist anymore. I was never good at math anyway.

I ordered some stuff from this place called Stitch Fix. You give them your sizes and preferences and your “personal stylist” sends you some junk to try on and then you just keep what you like and send the rest back.
How utterly first-world of me.
Anwyay, I didn’t like any of them so I need to drop them in the mail. The only problem is, I don’t want to go to the post office.

It reminds me of you.

For the past year and a half of my life, the post office was the place I went to mail your goodies. To mail you little trinkets that represented my love. It brought me so much joy to send you things. You have no idea. I loved looking around for hours and days and weeks until I found just the thing for you.
I had a whole process.
It went like this:

1. Thinking I’d think about what to get you first. Sometimes it would come to me immediately. Other times I’d mull it over for hours, days, weeks even. It really depended on how much time I had or how many clues I’d picked up from our conversations. Sometimes there were no clues at all. I had to get really creative then. But don’t worry! I loved that part. I loved thinking of things to gift you. It was one of the highlights of loving you. You really were so incredibly easy to shop for.
2. Researching I spent a lot of time on this for most things. Reading all the reviews, combing through forums, asking google all kinds of questions, asking strangers on REDDIT for advice, putting things in my cart from companies I’d never heard of and would likely never shop at again. Waiting. Seeing if there was something better out there before I made the final purchase. I always wanted to get you the very best I could afford. I spent a lot of time setting a budget and then finding the very best thing within that budget. Of course, I wanted to get you the very best of everything I ever sent you but I was not always able to do that so I compromised and got you the very best I could afford. (Except for those whiskey glasses. I really thought they would be nicer and I’m sorry about that. If we were still together, I’d buy you some new ones someday down the road for an anniversary or birthday, maybe even real crystal ones. But, alas, that shall never come to pass and that makes me unbelievably sad).
3. Execution. Once the thinking and researching were all done, it was time to buy. YIPPEE! A lot of times I just sent the gifts straight to your house from whatever company I had bought them from. I hated this method the most. It was so impersonal the way they just showed up on your doorstep in a box with a company logo on the front, stuffed all inside with no wrapping and no surprise at all. I hated that so much. I would have much preferred to have them sent to me so I could inspect them and wrap them and place them all in a box. But sometimes I waited too late to be able to do that and sometimes it would have been too expensive, like the giant pillow for your shoulder. EGADS! That would have cost a fortune. Also, the scotch. I learned the hard way that you can’t mail alcohol. **(And that’s how I also ended up with a bottle of Glenmorangie Signet. Only I haven’t opened mine and eventually had to hide it out of sight because every time I’d see it on the kitchen counter, I’d think of you and a wave of sadness would wash over me.  I’m dealing with enough sadness waves already.  They’re keeping me fully submerged).
4. THE WAIT This part always brought me the best kind of anxiety. I loved getting my receipt with the tracking number and plugging it into my phone the next day to see where on the map my package of love was currently traveling on its way to you. I could hardly wait for it to arrive at your door.

You’d always fuss at me so gently:
“Get with the times, Stephanie Ann. It’s 2024. You don’t have to spend a million dollars sending me things through the USPS.”
I know, J. But I loved it so. It was such a simple thing but it made me so ridiculously happy.

I loved loving you.
I loved showing you in all the ways just how much l cared for you,
Mind Body Soul

I know it all seems so silly to you.
Maybe it will seem silly to me someday too.
I hope not.
I hope I never forget what it felt like to love you.

I find relief, release, in writing these words to you.  They help center me when I am in the midst of a raging emotional storm.  For a few minutes, maybe an hour, maybe longer, I am made whole.

But I am spent now and my heart is aching again.

Until next time

Hi.

You texted me this morning.

My phone buzzed in my hand and made the little sound it makes when I get a text from you. Your name flashed across my screen. Words appeared.

You said you didn’t know if you should text me or not.
I said I was trying to learn to live without you.
You said you didn’t know if you could live without me.
I said love is a battlefield and we are soldiers on the front line, and we must choose if we are ready to die for the cause or step back and let those who’s souls are braver than ours take the helm and forge the way. THIS. IS. SPARTA!

Ok, that is not what I said.

But I may as well have said aliens are blue,
I like pleasure laced with pain,
I used to smoke cigarettes,
and there’s a movie called Coffee and Cigarettes. It’s one of those noir type films that only the artsy folks could ever get behind, but I like the name of it.
Also, coffee and cigarettes are a really good combination. Cigarettes and booze too. It’s just too bad that cigarettes are bad for you and make you stink because there is something pleasurable about inhaling smoke in your lungs and then exhaling it all the way out like a breath you didn’t even know you were holding.

Sigh

I may as well have said my heart is a fortress and you are not allowed in because as soon as I said whatever nonsensical thing I said, you dipped all the way out and I haven’t heard from you since.

And that really hurts. I need you to know that.

It really hurts when you text me and open up a dialogue with me and then just disappear in the middle of the conversation.

In case you didn’t know, and you probably don’t, I love you just the same as the day I told you I loved you over the phone. I was sitting at my table in the kitchen. We were teasing each other about how deep it all was and how much we felt when suddenly the I love you’s just came rolling on out like Vanna White flipping over those letters on Wheel of Fortune.
We both laughed a litte bit afterwards.

There are so many things I want to tell you.
You were my friend before you were my lover.
I know you want to be friends now, but I’m not there yet.
It hurts to think of you with someone else
I hope you won’t give up on me

Lyrics from a song just now:
What happened to bulletproof weeks in your arms

I often think about all the things that might have driven you away from me and I want to ask you about them but I don’t know if you would be honest with me because some of them would probably hurt and I know you wouldn’t want to hurt me so I’ll just list them here so that you’ll know I’m aware of my shortcomings.

My ass. It’s less than stellar, I know. Its flat and wide and pale and I don’t know how to make it jiggle. Plus, I think of that one time you were hitting it from behind and you needed a break and I wonder if it’s because there were pimples back there or too much hair (I did try to shave as much as I could) or maybe even some TP in my ass crack! HORRORS! I can’t even deal. Or what if there was a poop stain? GASP!

Lyrics from a song just now:
And your hearts a thousand colors, but they’re all shades of blue

My stomach. No explanation needed. We both know what it is and what it is not.

Panties. Or lack thereof. Particularly that one pair I kept putting on every night while you were here in August because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, and you finally told me to stop putting them on because they were dirty. OH DEAR

Coffee. I didn’t have coffee for you that one morning when you woke up later than me and you really wanted some but all I was thinking about was eating lunch and so you didn’t have any for the whole day and I’m sorry about that.

Tears. My stupid tears. Let’s not go into details, we’ve already hashed that one out in text.

Job. I don’t have one. Maybe that worries you?

My house,
My dog,
My hair,
My hometown,
My mom,
My life,
Me,
Me,
Me

I know these are all superficial and the reason is likely much deeper than any of these but I have to beat myself into a bloody pulp before I can begin to breathe again. It is just how I do. I don’t expect you to understand but this process works for me. I have to go all the way down into the dirty damp dungeon and wallow around in there and when I have had enough of my own filth, I will ring a bell and ask to be let out where I will then go bathe in the cleansing release of all that is unholy and unlovable in me.

I mostly just came here to say I love you
I miss you
I know you don’t want me anymore
But I still want you
And until I don’t
I can’t watch you love someone else
Please forgive me

December

By Michael Miller

I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and shut my eyes
while you sit at the wheel,

awake and assured
in your own private world,
seeing all the lines
on the road ahead,

down a long stretch
of empty highway
without any other
faces in sight.

I want to be a passenger
in your car again
and put my life back
in your hands.

Love,
Me

My well is so empty

So dry

I lower my bucket down into the darkness of its belly, my hands chafing and rubbing against the rope.  I hear the metallic clang as it hits the hard bottom. Dutifully, I raise it again,

hoping,

but there is nothing. 

It is empty.

I feel so empty too.  Like the well, like the little silver bucket that attaches itself so earnestly to the rope, ready to go down to the deepest depths and bring me just a tiny bit of sustenance. 

But there is none. 

The well is dry, the bucket is empty, my tongue is sandpaper, my throat a cracked and pot-hole riddled slide down into my belly where darkness fills me up.

Fill me up then, darkness.   Strip me of my cloths.  Let me bathe naked and unabashed under your gaze.

Let me lie here in your shadows

Leave me be for now

Healing comes after the dawn, I know

But in you, I am made whole

https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/5jZTSwoD7kQKenztXmpVG7?utm_source=generator

I woke up at 6 a.m. this morning with that old familiar pang in my bladder that means I’m getting or have gotten a UTI. I haven’t been drinking enough water these last few days. I haven’t been drinking much of anything except V8, coffee, and wine. I should have known this was going to happen. Now, I’m sitting here absolutely miserable and wish I had one of those little orange pills that turn your pee the kind of orange you wish you could replicate with easter egg dye, but you’ll never be able to. Trust me. I am well acquainted with the orange pee from the UTI relief pills. The first time I took one, I was on a class trip to Washington D.C. Only these were prescription pills called Pyridium and they were purple, not orange like the ones you get over the counter. I remember my first pee in the hotel bathroom after I took that miraculous purple pill. It was blood orange and I was sure I was pissing actual blood and was probably halfway to dead already. Luckily, my mom has always had my back in every single scenario I have ever found myself. I called her on the hotel phone, probably in tears and hyperventilating, and she eased my mind with her calm understanding of the situation and told me exactly what was happening.

My mom is good like that.

Everytime I drive through Montgomery on I-65, I am reminded of the time I was driving back to Auburn after a weekend home. I had this white ’95 Honda Civic that my dad bought me for my high shcool graduation. It was a 5-speed (I don’t even think they make those anymore) and the AC had decided to go out in the middle of summer. In Alabama. I was cruising along with windows rolled down, probably listening to Eminem of The Cure, when suddenly traffic came to a stop. Everything was chill for a minute. Until the heat from the pavement and the sun and the other cars surrounding me suddenly became unbearable. Sweat was pouring from my hair follicles, dripping in my eyes, pooling between my thighs and my young, perky titties. I didn’t have any water, my mouth suddenly became scorched earth.
What was I to do????
Call mom. Of course. At her job.
Ring, ring, ring. May I speak to Teresa?
As soon as she gets on the phone the blubbering begins “Maaamaaa, I’m dying, the traffic is stopped, the AC is out, I have no water, I’m gonna die in the middle of I-65 and I’m only 21!! What do I dooooooo????? Maaamaaaa!!!”
Jesus H. Christ on a cracker, for the love of all that is holy, what an absolute fucktard I was. I don’t know how my mother put up with me but she did. She calmly told me everything would be ok, I wasn’t going to die, traffic would start moving again soon, think of something else to distract yourself, when you get to an exit pull off and get something to drink, you will be fine. And I was. Totally.

Everything happened just like she said it would.

One of her favorite things to say to me when I am experiencing a life crisis of epic proportions, such as the one I am in now, is that “You will be surprised how your life can change in a year.” She has been telling me that for as long as I can remember when I come to her with whatever dilemma I’m in and I’m so certain that this is the big one,
WW-eye-eye-eye,
it’s going down for real, ya’ll,
I will never recover,
my life is over,
dead man walking,
depressed doom down-in-the-ditch dirty d-bag mother sucker.

Nope, she says. You will be ok. Your life will go on and it will be ok.

And you know what? She’s never been wrong. Sure, my life may not make some miraculous recovery and I may not suddenly become successful or happy but whatever is ailing me right now in this moment? It will pass and I will be at peace with it and it won’t hurt to think of anymore. And really, what more can a person ask for? To make peace with themselves, with others, with their pain, their fear, their sadness. Suffering will follow us all the days of our lives in one form or another. All we can do is look it in the eye and say “I see you, I love you, you will hurt me now but someday you won’t and I will be stronger for having let you in because everytime you break me, you build me back up that much stronger, better, kinder, braver, more beautiful.”

Kintsugi (Japanese: 金継ぎ, romanized: “golden joinery”), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”),^[1] is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The method is similar to the maki-e technique.^[2][3][4] As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.^[5]

I have been working on this playlist the last several days. When I am in period of uncertainty, I can’t listen to familiar songs. It’s too painful, too raw. I have to find new ones to help me understand my journey. All of these are new to me with the exception of Ray Lamontagne’s Empty. His musical poetry speaks to me so deep and I always come back to this song.
Anwyay, I’m only a few songs into this playlist and I expect I will add more as I hear them but this is where I’m at right now. I played it for my mom last night as we sat on her porch and watched the dusk give way to dark.
She said “why do you listen to these sad songs that make you cry?”
Because they make me feel alive, they make me feel less alone in a world where I don’t know anyone who feels the way I feel about things. I feel a kinship with these people who create this kind of art, who speak these kinds of words, who live and love gently, gracefully, with intention. They don’t sound sad to me. They sound like beauty and grace and forgiveness.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m trying to be ok. I didn’t hear from J at all yesterday and that made me sad but I know he feels like he has hurt me. We have hurt each other.  Unintentionally but nevertheless. I hope he is finding the light somehow.

Day 3:

You know that movie Never Been Kissed with Drew Barrymore? This one is called Never Been Picked and it stars me.

To have and to hold.

I just get had for a little while but never held forever.

As I’ve been mulling this over, I can only come to one conclusion and it’s that there is something fundamentally wrong with me that every single person who enters my orbit eventually decides I am not worth it. So, then, I ask myself what is wrong with me? And here are the things I have come up with so far today:

• Pliable. I am not pliable enough. Meaning, I am too rigid. I don’t lean in enough; I don’t ask for help. I don’t rely on my partner to help me. I think this makes people feel like I don’t need them. Which is so far from the truth. The truth is, I need them so much. I don’t know how to ask for help. I don’t know how to lean in, crumble, fall down, let them pick me up, dust me off, take charge of me in the moments I can’t take charge of myself. That must feel very lonely to someone who wants to love me.
• Sex/Physical Intimacy. I am no good at it. I am scared of it. I am afraid of rejection when a lover’s eyes rake over my body, when their hands take hold of all my vulnerable places. I am so very scared they will not like me anymore when I take my clothes off. I think, over time, this probably lessens a person’s sexual desire for me. I am no fun in bed. Everyone wants someone who can let go and have fun and be all-in. I don’t know how.
• Motivation. I am in stasis right now. I am in stasis a lot if I am truly honest with myself. I haven’t ever found any direction to go in and so I end up just going in circles most of the time. As frustrating as it is for me, imagine someone trying to love you and grow with you and they can’t because you don’t ever really grow. You never learned how to water your own garden. You just wither and die as the seasons roll on.

I don’t know. I know I have some goodness in me somewhere and I know it is lovable but I’m not the total package ever for anyone. And that’s not me feeling sorry for myself, it’s just me being honest about who I am and what I bring to the table and ultimately what people want from another person. It has been my experience that sex is at the very top of the list. I think my motivation and pliability could be overlooked if I could give more of myself sexually. I think people choose partners so much of the time based on sexual compatibility and all the other ways they are lacking just pale in comparison to sex. Most relationships end because of infidelity. If sex wasn’t so important, then why are people falling all over themselves to find it, to have it, to get it, to keep it, to do it, forevermore? No one ever walked away from someone and said:

Dumper: “Man, the sex was off the chain, bro! Not only that, but she was kind and good and cooked me burritos at 2 a.m. and rubbed my head when it was hurting and made sure I always had clean underwear and did I mention she was fucking hilarious and charitable and liked babies and cats??? Dude, she was a fucking 10 and all of our values aligned perfectly. Oh, and the SEX???? Did I already mention that? It was bomb, dude.”

Friend: “So then what happened, my guy?”

Dumper: “Umm, she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life and didn’t know how to tell me when she needed help. I had to walk away from that shit, bro. Toxic as fuck.”

It more likely goes like this:

Dumper:  “Dude, she was great. She was hitting on all levels but the sex….it just wasn’t there. It’s like she didn’t even need it to exist. I don’t know, man.”

Friend: Yeah, dawg. I feel that, bro.”

But anyway, yeah.
I suck at sex.

I am no good at shaking my titties and throwing my ass in a circle.
I am no good at it at all, my non-existent readers.
It is not in my wheelhouse to begin to even remotely know how to be sexy and lounge around with my titties flopping about and my ass hanging out of my shorts; to feel sultry and goooood about it and make my mans’ mouth water for that brownish pink teat all up in-between his teeth. I don’t know how to take a single pic of my pussy lips peeking out from my see-through panties and send it to him to make his loins ache and his dick drip pre-cum in the middle of a midday meeting. I don’t sleep naked and I don’t admire myself in the mirror and think I am a sexy beast and any man would be so lucky to slobber all over this.

I have problems.

I want sex.
I like sex.
But I am not sexual.
And being sexual is important. I get it. I understand it. I don’t begrudge anyone from needing more from me. I really don’t. It is human and it is valid. I am sad that I can’t provide it. Like sad-sad devastated defunct down-trodden dead.

Maybe I will find love when I’m 87 and neither of us can no longer have sex. Maybe then I will get to have and to hold forever.

I’m sorry, J.
I’m sorry.
I know you loved me for who I am.
I will always love you for seeing me and loving me.
I’m sorry I couldn’t give you everything.
I don’t blame you at all.

That’s it for today’s STEPHANIE TALK wherein she tries to shed light on her shortcomings in order to self-reflect and acquire some personal growth but instead just blames something else so that she doesn’t have to admit that she is the problem. Stay tuned for more.

Ugh, I am insufferable.

Day One: Post Apocalypse

a·poc·a·lypse

[əˈpäkəˌlips]

noun

Apocalypse (noun) · the Apocalypse (noun) · apocalypse (noun) · apocalypses (plural noun)

1. (the Apocalypse)the complete final destruction of the world, as described in the biblical book of Revelation. See also Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”the bell’s ringing is supposed to usher in the Apocalypse”
   • (the Apocalypse)(especially in the Vulgate Bible) the book of Revelation.
2. an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic scale:”a stock market apocalypse” · “an era of ecological apocalypse”

I woke up angry. At you. I did not have an ounce of grace to offer you this morning and I’m truly sorry for that, J. I opened this blank page and started writing to you because I had a lot to say and I wanted to make sure I got it all out. The release of the words in my brain, the hurt in my heart, and the anger in my bones felt so cathartic.

I was really letting you have it.
And whoever this new person is that has replaced me?
Oh, she was getting it too. Real good.
Neither of you were safe from this storm raging inside me.
I imagined the two of you, gleeful and dancing with joy at the realization that you had finally managed to shuck me from your life.
FINALLY.

You to her: “Bring on the guilt free fucking, babe! Would you mind stopping by the store on your way home and grabbing some of that popcorn I love and go ahead and get some ice cream while you’re at it. Tonight is our night, babe. Gone, gone, the bitch is gone, the bitch is as good as dead! Did you know I have been in love with you since our souls collided in another lifetime? But lets not talk about that right now. We’ll save it for later after we have finished our Cumming Together Freedom Ceremony.”

Her to you: “Yes, lover! I’m so proud of you. I know this has been weighing on your mind and heart but you did the right thing, she was just bringing you down. BTW, I stopped by the lingerie store and I got something special for our Cumming Together Freedom Ceremony, henceforth known as CTFC. I hope you don’t mind but I also picked up some candles and some cleansing sage so we can rid every last crevice of your heart where her memory might still reside. I don’t want to start our new journey of love with her scent lingering over us. This is our season now, baby! ILYSM!!”

Obviously, I know this is a gross exaggeration of how the conversation between you probably went but it feels good to imagine that she is a total douchewhore and I do find some comic relief in writing these scenarios down because then I can feel somewhat just okay for a split second.

I absolutely hate her.
I shouldn’t but I don’t care.

I hope she is insufferable and has adult onset acne and is lactose intolerant and farts during sex and I hope it smells like shit and your boner deflates faster than a helium balloon when you suck all the air out of it. I hope she burps the alphabet and the birthday song.

**Disclaimer: Sometimes grief and anger make you revert to a more primitive version of yourself and these feelings are absolutely ok and normal and you shouldn’t feel bad for feeling them (even though you do and you will and that is why you’re inserting this disclaimer here so that when you revisit this someday after you are healed, you will remember that you were right smack dab in the middle of some intense emotions and you need to go easy on your former self, sister love).**

I absolutely love you.
I shouldn’t but I don’t care.

I hope you are happy and don’t mind her insufferable ways and love all her imperfections and apply her acne ointment for her when her hands are aching and only buy dairy free ice cream so that her farts are silent and unsmelly during sex and your boner keeps on boning. I hope you record her burping the alphabet and the birthday song and show your kids someday.

I hope you find someone to love.
I hope she loves you with her whole heart.

I am too tired to hate, too spent for anger, too brokedown for spite.

See, the thing about what I just typed up there just now is that it’s constantly changing, like every few minutes. Grief comes in waves and sometimes those waves bring hatred and vitriol and sometimes they bring sadness and tears and sometimes they bring reflection and understanding.

And sometimes I feel like I am just writing this to you and I am not being completely truthful with myself because I want you to read this and come back to me
but you are gone.
So far gone.
You have been gone long before you broke the news to me yesterday.

FML for realz, yo.
Can I getta AMEN???

This is so hard. I don’t understand how you don’t feel any of this. I thought you loved me. How is it so easy for you to move on to someone else? I can’t even imagine another man’s hand touching me. It makes me want to vomit.

Did you know that a garden needs more than just water to grow?
It’s true.
It needs
space
light
air
nourishment
the right temperature

Did you know love needs the same things?  I think that’s really beautiful and poetic.  I was thinking of this earlier today while sitting in my car in the school pick-up line.  I was feeling down-down and I thought about how we used to tend to each other’s garden. A garden, like love, will try to keep growing with only a little bit of nourishment but it will eventually die.  Maybe a few foolhardy sprouts will remain, but it will mostly turn back into just the earth.  And no one will ever know it once existed.

I am sorry we stopped tending to each other’s garden.

Why did you want to be free of me?
Free of the burden of Me
Free of the Burden of Me
FREE OF THE BURDEN OF ME

You know what? Fuck that noise. I didn’t stop tending to your garden. You stopped tending to mine. You took your hoe and your watering pail, and your enriched soil and you started tending to her garden. And when you did that, she came alive, and gave you what you were missing from me. But you took it from me! You took it away from me. How dare you! You didn’t even give me a choice. You just started working your magic on her and sprinkling your miracle-gro all over her and she bathed in it and she mirrored all of that back to you. You left me here to wither and die and then had the real nerve to wonder why you weren’t’ getting your needs met anymore from me. This new person was blooming under your care, and I was withering away from your neglect.

You asshole

Fuck you

I love you

And also. ME? Me, a BURDEN? Hahahahahaha. Yeah right. I am not a burden to anyone except maybe myself. I gave you all the space and all the time and I didn’t ask for more than you had always given me. Except I didn’t know at the time you were just giving it to someone else. I don’t know much but I do know that I am no one’s burden and I’ll be goddamned if I carry that cross.

You sent me a text this afternoon about some job you applied for and this is what I wanted to send back to you:
GRATZ. You should let your emotional support person know so ya’ll can celebrate and she can give you a blowie later

I typed that out in my notes folder on my phone and then sent it to my mom and asked her if it was ok to send to you and she said no.
So I didn’t.

I just sat here and waited for my heart to stop racing and for the heaviness in my chest to subside and then I sent you this:
Congrats <hand clap emoji>

You haven’t responded.
I shouldn’t have responded either.
I wish you would have responded.

I suddenly just feel sad now.
Like soul-crushing, fisting my shirt into a knot and screaming into it, throwing all the rocks against the window panes of my heart to break in and stop the flow of absolute love I have for this man who somehow cannot love himself enough to understand that he is worthy of the kind of beauty and grace that looks like
stumble-fall down-knock you on your ass grass stains on your white linen pants and tomato sauce on your necktie right before a huge presentation and you feel like shit and wanna puke up all the nerves and anxious worry that comes from wanting to do your best at all times and you don’t like to fall down in front of a crowd or in front of anybody really but your lover is there and she sees you and she brought the magic stain eraser and the paper bag for you to puke in and when you fall down she falls down harder so everyone will look at her instead and all the ladies in the audience will grab their Kleenex and weep at your chivalry as you help her to her feet and smooth her dress for her

I feel you so deep in my bones and in my heart and I love you more than I can even understand of myself and I want you to slow down.
Stop running.
Just slow down a little bit, please… stroll like you have all the time in the world to get to where you’re going and you don’t have to run anymore because the person who is going to love you will understand that you had to take your time to get to her. And when you get there, just let her hold you and don’t say a word but don’t leave either. Just stay. For once in your life, just stay.

I really don’t know how to not love you.

Things I write to keep from writing to you:

A crumb at the corner of your mouth and I take my finger and wipe it and put it in mine. That is how I know I want my sweat, tears, cum, blood to mix with yours

That is one way I know I love you But also when we’re riding down a backroad in some small town in Alabama where you have never been but somehow have history here so close to me that my mind is blown all the way into galaxies unheard of; and the sun is shining on you in the passenger seat and your head is tilted back and your mouth wide open, a portrait of you burned into the far reaches of my memory, so soft, so vulnerable, so achingly intimate to know you while you slumber. I fell in love with you a million times in those half second glances while I was driving us through those rural towns you’ll likely never see again. That one small ember in a universe as vast as the internet made its way to you up there in the far corner of a map, bypassing millions of people, it’s glow imperceptible to them but not you. It was a raging forest fire

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I read somewhere the other day that when you want to send a text to someone who has hurt or is hurting you, it’s best to open up the notes folder on your phone and type it out there and then sit on it for awhile before you decide if you should actually send it to the person or not.

This, apparently, is a form of emotional regulation and is a good practice to take up so that we don’t accidentally and unintentionally let said person know that we think they are a total
fuckwad-
dickfaced motherfucker-
absolute wonder-
gods greatest gift-
love of our life-
complete asshole-
dimwitted idiot

I guess that makes us look bad? Or desperate? Or something?
I don’t know.

But the overwhelming consensus is we should not tell them all the things our heart feels in the exact moment it feels them so that we can instead reflect upon our emotions and then present them in a much more refined way than, say, like Linda goddamn Blair in The Exorcist who ruined my life and is the reason I will never know a peaceful night’s sleep. All because of her demon possessed, terrifying as fuck, portrayal of some girl named Regan who peed at the bottom of the stairs because she couldn’t suppress the fucking devil inside her evil pre-teen body and ruined my life forevermore.

Fucking Skank.

I mean, sure. I suppose I could blame my dad for letting me watch her roll around and stab her vagina with a crucifix when I was only 8 years old but that is a whole lotta trauma and baggage to unpack and I don’t get paid enough to be my therapist so Linda Blair, AKA Bed-Shaking Banshee, will have to do.

But, I digress.

That was a little off the rails, which is exactly what we are not supposed to do when we feel big emotions and need to express them. We are supposed to practice breathing and meditation and look at butterflies and put flowers in our hair and wear a sundress down by the river while we roll around or frolic in a field of honeybees and wildflowers.

Or sit at our desk and chug black coffee and listen to rage music and stick pins in a voodoo doll we made ourselves that actually looks nothing like the conductor of our broken heart but it’s the best we could do because we weren’t’ gifted with all the talents, only the motherfucking one, which is using our words to soothe and rage,
hurt and cleanse,
regret and empower.

That’s all we know how to do so when we get told to suppress our words until we have emotionally regulated ourselves….well….motherfucker, we can’t.
We simply can not.

So what are we to do then?

Well, we can’t tell them all the shit inside us and the absolute havoc they are wreaking on our heart because they’ve already asked the goddamned pilot to make an emergency landing and the inflatable slide to freedom is deployed, my baby. One unhinged rant from you is gonna send their ass sliding all the way down that bitch before the plane has even landed and they don’t give a single solitary fuck because a cracked ass or a broken leg is preferable to being the keeper of your heart.
You know…the very same one they once treated with such care and compassion.

I guess, then, the armchair shrinks are right.? That we shouldn’t go gushing and gagging to the very one who is breaking our heart.  No matter which way you slice it, and there are only two ways when it really comes down to it-your way and theirs-is that while you’re busy hoping and praying for their love to return, they’re busy hoping and praying for someone besides you, someone who isn’t you.  Their contribution to the team project has reached its final conclusion and they have nothing left to contribute. So very sorry you were still working on your part over there but you can lay the hammer and nails down now, sis.

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Things I write to you to keep from writing to you:

Took from me and gave to her, emotional burden, I release you

I’m glad you said hi.  I hope you’re having a good day

Thank you for the daily check in.  You really don’t have to keep reaching out just to say hi to me.  In fact, it’s kinda hard for me when you do because I think I’m gonna get some attention but I’m not so it’s just a big let down when you go silent for the next 8+ hours.  I know you mean well and I love you so much and I thank you for your thoughtfulness because I know it’s coming from a place of love and you are not trying to or meaning to hurt me.  Please believe me when I tell you that only getting a small portion of you when I used to get it all is actually very painful and hard to reconcile.  These daily breadcrumbs are breaking my heart over and over and over again every single time you throw some my way.  And again, I know it’s not your intention at all and you may think you are letting me know you care about me by doing this but all that is happening is a deeper and wider chasm is opening up between us and I feel like everything that we were is going to fall into its abyss and the fog will roll in and obscure us from the others sight and we will be lost, gone forever.

Asshole motherfucker dick for brains. You don’t deserve my love. I fucking love you

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Listen my bitch,
my girl,
my baby,
my ride or die,
my Raggedy Anne for life

That man doesn’t want you no more,
my sister,
my love,
my friend.  

His well is dry for you.

His well is dry for you.

I know you don’t understand.
You are still so in love with him.

Your heart is a patchwork of love, all dirty, mad, passionate, desirous, envious, glorious and so painstakingly real that the patterns bleed one unto the other until all you can see with the naked eye is a blank canvas of a scorched wasteland where lovers traipse around in their steel toed boots and their bullet proof vests so that your love will not stub their toe or penetrate through to their heart like their love is doing to you. It is all up inside you, boiling and basting, murmuring and shouting; taking you so high you could fly and so low you could crawl.

And you wouldn’t change a thing because it felt so achingly good.
Like good good.
Like the best good you ever had.
So good you wonder if it’ll be that good again.
The goodest good,
the greatest good,
gooder than good,
gooddammit.

Good googly moogly

And you still wouldn’t change a thing even though it hurts so achingly bad
Like bad bad
Like the worst bad you ever had
So bad you wonder if it’ll be this bad forever.
The baddest bad,
the worstest bad,
badder than bad,
baddammit.

Bitch ass mother fucker

But hey,
sister-friend,
lover,
my bestest gal,
keeper of my heart and soul and all my secrets;
the one I secretly love more than I hate

Only through death can we find our resurrection

Post Script:

If you’re reading this
I love you still and always