i brought the matchbook

to the savanna and i will light it on fire. dry, open, it’s clear skies today. the birds are chirping freely today. the clouds are lounging, white and pink. i feel bad going all scorched earth but today i felt like it and sometimes all it takes is the feeling to move you.

we talked about who he is and who i am, and i am left with who he is, this person who must have always been this person but i had refused to see it. we hadn’t been honest with each other and here we are now. we’ve both folded, kind of. we’re examining each others’ cards. can he see how i have bluffed? i hold that still close to my heart because i am good at lying to myself and believing it. he tells me who he is and i listen. i listen and i can see from all his questions that he only cares what’s in it for him, he’s only interrogating how this has affected him, he is unconcerned with how this has affected me. he doesn’t want this but he won’t say it. he doesn’t want this because he would have abandoned this situation long ago. his actions do seem to contradict the actions of only a month ago but let’s not dwell on the past, baby.

he tells me who he is and i realize who i am. i realize that i am now angry, that i am jaded, that i can see much more clearly than before. i see someone who doesn’t seem to care that they’ve hurt me because they are incapable of caring, whereas i projected myself on his actions, where if i had done the same thing, i would have purposefully done it to hurt him and would have already ruminated the purpose and went ahead with it. i suppose i want him to hurt. it’s human, is it not? to feel resent for betrayal, for heartbreak. it’s just a stage but you really have to be careful with the players. maybe he won’t care about the friendships that he will have lost through the fallout because he has already abandoned many of them. what’s another loss?

i want to get under his skin. i don’t want him to hurt for the sake of hurting him. i want him to hurt so he understands that actions have consequences. repeated actions have consequences. ignorance has consequences. not taking accountability and just chalking things up to your nature has severe consequences. that this world is not yours and you just get to live in it. this world has boundaries, it has rules. at the same time, i’m not sure how much of my happiness i’m willing to sacrifice for this mission though i do recognize that i will have to give a bit.

it’s like training a dog. and by that, i mean that i am smarter, wiser, more willing to indulge but never losing sight of the bigger goal, which is discipline for my sake. no one fucking messes with me. mark my fucking words.

reflections on “The Lover as a Cult”: a 10 minute thought

here we go. 10 mins, i say. I have kept thinking about Olivia Gatwood’s poem, kept replaying the audiobook version of it. every time, i find something else to marvel at. something else to relate to. i feel that i have unlearned everything i knew before this lover and now i realize i must unlearn it again. how to be by myself, how to cook dinner by myself, how to sleep in my bed without wishing he were there next to me. how to stop smelling my sheets in the search for his scent. how to be with my feelings. how to be comfortable with a future that feels so uncertain and yet so strange, so uncomfortable, one void of him. one where things aren’t at the cusp of something beautiful. a future of almosts, i must abandon, for it has now become a past of almosts, a history of it. a lore, a fantasy.

she says in the poem that maybe why we fall in love is to see how we look to someone else. my lover has told me that i’m pretty, that i’m a humanist, that i’m one of the smartest people he knows. how i listen to his stories and i am patient. how i scratch his beard at all the right spots, how i play with his chest hair out of boredom. my large soft cheeks that have now sunk from not eating for three weeks. how i was good at what i did as a partner and i wore that badge proud. how i became someone in the eyes of someone else and strived to be better, strived to be a better version of myself. strived to reinvent myself for all the right reasons.

i’ve forgotten what it’s like to be alone, what it’s like to not text someone every day, how to save a story for him the way a mother makes a lunch. wrapped carefully in wax paper and carefully placed in a bag so that when he opens it, it’s almost as fresh as when it was made with love.

i am afraid that outside of here is just another here. i am afraid of the future. i am afraid of experiencing a season when the previous season held all his marks.

i am afraid i will spend the rest of my life building myself in the vision of someone else.

i wanted to be good enough for him. i wanted to be good. i wanted to be chosen. and now that illusion has been fully stripped away. i don’t know him at all. i can read him and everything points to an answer that i’m afraid to swallow. i’m afraid to accept that he won’t love me. i’m afraid to accept the truth that i will be the one that walks away, that i must be that person, that i will be that person because whatever prophecy i refuse to read will still ring true. he is not mine and i am not his. he will grieve in his own way and it will break my heart. he will move on and the only response, the only good response that i can return is to move on myself. what a tragedy to watch all of this crumble. i really did everything i could to freeze time, snatched every wish and miracle that came my way to delay the inevitable, but alas, here we are. here we are where i must spend the rest of my life building myself in the vision of someone else. olivia gatwood, i adore you. thank you.

i figured out what i forgot in the lullaby

so i came back and whipped my bag down in the kitchen and started typing. you see, i forgot that there is always an end to a lullaby. the goal is soothe someone to sleep. there is an end in sight with a lullaby. a lullaby only does its job if the recipient accepts it, remains still, finds peace. it’s a means to an end.

and i mean that when i say that i’ve got a gun to my head and i’m the one holding the trigger and everyone is telling me what i should do. which is to pull the trigger, to let it go. let it hurt. just die and you’ll live again. and i can’t. i can’t let it go. i forgot how the lullaby ends, i insist. i will not rest until i remember the last lyrics. hush little baby don’t you cry. i tell myself to hush, i tell my gut that it’s wrong for the first time ever, that this is not the end, this can’t be how it ends. i tell myself this is not how it ends as i’ve entered day 10 of disordered eating. i am wasting away, starving myself to sleep. i am vindictive. i’ll show you, i say, to myself. i’ll show myself how to kill itself. i’ll show myself how it can die twice. it can die from a broken heart and by my own hands. i have thought about writing a list of everything that happened this summer so that i can cherish the memory, because alas, it is only a memory. alas, it is only a supercut of what the summer could have been. those memories smell like summer in new york and stink like whatever cusp of potential i thought i’d be entering. those memories have led me here of all places, to my demise. i will punish myself before i punish the guilty. i will live in delusion before i face the fear of encountering the truth. i will show you how cruel i can be to myself so you know how cruel you have been. i will give you a taste of your own medicine by watching myself suffer. i am desperate. i am not desperate for attention. i am desperate for salvation but i refuse to take any path but the long way there. i am pathos, am i not? i am to be pitied. i am a woman in distress, i am a woman in demise and you get to watch it live.

i will live a tormented life before i choose to die again and find peace. before i can fall asleep. where am i right now but right where you left me? you thought i’d grow, well fuck that. i’m still holding the gun, i’ve never let it go. it will fall out of my dead hand if it has to, unless my fingers warp themselves post-mortem and then who will have the last laugh but me. oh life is a comedy! i say that because all i want it to be is a tragedy. i feel like the bottom has fallen out and i’m still falling. i’d rather just collapse, collide, die. i’d rather die again than have to reach the bottom and look up and figure out how to fucking climb out. i will not pull the trigger though i know it’s there. don’t i get some credit for acknowledging that it’s there?

today, i told the boy that i am afraid what the next months will bring. i left the quiet part out. the quiet part maybe he has figured out unless he’s too self-consumed, which is very possible. i left the quiet part out that there is no space for him in that story. i am afraid that the next months will be void of him, it will be a story of how i avoid him, it will be a story of how i navigate a life despite of him. i am afraid that in a month i will pull the trigger that last week i swore i would never do. i am afraid that outside of here, it is lonely. i am afraid that outside of here is just another here. i am afraid to find out. what am i if not his? what do i do with these hands when they are just hands?

i have fought feelings of never being good enough in any aspect of my life, and here is this new instance where i am not good enough. and it’s so pathetic because i know it has nothing to do with me. i know that when someone doesn’t love me, it’s not because i didn’t sit up straighter, that i wasn’t thinner, that i wasn’t smart enough, that i wasn’t funny enough. it just… wasn’t right. and i know that. but oh to be chosen! what’s that like? oh to be in this position and accept the news but not know what to do with it. oh doesn’t that make life a comedy! i get dealt these cards and i’m told to swim with them. i am afraid that he will be in my life but not in my life in the same way. i am afraid of navigating that. i am afraid of the spite and bad blood and resentment that i will feel for him. i am afraid that he won’t care. i am afraid that he doesn’t care. i am afraid of rebuilding myself because that would mean acknowledging that everything has burned down, that there is nothing left. that we are level with the ground. that these are ashes, darling. these are ashes and smoke. there is nothing here. this is not smoke and mirrors. there is nothing left. there is nothing left because he started the fire and you did your best to put out a brush fire with a fan. there is nothing left, baby. there is nothing left but your imagination. you are holding the gun to your head while your surroundings are burning. you cannot save it. you weren’t meant to save it. you could not save it. he will not let you.

you did not fail because you didn’t save it.

you are watching something die slowly in front of you but you don’t dare let it die. you try everything to resuscitate it. you’d make it your life’s work if you could. you need to let it die. you need to finish the lullaby and sing the final verse. you need to ring in the final note. you forgot what was in the lullaby: it was you. you have to finish the song. you have to sing the last note. there is no coda. there is no turning back. finish the lullaby and call it a day.

Dear 30-year-old Me,

I had debated writing to your 35-year-old self but I am impatient for answers. I am restless, I want to know what happens. I am in pain and I want it to stop. I want to know what happens, I just want to know if I’ll be all right. Perhaps I’m not in the right headspace to ask, to demand the answers, but I know when you look back at me, you will pity me, you will hopefully want to soothe me, and repeat advice that my younger self has already imparted to its even younger self: that things will work out, just not in the way that you thought they would.

I want to know what happens after graduation. I want to know, at the base elements, where I end up living. Do I stay in New York or do I move elsewhere? And what prompts me to move there? Out of my unbridled free choice or by circumstance? Where in the city do I move? What food do I miss? Who do I miss? What sounds or smells do I miss? What am I so relieved to have escaped from? Also what job do I do? Is it in the well-meaning field that I would like to pursue or is it something else? Do you feel like you sold out? I know, I know. These are the superficial questions. These are the questions to mollify me about my financial circumstances, my social position, a reassurance that I’ll survive even if my heart is broken.

Is he here with me in the city? Does he move elsewhere? What is our relationship? Do we still talk? What happens? What happened in September? October? November? December? January? February? How about after that? I want to know all the details. I am ensconced in the present. I’m being facetious: I can only think about the present, I am desperate and firmly myopic in the current moment. I am so confused, I am hysterical though I maintain a calm though wounded facade. Please tell me things will be all right. When you are immersed in pain, you forget what life is like on the other side. Do I love him? Did I love him? That’s a question I want you to answer honestly. I have been frightened of knowing that answer; I have prodded myself about it but I refuse to interrogate myself fully because I’m afraid what I will find. I have built myself makeshift armor and if I know even a little about warfare, it’s that you never expose your own weaknesses. I am frightened that the answer is what tears me into little pieces, that this bleeds into 30-year-old you. I think it would break me because I want to save face: it’s a flimsy mask of strength, of self-preservation. To be hurt means I have lost to something or someone, and you know how much I don’t care to win but I fucking hate to lose. I am so sorry for our disposition, for our soft, nurturing nature that’s both a blessing and a curse.

What relationships are strongest? Who do I keep in touch with? Who becomes a nemesis? What relationships grow stronger? What relationships wane mutually or run their natural course? Who do I meet in the span of a year that gives me hope that things will be all right? That I can move past this? That this is a life that I wouldn’t trade anything for. Right now, I’m losing faith but you know that. You know that these are dark, messy days; you know that I just have to let the truth flow through me. It’s funny that I think back to 20-year-old me wanting to move to New York City and being vulnerable with a boy in a park. I moved to New York City four years later in that self-imposed timeline and I did find a boy who knows most of my vulnerabilities though we’ve never walked through a park together, though we sit on my bed and drink wine on either ends of my bed facing each other, the rift in our friendship rooted by betrayal and words once left unsaid sits between us. Maybe I’ll find a different boy. I know I’ll have to after reading so many Natasha Adamo blogs.

Do you still run? Do you still run to the West Village or another neighborhood? Do you run 10Ks? Do you run another half marathon? Is it in another city? Is that city hot or cold or rainy or dry or humid? Don’t say humid. Do you take up any other hobbies or denounce yourself from others? What about your spirituality? Do you find faith and grace in new things, in yourself, in others? Are you less hard on yourself? I suppose if I could tell my 25-year-old self anything, it’s that I did work on myself, I did improve though the journey was perhaps unconventional, unsuspected. I have meditated at length on the value that Cumtown brought to my life, however fucking mind-numbing and stupid and degenerative the podcast may have been. But it inadvertently made me more comfortable about being myself: I’m less ashamed about my upbringing, I am more comfortable with expressing what I don’t and do like and embrace the judgement that naturally comes with that. I am unapologetically myself and I find it amusing that this revelation I am more comfortable with my shortcomings, my flaws, being human. I embrace them like a degenerate. I also have much better perspective into how others behave, their motivations, their ugliness, because one thing Cumtown does really well through its thin veil of irony is express the insecurities that others have, the boundaries that they will walk over. And it doesn’t make me more forgiving of them… I suppose in Natasha Adamo’s definition of forgiveness (where you accept someone as they are), then yes, but I don’t give them a free pass. I suppose right now I’m figuring out where my boundaries are and how I negotiate them. I’m sure you have lessons for me on this part.

Who do you compare yourself to or you’ve gotten past that? Grown up on that? Deemed that uncool? Who are your role models? Who disappointed you? What grief do you hold these days? How do you plan to experience it? Do you feel that you’re good enough? Hm, I might have phrased that incorrectly or carelessly. Do you feel that you’re more comfortable with yourself? That you feel less anxious and stressed with the idea of being good enough? Are you coping healthily with that definition? Have you appropriately extricated your self-worth from your insatiable and unrealistic desire for perfection? How has therapy helped you? Are you still going to therapy now that you’re off school insurance? Did you find a new therapist?

How is your family? Your parents are getting older and so are your siblings. Everything is always in a flux of change, isn’t it? Like the neighborhood you call yours where you used to deliver thousands of community newspapers, the country you call yours, the magnificent world that you call your world. How are they? How are you navigating their changes? Is everything all right? Are you hanging in there? Have you lost faith or do you find that you’ve become stronger by tapping into hope, in faith, in resilience? What does resilience mean to you and how has it changed from my understanding of it right now?

Will things be all right? How are you holding up?

I want you to know that I have few words to console you, to motivate you given my position as someone in grief. I will say that you are always someone who leads best with your gut. You know yourself better than anyone, you know what is best for you better than anyone. And whatever choices you’ve had to make and continue to make are the right ones. I’m proud of you. I look up to you. You are wiser than me even if there are times when you don’t know the answers. You are extremely funny, smart, and ambitious. I know that’s surface level. But you are capable of tenderness and love, and I really believe that you deserve someone who recognizes you for the person you are. Someone who is an incredible writer, inquisitive reader, self-reflective, lives in the present, constantly works on herself and perseveres, a fighter, a crafty mastermind who can move mountains if she puts her mind to it. You are incredibly resilient. Please remember to be patient with yourself, to show yourself grace. I know that you can be incredibly hard on yourself. Remember that there are shades of grey that are worth considering. Remember that you don’t have it all figured out and you don’t have to; you’re still very young and you survived (and continue to survive and bloom and thrive) in Joan Didion’s wise words about what it takes to live a fulfilling life, in her New York. You are always one step closer to salvation, I know it. You have died and died again and lived to tell the tale. Tell me all the inconsequential things that I care about right now and indulge me. Remember to smile and laugh and cry, and smile again. Smile sincerely. Love hard, baby. Love yourself even harder, baby.

Happy early or belated birthday, my dear love.

to the little calf

oh to be chosen. what’s that like? when it’s your turn to walk the line, to smell blood yet still step ahead, to hear your brothers’ and sisters’ eternal silence ahead of you. to smell fear but still want to bask in all the accolades? what’s it like to be the plumpest? the one with the most promising meat? death is a small price to pay for all your beauty. to be adorned with the title of sacrifice, to live your life as a tragedy is one of the noblest ways to die. when it was my turn, let me tell you, i forgot how to speak, how to walk backwards, how to change my mind when they whispered how much they adored me and meant it. i’d have danced for them if they asked me but they weren’t that cruel. i’d have let them caress me a little longer out in the warm breeze if they prodded me just a little. to be chosen is a costly thing, my sweet calf. the act tricks you. it tricked me and i pretended i didn’t see it. it clouded what i saw. my love, i gave everything. i’m sorry, little calf, for letting you retrace my steps for i too have brought you to the slaughter.

i am unsure what i want to write

i want to write everything but i do not know the answers. i cannot answer the one question i demand of myself right now: do i love him? I ask this because it would help me understand why I can’t let go. I tell myself I don’t. I don’t believe I do. I really don’t believe I do but I know that my body knows best and my mind will always play musical chairs with denial until there are no seats left for it to excuse itself. I am unsure how I feel about any of it. I am terrified of what’s next. I am not sure what I want. I suppose there was a time when I thought I did know what I wanted, and that was for life to keep going as it was. always the safe answer, my feet shuffling to the rhythm and now the music has stopped and i’ve lifted my head to face the hall of mirrors.

i have felt so many emotions lately. disbelief, shock, numbness, sadness, betrayal, self-pity, anger. i have felt this hole consume my chest and i’ve dared it to take me with it. i cannot live like this. i cannot live at the cusp of change, i cannot live with letting go. i cannot let go. this is letting go in a different way. this is letting go when everything is still alive. it’s walking away. it’s negotiating at its purest form but i can’t help but look at my cards and realize how much I want this. I want this because I feel safe, I feel happy. It’s the moments of bonding that I cherish and I am terrified of losing them. I am terrified that I will be alone when I’ve had a warm body for so long. I suppose what I really need to understand is whether I would be upset if I witnessed him showing the same level of affection to someone else, and I hate that the answer is yes. Yet I don’t feel sad that this is not a long term thing, I don’t know why that doesn’t bother me much. I think I have time to work up to the ending, maybe that’s it. Like the next four months will be preparation for goodbye and I can do that. Also ignorance is bliss; I have this weird feeling that I might end up moving elsewhere in the US and so I know that it would just make things easier.

I think the funny thing with this entire situation is that it’s given me good practice for a relationship in terms of opening up, communicating, negotiating, seeing what the world can offer. I suppose that where I am caught up is that my lover is like a cult: I am terrified of the world outside of here, I am so scared to unlearn everything I have learned in the past four months. I don’t know if I can do it.

I also don’t know what will happen with L. I like him, I don’t know how it ends. I have an idea how it starts. He would be a good friend to make regardless. I think I knew that this arrangement wouldn’t last forever. Also I laugh because my gut was telling me that this would end terribly and we would stop being friends, and I suppose that could be a possibility and maybe it’s up to how I feel. I know that what I should do is let this all go, but I can’t. I just can’t. I am not ready for it. I am not ready to leave this situation as much as I know it’s the right thing to do. However, I’ve learned how much my emotions go up and down that I will hopefully overcome this and make the sensible decision when I am ready.

ode to the linen women

white sheets, white glow
the smell of fresh laundry
can get suffocating
i suppose

when you're around it for long enough
the warm breeze only makes it worse
i forgot what it feels like
for heat to make pungent
everything you thought you
were you all right with.

i'd have helped you hang up the linens
all white, all clean
all translucent,
saluting the sky
blanching for all.

but today i can't bring myself
to salute the sky with both arms
today i can't see this clothesline
without it reminding me that
it ends somewhere
this thin wire so taut
yet not unbreakable.
cruel reminder of
wistful things.

betrayal isn't white
that's not the color that i would use to describe it
but there are shades of grey
in how we nurse ourselves back to health

i suppose i find broken men
because i see a flame
and dare myself to get burned
run back with tears when
the writing on the wall
peels back
and comes true

i suppose i find love to be a false prophet
i called the bluff
i think i'm winning
i smile resolute, pockmarked beyond repair
i think i can talk on the phone for 24 hours a day if i could
and i still wouldn't be filled

i have wondered where in this city i could go scream
without someone sounding the alarm
i feel like my heart has been pulled out of my chest
and all i want to do is die.

the linen used to feel soft beneath me
but with time its abrasions have emerged.
white is a color of renewal, of innocence:
that's the textbook answer.
today it is blinding.

joan didion you bitch

I live in your New York now. I live in it, in all its filth, in all its emotions, in the grime. I’m fucking rolling in it. I am fucking suffering in it and the world is on fire and I know someday it’ll get better but I know it won’t be today. Today it floods and I wash away with it. I really want to wash away with it. Today I feel everything nobody ever wants the privilege of feeling. Today I relate to all the ballads. Today I bawl. Today all the tears come and I am not sure if I deserve to cry. Today I feel betrayed, lost, disappointed, upset. Today I don’t know if I matter. And that’s what you wanted right? For me to live, to know that I get this single precious life and it’s cowardly to avoid the hard times, the difficult feelings. Today I am not sure who I am anymore. I guess I know who I am but I’m not sure what I stand for.

Today I am in Joan Didion’s New York and I feel so alone. I feel like its lone inhabitant. Today I feel like I fucked up. And by fucked up I mean that I did nothing wrong but have to clean up the mess that others have made. Today I feel like I want a ticket home, today I wish the water would just drown me. Today I face consequences for other people’s rash decisions. Today I am cleaning up a mess that I swore I didn’t make. But that’s life, right? We can’t all choose how it plays out. We get these cards and we deal with them. And that’s not fair. Life is not fair. I’m sorry Joan Didion, but I’m not a fan.

I’m not a fan of trying to fall in love, for trying to mistake something for love, maybe. For interrogating my emotions in the same way that you do. For having to face uncomfortable truths. For a man to tell me that he slept with another woman without protection and that it crossed his mind that it would hurt me but he did it any way. And it really was the last part that hurt: that it crossed his mind and still went ahead. Because I felt betrayed. I felt like as a friend I should be afforded some consideration, some respect, and in a way, I felt that I as a person was disposable. My feelings, my friendship were disposable. And then fuck you Joan Didion because then I had to accept what was given to me and have to learn all the rules and try to understand what had happened. Like this fucking sucks. You probably know that it hurts, it really hurts so badly. I wish I could tell the one person who has become my best friend in this fucking city but I can’t even tell that person because that is the person that hurt me. This is so heavy and everywhere, it fucking floods. Everywhere I am not sure where to go. I am not sure if I have to return a pair of shorts and go get my computer monitor and face towel. I am not sure if I will never be able to walk part that apartment and look at it in the same way. I am not sure if I can do this, if I will make this through. But you laugh because you know I will. That I will get through this and I will grow as a person. But fuck this. Fuck all these emotions. Fuck this disappointment. Fuck this pride. I am swallowing my pride and it’s clawing its way out of my mouth. Fuck all of this. Fuck not being enough. Fuck that I never feel good enough. Fuck this city. Honestly.

I’ve lived now, haven’t I? And it’s so painful. It’s painful knowing that I am not important. It’s painful seeing actions from someone you care about demonstrating that they don’t care about you. It’s excruciating to be terrified of what’s next. So many phone calls with my friends expressing how it’s this fear of being alone that keeps me in this. That kept me from under reacting. That’s motivated me to propose other arrangements. I am so sad. I don’t know how to feel because I am washed in this wave of sadness that I’m not sure how I get out of. I am devastated. I don’t feel broken, maybe just not yet.

I guess when I think about what happened with D, at least I knew what I did wrong. It was my fault. But this is not my fault. This is the fault of shitty actions by a shitty person, and I am so conflicted about calling that person a friend. And I feel like it’s unfair that I have to be the person who decides what’s next. How do you respond to a shitty act? How do you reconcile the thought that someone that you thought was a friend at a bare minimum would do something like that? And how do you just rip the bandage off and realize that there is nothing left afterwards. That you can leave this behind and now everything is a desert. And you chose to drain all the water because that was the moral thing to do. That was the sensible thing to do. That’s what a strong person would do.

And Joan Didion, I don’t know what happens next. I am so upset. I am not quite heartbroken, though I’ve realized that maybe it’s because I don’t know whether or not I am heartbroken. I don’t think I have figured that out yet. I don’t want to. I’m afraid of the answer.

I can’t believe that my house is on fire. I can’t believe that everything is burning and everything is flooding and I am supposed to deal with this shit. I can’t believe that I joked about toeing the line between wasting my time and having fun and now I have no choice but to admit that I’ve been wasting my time. Because now I’m not having fun, I have been hurt. Now I feel like I’ve lost the game and I am embarrassed.

And Joan Didion, this isn’t my best piece of work but I want you to know that I really took your advice to heart. I tried to really live in it. I tried to experience it all. I’ve tried to live recklessly and I don’t know what to do next. I am devastated. I’ve already said this, but I hate feeling this. And if I’ve learned anything it’s that I have a voice, I am a person, and that I don’t have to make every choice right now. But I inevitably will have to, because life does that to you, doesn’t it? It pushes you to make the hard choices and you grow stronger for it.

When I moved to NY all I wanted to do was grow, to live. And I got that!!! And this sucks. This fucking sucks. This fucking sucks that I have skin in this game. This fucking sucks that I have to grow up. It fucking sucks that I feel upset. It fucking sucks that I am crying. It fucking sucks. All of it. I am not hysterical, but I think there were flashes of that. Right now I feel like there is work that I should focus on. Right now I feel like I should sleep early tonight because I will wake up with puffy eyes otherwise. Right now I feel everything I should feel. And that is everything all at once. And I am not sure how that ends. I think that makes me nervous.

I think what enrages me most is that he doesn’t seem that apologetic about his actions when they were hurtful. Like the fact that he didn’t tell me for over a week when he could have done it, I want to know why. I think I deserve to know why because I want to hear from the horse’s mouth that he was a coward. And I think what I am so conflicted on is how I can really trust someone to not burn me again. And yeah, I will admit I’ve let him dictate all the rules, but I suppose I’ve been complicit in that. I haven’t brought it up. I am still guilty. Like I had a role in it even if it’s not completely me. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.