The Past Few Years

I write this piece from a meditative place today. 

I honor the space I am trying to create. I honor all the versions of me that have survived to be present with now. I honor who I will become after this writing. I honor all who read it and give me the time of day to be seen, not just understood. I honor all of life’s cycles just as they are, and therefore, me as I am amidst them. I am present. 

I also write with a heavy, weighted heart that feels full of wisdom yet. 

*takes a deep breath and exhales* 

The past few years have been hell and heaven alike. I have had the worst moments of my life in them and some of the most divine, life changing ones. I have cried more than I even knew I could cry, lost more in several years’ time than I even thought possible, and am still managing to stand as I am. 

I feel it was all necessary, though. I feel lighter in my body than I ever have, more connected with my sense of purpose and capacity, and more alive. I feel most me, in an entirely unpredicted way. 

Today, I would like to share all the ways I have become me in this moment. I feel it important to document, to release, and to to share with those I love and feel comfortable with. 

I have not been my best self online at times. I am not proud of some of the ways I have expressed myself in this time. I deleted my Facebook to continue on my journey towards communing with my greatest sense of being. 

I have struggled with oversharing my personal matters in what I felt at the time was an artful way. I love raw, bold, clarifying art. I love pure honesty. I think it helps us grow when we are real with each other. 

I did not present myself as best I could at times, though, and learned a thing or two about the power of privacy. That is just as artful a practice. Not to mention, it’s just simply confusing to others when I am confused in my own expression, and that is a nuance I don’t think I quite have time to unpack at the moment. 

Needless to say, I wanted to share these things today for clarification as well. Maybe it will make sense, maybe it won’t entirely, and I am comfortably letting go of the need to feel perfectly understood at all moments with my words. I just simply want to be seen and to use my voice to do that today. 

*I breathe and release all past versions of myself that needed to do this to survive. I move into my greater self in this moment.* 

This is going to be very hard, and possibly very confusing, for some. I apologize that it won’t be simple. Trauma never is, and if you are prepared to walk this journey with me today, you are someone capable of knowing that truth. I honor your capacity and thank you deeply. 

I got a divorce a few years ago. Sorry, dissolution of divorce. We finalized it about 6 months ago. 

I could not get myself out of bed and into the court to do it for a long time, but I wanted to be the one to take the official step. 

When I was 22, I got married. It was a lovely marriage in so many ways. By all counts, I married my best friend. I was in love. I saw the future together. I don’t know that I would have left them had there not been longterm issues and concerns. 

Whilst we dated, I began to realize something was very wrong swimming around in me personally. I started experiencing the clarifying sensation that something had happened to me in my childhood that I could not remember. I can’t remember so very much of my childhood and that seemed like a joke to me for awhile, until I was out on my own for the first time. It stopped being funny. 

Sex became hard for me. I felt like a failure, I felt incapable of providing for my partner’s needs, I felt like a broken, washed up piece of dissociating nothingness that shouldn’t be struggling with something I wanted. 

I entered therapy when I was 24 and began working on myself. My struggle with sexual intimacy was approached from every angle - maybe I’m gay, maybe it’s the religious trauma, maybe I’m overthinking sex, maybe I should just try more, maybe I should expect my partner to blow up when they feel rejected because I’m making a bigger deal out of this than there is. 

Those therapists did damage. In couple’s therapy, we approached our mutual therapist with an incident that had occurred between us in year one. We were both sincerely curious to know if my partner’s behavior had impacted me as a reason for why I was pulling away. She told me it would never hold up in a court of law and I was being unfair to put that on my partner, despite that not being the question we had both asked. I felt small and voiceless. 

We switched therapists and our first session? “You mean hell yes is yes? Sometimes therapists can do damage too and that must have been so invalidating to hear. Martina, I would like you to tell me how you want these sessions to be guided and what you would like me to work on with your partner in our private sessions. You are guiding this ship.” 

She helped me work on noticing my dissociation, approached my sexuality with tenderness, prided me on setting boundaries in my marriage that I direly needed, and very gently, so so very gently and expertly guided me through a few EMDR sessions. 

I began working on my memory. 

I started having a panic attack when we targeted something I did remember. 

2 weeks later, we found a place in Columbus. 

My last session with her was so very saddening. I knew I needed to continue this journey with her, but I also knew a good deal on a place was a good deal when it presented itself, despite the knowledge I was uprooting my life for someone I was in therapy with. I cried the night before that session and the whole way home. I still miss her to this day. 

After we moved, my grandfather-in-law passed away. He was my grandpa by all accounts. In some ways, I’m glad he never knew my partner and I broke up. I’m still spinning records and it reminds me of him sometimes. 

Not long after, I met someone and my partner also met someone. We had years prior been preparing to open our relationship. It felt like right timing to explore separately but simultaneously. 

The person I met immediately respected my sexual boundaries and needs. One very early conversation with them changed my life. I realized how much of a choice it could be to believe others and I realized that I was not capable of maintaining relationship with someone that had hurt me and only after years of bickering, sought the change I needed. I broke up with my marital partner three months after moving. 

My newly met partner and I fell madly in love. I was absolutely crazy about them in every way. We had the gentlest, sweetest, goofiest dynamic. I realized I was not bisexual but a lesbian in this relationship. (That started feeling apparent to me as my marital partner came to terms with being trans as well). I worked the hardest I have ever worked on a relationship in that one. Our communication was seamless, our desire for secure attachment was met. So many things went right that I couldn’t even name if I tried to.

About 6 months into this relationship, one of their partners behaved in a way that was extremely triggering to me and at my attempt to set some basic privacy boundaries, my partner told me I was projecting what I had just been through onto the polycule and being possessive and jealous. 

I was not ready to let go of this relationship, and would not fully let it go for some time after we broke up two months later. I felt broken, vulnerable, and so so very confused. 

Therapy language had been flipped around on me, my years and years worth of work in therapy seemingly meant nothing, my polyamorous orientation was called into question, and my trust in being respected was shattered. I had spent almost two months time in therapy preparing to respectfully ask for boundaries to a broken promise. 

I had spent years working up the strength to leave my longterm relationship and the reality that being in such a vulnerable place in a new relationship was not good for me had finally caught up. My partner had joked that they liked knowing I was struggling because it made them feel good about themself and having to actually face that reality was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. 

I cried every day the week before I broke up with them. I was in and out of the bathroom at work. I made a plan of self care for the weekend following the conversation I was prepared to have. 

It was sweet, and tender. I wrote them a poem, expressed my concerns with how my needs had gone unaddressed, and hugged them goodbye. That night, they sent me one last text I was not expecting and my world crumbled all over again. I paced my room and was unable to blink in a grief stricken state of panic. It felt like I had ripped a limb off and little did I understand, but that text changed the course of everything. 

I kept texting them for weeks after we broke up and re-opening the wound over and over and over again. I had little control at all of my impulses. 

At my friends’ concerns, I finally let them go in all capacities and got myself on Lexapro. I had been experiencing suicidal thoughts and spiraling into an identity crisis before we had even broken up - after those horrible things had been said to me. My partner was quite pregnant at the time, however, and I simply could not bring myself to make them aware of the impact of their actions. With Lexapro on my side, though, it was time to take care of myself for me, not for anyone else. Once stabilized, I was still full of a rage I could not place nor express. I now understand this to be the reality that I was in a situation I could not be honest about after I had worked myself up to honesty. I struggled to not go completely internal and nonverbal. I’m still wrestling with using my voice like I used to to this day. 

I have had days glued to my bed in extremely depressive states, moments of dissociating so intensely it scared me, and so many panic attacks in a row I had to leave work.

Since then, I have been taken advantage of as I’ve helped other people, my wallet stolen, and then car stolen after my previous one broke down on the road to Oregon. Those cars were points of pride in my supporting-myself- post-divorce era. 

My apartment has new holes in the floor and tears on the wall I will lose my deposit over. 

One night, I went to kiss my partner goodbye and one of my neighbors yelled “That’s so hot, can I join in?” I have seen a man verbally abusing his wife in the middle of the street in broad daylight, and my neighborhood has told me to just get over it or get involved. 

If you are reading this and consider yourself an activist etc, I would like you to consider what that means to you. 

Do I owe it to people to share my very intense and tumultuous trauma and mental health journey just to be seen as caring? The world isn’t ready for that intersection and I know that, but do other people? 

Is it easy to bring yourself to a protest when you’re glued to your bed? I made myself go, but it wasn’t easy. Was I visible enough? Was I loud enough? Did anyone see me?

Is it easy to feel safe as a (visibly) single AFAB person anywhere I go now? I make myself go places but I don’t feel safe ever, not fully, not the way a cis man would. I made empowered decisions to be single - do I not care about the world around me because I am struggling to keep my head above water on my own some days? 

Is it a privilege to not know if I’m real some days because I’m dissociating out of my control? If I have gone nonverbal, unable to articulate what is happening to me, does that make me callous because I cannot speak? Am I being selfish in taking a step back to heal, knowing that I am not a good candidate for leading activist campaigns and putting myself in harm’s way on any front line? If I have also suffered community trauma, does that mean I am holding out my natural leadership skills when I say that I cannot involve myself in most spaces right now? 

What does activism mean if it’s all virtue signaling and proving oneself instead of mutually working towards liberation for all of us? 

Do none of us deserve refuge at times we most need it? Is capitalism also subsuming activism up into itself, requiring productivity to build trust? Where is the sense of ableism in that? 

I have a new therapist and we are working our way to picking up where my EMDR journey left off some 2.5 years ago. She helps me see that I can trust myself and my body’s instincts. I feel less alone with her, and I am finally doing okay, I think. 

My marital ex and I are okay. I do not know how to explain it but I believe them when they say they are being a better person. I truly do. It is not my responsibility to rehabilitate. I can stand in some sense of humanity, I suppose, with honorable promises to do better and be better. 

My last ex and their partners made a podcast about 6 months ago smearing me not in name, but in rewriting the narrative as enlightened polyamorous thinkers. What does activism mean if it’s all virtue signaling and proving oneself instead of mutually working towards liberation for all of us? 

I am still healing, though. In so very many ways, I am healing. 

🙏 

On Being a Loner and a New Way Forward

My friend said this to me over the phone recently: 

“You carry yourself with authority.” 

We are constantly on a similar path of seeking growth and enlightenment together and have been since we’ve known each other. He approached me in middle school gym class one day as we both sat on the bleachers, staring out at everyone else playing. He struck a conversation with me that has never really ended and I’ve appreciated his willingness to be honest and curious with me about the world after all this time. I trust his perspective of me. 

I can’t get those words out of my head. 

I’d been lamenting my struggle with the way my confidence feels it’s perceived sometimes. I can’t quite get a good read on how people are taking my words and I feel very humble on the inside, just earnest and direct about what I do and don’t know, and I’m not afraid to make mistakes if that open and transparent process helps normalize the growth process. 

Yet, sometimes people do seem to feel threatened by my unwavering personality and it stings. It’s where I’ve been manipulated many a time - that darned value system of mine that places the growth of others before my own, confidently. 

My buddy catches me. He sees me. He knows how willing I am to let my greatness go unseen and pushes me to make sure I share it with the world. 

I’m in an uprooting phase in my life. I’ve been here before. Frankly, I think all of life is grief and transition. 

But something feels different this time. Like my entire worldview is turning on its head. More like a world tilting on its axis a full 360 degrees. I have my core and I’m learning to trust it. I have great instincts. I almost said good - they’re great. I don’t trust them enough  

After several - I mean S-E-V-E-R-A-L - hard fucking blows the past few years, I’m finally settling into the reality that maybe I really am a leader. 

I hate it. I hate the idea of leadership, though I understand it’s necessity in a world that’s just not ready for horizontal relationships and equity. I’ve been fighting it since I can remember. 

I’d call my dad a hypocrite in front of his martial arts classes when he’d be - you guessed it - a hypocrite. I’d be reprimanded. I’d gather my youth group friends in one room to get them all talking and learning about each other’s very different lives. I’d be the glue that held them together, it felt like. I’d sit in the lounge of my sophomore floor and as an assigned campus ministry coordinator, intentionally make myself available for friendship and talking about anything, in earnest. I was praised as radical, a leader of leaders. Not just a leader - an example of how to lead. I dropped out. Whenever I hit the stage, I could feel all energy on me. I was told I had an ability to do that that was admirable. I resented it because I felt one dimensional and it burnt me out. In management positions, I’ve sought to even out the power, uplifting and helping people see their capable selves, not at all unlike me. I’ve been praised and then relied on for outputting more leadership and other times, been mistrusted for being a genuine person with no hidden agenda. 

There are more days that I can feel how very not ready the world is for people like me, yet in the quiet moments when no one’s watching, people will engage me.

I never could quite make out what it was I felt people wanted with me. I show up in earnest to the spaces I’m in, I’m awkward but consistently there, I listen as much as I speak, and I care without feeling the need to be showy about it. In fact quite the opposite. I hate when people can see my good deeds. I just want to do a deed out of responsibility and kindness and to motivate others to keep doing the same. I do not desire the attention or Nobel Prize for it, in earnest. I would resent an award, honestly. My reward is in feeling human. 

Nevertheless, when I speak, people listen. Perhaps it’s because I’ve studied leadership and was birthed into an environment in martial arts that built me into the four tenants my father had pinned up on the wall. 

Patience. Respect. Modesty. Honesty. 

I am blatantly offended when people do not exude nor work on these qualities in themselves. They are what makes a good human and a good leader. 

Spend more than 10 minutes with me and you’ll hear me passionately rant about some leader somewhere I resent for sucking at their role. 

I carry myself with authority. I’m starting to know what that means now. 

Because I resent this reality so, yet see it all the same, I’m with the loners in every room I’m in. Occasionally I find myself stumbling into the popular kids table because oops, someone read me incorrectly and liked my vibe, but I cannot count how many “…you saw that, right?” conversations I’ve had with all us weirdos that see everything. We stay quiet because we’re wise and we’re read as too sweet to harm a fly in an infantile way, too ignorant to notice or perhaps too stupid in an ableist way, or too above it all to care, or even worse, too disruptive to the nauseating fog in the room. Everything that’s going wrong that no one wants to talk about? That’s us. 

We’re the weirdos on the bleachers watching everyone else play. Bet that when we do play, it’ll be one hell of a game. An underdog’s game.

These people? They’re my people. 

We don’t have a community. Not really. We’re too disillusioned to stick it out. When you see and albeit live the cycle of ever-changing cool kids and their popularity contests, you kind of get sick of it. I’m sad to report that it doesn’t necessarily change with age either. But, us weirdos and loners? We get more jaded but wise. We know when and where we’re needed, but it’s lonely in the meantime. 

I want to do life next to my people. I’ve been telling y’all how much I want to stick up for you because that shit ain’t right for quite some time. I’m tired of doing it in hiding. 

That is to say, I ain’t fucking with no fake fools. 

I’ll have you if you’ll have me and even if we don’t cross paths, I’ve got your back and I’m speaking up for your need to hold fair space. 

Why I'm Leaving Leftist Communities

If you reference back deep into this blog some 10+ years ago, you'll see my wrestlings with literal God that upon some hindsight perspective, were also wrestlings with capitalism and the conservative values I was being expected to have but kept falling short in being able to produce for my Christian circle of influence. 

Back then, I was 19/20/21 years old and contemplating leaving the Church. My journeys in Worship Leadership school (a made-up degree but one that can, scarily enough, be used) showed me behind-the-scenes into what ministry is actually like. My theology and Bible classes started feeling so very hollow and it was things like "feminist and African American theology" being thrown around like elective/optional pieces of historical literature to pontificate around when considering what we were to believe. It was hypocritical professors that sucked at their jobs, and ones that were good at ministry but felt the loneliness and pressure of big corporate Church to shut up. It was the inherent misogyny I found in my faith and the way it made my trauma responses and mental health worse. 

But most importantly, it was the revelation that I was the arbiter of my own truth and an oh so powerful and lovely human being, capable of anything I set my mind to creating in this world. I began to recognize my obstacles as no longer metaphorical entities to shadowbox, or even my own imperfections as a human. I started to see the system for what it is and started realizing that to fight for the world I wanted to be a part of, I had to dig at roots that existed in realities spoken by real humans. 

I became very passionate about arts and activism and turned my love for music towards a means for representation as a queer person, a sometimes woman-identifying person, a genderfluid person, a trauma survivor, and many other intersections I exist at, as well as a platform for speaking out about injustices occurring to other marginalized folks. I met some cool people and I can confidently say my sense of the world was deeply formed in all those years. 

But then I started going through some real shit (or rather realizing I had been going through it), and the more I dug, the more I realized that surrounding myself with people that claim leftist values does not make me any safer than I was back in my church days. 

I had a pastor once I was quite close to. His whole family was strange. As a 15 year-old, I didn't understand what it meant when his brother, the worship pastor, would speak inappropriately about his daughter, or how absurd it was that his father and mother survived a cheating episode and wanted to be held up as a gold standard of relationship, or how uncomfortable it was for my pastor to speak about "women's bodies" as something he appreciated with a value no 15 year-old AFAB person should have been privy to hearing about. His son assaulted someone several years ago and the family apologized to the victim's family as their means of accountability. I had heard rumors about the son practicing beastiality but my pastor's concerns about my then boyfriend's sexuality was more important. 

I spent time around kids in my teenage years that verbally claimed women as their wives prior to pursuing them. Some of them became domestic ab*sers, some of them became unsafe partners, some of them were horrible friends, and I'm certain there are things I don't even know about to this day. 

On campus, there were reports of assault happening and several people shared their experiences with racism with me. One peer called me out once and we sought resolution together. It was precisely because people felt comfortable holding me accountable and sharing shit with me that I realized we had way bigger fish to fry and multiply. It was way way bigger than my own ignorance. 

But aside from the meaningful experiences I had one-on-one, no one said or did anything. Things have come out about personnel years later. They're in a frenzied PR move to play to visual accountability and pull diversity ploys and I can't help but think about these years in my life as not all that different from the leftist circles I've been spending my time in these last few years. 

Things have come out about community members in so many of these circles. And each time that has happened, I have been absolutely shocked, so often now that I'm not even shocked anymore. Yet, prior to my lack of shock, it was the reality that there was no religious doctrine to expect would be used as an excuse. There was no apparent culture of protecting these kinds of people. It has been abhorrently offensive to me each and every time, and I hope and pray each time that the people surrounding these type of folks do the right accountability work. We rarely, if ever, do. In fact, I've seen more folks in leftist circles consistently make questionable choices even more than I have in my former church circles. I never could quite put my finger on it but now I've started to investigate my sense of neoliberalism. 

I think leftist culture prides itself on a sense of high moral values, so above and beyond, unthinkably incapable of harm. Leftist culture does not practice accountability - it practices posturing. Leftist culture does not invite uncomfortable conversations. It pontificates around the room to the leftist with the highest social clout or loudest voice, considers their wokeness, and builds decisions about future movement around a sense of neoliberal leadership. That is to say, leftist culture enables fascism by playing capitalist leadership games, willing to co-opt the ever living fuck out of the blood, sweat, and tears the rest of us put into our daily fight, all to increase their clout lest they be the next call-out victim. We daily folk are easy targets for neoliberals - we speak incorrectly sometimes, we contain multitudes and embrace our inconsistencies and complexities, we practice accountability as the hard work it actually is and to each other's faces, but we don't hold degrees or doctorates in Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, Communications, or win the pain Olympics to satisfy the neoliberal gaze in becoming a Savior every time. 

I am leaving leftist spaces because it hurts 50,000 times worse to be spoken over about your own goddamn experience because someone has a degree or non-profit position in your neighborhood or a neoliberal value to prove to god knows who, instead of spoken with about your experiences. I do not fuck with energy that makes assumptions or educated guesses without taking the time to know at a human level. I do not fuck with energy that creates unsafe social environments where psychological warfare is instituted for the purposes of direct or indirect silencing, done in the name of any type of justice. 

It is accountability practice to seek wisdom together as a collective, to make space for individual expression in relation to one another, to dig at the roots of all of our problems, and to free ourselves together in this fucked up world. I am not interested in false safety that cannot even recognize itself, and I am not interested in fighting for the right to be in power over others. 

I've witnessed it before and been victim to it time and time again. Hell, I’ve even espoused that shit myself without even realizing what I was doing because it sounded correct.

In church circles, we (the good ones) at least held an understanding that we are in it together and that all our bullshit can be handled together, too. There's something to be said about the way spiritual communities, when held together in good faith, operate. 

I am only interested in real ass motherfuckers trying to build a real ass world. I am still a leftist and you'll still see me around. My values just don't define me anymore, nor does my community. I do. 

If we can't see each other through the lens of our shared humanity, I'm not interested, no matter how bad you want me to believe. I'm really good at breaking my faith at this point. 

We say real recognize real for a reason. The horizon is ours.   

Goodbye Facebook

I said goodbye to Facebook today. It feels like a momentous grief is being pulled from my shoulders. 

So I’ll resign to sharing my thoughts on here as I see fit. 

I’ve been writing on here since I was like 15 or something? Like half my life already. 

What a wild fucking ride it’s always been. 

It seems I return here when some demon is exorcising itself from my body. That feels revelatory and meaningful to me. But the real truth is that I’m always doing that  because of the world we live in. Capitalism begets constant healing. 

And I’m not tearing myself to shreds anymore. Just expressing. 

So that’s cool. 

I don’t really know what else to say but I’m not as put together as I seem and also I am. So there’s that. 

Welcome to my cluuuub, welcome to my cluuuub, welcome Squidward welcome Squidward welcome Squidward welcome Squidward welcome Squidward! 

I Am Thinking I’m Going to be Okay

 “Candy” by Machine Gun Kelly 

Something is shifting in the air today. I don’t know if I have words for it? 

I am letting go of all the expectations I’ve been putting on myself to have everything figured out and to be put together lately. I only know like a handful of things and I am far from put together. My self awareness is perhaps my problem sometimes haha. I am too self conscious. 

I’m on antidepressants and I almost blacked out on them this morning. Still worked a little, though. The dogs were nice to be around. 

I guess I’m just saying that I’m tired of holding onto everything. I want to be held. I want to release my grip and just lay back into life. I’m tired of fighting it. I’m tired of being exhausted by that fight. I don’t want to just be a fighter anymore. I do that and I’m very good at it. But I just want to live again. Hell, even to survive. I want to create a safe environment for me to do what I need to do, survival or thriving. I am doing what I can and what I want to do, and if I’m not, I will figure out what needs to change. I always do. I just wanna dance until then. It helps my brains to get there anyways. 

No more trying. Just resting and living again.

“I’m in my head again. I took more medicine. Ripped up the parts of my heart and my chest again.”

I Am, and That's Enough

"Doll Parts" by Hole

Today, I am somehow managing to experience hope in my healing. 

I am feeling a depression lingering over my head like a dark cloud. I am feeling a fight against lots of negative self talk, and I am feeling a fight for maintaining the life I want to keep leading. 

I have worked so so very hard for everything I have become in life. And fighting to keep a hold on that in the midst of a terrible depression is even harder than I even could have predicted. 

I know that on the other side of this is me, fierce, not to be fucked with, SAFE, sane, and healthier than I've ever been. But that felt like me just some 7 months ago. Here we are again. 

And because it feels repetitious, I have these blog posts to look back on, and those moments to remember, and they are coming to me in full bodily form. I am remembering what it feels like to have control over my life again. It is excruciatingly hard. It feels terribly lonely sometimes. I feel like I'm losing my mind and I depersonalize something fierce sometimes. I worry what others will think of the life I want to create. I worry I won't find the people I need in it. 

But then I always somehow manage to. I always, and I do mean always, somehow find myself picking myself back up again and finding the answers. Always. Every single time. I always do. I always do. I always do. I always do. I always do. 

That always doing makes room for me to trust myself, and my future self, and my present self, and hell, even my past self that led me to today. I love them, and they love me, and I love the future me, and they also love me, and us. There's so much self love to be had. 

It's extremely hard these days. That self love. I can't even describe it. I'm not certain I feel it most days. I feel a lot of self hate. And I suppose it's partly because for things to get better sometimes, they have to get worse first. I am drawing up to my surface all the things I've come to hate about myself, and not allowing it to remain. 

It is HARD. It's comfortable not trusting myself and it's comfortable hating parts of myself that don't deserve it. I'd rather just not think about it some days. But it always finds me, and because I am not settling for anything less than self love in all areas of me and my life, it scares me. 

"GASP! There is a part of myself I do not yet love! Welllllll, we must fix this!"

And it is HARD. So so so very hard. But again, out of instinct, sheer force of will, spite, fight, and my always doing, I manage to make it through to myself. Even if it's a step out of line or a step in a weird direction. It's a step, and at least I am stepping, not sitting still, forever wallowing, and isolating. I am getting better and learning to love myself in depression. I am worthy of love even when I'm depressed. 

I love you, little Martina. You matter, to me, to your loved ones, and to the world. You are found, held, present, and so so so very important and loved. I love you so very much and hope you know and remember this. You are so very special to me, there is no one like you, and you are uniquely found in me because.... I AM you! :)

"I am
doll eyes
doll mouth
doll legs"

I Miss You

 Listen to The Night We Met, the Micky cover. Lord Huron's version isn't painful enough for this post. 

Today is a force myself out of bed day. Everything in me desires to glue itself to my bed, cry all day, and dissociate from all the overwhelm. 

It is my 2nd day off and my days off always catch up to me. I am getting bad again. 

I'm having trouble getting enough sleep, I'm struggling to eat sufficiently, and I'm trying to distract myself from my feelings. 

The distraction is nice because I certainly can't wallow in them. 

But goddamn, it's been 5 weeks and so much of the pain is just the same. I've gleaned so much wisdom over this time, but the grief is still there. 

I miss my partner something fierce, something awful, something dreadful that makes me roll around in bed feeling incredibly and overwhelmingly itchy. It's like I want them here with me cuddling but they are 5 weeks gone. 

And to go from talking all day everyday to hearing not a peep for 5 weeks feels like hell. It will only get worse from here on out, and I am not certain how to cope with that. I honestly don't know if I can, my body keeps telling me. But I must. 

I hate having lost a love of my life, and in an unfair way. I am here lately consumed with so many feelings I can't quite make sense of. And I suppose it's the reality of knowing that when I make sense of them, I am letting go. 

God, I hate letting go. 

"I had all of you, most of you, some, and now none of you
Take me back to the night we met
I don't know what I'm supposed to do
Haunted by the ghost of you
Take me back to the night we met"