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i didn't think they were when we first met. i mean, why would i? they were suave, confident, hot. filled to the brim with sticky hubris and emotion. but everyone has a vice, and the best of people keep theirs well hidden. so i find myself here, the place where all good characters begin-- in love. i definitely wasn't expecting it, but that's another story entirely.
i think insecurity is a cautious devil. like the fairy stories i was raised on, it's cunning, a trickster. it masquerades as many things- pride, confidence, and anger being the most prevalent flavors. my lover is none of these things, save maybe a bravado that only comes from finally having the courage to live truly as oneself after years of running. this bravado is enticing, but not necesarily a symptom. perhaps the greater fault is that i am entirely consumed by their personhood. i, like a crocodile on a winters day, bask in the sunlight of their soul. if my limbs were iron i would carve wheels from pure stone and a wagon of aged wood and use it to drag myself to their feet. yet, love is farsighted, and time has revealed the true deliciousness of their personhood rests on the facet that they too, are human.
so, we make our bed in the meadows and we fight our battles in the night. i speak more than i listen, they keep feelings like secrets. they shrivel and burrow to avoid, whereas i become louder to confront. our love is indeed an unlikely story. but i like it, and i want to make it. so, i find myself getting quieter, conceeding more. i let them win and ask them to decide. they do, and we fight sometimes. they would rather be disappointed than rejected. god, don't we all.
i speak in riddles and they in fact. maybe we are too different but we don't let it deter us, for we are far more the same than we could ever realize. still, when i speak plainly they assume puzzles, when i gently correct they quiver, when i say too much they internalize, communication rought by years of passive agressive parents and partners before me. i, who have known none of this, continue my ramblings, wanting only to share more of myself with my lover. i say the wrong thing. there is no wrong. i say things. they hurt.
i don't often mean it the way they take it. their interpretation is a faulty compass that rarely points to true north. sometimes the sheer polarity of their interpretation shocks me. i say i'm tired, they ask if i want them to leave. my direct mind cannot wrap around their curved one. if i wanted them to leave i would have asked. and i would never want such a thing. i say i am scared to become dull. they apologize for ruining me. i ask them what they want, they cannot give an anwer. insecurity is not a trait, it is a tyrant. i see them beneath the ruling scepter but i cannot budge them out from under it.
so i try to be gentle. i speak softly. i conceed. i give them exactly what they ask for. i have been trained on what to avoid. i wonder if this training is making me trickier, or more like the partners and parents that made them this way in the first place. i am no saint, i wish i could learn to shut my desperate eager mouth, a chore i have resisted and fought since childhood with the will and stubborness that remains unchanged. still i ache. the constant intent on misunderstanding me ages my soul. i feel the ache begging them from within my loving eyes. "see me as i am, lover," it cries, "please hear me as i am."
Jan 13, 2025
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For someone who claims to identify so closely with solitude, uncovering just how tethered I was to the emotions of people I love was a crispy realization. Of course, that attachment is the basis for any kind of relationship. You cannot claim to “have someone” in your life if you do not feel some kind of emotional connection towards them. The stronger the connection, the stronger the relationship. We all know this. However, there is something to be said about a relationship that is “too good”; a bond so strong due to its shocking lack of tension. In hindsight of various broken and fragmented connections I’ve been apart of, any relationship that exists while remaining entirely unscathed now kind of terrifies me.
I believe there can be such a thing as “too much love”, and I think those who have given or received it know when they have done so. It’s a mistake anyone is capable of making. Imagine a relationship so polished, free from any erosion (visible or otherwise); seemingly perfect. This type of connection can only be established through a building of trust and an abundance of time. However, I’ve come to learn that the more impeccable bonds tend to break easy when faced with their first real blow. Birds only crash into the cleanest of glass.
*"If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it...*"
I don’t want excess. For the food of love, I am no glutton. I eat until I am full and push my plate aside. I used to love like my life depended on it. I put those people whom I adored on the highest of pedestals, framed them in my gallery and admired new details every time we shared a visit. Maybe I just hadn’t been wronged enough to ever think that I could be wounded by those I dote on so heavily. What is it with loving and being loved that makes feeling hurt seem so impossible? Why must love shatter all preconceived expectations of what emotion is? Is love really so massive, so gargantuan that it conquers all other feeling?
Yes, and no. At least that’s what I think. This is all just what I think. I don’t want to come across as some great romantic or lovesick puppy or old friend. I’m just trying to figure out the right way to love, like everyone else.
Mar 16, 2025
🫀
there's no standard treatment for a broken heart. i sigh quietly to myself, thinking i’ll actually find an answer on how to heal a broken heart on google
it all began five years ago, when i finally started spending time with him—the boy who seemed to shine a little brighter than the rest. he was the kindest, the prettiest, the one who made my heart feel lighter just by existing. and he wanted to be my friend. how could i not fall?
kept the friendship up for a couple of years and my crush for him grew even stronger. sometimes he would come up in my dreams and then i would try to summon fate itself—manifesting, wishing, aching for him to love me back. because, as every girl knows, there is always a phase where we believe the universe listens. and so, i rinsed and repeated, hoping one day, he would look at me the way I looked at him
when we messaged or meet up, he felt like my twin flame. a connection so deep, so natural, that i convinced myself he must feel it too. he understood me, and i understood him
but i never felt that he liked me as much as i liked him.
and then, it ended—not with a dramatic farewell, not with a grand confession, but with silence. I ruined it in my own quiet way: fading out, withdrawing, blocking him, letting the messages go unanswered. I stopped reaching out, and so did he. it was as if we had been a story left unfinished, pages ripped from the book before the final chapter could be written
it has been four months since we last spoke. and now, he has a girlfriend. may I add—throughout our years of friendship, he never had one. situationships, yes, but never something real. yet, here she is. not me.
the day I found out, it struck me in a way I hadn’t expected. I had let him slip from my thoughts, let weeks pass without missing him—until I saw what I had once longed for, in the hands of someone else. I hadn’t realized I was still holding onto the dream until it shattered before me.
now, my mind drifts to what could have been. I picture myself in her place, feel the ghost of a life that was never mine. would he have loved me, if I had held on? if I had tried? was I ever good enough for him? wasn’t I pretty enough for him…? why… her… not… me…?
time is meant to heal. i know this. but this wound runs deep. losing someone you once felt connected to in the deepest corners of your soul is a quiet kind of grief, the kind that doesn’t announce itself loudly but lingers in the spaces between thoughts. my heart feels heavy, my soul even heavier
but today, i miss him more than usually. i’ve fallen to deep, so now every time i think of him, i will miss him deeply.
Feb 28, 2025
🫀
i can’t listen to music without thinking about her. every piece of shitty poetry that condemns my for you page makes me think of her in our living room. she is holding bills as she sits on our couch, a calculator on the table and a glass in the other hand. i will ask her what she wants for dinner, and she will tell me.
there’s something so guttural about knowing you want to love someone for the rest of your life. that little moments like a dinner order are exactly what will give you the drive to wake up and slave away to a 9 to 5. ive been thinking about what i wanna be a lot lately. i think it’s honestly teaching. philosophy. i like to imagine myself as a philosophy professor discussing love with my students, i would tell them about my little artist at home and our baby girl and how i too thought marriage was simply the removal of autonomy until it befell my door.
i think that’s a normal way to feel, with tubes of “the good ol ball and chain” and “can’t live with her can’t live without her“ down our throats like prospective foie gras.
but my love is gentle. it is patient. it is kind.
Mar 16, 2025
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A weird and whimsical adventure through the rabbit hole of American culture. It’s like if the internet were real.
Mar 16, 2025
⭐
if love is static, my lover is a fuse. hot, bright, and full of wonder, my love catches my eye and catches flane. if love is an orchestra , my lover is the conductor, i am never afraid for what is coming next. if love is fast, fickle, or angry my lover is not my lover. they are a star instead, a metaphor and the antidote, an achievement but never a trophy, a captured heart but never a conquest. if love is the reason they are the light. i am coming like a vision before the end. we are together and unique, seperate but conjoined. i am not alone in the night. what a joy! what a joy! what a joy! i am not alone in the night.
Jan 23, 2025
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i remember wondering what they must have been thinking. while the bombs were being dropped, while their high school crush was sent to fight a war he didn't want. i wondered what they spent their days doing. what their older coworkers were whispering about in break rooms. what the best cook in their friend group was thinking as they fed dinner parties with ritz pies and canned vegetable casseroles. i wondered how it felt to keep spinning when the world was falling apart, surely the citizens knew better, surely they spoke up, surely their bones were alight with rage and confidence and desperation! surely it felt cataclyismic. that's how it's always been taught. looking back, we see the patterns. looking forward, we just see another day.
these days, as my rights are being taken from me every morning, as the farmers are scared to farm and the reporters cannot report and the people are stirring unsteadily- these days i know all too well. i cut my strawberries in fours wondering if next week there will be any left. i listen to conversations in break rooms and elevators, making a tally of who's husband has a red hat and who talks about lowering taxes and whos eyes shift to the floor whenever someone says the word immigrant. i savor, save, and wonder. i worry, don't we all worry?
i hold my lover tight and blanket us in gratitude, praying it is enough that we never discover how lucky and rare this moment is.
when i was young i signed myself up for the revolution because it was exciting. then because it was necessary, and now because it is all there is. we expected songbirds and battle cries and passion, instead we carry casual, mundane grief. maybe there is no better future. maybe all there is is the hope of one.
so i no longer wonder. i know what it is to be one of the unlucky ones. i know the lack of glory in living through the next generations 'never again'. we are not revolutionaries. we are not martyrs. we are people just getting through the day. no one will write me a biography when i am gone, my diary will not be published. but my hands will be dirty and my soul will be light when they accuse me of the crime of being human. i lived, despite it all, during it all. isn't that what it's all about?
Jan 28, 2025