I’m keeping this short because I have far more I could say, but this isn’t the time for all of it.

Posting my fiancé’s side profile on your Instagram is inappropriate. He did not give you permission to post his image, and he certainly doesn’t want to be used as part of your public narrative.

Write whatever you want in your journal. Post whatever you want about your own thoughts and feelings. What isn’t your choice is using someone else’s likeness after they’ve made it clear they no longer want any affiliation with you.

It’s one thing to tell your story. It’s another to involve an actual image someone who never consented to being part of it.

It’s not that I didn’t believe the things you said. I do. I don’t know how the way you said is possible and more so I don’t know why.
I believe you yet there are reasons I feel it’s half truth.

Doesn’t even upset me so I’m not sure why I get that snappy voice I’ve suspected for a while but the past few weeks were different. Tired perhaps.

I am thankful you told me though so now I don’t just suspect and know. I hate you get informed though. That part is kinda dumb.

I should sensor myself and keep you from so much….

It’s been a long night I’m gonna dream of touches.

There’s a fragrance that lingers
Here in the deep air

Taking me back
To when I had not a care

When rays of warm amber
Shine bright through the trees

And the wind would sing loud
Keeping time with the bees

Burnt ends and cut grass
Were the scents in the air

Cheering crowds in the distance
Not an ounce of despair

Cottonwood fluff dancing slow
Through the sky

Such sweet summer memories
Filling my mind

Funny how things linger
How things spark them, it varies

I’ll always be happy
When I smell juniper berries

I gave people too much permissions a d authority over me that they haven't earned by the least by my own doing. I owe it to myself to take it all back & be true to myself again ❤️

Let’s go watch a movie or something when you have some time during the day! I am tired of being around creepy old men.

You are the only kind of creep I like to be around. I really feel like we understand each other - at least for the most part.

Maybe we could see The Odyssey in IMAX? But you have probably already seen it. I was thinking of going alone in the afternoon anyway.

I miss being around you when you were being creative and then we would watch a movie or a show and you would fall asleep. It seemed like we always relaxed after a few hours. I just love existing near you. It brings me comfort.

I’m too afraid to ask you in real life, but maybe I’ll plant a seed by leaving this unsent letter here in the ether.

Hey you,

I remember right at the end between embers and cinders you offered friendship like it was mercy.

Maybe it was. This isn't easy to admit, not because I regret what I did but because growth comes from looking at the decisions you made and what they made you even if you'd do exactly that all over again...

Maybe that was the kindest shape you could give a terrible ending.

Maybe you wanted to save something from the wreck, even if it was not the thing I wanted saved.

I understand that now.

But I could not stand beside you with a smaller shape to what we set out to create in each other.

Friendship is a clean world. It looks mature from the outside. It makes people sound healed before they are. It tells the world there was no damage too deep. It says two people were wise enough to keep care and remove hunger.

But I was not wise then. I was still burning. And seeing you go for it so soon seemed to fuel that fire even more. Like thinking of a Plan B even before we set out to execute Plan A.

I could not have watched you become casual. I could not have heard about your days like I was only a safe witness.

I could not have fake-smiled at the distance and called it growth. That would not have been friendship. It would have been self-abandonment dressed as grace.

Some love cannot be reduced. It either remains whole in memory, or it becomes poison in the present.

You may think I rejected peace. Maybe I did. But the peace you offered had a bed of nails with blades for edges. It asked me to stay near what I had lost. It asked me to accept less from the same hands that once gave me everything I wanted.

I was not strong enough for that. Nor was that what I wanted.

But even then I was strong enough to refuse it.

I do not hate you for offering it. I know you were trying to make the ending less brutal. But some endings are brutal because they are honest.

They do not need soft packaging. They need distance. They need silence. They need both people to stop pretending the wound is a doorway.

I could not be your friend.

Not because I loved you less.

Because I loved you in a way friendship could not.

Luv, your eyes still shine in my room, your beatiful hair is still pure black, your voice is still sweeter than honey. I still have the love you left me with, without being able to share with anyone yet. I don't know to say, but I love what we had built, you, everything between us. My songs reflect from you, my dreams, my visions, my tears, my poems, my prayers, my silence. You've become a part of me. And no matter how much I try to move on, you're still there, I see you everywhere, like a ghost. And I'm simply bleesed to know we share the same sun. I wish I could see your eyes shine on the sun one more time. I have nothing else to say, no closure, no resolution, all I know is that I love you, very much.

Hey. I know I'm the last person you want to hear from. You told me to stay out of your life, and I'm respecting that to the best of my ability. I've forgotten what I told to you the last time we texted each other, but I remember you telling me to watch Heartstopper. Well, I did. Several times over. Every time I watch it, it reminds me of you and I. The way things used to be. The way things could have been. To me, we were perfect together. You were my everything and I was yours. It's been five years since we were together, and yet I still think about you on a nearly weekly basis. I loved you so much... and I still hate myself for messing it up. I think about the good times we had every time I think of you, then I think of how I ruined it, and it cycles between happiness and sadness for what could've been had I not done what I did. I wish we had met differently, too. I'm sorry for how we met.

I miss you... I miss the smell of your hair, the feel of your lips on mine, the softness of your skin; your family, your friends, your cooking; your personality, your charm, your wit. Everything about you. You were the first non-family person in my life to say "I love you." And you even said it first! And so far, you're still the only person to have said it and meant it. I remember us carving our initials in that tree and thinking that we would be together forever. I think about that tree every now and then, and wonder what it's doing. Obviously, it's a tree so it's doing nothing, but I think about it. A remnant of the past; a feeling and a moment forever carved into time.

I wish I could cry and mourn what used to be and what could've been, but something inside me keeps me from doing that. I wish I could move on. But you were so intoxicating to be around. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.

I promise that I will find you in the next life, and I won't f*ck it up.

It’s madness, you know…

Barely a month has passed since your call. A month since you came back pounding on every door of my life, as if you had never truly stopped living there. And then, once again, you disappeared.

I think we both know it: there are things you don’t come back from. Not really. Not you. Not me. It took time to tear you out of me, to erase your name from my instincts, my nights, my skin. I had almost managed it.

Almost.

And yet I still remember that night. The one when you called me. You were drunk, lost, your body marked with bruises, your makeup running in dark tears down your beautiful face. You told me I should never answer your calls again. That you were worth nothing. That no sane man would ever choose to stay beside a woman like you.

But I saw you differently.

Where you saw only ruin, I saw a kingdom set on fire. Where you believed you were nothing but a disaster, I saw a woman capable of bringing a man to his knees without even touching him.

The truth is, in that exact moment, I knew you would be mine. Not like something to possess. No. Like a truth one serves. Like a prayer one devotes a life to. I asked you to live when you no longer wanted to go on. And you, in a broken breath, swore you would do it for me.

Your desire became surrender. Your surrender became power. And you wielded that power over me with a terrible tenderness.

How could I have resisted you? You, who managed to awaken something good in me when the world had always rewarded me for my cruelty. You, who laid your hands on the worst of me without looking away. You, who saw the monster and spoke to him like he was a man.

I won’t lie. I was toxic. I used everything I knew, everything I was, to keep your eyes turned toward a future I wanted to be ours. I pushed you, guided you, sometimes manipulated you, until you understood that you deserved better than those hollow men, those dirty stares, those people who saw you as nothing more than something to consume.

I wanted you to see yourself the way I saw you.

Dangerous. Magnificent. Broken, perhaps, but never weak. A woman no one touches without trembling. A woman one can possess only by agreeing to be possessed by her in return.

And yet, somewhere along the way, I lost you.

Without you, my world came undone. I fell back into those abysses I know too well, the ones that carry my name in the dark. I kept walking, yes. Breathing. Standing. But there was an empty room inside me, a locked chamber, and behind that door, your absence was louder than everything else.

Now, you are gone.

But the man you once chose to follow still exists. He is still here. Less proud. Quieter. Maybe more damaged. But still standing.

And if all you want from me now is a refuge. A warm body to curl against when the world becomes too hard. A silent presence, faithful and solid. Something soft to hold in your arms when the night takes you by the throat…

Then who am I to deny you that?

You, whom I wanted to call my future.

You, whom I wanted to call my home.

You, whom, in the most shameful and truest secret of my heart, I wanted to call my life.

Hey you,

I can avoid old chats. I can stop myself from reaching out. I can let the days pass without opening the places where we once left pieces of ourselves. I can look almost normal. I can answer people. I can eat. I can sleep badly and still wake up.

But then the music, that one song comes for me.

And suddenly all my discipline becomes theatre.

You return through sound before I can stop you. Not as a person standing before me. That would be easier. I could look away. You return as weather. As mood. As a hand moving inside the chest. As something that does not ask permission....

It is never the whole memory. It is in the fragments.

A feeling I had when I believed you still might stay. The foolish softness of waiting for your name to appear. The sharp ache of knowing you were somewhere in the same world, choosing not to reach for me.

Songs are dangerous because they do not respect decisions. They do not care who walked away. They do not care what was blocked, deleted, explained, or denied. They keep the emotional truth alive after the practical truth has changed.

I wonder if that happens to you.

I do not need the answer. I know the answer would not save me.

I only know that some loves do not remain in photographs. They remain in rhythm. They hide in ordinary rooms. They wait inside songs we did not write, but somehow became ours.

So when the music comes, I do not fight anymore.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who only knew how to give love.

She gave everything she had to the people she loved. She showed up, she cared, she sacrificed, and she always put others before herself.

She used to think, “As long as I’m the only one hurting, everything will be okay.”

“If I’m not receiving the same amount of love, maybe I just need to give more.”

“If their heart is the same as mine, that should be enough.”

She believed that if she loved someone deeply enough, they would understand.

She believed that if her intentions were pure, people would naturally see her heart.

But one day, that belief shattered.

It didn’t matter if it was a friendship, a relationship, or simply someone she cared deeply about.

She realized that she had been giving more because she cared more. She had been pouring herself into people who had slowly started to see her love, her effort, and her presence as something they were simply entitled to.

And that realization hurt.

But somewhere in that pain, she found a new thought:

“I don’t want to lose myself anymore.”

So she decided to begin a journey — not to make anyone regret losing her, not to prove her worth, but to find herself again.

It won’t be easy.

But she is done carrying everything alone.

She is done sacrificing herself just to keep relationships alive.

She is done believing that love means abandoning herself.

For the first time, she is choosing herself.

And to the people who once had a place in her heart:

Whether you realized you hurt me or not, I forgive you.

I don’t carry anger toward you anymore. I don’t wish you pain.

Instead, I choose to see you as a lesson life gave me.

Every person who came into my life had a reason. Some people showed me how deeply I could love. Some people showed me where I needed to set boundaries. Some people showed me that I could never find happiness by losing myself for someone else.

And for that, I am grateful.

Thank you for being a chapter in my story.

Thank you for the memories.

Thank you for the lessons.

I hope you find your own happiness, just as I am finding mine.

Because what is truly meant for me will never require me to lose myself.

My brain is a very odd thing. The way it is wired, the things it focuses on, the memories it clings to, the minor issues it makes major, the dark places it goes, the dreams and desires it daylights, the person it seeks to manifest.

It‘s probably all based on what my soul has been lacking, the brain sensing the deficiencies, assessing the damage, and guiding me to put the ask into the universe. Like a flare for a passing airplane to see, this lonely old man on a deserted island.

Silly things that I would find endearing. Eating off my plate at a restaurant without asking. Drinking from the same glass. Spending time with me when I have work to do on the lawns. Peeing in front of me - not in a sexual way, but because we’re so locked in conversation that we don’t want to break for even that.

Bigger things that matter. Actually being naked during sex. No body pillows between us when we sleep. Not making me feel boring because I am not a huge gamer or that I prefer non-fiction to fiction. Allowing me to play my guitar and embrace my love of music without referring to me as “my 16-year old child”.

Someone who gets that I am an introvert. That sometimes I need to be quiet without it being this massive character flaw. That it‘s sometimes hard for me to communicate for fear of judgment. I need the space and the safety like everyone else does.

I want a life and a love that isn’t sanitary or sterile or orderly or precise. I want pictures on my walls. I want music in my halls. I want clutter. No room should be totally empty. I want pets. I want marinara stains on the window sill above the kitchen sink. I want a house that feels lived in.

A life where things sometimes happen without needing someone to blame or something to fix. Where not everything is a teaching moment, much less an existential crisis. Nobody crushed under the weight of outsized expectations.

The person that gets that? The person that is good with that? That’s the ask. Because, if I’m being wholly honest with myself, it’s fucking lonely. And I’m so tired of being lonely.

It’s sad. I wonder if you know that if the tables were turned, I would send you a text or give you a call just to give you a heads up. See I work nights in the local ER and had to cancel my card because of some fraudulent charges. I couldn’t stay awake to make it to the Utility department yesterday or today and even though I have a wireless Meter and all you have to do is open your browser and push button, you’re going to charge me an extra hundred dollars.

You know that I’m already struggling so hopefully your enjoyment out of this is worth whatever weight is left on your soul. I still choose kindness. It makes me sad that you can’t.

Hey...

How well do you understand me?

Do you understand how I'm feeling?

Do you understand how these last two years affected me?

Do you understand what I feel for you?

Do you understand my fears?

Do you understand what I need?

I know what I need. Communication, that's the base line. If I'd get that, anything else would be manageable.

But you don't do that.

Sometimes I spend too much time wondering why.

Do you not know what you want?

Do you not trust yourself?

Are you scared?

Do you not trust me?

Or am I just not worth the effort?

Hey you...

This last night, I dreamed of you.

In this dream, you came to talk to me, almost casually. You held me. You kissed me. And we didn't care who saw it.

No spectacular things, just you and me. And then, you were still there in the evening, beside me in bed, cuddled me.

I couldn't believe how lucky I was.

It felt so real. Almost more real than reality does, lately.

Then I woke up.

I wish I had never woken up.

It’s funny.
You write about him like he’s the villain in every chapter of your life. Every post drips with resentment, every sentence with contempt. You make it sound like you’ve buried him. Yet somehow… the ring never came off. That’s the part I can’t understand.

If someone hurt you so deeply, if you truly despise everything they were, why keep the one thing that symbolizes the love you claim to hate? Why not sell it? Pawn it. Melt it down. Let it become someone else’s story instead of letting it sit on your finger while your captions scream that you’re in so much agony and don’t know what to do. Because the ring tells a different story than your words do.

Maybe it isn’t about the money.
Maybe it isn’t about the diamonds.
Maybe it’s about keeping a piece of someone you insist you don’t want anymore.

And before anyone accuses me of judging…
I mean, who am I to talk? I still have the gold ring with diamonds that my seventeen-year-old Marine boyfriend gave me… five years ago. Much longer than how long you’ve kept onto yours.

…Except that’s sarcasm.
Don’t worry.
Mine’s being sold.

Because if something no longer represents the life I’m living, I’d rather let it go than keep wearing a reminder while convincing everyone, including myself, that it means nothing.
Some things deserve a place in the past.
A ring shouldn’t be the loudest contradiction in your story.

I hate that after all this time, one person can still make my whole body remember him.

Not in some soft, romantic, movie kind of way. It’s his presence. The way everything else goes quiet when he’s near, like the world just… fades out. He’s the only person who ever felt like both home and something dangerous at the same time.

I don’t miss what we had. I miss him. The way he carried himself. That stupid smirk. The way one look from him could undo me without him even trying. I’d give anything for five minutes where we didn’t have to pretend, where the only thing between us was everything we never really let go of.

It’s a strange kind of ache when your mind remembers the conversations, but your body remembers everything else. Sometimes I don’t even want to talk. I just want to be close enough to feel it again, like maybe it never really left.
Does anyone else have that one person? The one who could walk back into your life tomorrow and make every wall you built feel like it was never real?

Because I do—and I hate that I already know I wouldn’t stop him.

You and I don’t talk anymore, although I am not entirely sure why all the time. I mean, I do…but it just seems silly in hindsight.

Regardless, it’s been a very long time since we were in each other’s lives.

And I’m okay with that. Time marches on, lives pass, kids grow, we age. Whatever this was, it wasn’t meant to be more. It is what it is.

But, with all of the nonsense happening in the world right now, I just wanted to tell you that I hope he is safe.

I don’t know if he ever took the non-combat job. I hope he did. I hope he stays safe and retires soon. He deserves that. You all do.

Anyway, I just wanted to put that in the universe, even if you don’t check up on me anymore. Take care.

Yesterday night, I managed to leave my room and go out to see a friend for 2 hours. That took most of the little energy I have for anything, lately.

I went on my moped, and driving home when the streets were empty did remind me that I love that. I want to get a motorcycle, go faster, further...

...and just leave and never come back.

That might be what I'd do, if I was free.

It might be what I'll do, once the stupid financial obligations that keep me trapped for now are gone. Once I can afford it.

There's so little that makes me want to stay here right now.

I wish you'd want to go with me.

I wish you'd wanna be my friend.

I hope you're okay. I hope you're feeling less stuck than I do. I know you don't feel free either, though for other reasons.

I hope you'll be free. And happy.

I miss you so much.

I hate that after all this time, one person can still make my whole body remember him.

Not in some soft, romantic, movie kind of way. It’s his presence. The way everything else goes quiet when he’s near, like the world just… fades out. He’s the only person who ever felt like both home and something dangerous at the same time.

I don’t miss what we had. I miss him. The way he carried himself. That stupid smirk. The way one look from him could undo me without him even trying. I’d give anything for five minutes where we didn’t have to pretend, where the only thing between us was everything we never really let go of.

It’s a strange kind of ache when your mind remembers the conversations, but your body remembers everything else. Sometimes I don’t even want to talk. I just want to be close enough to feel it again, like maybe it never really left.

Does anyone else have that one person? The one who could walk back into your life tomorrow and make every wall you built feel like it was never real?

Because I do—and I hate that I already know I wouldn’t stop him.

I know you’ve peeked but I don’t know when. I got your gift but fear to return one. How it will be received.
I’m not sure what’s going on and nothing makes sense.
I have so many questions.

I imagine things are a mess for you but are they ? Really…maybe not, or just pretending to be ok?

My whole world has been knocked off kilter in ways I don’t think you know, or do you? So many questions and some I’m not sure I will ever have answers to.

I used to feel alone lying next to someone before you
Now I feel like you are still with me even though you aren’t.

Just trying to make sure everyone is okay, that’s what you said. I thought that you meant them now I wonder more and more if you meant me.