You're supposed to feel happy for your old lovers when they find someone new
But that feeling is so foreign to me
So I pretend, so I lie, so I cover up anger and jealousy with "Oh wow how wonderful for the both of you"

But I would be lying if I said I didn't wish them perpetual misery
I would be lying if I said I didn't wish them both mediocre *** where nobody finishes
I would be lying if I said I didn't wish for their oven to break halfway through making a Thanksgiving turkey and not to notice until it's too late
I would be lying if I said I didn't hope they both get called into work every Friday night on "date night"
I would be lying if I said I didn't wish for every drink they have on the rocks to taste like straight water
I would be lying if I said that I didn't hope their internet cuts out every single time they try to Netflix & chill
I would be lying if I said I didn't dream it rains every time they plan a wondrous beach afternoon

I would be lying if I said I didn't care
And so I fake smile every time he tells me how beautiful her smile is, and how happy she makes his days, and how her voice is like an angel's

Oh wow, how wonderful for the both of you.

I'm bad with dates and names and numbers
But I know the color of your eyes matches the sky in the middle of June before the rainstorm hits Florida
And I know that your skin is the same shade of tawny as the deck on the porch of my mother's best friend's vacation home back in Michigan
And I know that your hair is just as soft as the kittens I pet in the shelter where I cried because I had to pick only just one
And I can pick your scent out of a lineup of boys with every single variation of Axe body spray spread among them
So I can't remember the day we met, or the name of your grandmother or the number of times we have kissed or held hands
But I am a writer, and the essence of your life will never die as long as I have a pen and a paper

My throat is aching with the words I cannot fathom saying to you
My hands are shaking because I wanted to hold your hand so ******* badly
My eyes cannot see straight because all that I am seeing is you and your bright blue eyes
My heart is racing so fast and I cannot catch my breath because you are making me laugh too hard

And then I stop
And then I remember I am not the one
And then I remember there's a beauty at home waiting for you to text her goodnight
And then I think about how she went to sleep alone, and I got to have your attention to myself for once in seven years

My voice is shaky as I tell you about my family and hold back tears because things are getting just too **** personal
My skin feels hot as I sit there and wait for you to touch me back
My legs quiver a bit as I hike my dress up higher so you can see the black lace on my *******
My smile forms a smirk as I think about you actually taking the bait and grabbing my face tightly and kissing me

And then I stop
And then I remember "just friends" do not look at each other like that
And then I remember "just friends" do not touch each other that way after dark
And then I remember how you're going to break her heart the same way I broke yours seven years ago

Did you know I felt that our lives were undeniably tied together, irrevocably?
Like even if we fell apart and strayed too far away our paths would cross once again?
I felt that our bond was star-crossed and our connection was meant to be regardless of our star signs and past loves
I felt that our love was a story to be told through the ages and one to write down in the books
Did you know I felt that every single time we kissed the stars aligned and all the words I knew finally made sense for once?
Like even though the world was falling down and the things I knew were crashing down everything was okay because I had you?
I felt that you could grow to love me again despite having some girl at home wanting you to love her
I felt that our love story was almost too good to be true even though we only had relations through our kisses at 5 in the morning
Maybe it is me and my blind intuition to trust a stranger
But also, perhaps it is you and your need to feel a connection through past experiences with loved ones
Either way, I miss you

I said sorry over one hundred million times for being upset you hurt me
I kept being naive and letting you proceed to cause damage
Yet, you never said sorry for the damage, and you never apologized for the hurt
I learned to forgive you even though you never expressed the need or want to be forgiven
I learned to accept an apology that I never received and never ever will receive
There has got to be so much strength in that.

Did I love him right away?
No
Absolutely not
I don’t even think I liked him right away
He was cold, he was reckless, he was bitter
But his smile, when he smiled, he could light up a room
Did he love me right away? Of course not
I was loud, I was gaudy, I was too chipper and my laugh could make ears bleed
But somewhere along the way, somewhere along those years from 18-23...it started blending together and made perfect sense
I kept him alive and he kept me safe
Now here we are
And when we see each other on the street we might wave and we might share a smirk
But that is nothing compared to the energy we could have between us if things had gone differently
Nothing can compare to the epic love story that may have been, could have been, would have been

I wanted you to like me so ******* badly
So I dressed up all pretty and I did my makeup way too dramatically
I just wanted you to just notice me
I wanted to make sure you s a w me

And then you did

Only sort of
You saw me as pretty, you saw me as attractive, as ******

But you never noticed me losing control
You never noticed me getting high and pretending everything was ok
You didn't see how I would take 6 shots of ***** back to back just to get through the night
You didn't notice as I would black out and pretend everything was alright
I was not happy
I was numb

But hey, at least you thought I was pretty.

There have been days where I have woken up with nothing but pure excitement for the journey of my day
But there have been so many days where I cannot even fathom the idea of inching my way out of bed
There are nights where I look forward to gathering with friends and being out and enjoying the moonlight
But there have been so many nights where I cannot even dream of anything besides being alone with a bottle of whatever
Highs and lows
Depression knows no bounds
It doesn’t play favorites
It doesn’t come every day, but it is always there
Depression doesn’t know that it was my best friends birthday and I promised I’d make it to the club
Depression only knows it’s December 23rd and it’s time to listen to the same song for the 17th time in a row
Depression only knows that I haven’t eaten in 2 days and this bottle will demolish my sanity
Depression can only see that if I don’t have the mental capacity to acknowledge my problems, then maybe they don’t exist
It doesn’t come every day
But it’s always there

Sometimes I wonder if I was drunk and in a room full of all the men I have loved
Who would I run to?

Would it be the first love?
The one who held my hand like it carried the world inside of it?
The one who kissed me closely in a stairwell?
The one who had the heart I broke into pieces?

Would it be the one that got away?
The one who made me feel wild and free and secure?
The one who always put me on the back burner but I wouldn't give up?
The one who broke my heart into pieces?

Would it be the one that was my almost lover?
The one who wanted all of me but not at the cost of a real relationship?
The one who drove me insane and made me feel like I was the problem?
The one who was my best friend in the whole ******* world?

Would it be the first real adult relationship?
The one who had a real job and real goals?
The one who took me on priceless excursions and showered me with gifts?
The one who told me I was too much of a stupid liberal city girl to be with him?

Or, would it be the one I thought was the love of my life?
The one who I spent most of my late youth with?
The one who had the family I loved and the laugh that brought me to my knees?
The one who told me I was too stagnate and was not willing to watch me grow into something spectacular?

So sometimes I wonder who I would run to
Who would I want to let in to break me again?
I do not know which hand I would run to hold, but I know any of those hands would be a mistake

Even on my very worst and most vulnerable day
I am still the villain in someone elses story
That does not mean I have not been the hero in many others

Even if my light outshines my deepest darkness, the dark still exists
We all have the capacity to hold back our darkness
I am stronger than others, not better

After all, shots of straight ***** taste better than the thought of you and her

I want to write about the sunset, how the rays hit the ocean and it was so beautiful that I could almost shed a tear
But all that I can write about is how handsome you looked with your back to me as you stared at that same exact sunset
And all I can write about is how much I loved you at that exact moment and the sun could have fallen down and I probably would not have noticed

I want to write about how melancholy the rainstorms make me and how I get so lonely and depressed each and every time the sky cries
But all I can write about is how your eyes are the same exact color as the night sky right before a rain storm in the middle of July
And all I can write about is even when the sky was having a mental breakdown full of rain all I could think about was how content I was being wrapped in your embrace

I want to write about how genuinely happy and bright I feel once the Birds of Paradise start to bloom in the spring
But all I can write about is how they are the flower I could see from the porch swing at my mother's house where we talked about our future children
And all I can write about is how much I miss talking to you at four in the morning when the rest of the world was asleep, everyone except for us and those Birds of Paradise

I want to write about nature and beauty and the weather and happiness and I don't want to keep writing about you
But it's you.
It's never anyone or anything else, but you

A young girl stands in front of the mirror
Her hands gripping on to her hip bones
And she still believes that she is too fat
She is holding her breath and ******* it all in
Her lips are pouting
Her eyes are wandering
Her face is flushed

She asks herself :
"Do they like me?"

                                                                                             Do you like you?

I want to fall asleep next to you like I used to when I was 15
You know when we would make the most of our time together because there was so little of it
The time when each and every time felt like the first time
I miss those times
I want to fall asleep next to you and feel your lips graze the tip of my nose
All I want is to become emotionally naked to you and tell you every feel from the past five years without you
Everything, all my pain, my joys, my memories, I want to fill you in on my life
And I want to know everything I missed about yours
Does Journey still make you smile and dance?
Do forehead kisses still melt your heart?
Is your mom still intolerable?
Are your dogs still obese and still crazy?
Do your brothers still remember me as a koala?
Do you still remember playing the guitar as I sang Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen for a talent show?
Do you remember our first kiss in a stairwell?
Do you remember how I was so angry at you I broke plates and cried for hours?
Do you remember how before we were together you were my best friend?
Do you remember how we were together on the couch when Michael Jackson died?
Do you remember how you wrote me a letter every single day the first summer we spent apart?
Do you remember when we experimented with chocolate syrup and whipped cream and it was so embarrassing to be so sticky and we just laughed?
Do you remember how you always would let me have the bubbled chips because they were my favorite?
Do you remember the time we walked home along the railroad tracks and I stayed behind to take photos of you being so handsome?
Do you remember running two miles in the pouring rain to bring me an umbrella?
Do you remember that first time we broke up and nothing felt right so we had to fix things?
Do you remember why we fell in love?
So many unanswered questions
I want to strip down for you
I don’t mean sexually
I want to strip down all my walls and release everything I meant to say to you now
Five years later and this still feels like a mistake
Five whole ******* years
I want to fall asleep next to you

I tried to imagine a life without you
A life where we never touched hands and clenched them too tightly
A life where we never exchanged gazes in hallways
A life where our lips never touched in the dark under the covers
A life where we never sat up on the phone until the whole world was asleep
A life where we did not once share every secret in our books
A life where I never knew your family and you never knew my heart
A life where my skin never got to know the pleasure of your graze
A life where I never prayed for you because I never knew your struggles
A life where I never went to the games and never cheered you on from the sidelines
A life where I never sang along to the love songs you played on guitar
A life where I never even got to know your name

I tried to imagine a life without you
And I would rather die than to ever think of that life again

I took our pictures off of the wall today
It felt like peeling off a scab and watching it bleed
It hurt and it hurt like hell

I erased your voicemails from the machine today
It felt like a sin to **** a sound so beautiful
It hurt but I know that it will do me well

I found your old sweater in the spare room’s closet today
It felt like the softest thing I have ever touched in my life
It hurt but I called you anyway

I heard your new voicemail, as I called tonight
It felt like nails on a chalkboard to hear a new woman's dialect on the machine
It hurt but I wore that old sweater all ******* week

If you still have the people you love most in your life today-
Hug them
Hug them tighter than you ever have
Call them and tell them you love them
Never ignore their calls
Pick up the phone and call them first
Make sure they know

They have to know
They have to know that when they're gone you won't be able to sleep knowing they've gone away
They have to know that all throughout the day you will cry when they have gone to sleep forever
They have to know your heart will be missing a piece when they leave
They have to know before they're gone

You have to tell them while you can
You have to tell them that they are special to you
You have to tell them that you will forever miss their voice and their laughter
You have to tell them you will miss never seeing their face on the caller ID

My God, please tell your loved ones you love them


I love you, Dad. I love you so much.