I have empires in my future.
You should have never been allowed over the threshold.

Part of me hopes I’ll get married and have kids just because of the reality that regardless of how successful I am, I will be deemed a lonely failure by many if I don’t have a family.

Part of me hopes I’ll never have a family so I can change that stereotype.

I keep looking at my phone.
Thinking if I can articulate my obsessive thoughts.
Feelings.
Pain.
Eloquently enough.
They will somehow go away.

I hate that I can’t stop thinking about you.
It makes me feel like you’ve won twice.

We were made from exploding stars.
Parts of the universe from far away on a size of magnitude we can’t fathom.
So why do we feel sometimes like our circumstances are immovable?
We’re blueberry pie and deep space.
We’re atoms that formed a conscious being that can create, move, think and BE.
Let yourself be free to evolve.
Watch yourself manifest new versions of you.

I’m not sure why I keep remembering the good parts this week.

Maybe because your birthday is coming up.

Maybe because I just stopped talking to a guy I had been seeing for a few months and realized I wasn’t sad at all.
I didn’t grieve about it.
I haven’t thought about him.
I’ve instead been thinking of you.
4 months later.
And sometimes 4 months ago feels like another life and sometimes it feels like last week.

Maybe because I’m in that stage of loss after forgiveness where I can look back without anger and really feel it.

I know the universe has my back.
I know I dodged a bullet.
So why are there tears in my eyes thinking back to when I’d fall asleep with my head on your chest?

I think of all the things I plan on becoming.
They’re so much more interesting, exciting, and inspiring than being someone’s wife.
I can’t believe I almost made that trade.
I can’t believe I almost sacrificed my dreams on the altar.

I will find someone - someday.
Who will match me.
Who I do not need shrink for.  
Who will accept me, in all of my rawness.
I will not reduce or downplay my aspirations for any man.
I will press forward and the right people who desire the same things will come into my life.

Felt sick to my stomach this morning.
It reminded me of you.

I will be the man most men will never be.

I think you were the love that gave me words.

But never bothered to teach me the language.

Someday, someone will speak to me until I’m fluent.

I think you were the love that gave me words.

But never bothered to teach me the language.

I spent so many nights out on this balcony thinking about you.
Worried about you.
Imagining life with you.
Missing you.
Longing for you.
Now all I feel is regret.

I don’t love you anymore.
I don’t want you anymore.
But my body is still processing the loss you.
I dream of you, almost every night.
But not the good parts.
Not the lie I fell in love with.
I dream about the truth.
I dream about who you really are.
A stranger.
My brain keeps telling my body,
“He’s not real.”
My body keeps asking,
“Are you sure?”

A friend of mine, who spoke English as her second language-
Responded to a girl we knew obsessing over her boyfriend, Bobby.
She lost him at a party and was freaking out and kept calling him, worried he was with another woman.
My friend finally pulled her aside and said,
“There are many Bobbys.”
“The world is FILLED with Bobbys.”

10 years later and I’m realizing how true that is.
There are people you think you can’t live without, but you can. So easily.
There are so many people you can have chemistry and deep emotional connect with.
But you forget that, when you’re getting it consistently from one person.
You think you’ll never find it again.
But it reality, the world is filled with Bobbys.

I thought there would be no one else.
That you would be the last.
But then, there was.
It feels different.
Like a new season.
Less harsh temperatures and volatile weather.
It’s more like a slight breeze 72 degree day.
It’s nice to not have a chapped face and cold hands.
Even if I still do miss the shock it would give me when I opened my door in the mornings.
We’ll see what this new season holds.
I hope it’s gentle.

Snap memories open up videos from five years ago.
It’s from your birthday in San Fran.
Five years ago today I was so in love with you.
Five years ago I thought you were forever.
Five years later I’m recovering from the heartbreak of another man on your birthday.
I forgot it was your birthday.

It’s a shame you’ll never see these poems like I planned.
It’s a shame the deep love I had for you went to waste.
It’s a shame I never got to present my PowerPoint about how all of my fears and yours didn’t matter if we had each other.

But I hope one day you find someone else who loves you enough to put her feelings in a .pptx file for you.
I hope one day I find someone who loves me enough to want to make one in return.

I’ve got to detox you out of my system.
I’m going through withdrawals.
Even though your love was synthetic.

To hear the main reason you liked me so in the beginning was because I was the opposite of your ex wife.

You didn’t actually value the things you said you did about me.

You didn’t appreciate the things that made me unique.

Like a coat off the rack.
You were just trying me on for size.
To see how this felt.
There was nothing unique to you.

You didn’t see my embellished gold buttons.
My tailored fit.
My velvet interior.

You didn’t love me for any of the unique things I am.
Which make me so valuable to some.
You just liked me because I was different.

You were just playing dress up.

Usually, when I drive by really large homes my first thought is:
“Wow -what do they do for a living.”
My second thought usually is:
“What their net worth.”

Yesterday, I spotted an absolutely giant home and my first thought was:
“I wonder if they’re happy.”
My second was:
“I wonder if they love their partner like I love mine.

I caught myself after about 30 seconds.
Was I really thinking about this old super rich couple’s happiness?
I surprised myself.
Then I realized.
“Ah- that’s the lesson.”

You just have to jump! They said.
But I never wanted to free fall-
Until I saw you in the waters below.

You have this little sigh you do.
When something is bothering you.
In the exhale there is weight.
All I want to do is take the load off of you.
That was one of the first times I realized I loved you.
I was getting stronger, but not for myself.

I slept in the bed last night we had *** in for the first time.
I laid in the same spot I was in when I woke up to see my hand interlaced in yours.
I felt both comforted and horribly anxious.
A brief smirk on my face-
Follow by an elephant on my chest.
Longing and loss seem to be the closest of friends.

Like a burn victim wrapping their welts.
A dog licking its wounds.
A torn muscle in an ice bath.

I will build myself back together after you.
These broken bones will grow back stronger.
I’m not there yet, but I’m healing.

You are not the man I thought you were.
I was in love with a ghost.
A vapor.
A story - of who you wanted to be for me.
Now I understand the man I loved did not exist.
It was always the hope.
It was always the potential.
The shared idea we had together.
It feels like suffocation accepting this was a lie.
I hope I can breathe again soon.

Like the moon determining the tides on shore. - My pain for you comes in swells.

It sinks back into the depths of me where I almost think it’s gone.
And then it crashes back to the surface far up my beaches.
Destroying my sand castles.
Erasing all progress I made while it was away.
It mocks my efforts.
Pulling them back to the depths of the dark floor.

Like a wise woman once said, “Let us forget, with generosity, those who cannot love us.”

So I will try to forget you.
I will try to stop dreaming about you.
I will try to stop caring about you.
I will try to stop loving you.
I will try my hardest, to forget.

I want to know if you think about getting better for me.
I want to know if you think about me at all.

I keep having vivid dreams about you.
Almost every night.
Last night I had one that felt so real.
I was telling you how heartbroken I was and you were blowing it off, like you didn’t believe me.

Then you said:
“It’s dumb for someone like you to be that heartbroken about a guy like me.”

Was it actually just my subconscious or maybe it was something else, could it be real? Were we communicating on a dream plane?

When it happened I had so many things to say to you.
So much hurt to express.
So much anger to share.
I wanted to shove the intensity of my rejected love down your throat so you’d have to feel the whole of what you were turning away.
Like a large piece of steak being forced down.
I wanted your esophagus to ache with what you had to swallow.

I don’t have words now.
I know now you’ll never feel the entirety of my love.
You’ll never know the depth of my hurt.
No amount of words will make you feel the ache I do.

No one is immune.
No drug will cure it.
No philosopher can properly describe the disease.
No scholar can logic away the infection.
It gets us all, eventually.

I know I’m enough.
Enough has never been the issue.
It’s the too much.
I’m too ambitious.
I’m too outspoken.
I’m too commanding.
Can’t someone embrace my rawness?
To meet me where I am at fully.
To not die a death of shrinking to make someone comfortable.
You cannot still my waters.
I am have undercurrents too deep for you to reach.
Regardless of how vast my love is for you.
I cannot change them.
It’s who I am.
It’s what I am.

I keep hopping on planes hoping I’ll lose my feelings in the cities I’m leaving.

I keep waiting for it to not hurt.
I keep waiting to not have shooting pains of anxiety run through my chest when I’m reminded he’s no longer mine.
I keep waiting to feel normal again.
I’m afraid that might not come without a lot more hurt, from truly figuring out how to let him go and the future I see for us together.
I keep waiting to feel like it won’t absolutely crush me to do that.

I’ve found that in my adult life a lot of decisions you think are about forgiveness, and they’re not.
It’s always good to decide to forgive.
Especially for you.
The real decisions we make, the hard ones, is if you should try again.

He just feels like mine.
Not in a possessive way just in a fitting way.
Like that solid color puzzle piece you’ve had to the side waiting to see where it goes.
And then finally you see it.
Like oh, yes- of course.
Of COURSE it goes there.
How could it not?
How could it ever go anywhere else?

Looking back it’s funny that we never took many photos together.
A few goofy ones & ugly selfies.
But never posed ones for social media.
I guess it was because for the first time I didn’t feel the need to look good in a relationship.
I knew we were good.
No proof needed.

How can I not love you?
Give me a **** reason.
I sure as hell cannot.
When I try they wash away with understanding.
With empathy.
With your perspective.
I am the most victimless victim there is.
I am in a cell pretending it is a rooftop.

If this is, what my fear is telling me this is.
Then you are not the man, I thought you were.
And this was a lie.

I’ve been missing you -
So much if physically hurts.
I’ve been thinking of you -
So much I’m sometimes convinced others can hear my thoughts.
I’ve been loving you -
And I can’t figure out how to stop.

Every time my phone buzzes.
I hope it’s you.

Shouldn’t feeling this deeply matter?
Shouldn’t all of this love count for something?
Is it really all going to go to waste?

This pain is different.
It’s visceral.
I’m hurting in parts of me I didn’t know could feel pain.
I can’t eat.
When I sleep I dream of him.
I keep telling myself every logical thought.
But it doesn’t keep me from feeling this ****.

My ex told me when I broke up with him:
You don’t love me like you think you love me. Because if you did you wouldn’t be leaving.

One day, you still meet someone, you love more than you could think possible. And you will plan a future with them. You’ll be so sure of it. And he will break your heart.

When that happens, you’ll know how I feel.
Because you don’t feel how I do right now, If you did, you would have never left.

And I now realize, five years later.
He was right. I would have never left.

I can’t eat more than a few bites.
After 2 or 3 I feel stuffed.
It’s probably because my body is processing too many other things right now.
It’s full.

There is no trace of you.
All belongings mailed back.
Not even a rogue sock to show you were here.
No social media post or our love that I can look at and think of when we were happy and debate on deleting.
It’s like you were never here.
Your key no longer on my ring.
Your name not on my tongue.
And yet, I wreak of you.

If I am anything, I am persevering.

At the end of the day I have no regrets.
I was the best version of myself in this relationship.
I gave everything I could.
I didn’t put up masks or walls or conceal the way I was feeling.
I gave it everything.
And I can’t make him love me if he doesn’t.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter why he doesn’t love me.
Or that he can’t love me because of trauma or mental health.
He just can’t love me.
And I am worthy of love.

I am worthy of love.
I am not the insults past lovers have called me.
I have so much to give.
Pure and loyal love.
Which will be reciprocated.
I will be loved so fiercely.
No one.
Not even me.
Will be able to doubt it.
I will be loved so fully that I can show the depths of my love to another.
I am worthy of love.