Why is it that with every breakup since
I think of you
I cry at the loss of you

I keep thinking if I let myself feel it fully it will eventually stop. Doesn’t it have to eventually stop?

Christmas used to be magic
Mistletoe had meaning
Tinsel told me reasons this year was different
Little lights told me lies and I believed every single one
Carols charmed me
Presents paraded in front of me
Oh god and love, love felt so very near.

I make quick decisions about people.

I like you or I don’t and I know within the first few times meeting you.

I don’t understand when other people also don’t come to these quick decisions about me and others. I’ll ask questions to myself like “Can’t they tell I’m great?”

Once I’m in, I’m in- and I’ll love you more fiercely than you’ve ever been loved. But I won’t show as I’ll be afraid you won’t love me back or at least as much as I love you.

So I will conceal some of my love, give it to you in smaller pieces, mostly non-verbal because words are my love language and mean the most to me. I will see how you respond and reciprocate.

I assume people are good until they show me otherwise.

I am afraid that no one will ever love the full, raw version of me. I’m afraid I’ll always be too much for other people.

I want to open up, share, and know someone’s life story, and how their brain works- but I want them to do it first.

I want them to be vulnerable so I can be too.

I am scared to show people how I am really feeling.
I am scared to give someone control over my emotions.

I hate the idea of someone having power over my emotions.
That feels like a loss to me.
Even if that loss is to the best hands.

I am afraid to rely on anyone.
I want to be self-sufficient and singular.

But I also want to be so intertwined with someone under the sheets on a Saturday morning that even the smell of waffles and coffee doesn’t tempt me to move. I’ve lost track of what limbs are theirs and mine.

I want intimacy without the real ****.
Because the real **** scares me shitless.

I can’t help but romanticize every little bit of my life.
Give me heartbreak I’ll make it growth.
Give me a failure I’ll make it a lesson.
Give me a foe I’ll make them a friend.
Give me your heart I’ll keep it safe.

Love comes out so easily sometimes it feels unintentional.
Like boiling water in a *** on the stove.
It just bubbles out of me.
You might think from these poems I’m a hopeless romantic.
One who tosses rocks and windows, says I love you first and does grand gestures.
I don’t.
I don’t share these poems.
I don’t breakdown to love songs.
Most people say I’m intimidating.
The love comes out in every small action.
Giving them the bigger bowl of pasta.
The piece of bread with more garlic.
Remembering their Tuesday plans.
Wanting to understand how they think.
Finding that perfect, thoughtful gift they never asked for but they love.
Really listening when they speak.
Giving an unsolicited head rub just because I’m really good at them - and I like to hear them sigh with relief as they melt into my legs.
Just like the bubbles in the ***, one by one, they boil out of me.
Often, to evaporate.

Maybe the reason writing is so soothing to me is because I truly am a woman of my word.
I know these letters I write will not be lies.

I keep waiting for the shoe to drop.
I can’t believe you like me. My brain won’t let me.
Maybe it’s evolution of thought.
Self preservation from it’s previous losses.
I discount everything that’s happened.
Looking for signs to prove my doubt.
To not become hopeful because it can’t be true.
A guy like you would be too good to be true.

There’s been a lot of toxic love before you.
You being pure makes me see it.

My brain is wasting all of its time on these **** men.
Not worth it’s time or processing power.
I should be using it to build my empire.
I’m never happy after thinking about love interests.
At best, I’m left with an anxious longing.
So why do I put myself in that loop?
I am the happiest, and feel the most alive when I am creating.
Creating new, powerful things.
Growing.
Why do I let myself get distracted by the things that don’t bring me joy.
It’s time for some mental spring cleaning.

The months I felt the deepest I kept quiet.
I lay in bed and wonder if I’ll ever feel sure again.
If anyone will ever calm my waters that deeply.
Ignite me as much as he did.
How many I love you’s I didn’t say.
Even though I knew he felt it too.

It would have still ended in ruin.
Still here this October night searching for meaning.
I just wish I would have allowed myself to fully burst while it happened.
Right now I’m a malfunctioned firework.
Never truly went off to see beauty in the sky.
And yet, I am here. On the ground. Exploded.

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.