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 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.

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

That’s the thing about writing.
You think if you can confess your vices poetically enough, they’re not vices at all.

I will be the man most men will never be.

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

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 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.

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.

I feel like saying I love you but I haven’t yet.

Sometimes I say it in my head after saying good night.

I double checked my text to you last night to make sure I didn’t accidentally let it slip. I felt so strongly I just knew my thoughts could have leaked onto paper.

I feel like saying I love you, but I haven’t yet.

Is this the good part of me that wants this? Is this the angel or devil on my shoulder?
Do I want it because I’m lazy, I’m spoiled?
Do I want it because I want to be my authentic self?
Or do I want it just because I want to seem like a person who is an authentic self?
Or do I want it to be the best version of me? The one I would have been before the world told me what to be?
Or do I just want to be different and this different isn’t different enough and I want to start over.

You don’t make me happy.
I am that on my own.
But you magnify my happiness so beautifully.
Like an acoustic guitar being plugged into an amp.
The same, but louder.
The same, but better.

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 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.

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 think you were the love that gave me words.

But never bothered to teach me the language.

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.

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.

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?”

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.

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’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.

You are the boy
Who makes me forget
That any others exist

My mom prays for me a lot.
Which is good.
If God has favorites, I know he’d listen to her more than me.
She deserves a direct line.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

I love you and I’ve run out of excuses of why I shouldn’t say it.

I’m not saying this out of insecurity.
I’m saying this from a place of confidence because even if you break up with me, I want you to know.

I don’t want to have held in what I know. What I have known since February, maybe before.

I want to be vulnerable with you because I’ve never felt like I could before.

So I need to say this to you unprompted.
I need to say it first.
I love you.
I love this version of you.
I don’t love the idea of you.
I love this life with you.
I love you more than I have ever loved anyone else.

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.

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.

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.

I admire people’s words when they feel so deeply, just not their actions.

I admire my actions when I choose logic, just not my words.

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.

It’s absurd how much I care about a ******* like.
The value subconsciously derived from a double tap.
Refreshing the page again and again.
You are valid, important, and loved... even if that picture you posted on Instagram recently performed like ****.

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.

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 ****.

If your eyes were the Atlantic Ocean-
No matter how strong the ship.
Or how accurate the navigation system.
I’d still get lost.

It feels different with you.
In ways I keep failing to articulate.
There are no new things, but somehow they are all different.

Grocery store shopping is different with you.
Watching TV on the sofa is different with you.
Embracing you in my arms at night is different.

It’s a peace I’ve never had before.
That’s the main “different.”

A peace that some might describe as a knowing.

I don’t know if I know he’s the one.

But- the line from 500 days of summer feels like it rings true. “I just knew - What I was never sure of with you.”

I guard myself from feeling because I don’t want the hurt.

I keep myself from falling because I’m afraid of the bruises.

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 am lonely.
I need to love someone.
But I am only lonely for the right love.
The good love.
The kind of love I know exists.
The kind that makes even the most basic of tasks feel magical.
The grocery store shopping joy love.
The can’t wait to just do nothing all day with you love.
I do not need a body to fill the void.
If anything it will make the void more obvious. Impossible to fill the entire hole.
It only serves of a reminder of how much better things could be.
It’s like a Wholefood’s peach cobbler.
All you do is compare it to your grandma’s and it makes you miss her more while you wonder if it’s worth the calories.

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 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 thought a wedding board was dumb before you.
Friends pinned for a wedding with an unknown man.
Now I find myself glancing at wedding pictures.
“An elopement in Italy sounds nice”
Popped into my head.

If I’m going mad.
Don’t take me out of the rabbit hole.
I like it here.