I'm afraid that someday
I'll wake up broke again
And you'll realize how
Dull I really am
Behind all my
Shiny masks

PeterGerstenmaier

Dull

Jun 4, 2026

June 2026

2026

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VanessaRue

love doesn&#8217;t vanish when the masks do.

South-by-Southwest

Even a dog will abandon you if you don't feed it .

removed.u685248

I suspect this is a pretty common anxiety. I lived with it for most of my life.

After I got divorced, and most of my life-long friend and even my eldest daughter sort of went with my ex, which surprised me, I had a lot of months to take stock of my whole life.

I especially focused on my relationships, and with my therapist even made flowcharts and graphs, trying to really be as scientific as possible at examining the good relationship, the bad ones, where I was at in life during each.

I was surprised to find the times when I was by far most poor, and that turned out to include the relationships I had after getting divorced and wiped out financially, and living on disability benefits so no way to rebuild my finances, by far that's when I had the women in my love that truly loved me back, rather than me loving and others just taking whatever they could from me.

Affluence for me, and maybe partly it was my attitude, but money seemed to really attract the wrong type of partner to me, basically gold-diggers, for money and emotional gold-digging as well. When I broke, I met women that couldn't possibly like me for anything but simply *me*, because all I possibly had to offer them was me...

Maybe that's exactly what you're trying to say in this poem in fact that I read it again. Man, your poems always make me really think, they trigger memories, and self-introspection, in a way that other writers just don't seem to do.

p.s. I've sent you a lot of messages, just ignore all that shit, I've been a bit stir-crazy not being able to stand up and just move around, and I'm sorry I over-loaded you. You don't deserve, I didn't realize it... in fact, I've been pretty selfish ever since Mari's death by writing far too much to you. I'm sorry, Jill pointed that out to me actually. I want to tell you a story from my late twenties sooo badly, lol, that's come to mind lately, but I'll take a very long break before I do that.

Whenever I see a new poem from you, it always makes it a red-letter day for me before I even read it, and I always get a small espresso to sip first so it's sort of a ceremony even, ahhh, you know I'm a big fan. Thank you for your writing, I hope you're doing well.