Category: Relationships

Sharing my
humanity

Here, you will find works uncovering and confronting a wide range of personal and shared experiences. Some through an analytical lens and others through emotional, each piece is rooted in healing matters of the heart. Sharing our experiences captures the essence of what it means to be human, and by exploring these we are able to find understanding and connections that remind us of the power in being both different, and the same.

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February 2025
October 2024
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June 2023

A Silent Sacrifice

2/4/2025

How do you cope with knowing that there are parts of the story you will never tell?

How do you reconcile with the loneliness that comes with forever carrying the worst moments alone, that it is best they remain unspoken til the end of your time? How do you live with the inescapable isolation of knowing these memories must die with only you, to avoid ever giving them the opportunity to be carried on by another?

How can you carry it, while still carrying on?

The Luck of Losing You

10/31/2024

How I cry for you continues to embarrass me.

I let my face streak with tears each time I hear your name. The irony of us sharing such a thing will never be lost on me, as I will never stop hearing yours. I cannot deny the cracks it causes each time the six letters are repeated directly at my never-prepared face. The bittersweet resentment accompanying the once beloved word may never disappear completely, but I welcome the day that the memory of your face begins to fade.

Could I forgive you?

10/26/2024

I am afraid I will feel you forever, in everything and everywhere.

I can see the mark left by your hand pressed upon my cheek each time I look in the mirror. I can feel the now unbearable weight of your fingertips where they once gently traced my torn skin. I watch as all the stitches left by your love begin to rip as the time passes and drags on without you. Each tear that existed before you and started to patch in your presence now unravels in your honor. I will live with you inside of me always, despite knowing the space that once existed between us for 24 years has been reinstated. I have to laugh now at the memories of thanking a God, I am not entirely sure I believe in, for the once-believed blessed fortune of finding you. I slept next to you and replayed these prayers until my body exhausted itself. You slept next to me as you dreamt of another. I do not wish to remember this of you. At times, I do not wish to remember you at all. I do not want to carry you with me, always. I do not want to carry you with me, at all- but,

To Be Loved Simply For Being

10/22/2024

A journal entry from 4/20/2023 on loving and being loved.

The idea of love without constant offering feels weird to me, unreal. A fantasy that will remain unfulfilled. Always providing some tangible proof of my care, my thinking of them and devotion. Should I not give these things, should I not be so quick to give them- even if it is solely in the form of always paying for dinner, my mind assumes death. Any chance of love maintaining momentum and longevity dies and their feelings with it. I never realized I had this thought process until I saw it in a book. This love without excessive giving.

To Love and Be Loved After Abuse

3/7/2024

“I wonder if you are ready for a relationship.”

How simple a statement, filled with sole curiosity and no judgment. Yet, it has consumed a large part of my spinning mind since feeling the first signs of attachment after abuse.

The Art of Forgiveness

10/17/2023

You will not leave this life unscathed.

The world will lay its hands on you in vain. It will cause a wound to bleed until you agree to forget it. It will force your face so far down into the earth that the fallen spot will be forever marked by your pain. The crash will be so loud that it is quiet. You will see the outline of your essence as it irreversibly mixes with the sand it fell on. It’s imprint will serve as an unwanted reminder of what was stolen from you, only to be buried beneath the ground and left to rot. The world will never give you this part of yourself back- but there will be flowers that grow in this spot once infertile.

The Best Loves Are Those Unrequited

9/30/2023

The things we love often don't love us back.

To be more precise: the things we love often cannot love us back.

Your favorite painting in your favorite museum, the short poem you have read obsessively on your mass printed page, the weather that most makes you want to spend the day outside- these cannot love you. Your coffee mug with the perfectly placed chip that your grandma gave you, the sound that comes out when your favorite person laughs, the smell of salt water and sunscreen- all of the things that fill your heart with a fire only love can light. These things cannot love you.

The Lover's Paradox

7/26/2023

Love is big and small at the same time.

I read that in a book once, though the name is far from my memory. The words placed roots in my mind immediately. I have not shaken them since.

There are many things we encounter in life that we do not understand. Some with a specificity, so specific, that it leaves the mind reeling. You are left with an incurable begging to know. Yet, almost involuntarily, you carry these disorienting, or maybe misunderstood, meanings with you. You hold them tight until, one day, you realize why your body has been holding them, all along.

Can a Woman Hate Me Like a Man?

6/15/2023

Misogyny is romantic.

It is the pillars we placed upon the platform of loving relationships. There has not been a time when women were seen as the ground necessary for others to stand. Pretty, decorative towers that hold up no ceiling, are stuck atop a cement floor that prevents straying. Stopping these untethered minds from being swept away in unpredictable fancies and hysterias. To be approached, pursued, and taken is an honor which a woman must remain grateful. Someone has seen past your inability to successfully function independently- or not- and chosen to take you despite it. How thankful we must be. How humbling to realize it is unlikely any other would offer you the same kindness- pity, even.