“The healed version of me/you, is going to be meaner.” The first few times I heard that, I wasn’t sure it was what I was going for. I don’t want to be mean. However, for me as I have grown and healed, this sentiment definitely rings true. I say no when I don’t want to say yes. I speak the truth in situations where it would be less uncomfortable to gloss over it or say nothing. I don’t waste my time in circles where people are committed to misunderstanding me or expecting me t

You knew things about the world that I didn’t. About power. About attention. About what it means when a man looks at a girl like she’s exceptional instead of vulnerable. Could you tell going in, that I was so starved for love that a little taste would have me craving more? Needing more. And maybe that’s the part that unsettles me now. Not the memories themselves, but the realization that at fifteen I thought being wanted was the same thing as being safe. I thought proximity t

My labs say I’m fine. My body says I’m not. I recently went through a health scare that forced me to slow down in ways I never expected. I ended up in the hospital with extremely high liver enzymes and gallstones. The liver was determined to be the primary issue. I was able to avoid having my gallbladder removed, and thankfully, the source of the liver damage was identified and removed. Since then, my enzymes have slowly come down and, as of last week, are finally back within

There are moments when I wonder if I’m as close to people as I feel I am in my own mind. Are my connections real, or are they built more in my thoughts, emotions, and hope than they are in reality? In moments of loneliness, when I feel the urge to reach out, I find myself questioning everything. Would they even want to hear from me? Am I as important to them as they are to me, or have I created a sense of closeness that only exists on my side? I’ve noticed this from the oppos

October 18, 2020 There has always been a piece of me that screams to be free. I don’t know why, or where that desire is rooted, but from the time I was a small child, I have felt this ache. My birth mother was bipolar, not extreme, but enough that I never knew if I was going to be met with happiness, sadness, anger, or chaos. And whatever it was, it was often intense. I won’t go too deeply into that, but I never felt particularly free to be myself in those conditions. As a ch