Almost

There should be a word
for the kind of love that lingers
beneath the surface of something steady.
Not louder than friendship,
but just as present.
Unspoken, not because it’s fragile,
but because it’s sacred.

Every time we see each other,
it returns like muscle memory.
That hush between us.
The pull.
We don’t name it when it would be unkind to.
But it’s there.
It’s always there.

If he ever turned to me and said
it’s always been you,
I would not hesitate.
My whole self would soften into it.
I wouldn’t need to be asked twice.

But he doesn’t.
He chooses other lives.
Other women.
And each time,
I remind myself to understand.
To not ask why.
To not wonder if it’s something in me
that makes him look away.

Still, I would never want to take from him.
Never want to interrupt the good he’s tried to build.
Because the love I carry
was never born from wanting to possess.
Only ever from wanting him to be well.
Even if it’s without me.

He knows how I feel.
Always has.
And I know how he feels.
Even when he hides it behind timing
or circumstance
or someone else’s name.

Maybe one day
when all the other lives we built
have settled into memory,
we’ll find ourselves side by side again.
Maybe then,
on a quiet evening on a porch,
with stories between us,
he’ll look at me like that.

And if he does,
I will not look away.
I’ll let him see every part of me.
Even if it’s only for a breath.
Even if that breath
has to be enough.

Because my love
has never wavered.
It never will.

The Day I Saw Myself in the Future

A therapist once told me I was ‘passively suicidal’.
I wasn’t actively trying to die anymore, but I wasn’t really trying to live either. Just existing in the quietest way, moving through the days like smoke, ticking boxes, showing up only enough to keep going.

There was no vision, no reach. I wasn’t hoping for anything. I wasn’t growing. I wasn’t even wanting to.

I never made plans for the future. Not because I didn’t care about one, but because I genuinely couldn’t see myself in it. I didn’t believe I would be there. I wasn’t in the picture.

Then recently, someone asked me,
“What would make you quit your job?”

Without thinking, I said,
“Nothing. My only goal over the next 5 years is to find and build a home for my daughter and me”.

My voice cracked and I didn’t know why. I didn’t realise what I’d said until later. I hadn’t said anything about endings. For the first time in so long, I had a goal. A shape. A horizon.
A stretch of time that I was planning to be alive in.
I saw myself there.

Not just enduring, but building.

Not just surviving but choosing to stay.

That moment stays with me.

Now, when I talk about the future, my voice catches. It feels tender, fragile, like I’m speaking of something sacred. I want to see her grow. I want to meet the woman she becomes. I want to watch her shape the world and shape herself.

I want to build something so gentle and grounded that she never has to feel the way I once did.
I want her to know comfort like I knew ache. To feel home not as a place but a state of being. To never wonder whether she belongs.

Sometimes I worry.
That these words might be misread. That if my parents saw them, they might think I’m blaming them for the way I once felt. Saying they didn’t provide that for me.

But I’m not.
They loved me with everything they had.
Pain doesn’t always ask permission though. Sometimes it just arrives.

Now my reason to stay is almost 6 years old. She runs barefoot through my heart and paints the sky with her joy. She is my reason. My turning point.

But lately, very quietly, another reason has begun to emerge.

It’s not loud. It doesn’t demand much.
Just a whisper.

What if I lived for myself too?

Not just for her.
Not just to protect or provide.
For the woman I’m still becoming. For the dreams I buried before they even had a name. For the version of me I never thought I’d meet.

She saved me, but now I want to show up in the world. Not just for her, but with her.

Not from the sidelines. Not only as a witness.

As someone still alive in her own story.

The Unforgettable Essence of Real Love

I’ve always known I couldn’t settle. Not for comfort. Not for company. I don’t want to be with someone just to fill the space beside me.

I love love. The kind that pulses through your bones and makes the world spin softer. I won’t settle for anything less that the loud, aching, unapologetic kind of love. The kind you want to shout from the rooftops.

I’ve spent most of my life as a secret. Not hidden, exactly, just rarely fully seen. I connect with people deeply, in ways that sometimes shakes them. And thought I don’t always stay, I stay long enough to hold the space. To be there in the in between until they find the one who feels like home.

I love that.

The way hearts brush in passing. I don’t need forever, just those fleeting electric moments of being truly known.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between wanting to be loved and wanting to be wanted. Both ache, but they’re not the same.

I’ve stopped searching. When you’ve known real love, the kind that changes the shape of you, you understand it can’t be hunted. You can’t fabricate that spark, that thread between souls. It’s either there or it isn’t.

And I miss it.

I miss the unspoken pull. The static in the air. I remember what it felt like, stars filling my eyes, that ache in my stomach, the unmistaken knowing, the moment I walked into a room and felt;

There you are.

Fall for your friends, don’t date

Dating is one of the worst things I care to imagine.

You meet a stranger. You make small talk. You try to determine if there is a potential to spend your life together. With the explicit goal of figuring out whether or not you want to have a relationship with them.

It’s barbaric.

I’d much rather continue falling in and out of love with my friends.

They know me, I don’t need to pretend, or put on facades or question my every move.

In reality, I’m only pretending though.

For a small moment, my heart lies with them. I see all their beauty and their potential. Then, as quick as the wind flies past, it’s gone. I fall in love again. Not lingering long enough to become a casualty.

The Struggles of Corporate Life: Choosing Yourself

How I managed to find myself stuck in a corporate wheel I don’t know.

They tell you to climb the ladder and smile in meetings. Tone “it”, (being you), down so you don’t come across too much for the client. Always be agreeable, always be available. For a while I did just that. Yet, at some point, I found myself wondering; “Is this it?”

Sometimes I’ll even try to convince others, maybe even myself, that this is everything I ever dreamt of. Maybe it’s easier to believe that than to face the crushing weight of unmet desires. If I tell myself this is all there is, then if life doesn’t offer more, I’m protected from disappointment at least.

When I put my mind to something, I give it my all. Yet, I’m in a role where I’m not really heard. My efforts are seen but not valued. My workload is noticed but only with pity. People feel bad for me but no one seems interested in doing anything about it.

Even now, I feel the walls closing in. I start to notice other paths I could take. Yet, I hesitate. I feel guilty at the thought of moving forward. I don’t want to let anyone down or leave anyone else in difficulty.

What hurts the most though? No one else would hesitate to do what’s best for them.

So why is it that I still won’t choose myself?

Finding focus amidst chaos

I’m trying. Every day. My brain doesn’t stop running through everything. Writing lists, trying to keep my focus, trying to stay on top of everything.

It feels as if I can’t catch my breath but I’m not drowning, just swimming really hard. It’s like I can see land and I know I can make it. I just have to give it my all until then.

I can’t wait until I reach land.

A whisper of what could have been

I listen to them play, screams of “Dad!” and laughs ringing through the house. Hearing him teach her that sometimes it’s okay to laugh when someone falls and comfort her when she’s bumped her knee.

There’s no negative air between us, no more walking on eggshells, we just appreciate what both of us are doing for our child. She is the soul focus in our life.

6 years ago today I moved back to my parents home. It was never my family home as I’d never lived here. With both of my parents choosing careers that fortunately provided living accommodations, there had never really been a “family home” as such. Yet there I was, in a position I had never dreamed of being in, as I had no where else to turn. I had lost the home I believed I was building. I had lost my best friend, my partner. I was forced to return to a country I had believed I wanted to leave, had accepted I may never live in again, because I was so certain this was the first move to the rest of our lives.

I didn’t want to come back on my Dad’s birthday, I was worried I would taint the day. If you had told me in that moment that 6 years later we’d all be sitting around a table eating pizza together with our daughter I would have laughed in your face. I was broken coming home, my heart had never felt heavier, I’d spent the entire plane journey from Australia, all 1235 minutes of it crying to myself. Why had I not advocated for myself sooner? How dare I let anyone treat me the way they both had? Why wasn’t I good enough? What did she have that I didn’t? Why did’t he value me enough after 4 years to even try avoid hurting my feelings? Nothing had ever hurt me as much as that.

Now I sit and listen to them laugh. There are moments where I think what if things had been different and she’d been able to experience his love every day of her life, that’s what I mourn now. Not our relationship and what that would have meant, but what it could have been for her.

Fools love

The thing is, I don’t want to stop loving you.
I understand it’s in my power and my power alone, no one can help me now.  You have moved on and it breaks me every time I think about the fact it was so easy for you to be with another after spending so much time with me.  Yet here I am, still wanting to remain loyal to our memory.
I am still foolishly with the hope we could be the family I always dreamed of.  I’m terrified of doing this alone and I know you will be a part of our baby’s life, but I also know you would do anything to not have to be a part of mine.
I’m going to have to figure this all out by myself without you by my side and that is terrifying to me.  I never wanted to do this alone.  How will I know what she wants when she cries?  You have always been better with children than me and here I am about to somehow raise ours, without you beside me.
I wish I could move past you, but I still don’t believe your unhappiness was due to me.  I still believe you are distracting yourself by jumping into something else, something comfortable and past.  I still believe you need to spend some time alone to try and organise your thoughts and feelings.  Yet here we are.  From my point of view, it seems it is more important to you to be with someone new than to try and sort your head out for yourself, and now more importantly for our child.

It doesn’t matter what I believe.

I think of you and I still smile; it may be through a waterfall of tears, but you still bring joy to my heart.  It is only when I remember you do not feel that way about me, I crumble.  I don’t know what you feel about me now.  Do you miss me? Do you ever think of me?  Would you do this all again now you know the outcome?

I hurt every day, without fail.  Yet I would do it all again.
The pain, the lies told to me, the deceipt.
Being taken for a fool again and again by those you consider close, the ones you trust and love.

The love I feel already for our child is stronger than anything I have ever felt.  The part of me that wishes we could experience together will fade in time.

I reach out to you because you’re the father and you were my best friend.  I always thought if I were to fall pregnant, I would be able to share it with you.  That you’d be lying beside me when she rolls from one side of my stomach to the other, I could grab your hand and you could feel her, you could see her with your own eyes and marvel in the same way I do.  Instead every night when it happens, I try to grab my phone as quickly as I can to record a snippet of it to send to you.  I then lie there and hold my stomach trying not to cry because all I can imagine is you lying in bed with the girl you chose over me, after four years of loving each other you were able to replace me in less than a week.  That’s how much I meant to you.  You both get to continue your lives and go on fun adventures and forget momentarily about what’s going on.  Whereas this is my life now.  Constantly trying to record things to send to you because I don’t know what’s important and I don’t know what you’d want to see.  I know it’s not the situation you wanted either, but when you don’t speak with me about these things, I end up making up what you’re thinking in my head.  I wish you’d be vulnerable with me again.  I feel like a stranger to you now.  I wake up every day with the worst feeling of impending doom in my heart and every morning I must try and overcome this.  It terrifies me and I don’t always succeed, I often reach out to you and then within minutes feel foolish and embarrassed as these aren’t your cares or issues and I should be able to surely deal with how my head feels by now.  Realistically I should only be reaching out to you if it’s something to do with our baby.  You don’t need to care about me anymore.

 

I write to you because I want you to understand what I’m feeling.  Even if for a split second, it makes me feel less alone, because I couldn’t share the details, I would share with you with anyone else.   It’s stupid to continue coming back to you, but you were the first in so long that I opened my heart to, realistically you were the first I ever truly opened my heart to.  I can’t do that with another now, because I can’t feel like this with anyone else.  Not just for my sake but for my baby’s, I can’t be the reason her heart breaks because I get close to another who eventually realises they’d rather return to an old fling than try and work on the relationship they’ve built, with the one they supposedly love.  I refuse to let myself be foolish enough to believe in the fairy-tale ideals of soul mates and true love.  You wrote me we were soul mates, but now I believe you only said that as you understood what I believed in, not because you ever felt it yourself.

I’m terrified to see you, I feel like a chore to you, yet not a second goes by where you’re not on my mind.  You, our baby, what we had once before or could have had in the future.  Instead I have me and our baby.  Whom I want to have my ideals of romance and love and trust.  Yet is it fair of me to raise a fool?  Do I tell her to be vulnerable with another when I know the feeling, she will most likely result in having at the end of it all?

I know I will do everything in my power at least to ensure she is never made to feel the way I do right now.

 

I

 

 

I don’t want to stop loving you but my god I wish I could.

Amalgamation

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad.  Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between” – Sylvia Plath 

The above is something I have found myself fighting with for a large portion of my life. It almost feels as if you have two polar opposites to your personality.  So distant to each other you could never envisage the two coming together.  Yet here you are, an absolute amalgam of the two.

There is the part that is portrayed to most people. Happy, active, working and busy. Bubbly and bright and just an all round helpful person. I love working, if predominantly for the fact it keeps my mind busy. I’m good at it. Better in fact than your normal day to day tasks. I’m organised and have an understanding of the goings on around me. I can make sense of this world.

Alternatively, there is the side to me I almost fear showing others. For if I am to show you how much I care, how much I am affected by the words used towards me. You will think me a fool, thin skinned and weak. The side of me that rights and feels she understands the moon. The side that will talk to plants and embrace the fact we are but one. As what else is there but this one life?

I wish I were a fool. I wish at times I would just soar through life not caring about the injustice in the world. On our streets, in our neighbouring countries, on the internet, and if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t hurt. I find it hard to understand how one person could be so dismissive of another. Without caring about how that may affect the other person. We are all different and we’ll never be able to get it right one hundred percent of the time. Yet we can try. Why are we mean to one another? It tends to be as a defence mechanism. When someone’s been hurt and feels if they should feel such a way then why can’t they inflict that upon someone else? It’s stemmed from negativity. There is zero benefit to it. No one feels better after being mean to someone. Surely that must mean we do care. I have to hope it does.