A hundred times I (didn’t) miss you.

I miss you. 
Oh, how I miss you. 

Your coffee is getting cold

Being lonely is getting old. 

I miss the way you said my name

Silently on hold. 
I miss waking up next to you

Only you were never there

So I guess all of this really isn’t fair. 
I longed for that kiss goodbye 

As I walk down the stairs 

I must have just missed you. 

You don’t really care. 
I missed you in the audience of my show

Because you know, you never go 

But let’s just go with the flow. 

I miss you. 
Oh, how I miss you. 

I miss that time you kissed me on the beach. 

That kiss was just out of reach. 

Sorry, this has become quite the speech.

I really did miss you. 
I miss you because you’re familiar, not because you’re safe. 

I mostly miss you when you’re late. 
I miss you when you’re sober. 

I missed you before you said it’s over. 
Remember that big trip?

Yeah i missed you. 
Oh, how I miss you. 

I miss the way you taste

Like a spoiled wine you drank too late. 
A hundred times I miss you. 

But not the way you think. 
And every night I go to sleep

I miss you. 

Long Distance Friendships

I think technology has made this instant-gratification-entitlement mentality across the board for its users. Just because someone has instant access to my life via technology does not mean they are entitled to that time. 

I almost agreed on the common courtesy of the timely reply back, but then I am reminded of how many times I’ve gotten a message, found myself busy, and then forgotten to reply. 

To me, I think real friendship is acceptance. It is realizing and understanding and being accepting of that fact that sometimes people won’t have time for you. Hell, sometimes those people won’t want to have time for you. And that is okay. Life gets busy. People get busy. Feelings. Emotions. New love interests. Hobbies. Work. Family. 

Time passes. 

If you can’t accept them as they are, including the times they just want space, even if they don’t realize they are distancing themselves from you – are you really being the best friend YOU can be?

The sign of true unconditional friendship is when, even after time passes in silence, the moment you get that “hey! Do you want to get coffee?” text, you respond with love and eagerness “Absolutely! How about tomorrow?” and when you are together, it is as if no time passed at all. 

*Thoughts from the experience of a long distance friendship that is still to this day as intimately close as day 1 despite every passing silent moment time has gifted us with. 

The Hero Complex

A poem I read at the spoken word poetry event:

He has an infinity for the broken. 

The Dramatic. 

Anything or anyone who needs him. He will come swooping in like a knight in shining armor on the day of battle. 

On the eve of battle he will be no where to be found. 

He will profess that he loves you, but what he loves is the broken pieces of you that reflect him. 

Look how good he is to you. That is the lie you will tell yourself. 

Look. 

How. 

Good. 

shines each broken piece. 

Yet, you throw a blind eye to who threw the rock at the mirror. 

Planting Weeds

   

Life is a garden; grow it. 

I stopped struggling with insecurities when I was around 15; the year I realized I was hot. By that I mean I came to an understanding that the only opinion of my level of attractiveness that mattered was the opinion that I held of myself. 

Even still, I walked into a relationship whose key player danced on the human weakness of feeling as if you are not enough. I would lay awake at night thinking that I needed to change my body or my habits to be enough for this person. 

It felt like an insane uphill battle because my well founded self confidence in who I was fought with this projected insecurity of who I felt I needed to be.  

  
  
Insecurities are like the weeds of life. Bad people are the pests. Unhealthy thoughts like having bad soil. 

I’ve never seen someone plant weeds, but that is exactly what I had done. 

A moment of enlightenment brought to you by: unconditional love.   

After that relationship withered away, I found myself laying in the arms of the man who told me he loved me so much that when I was away he even missed my stinky feet. Yet even in the arms of someone who loved me so fully, I found myself struggling with the ghost of those insecurities I had never come to know, and this sudden hollow need to feel like I was somehow enough. 
  
The result of unaddressed emotions lead me to become both bitter and needy.  

  

I expressed to my best friend during this exploration of self awareness, “This must be hurt pride causing a bitter root to take hold.” and she had given me three weeks to bitch, whine, and be resentful, and then assured me I had to get my shit together. 
  
Once my allotted timeframe came to an end, I worked to uproot the bitterness. I imagine visually it’s a lot like weeding a garden, where you grab the weed by the base pulling hard, trying to ensure you get all of the roots out of the soil so that it doesn’t take hold again later. I turned my love off, and it had been affecting all my relationships. 

  
The weeds sprung up ever so often, and I become more equipped each passing day to handle them. There would be a season where it came time to plant a new garden. However, I discovered that though free of weeds, my plot of land had bad soil. *Coming out of the metaphor, I never addressed the needy feeling taking its toll.   

If love is like sunshine, then pain must be the rain.

This has brought me through another growing season: You do not need either person to be enough. 

  
The sun and the rain do not dictate to the flower to grow, bloom, and be a flower. You do not need either the insecure or loving person projecting their perspective of who you are and what you are worth on you. 

The rain does not arrange a downpour on your schedule, and the sun does not shine at your command. You will never be enough for the wrong person, and there is nothing about you that would keep away the right person.

  
  
You are enough. 

Be a better version of yourself today than you were yesterday. This change in yourself is happening every day because of the love in your life from family and friends, but strongly because even when it seems like you fail, you spring back up. You are not a victim of others actions. You are strong, loving, hard working, attractive inside and out, and intelligent; all of this makes you beautiful. 
  
Say it every day, with conviction “I am enough.”

  

Keep your love on.

If you never truly invest, it is because you subconsciously fear abandonment. Fear and love have opposite agendas, and cannot coexist. 

This fear of abandonment is an insecurity that you are not enough. It is in you to cast out your insecurities, no one except you is going to make you fearless. 
  
Love takes courage; courage to be vulnerable, courage to open up, courage that even though it may hurt you gave it your all. Again and again. 

“Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.”

Sometimes love leaves, and it is not anyone’s fault. Real love is freeing, and that level of freedom can be scary.  

Do not let pain change you into something you’re not; do not let it close you up. 

“Each display of love no matter how seemingly small, is a powerful act of spiritual warfare that removes anxiety from the environment and replaces it with freedom and safety.”

Anxiety shows up in relationships, and that fear tempts you to run away. It takes courage to choose connection in the midst of fear. 

  
In the end, in this world you have control of only one thing; yourself. That’s it. Accepting that makes you incredibly powerful. 

You will come across those who do not share the same goal as connection as you, in that moment of angst, “think highly of them rather than protecting yourself from what may feel like rejection.”

More importantly, if no one told you today, you are enough. You are more than enough. You are loved. You are worthy of love. 

XoXo,