I used the title of this book to inspire the title of this poem
the evidence of my emotional affair stares back at me- taunting me with a smirk- sexy photos exchanged while both of us were legally bonded to other people flirty emails sent back and forth to satisfy my craving for attention I couldn’t get from my husband It was fun and sexy, wasn’t it? We were our own Gen X, low rent version of Ashley Madison seeing how much both of us could get away with- except that for years, it hurt me and caused me so many trust issues after learning you had been married the entire time of our decade long flirtation and you acted like a psychopath when I confronted you with it- like my feelings of betrayal weren’t valid, and you tried to gaslight me into believing I was a crazy bitch and a few years later, I’m divorced and reflect on our torrid affair and shame takes a hold of me as well as regret over that day in the parking lot of second and charles when I gave into my yearning for you- I try to hold compassion for the atrocity of our infidelity and for the younger version of me who was so selfish and allowed her ego to guide her And allowed herself to continue her pseudo friendship With you- allowing you to use me for emotional labor while you slept next to your wife and lied to her and me I’ve tried for years to find forgiveness for you even empathy, tried to not always see you as villain in my story But forgiveness, compassion, and empathy for you Evades me And I’ve come to the conclusion- You’ll always be the most toxic story in my life- One of the three things in my life I’ll forever regret the one who should have left my life once I made vows to my husband but instead you stood there selfishly pushing your lust driven agenda on me- not respecting my marriage or yours one of the three people in my life I’ll never forgive for the impact of trauma You made on me
I know I’ll be okay, I know I’ll be fine I’m the queen of resilience, coming back triumphantly After each tragedy but right now, I need to honor the heaviness of grief that resides within me Acknowledge that for a while, my kids may view me as a villain for breaking up their family for making them products of broken home I gotta feel this residual anger and resentment Directed at myself and my ex for not being able to make our marriage work At least I can say it wasn’t me who gave up easily I was the one who gave my all and best efforts to make it work but one day, I had to accept it for what it was a marriage damaged beyond repair And no amount of meds, therapy, acceptance or healing on my part could have saved it- not when I was always doing 80 percent of the work and he barely gave me any effort and while yes, he did care of our kids and of me he still didn’t help in providing for them, show initiative to better our family or even tried to love me the way I needed to be loved Instead, he hid behind his fatherhood and age To distract me And it wasn’t until the healthiest version of me showed up and got the courage to put a stop to this facade of a marriage and stop our codependent story of love We’ve been modeling for our kids It’s up to me to break this generational curse of toxic love or else our kids won’t know or understand what a healthy and real love story looks like
to reach the next level of my life I need to stand firm in alignment with my values I need to be brave and take the necessary steps for my full autonomy even if it’s painful, even if I start to question the process the end result will be the betterment for me and my sons, a life full of purpose a life where I’m no longer attached to anything and anyone who held me back from reaching my potential
I wrote this poem in September of 2019 and 5 years later, I’m posting it on my 1 year divorce anniversary so this poem is extra special to me.
for real, for real
It seems that my freedom is a long time away it is almost hopeless to get away from my prison of obligations and responsibilities I yearn to escape! I love my kids but I’ve stopped loving their dad the space between us became too wide a long time ago and we can never go back to who we were, who we wanted to be So now I long to be free of these marital chains that once upon a time I longed for As hopeless and as hard as it seems I’m determined to be free from my suburban confinement
summer feels eternal it’s the sixth of september and we’re still in 90-degree weather melting in this heat it’s a global warning with no sign of reprieve it’s a never-ending season that has me sweating and cursing constantly saying FML and calling my friends during panic attacks in the bathroom at work it’s my insanity I can’t seem to rein in all the way, no matter how hard I try and the frustration of it wears me out and make me want to throw in the towel and give up
Crushes–we all get them at some point or another. It doesn’t matter if we’re 13 or 43. They’re unfortunate or fortunate circumstances in our lives depending on how we look at them. I’ve had more of my share of them, and of course, there’s a playlist I listen to when that happens. As jaded in love as I am, there’s a small part of me that’s still a lovergirl. I’ve tried every way to squash the lovergirl in me but apparently it’s resistant to all of the misandrist poetry I write and all of the books I read about hating men and how love is just the most terrible thing in the world. So I’ve just learned to just let her be and write corny AF love poetry and listen to the most romantic music even if it’s nauseating to me. One of my friends told me the nausea part is some kind of trauma response, and she’s probably right, but that’s another blog post for a later time. Anyways,here’s a few poems I wrote about having a crush and my lover girl playlist. The playlist is filled with that, “wtf, I have butterflies in my stomach at my age, let’s goooo!!!” kind of energy or “lmao,I’m living some kind of modern Victorian infatuation story or I’m straight up delusional” energy. My most recent crushes have been on Ben Affleck, Benjamin Franklin(cause I’m a materialistic bitch) and of course, Yung Gravy. See y’all, I’m not always a hater when it comes to love (contrary to a lot of what y’all see in the blog) , I, too, have a little romantic girl somewhere in me. Maybe I could manifest that Ben Affleck, Yung Gravy, or a millionaire, sees this blog post, gets a crush on ME and makes their way to my hometown and takes me away in their private jet.
Here are the poems:
Not in my plans
I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t in my plans for self improvement But I fell for you in spring I don’t even know when it started to happen All I remember is absolutely hating it hated how soft and corny it made me hated how I started smiling at your messages hated how you started to melt my jadedness about love and how I finally felt like love was a possibility for me
5/2/23
it’s me on a quest to find my Travis Kelce
Fight with the romantic girl
The romantic in me riots and protests and says this solitary confinement is bullshit It’s been over a year since we’ve been intimate with anyone or felt a romantic connection and I try to reason with her “We’re still healing and we’ like to stay emotionally regulated And healthy” and she yells, “no it’s time to take all of our therapy skills out for test drive and find someone we vibe with’ And I answer, “but we’re not” And she screams, “stop with your excuses go find the next muse of your poetry
7/29/23
wondering who my next Ace of Cups will be
So embarrassing
thought I was done with this part of my life accepted solitude was now my new life but you had to smile at me butterflies appear and I want to vomit my heart races every time you’re near And ugh, I fucking hate you for this so embarrassing at my age to crush on someone so hard and to write poems about a new unrequited love And I tried to ignore and quell this feeling but you have the audacity to appear in my dreams maybe it’s your fire energy, maybe it’s your poetry I’m not sure exactly what it is but fuck you for bringing out the romantic in me
2024
I have honestly done this more than a few times this year-I have issues according to Google
Lover Girl Playlist: Ew -Crush Culture
Crush Culture-Conan Gray I’m not in love- Will to Power Begin Again- Taylor Swift Bad Habit-Steve Lacy The Prophecy- Taylor Swift Late Night Talking-Harry Styles Sanctuary-Joji Dreaming of You-Selena Nonsense- Sabrina Carpenter Overdrive- Conan Gray Still Falling for You- Ellie Goulding Ceilings- Lizzie Alpine People Watching- Conan Gray Footnote-Conan Gray Dress-Taylor Swift Means Something- Lizzy McAlpine Enchanted- Taylor Swift Clementine-Yung Gravy The Louvre-Lorde Pessimist- Julia Michaels Risk-Gracie Abrams HOT TO GO-Chappell Roan Mastermind- Taylor Swift So High School- Taylor Swift Still Chose You- The Kid LAROI Invisible String-Taylor Swift Long Story Short-Taylor Swift So American-Olivia Rodrigo Disaster- Conan Gray Lover- Taylor Swift
Below is are the links for Spotify and YouTube in case you do want to get in touch with your inner romantic:
Crush Culture makes me want to spill my guts out-Conan Gray
in purgatory, I live waiting for the finality of my longest chapter of love to end In purgatory, residual anger and resentment Invades me- and I turn into an emotional time bomb Waiting to explode In purgatory, I wait for my sentencing, praying the judge sees things my way and honors what is best for broken family
September comes in with a rage and determination in my heart to keep on moving with a new purpose to heal and evolve into the healthiest version of myself without condemning myself over my past misdeeds and obsessing over how toxic I once was so what if I allowed myself to be a doormat, to be stepped on over and over again? so what if I wasn’t the mom my kids deserved? Every day is a brand new start to live a life Intentionally and with purpose to continue to grow, build, and expand exponentially because while my past has impacted me and I’m still dealing with the consequences of it I need to move past it, leave it behind I’ve learned everything I need to learn from it now it’s time to build my present for the future I deserve to live in
I’m armed with my notebooks and journals full of poems and stories
what cannot be said aloud will be written in a poem for better or worse I have a tendency to process my emotions in metaphors and verse and while many wouldn’t call what I write poetry because I lack technique or an MFA or whatever else I’m missing I’m going to keep writing my raw emotions Down and sharing them My words hold value, My words have power And it has helped and a few other souls when our feelings lack logical explanations and reasons For better or worse I’m going to continue to tell my story in poetry
the shelf of my bookcase breaks, and my poetry notebooks fall every single one of my love stories scattered on the floor Failure after failure Were any of them worth the effort? Was the experience worth the suffering? Maybe it was for the inspiration behind my prose and poetry and the growth I’ve had Still, that doesn’t seem like an adequate answer
In humility I ask mama Killa for guidance To send me a sign of some kind as I start to unravel and lose myself in my anxiety and insecurities As I start to question if I’m on the right path and throw myself a pity party and cry because no one is coming to save me And how despite all the empowerment I feel with my autonomy I still miss being in a relationship and cover myself up in defeat Thinking I’ll always be this lonely But mama Killa sends me a reminder of the love of sisterhood in my dreams to remind me I’m on the right path Mama Killa, in her own way, reassures me that staying true to myself and continuing what sometimes feels like a challenging and cringy journey of self-discovery Is the right thing for me to do in order to heal, to grow, to evolve and to remember everything will fall into place as long as I keep going and never give up
I breathe grief in, I exhale grief out my pain needs a way out because despair and sorrow fill up my lungs and anger sits at the bottom of my stomach and I’m tired of living like this a life full of emotional intensity And supposedly there’s a cure for it with therapy and radical acceptance but how do I accept that every man who’s ever professed his love to me always leaves Will my romantic misfortune one day end? or am I destined to repeat the same story of abandonment over and over again?
the consequences of being a hopeless romantic outweigh any rewards everytime I start to believe in love it never works out Everytime I start to believe in love it ends up in chaos and destruction and i try and try again only always to have the same ending and after 26 years of doing this-I don’t have it in me to endure around love failure someone who appears sure of me-only for them to change their mind about me on a whim the consequences of being a hopeless romantic has filled a dozen notebooks and journals with sorrow and grief
maybe my alien will bring this kind of romantic energy
I’m curious about the aliens on earth and if they’re into NSA, telepathic sex the kind where I get to lie down and sleep, and they come into my dreams and make me have multiple orgasms Over and over again perhaps these are crazy thoughts from a middle-aged woman who’s been celibate for more than a year And is oh so thirsty for intimacy but can’t stand the thought of a man getting near me it makes me want to vomit at this point I’d take some extra terrestrial Out of the universe sex without any feelings involved the kind that fixes my craving for connection and intimacy the kind that doesn’t bring me another episode of psychosis
Life on the BPD 