I didn’t realize how long this post was going to be until I got to the end. My mind high jacked my fingers, and oops 16 pages later…

Enjoy my craziness. : D

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It’s Christmas Eve.

I feel like I should be feeling something. Excitement. Anticipation.

I know kids everywhere are having those feelings. Families are together, waiting for the festivities of tomorrow.

I have an empty house on a rainy day to look forward to. No Christmas tree in my mom’s house. No lights on the outside to remember to turn off in the morning.

And most people would read that and think about how depressing it sounds. How gloomy. How unfortunate to spend a holiday alone.

But me? My thoughts?

I’m neutral. To me it’s just another day.

My mom will be off working. I will wake up and finish my nephew’s birthday gift. I may start another book. John and I may play Warcraft. I will make posts on Facebook wishing my friends well. The super special ones will get text messages. I doubt I will do phone calls, maybe one or two. It isn’t anything personal, just my introvertness being all introverted and stuff.

I don’t know where that leaves me. It’s odd, knowing that people feel bad for me, when I don’t feel bad for myself. When I don’t think there’s a reason to feel bad at all.

Why does society force such importance on this time of year? On any time of year? Valentines Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween.

I know in the past they used to hold such significance.

But now?

Now it feels like sand paper on my skin. Partaking in these flashy, superficial holidays bothers me. It makes me feel like I am making a mockery of what these days used to stand for.

I think Christmas bothers me the most out of all of them because it feels like such a selfish holiday. Why do I have to give gifts? A material object? Why does it have to be during this time frame? What about all of the other things I have done throughout the year?

Do all of my other gifts not count? If I don’t give something now why is it a black mark against me? I love and care everyday of the year, why does society seem to be set on twisting this day? Making it feel like an unspoken obligation?

Why do we raise children to expect this type of tradition? Raising them on the belief that if they are loved they will undoubtedly receive something. Always some ‘thing’. An object.

There was a picture of Piglet and Winnie the Pooh, and in the picture Piglet is asking Pooh, “How do you spell love?”

And Pooh replies with, “You don’t spell it. You feel it.”

I feel much the same way. Love is not an object. It is not a thing. It is a feeling. It is energy which passes from one person to another. An exchange.

Wedding rings bother me, too. I understand they are symbolic. And I understand for some people they mean the world.

There is a story behind my view, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to delve into that. I know I should. There is hurt in that wound that still needs to be purged. And I can feel the discord in me from my writing having drifted so close to those memories.

These aren’t happy Christmas thoughts.

I’m thinking of myself, sitting under the bare snow covered trees in my forest. The one where my warrior self resides. The one where my falcon hunts during the summer months.

But it’s not summer right now. It’s winter. Snow covers the ground, the black branches. It’s evening. It’s dark. The world is sleeping. It is quiet.

I am crouched, my arms warped around my knees and my breath warms the air with clouds of white. I am sitting, thinking.

In the silence and peace, where the world sleeps and nothing can hurt me, my mind wanders to the past, different days. Harder days.

Days before I moved to Florida. Before I went to college. Days where I was still unsure of whom I was. Still lost and drowning, clinging to people as if they were driftwood which would take me to shore where I would finally be able to stand.

But they never did. There was no land back then. Only endless sea.

When Warren #1 and I broke up it wasn’t really a break up.

We had been together for five years. We loved each other. We talked about getting engaged. We knew we had something that was hard to find. Some connection.

Neither of us had been in a serious relationship outside of our own, however. We talked about that more and more often. How we didn’t want to get into our thirties and have a mid-life crises because we were always wondering ‘What if’.

What if we could have had something better with someone else? What if we became resentful of each other for missing out on experiencing something in our ‘wild years’.

I’m not sure if I’m really explaining the feelings right. We were worried that if we didn’t try having space between us, that we wouldn’t appreciate what we truly had. We had nothing to compare it to. Nothing to show us how good we were for each other.

We agreed, both of us, to try to see other people. It was mutual. A hiatus of sorts.

I was fine for the first few days. But the lack of contact started killing me fast. And maybe killing is a strong word, but that’s what it felt like.

I would call, and he wouldn’t answer. And when he did he would be short with me. I would ask to see him. I needed him to hug me. Touch me. Anything just to know that he still cared about me. Two weeks in and I felt worthless. It seemed so easy for him to function without me. While I was on the other end of the line, a complete mess.

He said that the point of the separation was to see other people, and that if we saw each other it would be missing the point.

On some level I knew he was right, but it still hurt to hear it. It still felt like being abandoned. I didn’t want the separation anymore. I didn’t want to meet someone else. I already knew he was what I wanted. At the time, it felt like he was what I needed.

My driftwood keeping me afloat. I didn’t know how to be alone. I didn’t know how to be myself without him there to help define me.

I became depressed. I had a hard time eating. Sleeping. Caring about anything seemed like the hardest thing to do in the world. It wasn’t a feeling I had felt in a long time. At least not to this level.

It reminded me of when my dad and left.

I ended up spending more time with a co-worker who was having his own issues with his girlfriend.

It started by playing, of all things, World of Warcraft. (Side note, this game has stolen six years or more of my life… and now I’m playing it… again… with my younger brother. I shall never escape its clutches)

I didn’t want to be alone, so I would play on my laptop, sitting on his bed while he played at his desktop. There was nothing sexual. Just this need for both of us to not be alone.

Then one day Joe told me that he broke up with his girlfriend. And then he started holding my hand in the car when we would go get lunch when we were on break. Then hugs. Kisses.

I wasn’t drowning anymore. It felt like someone still cared about me.

Looking back at it I was a fool. I was young. Silly. Naive.

I wish I could go back and give myself a hug and to tell myself that I was already loved. That what Joe was giving me wasn’t love at all. I wish I could go back and protect myself from all of the hurt and venom that I was going to be subjected to.

I was working at the help desk at a college. Joe worked in the IT department. I had originally been a contract worker, helping to switch all of the computers on campus over to a new server. They needed more manpower temporarily, and I was one of the lucky people who got picked.

When the contract ended there wasn’t a spot in the IT department for me to fill, but they didn’t want to let me go, so they moved me over to a permanent position at the help desk.

Joe and I saw each other every day at work. We went to lunch with the whole team because I had worked with them for so many months. They were my friends. We all played WoW together. I went to concerts with them.

I felt like I belonged.

And then Joe broke up with his girlfriend, and I was single, and then we were together. I thought it was real.

But I was at the help desk. I was fixing printer jams, and changing ink cartages. I was answering phones and creating email accounts. I was running down stairs to get my boss her lunch.

I was a step and fetch it, and I was unhappy.

I knew I was better than this, and I wanted to be better.

I told Joe that I wanted to go to Florida for school.

He said I wanted to go to Florida to leave him.

Which brings back memories of how we started dating to begin with.

I was the one who brought it up. I wanted to date him. But in the beginning he didn’t want to date me.

I was too young. Too financially unstable. I was 19 going on 20 and he was turning 28.

It hurt. I thought he had cared, and he seemed to be fine with me until that point. I thought he reciprocated my feelings, which was the only reason I nervously had brought it up.

But no. I wasn’t what he wanted. It made me think that he thought I was a child. Maybe I still was. Maybe I had done something foolish and silly and he hadn’t said anything because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Maybe I wasn’t as mature as everyone said I acted.

Well, I mean, obviously I wasn’t. An adult had just rejected me. I was still too young to be thought of as a women, as an adult able to be in a relationship.

So I distanced myself. I hurt. I felt worthless again. This was the first time I had reached out to someone. Warren had asked me to date him. I had never put myself in the position of being turned down. These were new feelings and I didn’t know what to do with them, other than return to being depressed.

But then suddenly Joe did want to be with me. He cared about me, and didn’t want to be with out me. So we became a couple.

So when the subject of school came up, he said I was doing it to get away from him.

I tried to explain that wasn’t why I wanted to leave. That I wanted to be something more than a help desk assistant. I wanted to be someone he could be proud of. A successful adult, not the child he was worried about me being, or at least the child I felt I had to prove I wasn’t.

He wouldn’t hear any of it. And for days he didn’t talk to me. At all.

I didn’t know what to do. He wouldn’t answer his phone and I didn’t want to be the creepy stalker showing up to his house. So when he didn’t say anything to me at work, when he walked pasted me like I didn’t exist, I figured we were done, that we were broken up.

Before all of this though, I had to deal with the fallout of Warren.

After Joe and I had already started dating, Warren called me out of the blue. He wanted to see how I was doing since he hadn’t heard from me in a while. With Joe filling my need for affection, I had stopped reaching out to Warren.

I said I was fine, that I was seeing someone else. I thought that was ok. We had agreed to see other people. And I was.

But it wasn’t ok. He couldn’t believe that I was seeing someone. He couldn’t believe I was a cheating whore.

I am not sure what being stabbed in the chest feels like. I have never physically experienced that type of situation. But I imagine it is very similar to the feelings I had during that phone call.

Over and over these words, these phrases where shouted through the phone and into my ears. Into my brain. Words became weapons. For both of us.

Swords, daggers, spears. Hateful, hurtful things that we never meant, but said anyway as a way to lash out. Both of us wounded animals.

It drove me closer to Joe. Clinging to him harder as Warren truly fell out of my reach. My best friend of 5 years. Gone. And in such a horrible way.

We had agreed. I had done nothing but what we had said we would do. I was honest about it. I didn’t hide it. And yet I was a liar. A whore. I was dishonorable.

I hated myself. I hated Warren. I felt like a terrible person. And Joe made me feel like I wasn’t.

So when Joe ‘broke up’ with me I felt like I had lost everything.

Maybe I was a terrible person. Maybe I had done something wrong with Warren. And maybe I was being selfish with school. Maybe it wasn’t right for me to move away. Maybe I wasn’t thinking about Joe’s feelings and how it would affect him.

All I wanted was to be a good person. I wanted to have a career that would make me financially stable like what he wanted. A job that would make me happy. I wanted to learn and better myself. I didn’t want to leave him. I didn’t want to mess up our relationship.

But I was. So that made me bad.

I functioned on auto pilot for days. I felt nothing. I didn’t cry. I didn’t know how to cry. I had slammed my walls up so high that I couldn’t see or feel anything. I was inside myself. I was safe. There was no pain. No hurt.

There was nothing.

Nothing.

I could function with nothing.

Check this email. Respond to that message. Do this task. Eat at least one meal. Ok, maybe not a meal, at least one snack. Good. You did good. Eating is good. Ok, now reply to the new email. Don’t forget the lab needs more paper. Debbie is looking at you, don’t forget to smile. If you smile she won’t ask you what’s wrong. Good. Good. You’re doing good.

One thing at a time. That’s all there was. Whatever was in front of me was the only thing that existed. Even the voices that had been plaguing me, the words Warren had placed in my head, eating me away from the inside, were silent. My walls so high that even that pain couldn’t reach me.

There was nothing.

And then out of nowhere Joe came to me one day and said that he wanted me to follow him. I was confused. But I could tell he was excited. Antsy. He wanted me to follow him, and he wanted me to do it now because there was something he wanted to say, or do, something he couldn’t wait for.

Much like a kid on Christmas morning. Which makes me give a sad, ironic smile since it’s Christmas Eve. But that’s the only way I can think to describe his energy in that moment.

We ended up going to where the guys took their smoke breaks.

It was empty. Just us.

He took out a box and handed it to me.

It was from Kays.

I was so confused. I had never gotten anything from a store like that except from my dad. He had gotten me two sets of jewelry, one for Valenties day, and a necklace for my birthday. Gifts to try to buy my love and affection. At least that’s how I categorized the act in my mind.

This was different though.

This was a gift. An expensive gift. From a guy. Not my dad. A guy I thought I was broken up with. But a guy I loved. So much confusion.

I took the box and opened it, slowly. Like a snake was going to spring out and bite me.

If only I knew.

Inside was a hello kitty head, with little paws holding onto a heart. A heart full of rubies. Small glittering stones, dancing in the sunlight.

There was a note, too. A note saying that as long as I had the necklace that I would always have his heart, and that I would never be alone.

I cried. We hugged so tightly. I thought things were ok. So foolish.

How could a necklace erase all of those days?

I know now, with my current self, it wouldn’t. But back then it did. I forgot, forgave. I didn’t care about the past. He loved me. This proved it. We would be ok. We would make it work.

I got everything set up for school. I was going to move to Florida. Joe didn’t want to go with me. He was worried he wouldn’t be able to find a job. It was risky, again with the unstable, and he didn’t want to do it.

I wanted him to come with me. I said we could make it work. I had money for living expenses. We could do this. But he said no.

So I was going to be going alone. We were both sad. And then the day came where I had to say goodbye.

I went to his house. When I got inside he didn’t say anything to me. Not one word as he reached up, unhooked my necklace, and put it in his pocket.

I was confused at first, thinking that he was going to try to kiss me, his hands going to hold my cheeks, but no. They kept going, back under my hair, but not playing with it.

What then?

Fumbling with the chain.

Was it sitting oddly?

No…

Then it was loose.

Then it was gone.

Gone? But it was his heart. His love for me. How could it be gone?

And then he was looking at me. His eyes. Empty eyes. Unfeeling. There was nothing there. While in mine I felt tears. I couldn’t stop them. I think my heart knew before my brain did what had just happened.

I covered my mouth because I felt the sob in my throat. I felt it, tried to keep it in. Felt it almost strangle me as it clawed it’s way out. My knees were weak and I leaned against the doorframe for a few seconds as my body shook. I couldn’t control anything.

I couldn’t process it all, it was too much, and his eyes, the whole time his eyes just staring at me. No explanation. No compassion. Just watching me, like I was an ant or some mouse in a maze. Something to be observed as I suffered in front of him.

Somehow I got up, and I left.

I didn’t say anything either. There was nothing to say.

Actions speak louder than words.

I don’t know how I drove away. I don’t know how I was able to see the road. I don’t think I should have been driving to be honest. But I think that’s what held me together until I got home.

Focus on driving. Turn here. Slow down there. Make sure to read every sign. Focus on everything. Everything outside. Do not look inside. Do not look inside.

Just like you’re never supposed to look down. You can make it if you don’t look down.

So don’t look inside. You can make it if you don’t look inside. You can make it. You’ll be fine. You’re not bleeding out. You’re not fatally wounded. You’re fine. You’ll make it.

The next night Joe texted me.

I was supposed to leave in the morning for Florida. My U-Haul was packed. I was sleeping on the floor on an air mattress. Or trying to at least. But I couldn’t. I hadn’t slept at all since leaving Joe’s house.

I hadn’t thought. I hadn’t processed anything. I had gone back to before, to autopilot. One task at a time. One box at a time. Focus outside. Outside. There’s nothing inside. Don’t look there. It’s ok. You’ll be ok.

And then suddenly there’s this text, reminding me that I wasn’t ok. That I had a gaping wound in my chest. And that there was so much anguish inside me that I couldn’t breath, but somehow life was cruel and wasn’t letting me die.

He wanted to see me. He was sorry. He didn’t know why he had done that. Could he come over?

I don’t know why I said yes. Maybe for closure. Maybe because I was hoping it was all a horrible dream and that if I saw him I would wake up and none of this would have happened.

He came over. He gave me back the necklace, saying he had only wanted to look at it.

He tried giving it back to me, and as he put it in my hand I felt nothing. It meant nothing to me. It was the hollowest gesture I have ever experienced.

This wasn’t his heart. It literally represented nothing when only a few days ago it had meant the world.

I never wore it again. I put it in a box and I kept it for a very long time. A reminder.

He asked for us to still be together, that he didn’t want to lose me. And I agreed. I said it because I knew he wanted me to. I felt nothing. I answered out of reflex, not out of feeling. Not out of love. I said yes because it felt like I had no reason to say no.

I was nothing. What would it matter if I said yes, if I said no. What did anything matter. Nothing would fix the empty shell that I was. So if it made him feel better, fine.

He wanted me to stay in the relationship, so I did.

It wasn’t until I was in Florida and met Warren #2, and told him of Joe, my boyfriend, that I began to care that I was still in a relationship with him.

Joe and I would talk once in a while, not often. He didn’t answer very often. Warren asked about our relationship, and I told him. I answered all of his questions, and the more that Warren asked the more I felt like a person.

The more I stopped feeling dead.

I didn’t breakup with Joe. Warren ended up doing it actually. Which is a whole ‘nother cluster fuck of awesomeness that I put myself through.

Another memory for another time.

That is the main hurt I have from Joe. But there are countless others, like how he never broke up with his girlfriend. How he was seeing her still, and how our group at work started disliking me because they thought I was making moves on Joe and disrespecting Crystal.

I found out that Joe had gone on a double date with a co-worker and his girlfriend. Joe had told me he had gone out with ‘the guys’. I had been lied to. I had been used to betray someone else’s trust, even though I had told Joe that if he wanted to be with other people that was fine, just to tell me.

And there was never one time, not once in the year we were together, that I went to his house without him asking for me to bring something over. Pick up dinner; stop at the store for soda. Would I bring a candy bar? Some cigarettes?

I didn’t realize it until we had been separated for a few months. But he was worried about me being financially stable, when I was bleeding out money on stuff that he could afford much more easily than me. I had to purchase my right to see him.

I was freaking out, scraping up money, trying to figure out how I was going to pay for my next semester of community college and get the order he wanted for dinner that night.

When he got into a car wreck he was without a car for about a week. I stayed over at his house fairly often so we could both go to work. Just car pool. It was easy. The days that I didn’t stay over I left my house early to get to him, so we wouldn’t be late.

But when my car got totaled I lived too far way from him to come pick me up. It was too much gas. And he didn’t want me to stay over.

The day I went to look for a car at the dealership my brother had dropped me off. He had to go somewhere; I think a rehearsal for band. I didn’t end up making a deal, so I didn’t have a car to drive home in, and I didn’t have a ride home lined up.

I called Joe. Surely he would come to get me. But it was inconvenient for him. Wasn’t there someone else?

I was sitting outside, on the steps, roughly 10 miles from my house, at night. The roads I would have to walk were extremely busy streets, with no sidewalks. And he didn’t want to come make sure I got home safely.

I ended up getting ahold of my mom. She hadn’t been answering her phone before. Which is why I had called Joe. Thankfully she had picked up after a few more calls.

She said she would come get me.

We ended up stopping for food at Arby’s and she asked me why Joe hasn’t come to get me.

I told her. And she asked how I thought that was ok.

I don’t remember what I said, but I explained it away.

She was really quiet, and said ok. And we left the subject alone. It was never brought up again.

When I wrote my Cousin It post, I mentioned how my mom was really good at letting me make my own choices, and that by choices I meant mistakes.

That had to have been one of the hardest things for her to do. To sit, knowing that I was going to get hurt. Knowing that Joe wasn’t the person I thought he was.

Some people may read that and think that she is a terrible person, that she should have kept me from seeing him. Told me to breakup with him. Protected me. Defended me.

But I don’t think she should have. I think she did the hardest thing in the world. She let me be my own person. She let me learn, and gain wisdom.

She didn’t shelter me from life. And I respect her for that. I am grateful for that.

Years after the breakup Joe surfaced again.

He posted pictures he had of me online. A starnger online messaged me, letting me know that there was a post on a forum that linked back to an account I was posting fictional stories on, and that he felt I should know about it.

I was at work, so I couldn’t see the images due to the fire was, but I could read the the comments on the page. The hurtful words.

I made a post on my profile. It wasn’t a rant. It wasn’t a rage filled cry of how unjust this was, how mad I was.

No.

Instead I said that I couldn’t prove who posted the pictures, and that I hadn’t looked at the images, since they were blocked by my work’s firewall, but that I had seen the comments and I could guess that the images were things I didn’t want publicly displayed.

All I could do was guess at who. But, if it was the person I imagined, that I wanted to thank him. Thank him for pushing me away. Thank him for being a part of what made me who I was that day. Because of him I was a stronger person. I knew the things that truly mattered to me in life. I understood myself better. Because of him I was pursuing a career that I loved. Because of him I was doing amazing in school.

I said yes, there was been hurt from our relationship, but that I could remember the good times, too. The times of riding on the back of his bike out to the beach, of going for lunch together, of playing World of Warcraft together. Skipping out on work the night Wrath came out so we could get the expansion and stay up all day playing our characters.

I said that I remembered good times, and that I hoped he remembered them too, and that all I had to say was thank you.

That was it.

I made peace with it. With that chapter of my life. That post was my closure.

But maybe I haven’t made as much peace as I thought I did.

The thought of gifts still bothers me. The thought of someone giving me a wedding ring, or any object meant to signify love terrifies me.

There is still a part of me that gets tense. A part that has a hard time filling my lungs with enough air as the fear turns my blood to ice. There is a part of me whose throat gets tight and whose muscles tense, preparing to run. Run so far away that it could never happen.

That pain could never happen again.

I know now that Joe most likely had borderline personality disorder. I know on a logical level that he was sick, and that there were most likely a lot of factors for some of the events in our relationship affecting me as strongly as they did.

My issues with my parent’s divorce, my breakup with Warren, my struggle to find social acceptance. All of those things leading to what I think was dependency.

I was not a strong person then. At least I don’t feel I was strong. Maybe in a way I was, because I was still surviving. Refusing to give up. Still trying to find something to cling to, my pieces of driftwood so I wouldn’t drown. All I needed to do was stay alive. Stay above water.

Anything. Anything. Just so I could live.

But there is still that injured animal portion of me who remembers.

There is a part of me that runs on instincts. A part of me realizes that this action has happened before. This action caused us pain. Pain is bad. This action is bad. Run. Avoid the pain. Self preservation. I want to survive. This action is counter productive to survival.

How sad, really.

There are five love languages, or ways to so another person you care. One of those languages is gifts. Some people see gift giving, or the receiving of tokens, as love. For me it is physical contact, words of affirmation, and acts of service.

But gifts?

I love giving things to others. Like giving Joey his wedding gift. Or getting the coffee drink for my mom. I love making others happy because their happiness becomes my own.

I can handle small gifts. Like the cross stitch from Bre, my Christmas gift from last year. The tokens from friends I can accept and often cherish.

The stuffed dragon my Mother Earth got me guards me every night. And I love it. I’m so protective of it because it came from her. It came as a token of love and it means so much to me.

But when Warren #2 tried to get me flowers, or any sort of token of affection I would have anxiety for days. I kept waiting. Waiting. And eventually I learned.

His gifts were different.

But not a good different. They still meant pain.

Warren #2’s gifts were a sign of guilt.

The only time I ever got flowers was when he had done something he knew would hurt me. It would take a few days more for him to feel guilty enough to tell me about it. About how he had cheated on me, or lied to me about something.

The gifts were a way to try to make it better.

But flowers mend nothing. And so gifts from a significant other were still a painful, unsafe experience. Gifts still meant hurt. They were just a precursor.

And I am left wondering how I am always the labeled the cheater in my relationships, when I am the only one who is loyal.

Me. The one who is open about being interested in polyamorous relationships is the one who is monogamous.

How is it that I feel I have nothing left in my being to give when my relationships reach their end, but I am called selfish and uncaring?

Those who read all of this must think that I am sitting at my computer, depressed. That I am dragging myself over the coals by revisiting these events. Tormenting myself with these thoughts.

But I’m not.

I feel calm. The discord that was present earlier is gone, and I am left thinking that it was good that I sat and wrote all of this out. It was good that I didn’t try to hide from these thoughts. It would have festered, floating in my mind, infecting my thoughts.

Warren #1 and I struggled for so long to overcome the hateful, hurtful things we said to each other. We have talked, countless times, about our past, and we still do sometimes, even now. We still apologize to each other.

We will never be able to take any of it back. But we can acknowledge the facts, and still respect each other. We can empathize with each other for where we were at the time.

I can’t do that with Joe. I don’t think Joe ever loved me, at least not in a healthy way. I don’t think we were ever really friends. If I saw him now I wouldn’t trust him.

I know now what I see in other people. I read energies better. I am also stronger as a person. I wouldn’t ignore the red flags that I danced on all those years ago. I wouldn’t brush away those feelings of foreboding.

And that’s why I respect my mom so much. By letting me go through all of that, she let me develop the skills I need to take care of myself.

I don’t look back at those situations with depression. I don’t pity myself and think, “Woe is me.”

I look back on them realistically.

They sucked. Oh my god, did all of that suck. And there’s no way that I want to go back and do it over again.

But I don’t want to change it either. I am who I am in large part because of those situations. Yeah, I have insecurities from it. But I’m aware of them, and I know that I need to work on them.

There was bad stuff, but I gained so much from falling down and scrapping my knees… and elbows… and palms… and I’m sure parts of my face… and like, all of my ego… It was a pretty nasty fall.

But it made me look at myself. It made me think about what was important to me.

I can’t say that I did much better with Warren #2. But I did better with Corey, and even better with Jarrett, and now Sir.

I am learning. Learning to love myself. To care for myself. I’m learning that not all people are bad like how Joe and Warren #2 were.

Warren #1 wasn’t. Jarrett wasn’t. And for all of the issues that he and I have had, he is still the strongest connection I have ever had with anyone.

And Sir. Totally a fantastic guy who was like me, who is like Ari. Lost and in need of finding himself. Which isn’t something I can help him with.

I’m happy with where I am. I’m content. It is Christmas, and while my Christmas day may be spent alone, I have a lot of amazing people in my life. Mostly because I made the choice to move to Florida.

A lot of positive came out of that darkness.

Life may seem pretty shitty sometimes, and there have been super dark moments for me. But I don’t regret them. I don’t want to change them. Because right now, inside my mind, I’m sitting under a brilliant star-studded night sky, looking up at a winter solstice moon.

I am in my quiet wood, calm and at peace with that aspect of my past. The tangles are gone, the tension eased.

Tomorrow will be another day where I wake up. Where I have people who love me in my life. Who love me regardless of what day it is. Regardless of if I am physically in their world, or miles away. Who love me regardless of if we give each other gifts or not, because love is something that you feel.

Merry Christmas. To all of you. <3