My Open Diary

You must miss me.

That’s why you are here.

Rest easy knowing that I miss you, too. I hope it doesn’t feel like this forever.

My mom died at the age of 51 from congestive heart failure on September 19, 2024. Twenty-five years of using hard drugs will do that to you.

My (then) 11-year-old brother was less than a month into his 6th grade year, just starting middle school. It was just the two of them.

Like every morning before, he got up and got himself dressed. On his way out the door, he went to kiss her goodbye and found her there in her bed.

I missed his first call. I heard it on the second ring of the second call. He was frantic. I knew as soon as he described the situation: he could not get her to wake up, she was cold and not breathing with her eyes open. I told him to walk onto the front porch.

I stayed on the line with him for the 45 minute drive to their house while my fiancé called an ambulance. My mom was long gone by the time the medics arrived. My brother has been in my care ever since. 

My easy, carefree life at the beach is gone. I had to move back to my one square mile, very red, conservative, & rural hometown. I didn’t want to completely turn my brother’s life upside down further by pulling him out of the group of kids that he has grown up with since kindergarten. Luckily, I work from home so it was feasible.

But my mom had mild hoarding tendencies, and no life insurance, and no will. Her funeral, burial, and headstone had to be financed. I couldn’t pay the mortgage and my rent at the beach apartment. So I packed all of my stuff & left the little home that I had made for five years into an already packed house.

Week after week, I have thrown away, organized, saved for family members, and donated so many things: furniture, clothes, media, mementos, and photos. It’s been a year and a half and I’m still not nearly complete.

I’ve paid a cleaning lady to help me organize once a month but it’s been such an overwhelming task. And the household income has cut in half since I initially moved in.

My fiancé left last August because the weight of her trauma was too much to bear with my new grief & responsibilities. I miss her so much as a person, but the reality is that she wasn’t a great partner. She did not do much to help with the house or my brother or any responsibilities beyond splitting bills and the occasional drop off.

About two weeks before she actually moved out, the Florida department of children and families called me. They asked if I would be willing to take custody of my 16 year-old cousin Jamie to keep him out of the system. They said they had exhausted all options and he was going to a children’s home unless they could find somewhere to put him. I agreed. This was the final straw that pushed her out the door. I don’t regret it. I think it was a blessing in disguise for both of us.

It’s been really hard to become an overnight parent to two neurodivergent teenage boys. And doing it alone has truly been a struggle.

But this is the path that I have chosen and I’m proud of my decisions and my heart. I am proud to watch them grow and to help influence them into being emotionally competent, kind, thoughtful young men. I do my best to lead with love and be the parent that I wish I would’ve had.

I still miss her & think of her almost every single day. We haven’t spoken since November & it was just an email. A hateful, poisonous email…

I don’t want to miss her. I wish that I didn’t. I wish that I had control over it. I keep practicing forgetting and I’m gonna keep at it until I don’t miss her anymore. I’m simultaneously mourning her & the life that we were supposed to have together accompanied by the deaths of my mother, my sister, & my freedom. It all gets so heavy sometimes…

She did me wrong. She hurt me. She left me in a lurch and even after, I offered kindness because I wanted to maintain her friendship. And she spit in my face.

How could I still miss someone who said so many horrible things to and about me?

Because I still miss my friend. I miss her opinions and takes. I miss her stories. I miss her dog. I miss her Spotify playlists. I miss cooking for her and knowing that she’s well. I miss her audiobooks & suggestions. I miss the lovers that we used to be together and how vulnerable and tender we were. I miss her trinkets and tiny thoughtful things that made me know her more. I miss her choosing me. I miss how it felt to be loved by her.

And at the same time, I was so unhappy in our relationship by the time she left.

I feel like all of the practice that I had romanticizing my life as a form of survival in my childhood bleeds into other aspects. The way that I had to ignore my mother’s dangerous tendencies turned into my ignoring and excusing poor behavior and treatment by partners who are supposed to love me.

I let things slide far too many times. And I need to accept that I deserve better. The universe won’t allow me to settle for less.

It’s nothing that I haven’t said before. But I know that you have a hard time remembering the good things. So I’ll say it again, in the permanence of the internet:

You changed so many of my multitudes for the better. You taught me new levels of grace and bravery. You opened my eyes to the pain of others that I could not see. I was waking up and you wiped the sleep from my eyes.

You were so gentle in the beginning. And I thought that you loved me so truly. I really felt safe for the first time, at the start. It was like real tangible magic when you loved me. I had never felt so beautiful or adored.

In fact, you were so magical, that I’ll never be able to settle for less. From the moment we connected, there was a deep knowing. A recognition. A spark. A changing that can never be undone. And now I don’t ever want anything less than just that.

It didn’t end up as the forever we had planned. We didn’t even make it to our fourth anniversary. But it was still something precious and life altering for me.

I don’t know why everything changed on that odd November morning. We had been split up for nearly 4 months and I genuinely thought that we were friends. I thought we were gonna live out the lesbian trope of being besties with your ex. I don’t know what you could possibly have been going through to try and build a wall between me and our friends. Or why you would ever steal from me. But I guess that’s not for me to know. Spilt milk, and all that jazz.

Even still, I don’t think you’re a bad person at all. I actually still believe that you’re an astounding person. You’re deeply wounded and you’re just trying to survive, like me. I don’t think you meant to hurt me as severely as you did. At least I hope you didn’t. You nearly succeeded at shaking the foundation of my security. But instead, you’ve given me a chance to prove my resilience to myself, yet again. (a reoccurring theme in my life, as you know)

So thank you countlessly for the lessons. Thank you countlessly for your time and your effort. Thank you countlessly for providing a love safe enough for me to be honest with the world about who I truly am.

And thank you for opening the closet door. It was dark in there.

PS. If you read this, please unblock me from Spotify; that one stung the worst 😭

I’ve told myself for years that I’m an eternal optimist, but I’m considering that it’s really just a constant need to make sense of all the pain.

From a tiny apple screen, my heart eats bite sized clips of war. Sitting in a rocking chair on a calm, cool Florida spring night with children & crickets laughing in the driveway. Simultaneously watching whole communities vanish in walls of flames under sprinkles of bombs.

“Kindness is just love with it’s work boots on.”

-The House Bunny

I don’t write as often when I’m happy.

I wish that I did.

But my year has been too full: of love, of travel, of laughter, and art, and good food, and music, and kids, and fair weather, and friendship, and pink skies and just so much goodness. I am so blessed to sit in the light of all this joy.

I wish I could share it all with you, but I like to catch my moments of delight in pictures. After all each one is worth at least 1000 words. ☺️

“The key is to be tough, not hard.”

my sun doesn’t shine and my moon doesn’t rise without you.

No twinkling lights splatter across the inky abyss, no meteors soar or stars shoot.

Your love makes me certain that there are bits of heaven tucked away in this hellscape.

It gives me hope and makes me sing louder, dance harder.

We melt together when we hold each other; the flesh surrounding us is warm and soft and tender, but it keeps us farther apart than we care to be.

Luckily our souls know no such bounds & our energies collide.

And I am safe.

I am full.

I am seen & elevated & made more by and for your love.

A Letter to Agnes DeMille by Martha Graham

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.

If you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium
and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is;
nor how valuable it is;
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
of the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction;
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes us more alive than the others.

i’m asunder.

do write even if i have nothing of value to say?

writing for write’s sake.

I miss you when we’re apart, sweet bloggy.

what shall I say to soothe the swelling in my soul to share?

do i describe the apathy required to exist in this current hateful world?

i’ll spare you.

I think that the entire reason I worked to get my degree was to fight my imposter syndrome.

I had to achieve a bachelors of fine arts from a state university before I could really say that I’m an artist.

Now I don’t believe that for other people… not in the least. Anyone can be an artist.

I guess the difference is that I know where I came from. “i’m polished white trash“ I just always joke. Maybe i’ve been recycled.

I think I needed that stupid piece of paper to take myself seriously. So now I can really say it. I am a trained artist!

But it feels strange; I wish it were more comfortable.

Maybe I’ll grow into it.

Is not the thought I want to have while wearing a menstrual cup and no panties.

Each clear, fine night the Moon glows her bright beaming reflection onto the surface of the Sea. Most nights the Sea gleams the light back and they quietly smile & whisper to one another.

But the Sea isn’t steady like the Moon. The Moon is older and wiser than the Sea. She already knows her importance and place on high. The unruly Sea tosses and turns, ever changing and feeling like she is too much for this world, too watery, too deep. This troubles the Moon.

Wanting to keep her companion shining too, the Moon takes a great, deep breath and inhales a passing Cloud; when she blows it out, the Sea swirls beneath her feeling dizzy and moved. As the Moon exhales the Cloud forms a dense, heavy, warm Fog.

And it is fate; the Fog loves the Sea. She recognizes herself in the Sea. And the Sea feels at peace and seen in the Fog. The Fog listens more closely and holds the Sea ever nearer; cheek to cheek they sway until the Sun rises and they can hold each other no more.

Each day the Sea waits for her lover to hold her ever near. And the Moon smiles.