This is 40, Dear A.
“I intend to continue to live a very big life. Even if I don’t exactly know what that life will look like, I know it will be one full of love, of belonging, and many, many adventures. I know this because I finally know me. And that is the life I plan on living.”
Coming Back Up for Air
“…the reason is because I didn’t know how to. All I knew how to do was feel—all the raw emotions, hoping that at one point it would stop or I would have someone (new) to help me forget the hurt and pain the last person caused me. I think it’s only now, in the absence of chaos and distractions, that I’ve been forced to face it: the grieving of a relationship. And processing all of it—the good, the bad, what you need to take away from it, and what you need to truly, finally, let that person go, for good.”
The “In-between” Space
“All that said, this is still hard. And it takes a toll as I am, “wired for belonging and connection,” to quote Brené Brown. I still long for connection and love, so I am grieving someone, or the “what could have been” with this person. And as small as that is in the grand scheme, it feels like the moment I needed to finally share some of the things that have been weighing on my heart lately. “
Dear you,
"Life and love isn’t always, or ever, that black and white. And, maybe, instead…there is gray. I have found myself living in the gray—the unexpected, recently, and I don’t know how else to really speak to it. Other than to say, that life is never what you expect it to be. But it is here. Now, and now, and now. And while I may not have the life I, or others, ever expected, it is a fully lived life."
Dear 34 year old me
"...I wish you could see what I do now. Your big, beautiful heart was broken, so many times, but you found the courage to let him go (finally), and, in hindsight, we can finally see just how beautiful it still was, all of those moments—all of those highs, even when it meant there would be lows. You loved. Your big heart fell in love, and that’s so fucking beautiful."
Diary: Heavy
"I don’t know what it is about this particular month, but I feel, and have felt, it’s been a particularly heavy, and just…hard month...
I feel that weight like a collective burden as I hold their words and feel what it is they must be going through right now. I don’t know why life has been so hard, for it is for so many right now, and I wanted to speak to it."
Dear you,
"I want to write to you, before I meet you, as I feel there’s so much I want you to know. About the girl before, the girl that was, before the woman you will one day meet. Tonight finally feels like a good time to at least start. Because tonight I just learned my last living grandparent, my grandma Mae, passed away today."
Diary: My Christmas Card
"I rarely post when I don’t have something positive to post about, or unless I’m in a really positive place. Tonight I’m sharing, despite all of that.
There are so many pretty posts, so many picture perfect Christmas cards, and I’m not knocking you if you shared one, but this is just not one of those. This picture is of me, after an entire Thanksgiving spent alone."
2019: The Year of Love, Love Lost, and Paris
"I cried because the man I fell in love with was proposing to someone else. I cried because he was, in every single way, exactly what I wanted—at least in that moment of my life. And even though I can look back on us and see just how much he didn’t deserve the love I had for him, it is irrelevant to the simple fact that I did...love him. I loved him in a way that I have never known before...connected with him in a way I had never known before. I cried because this hurt me—seeing this, as it should. But it was also necessary. I knew this was the moment I had to let it all go."
Diary: Paris
"One year ago today I was on a plane headed to Paris. I had just come back from another trip. One day separating such vastly different men and different experiences. To succinctly put it, one man I was hoping to fall in love with, and another who was falling in love with me."
Diary: Finding the words
"I know it’s been a long time. The words have been there, all along, and yet…either I haven’t known the strength, or had the right space to really share them here.
...there will always be excuses to not write, to not share, but the words were still there, wanting and waiting to be shared."
Diary: To be clear
"I’ve said it before, and it’s absolutely true: I have lived more in the past 5 years than in the previous eleven. Even though this wasn’t a turn I expected, I absolutely love the life I have created."