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.”
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: Still just me
"The truth is it’s so much scarier and harder when you face things like this alone. Yes, I am strong, and resilient, and capable, but…BUT, I am also human, and it’s okay to feel this way. To feel lost, and like you just want to fall apart, even when life says, no, you can’t. Because there is no pause, no person to lean on. It’s just me. And I honestly never expected for it to still just…be me."
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: Being sick and Paris
"I am still grateful, and I know that it will pass, but it’s also bringing up all the emotions that come with being sick and single. It feels like this photo to me: a solitary path where there’s no one else to help me get there—past it, through it—other than myself. ...It’s a painful reminder, especially when you’re brought to your lowest, that you are all you have."
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: Try, try, and fail again
"I was supposed to have a first date on Thursday...I was supposed to finally be meeting someone I was genuinely excited to meet, to get to know, to maybe even just allow myself to hope to find that spark, that excitement again...to have it all go away, again—just like that."
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."