How Would You Use Today’s Word?

Today was not a great day. I've just realised that some friendships that I've been trying really hard for a really long time to make them work, just don't. They stopped working somewhere along the way and I, in my foolishness, I thought their intentions were good like mine and I thought they cared as much as I did. I've been blind. I didn't see that they had already made up their mind to not trust, to not care, with their hearts closed. Maybe I forced some things, I try too hard and I care too deeply and I have all this love inside of me, I just have to find the right people. Maybe we are just acquaintances now, and that's ok, maybe it's just a phase, stagnant or declining friendship, but whatever it is I hope I will find someday some people who will reciprocate.

I usually drink cocoa when I'm sad, but I'm not sad, my mind is clear and writings helps, it's the cycle of life, the making and the breaking, the seasons and the death of things.

I have been ripped from the life I was building for myself once again. The dreams, the places I was getting to know, the people I was meeting, the future I was walking towards are gone.

My own body is fighting me. And my brain often times does not work. Without my brain, and ideas and dreams, who am I?

For my mother always described me as a Tsunami. Try to stop a Tsunami, is how she'd describe me when I'd had an idea. These days I feel like little more than a puddle.

These days are also the days that I unexpectedly get to spend months with my family. I get to go to my brother's graduation. I'm not halfway across the continent.

These days I get to enjoy my mother's cooking. I get to tell her more about out who I've become. And I find out about her.

These days my father, who has never been good with words, and who never actually wanted children, offers to pay for my motorcycle license once I feel better. If it helps, he says, I'll gladly pay for it.

These days, when my legs shake and I can suddenly barely walk, my dad will grab me. Hold me up. And pretend to dance with me through the living room.

These days I will be laughing so hard I cry. Instead of bawling my eyes out.

I do that too, sometimes. Because it's. Not. Fair.

But these days, and these moments would've never happened were I not sick.

It'll get better. And even if it doesn't, I can still make a happy life for myself

Why did you give the last of your food to that poorly disguised mimic? You were finally at peace with letting go, but now this odd thing won’t leave you alone and is even turning itself into various items in an attempt to aid you.

Sometimes love isn't grand gestures or daily phone calls

Sometimes love is when my mother comes home from visiting family 7 hours away. Where I couldn't go. Because, because car ride are too much and I'm sick.

She comes home and tells me of my whole family crying about me when they were leaving. Wishing they could do something

Maybe love is when my cousin gifts me fabric and patterns because she knows I love sewing. Even if I can't right now.

Perhaps love is my aunt gifting me rolls of leather and upholstery fabric and 3 kilos of cherries for the same reason.

Love might be another cousin crying, wishing my mother to tell me she thinks about me every day but doesn't have the words.

These people, my blood, that never felt like family or close. That are so far away in the world and in life.

Perhaps life is in those small moments. And way more people care for you than you think. Even if you have no clue. And thought they'd abandoned you long ago.

Another good thing to come from this bummshit journey :)

People care, we are all just as awkward and lost for words. Give others the grace to be as awkward as you think yourself to be. They might surprise you

As a blue collar woman, I could love nothing more

My new favorite hobby is weaponizing my Mom Friend status against my male coworkers, of which there are a surplus because I am A Woman in The Trades. It's hilarious to me. I have been the Mom Friend my entire life and working construction means I've expanded my territory from Mom Friend to Site Mom by virtue of always knowing where things are and also having pain meds and general life advice if you need any. Do you know what happens when you are so aggressively mom-shaped despite not even being 30? All the young guys I work with have subconsciously put me in the mom category of their brains. Do you know what that means? I live and work in the American South. These guys have been raised both socially and culturally to Respect All Mom Figures and I've snuck myself into that classification like a cuckoo in the nest. Like, listen, I can take it and dish it out with the best of them and I'm "one of the guys" 97% of the time, but I have my limits. If they're being dicks to each other and I'm tired of it all I gotta do is look really disapproving and scold them with some classic Mom-isms and it will stop them dead in their tracks. It's a total short circuit of their brains. Not one of these guys has withstood my telling them "manners are free and it costs nothing to be kind." Sometimes I just give them a look and say "Really?" in that tone of voice all moms use when they're completely fed up with you and it makes them straighten up in 10 seconds flat, guaranteed. It's psychological warfare of the highest order. One time I jokingly pulled out a "I'm so disappointed in you" after hearing this barely 18 year old tell some story about being obnoxious in an online game voice chat and it was very obviously a joke but somehow it rattled him so much AT WORK that he later told me he stopped doing it. It's a perfect storm of factors and literally all of them are in my favor. Should I care more about not enforcing gender stereotypes, especially in such a male-dominated field? Probably, but let's be real, the power has completely gone to my head.

Why did you open that door

I'm not in love with him

Why can't I stop thinking.

About him, about what could've been, about what we have

I'm not in love with him. We were at 14. But not now.

Until we admitted that we both sometimes winder about what could've been. Whay could've been had we met later in life. What could have been were he not in a relationship now.

Those thoughts were pushed far away, every time. Now they are here. The lingering moments. The split second we hold on closer when we hug.

I broke his heart at 15. We weren't in good places and needed to grow and heal. We couldn't do that together. It took him four and a half years to get over. To stop wishing it were different. And still, he was there for me when we started talking again.

He was the one I texted when I woke up in the hospital. He was the one cheering me on when I made the smallest steps in my recovery. He made me realise what I was missing, in both my last relationships.

Even when I had no intention of being with him.

And now...

I don't know if we would work out. If we would be happy. Yes, it would be easy to fall into. We've known eachother so long. But there are so many conversations we never had. We didn't cross that line. We still haven't.

And we won't.

Because he is in a relationship. And he says he is happy and building a future with her.

If he's truly happy, then I am happy for him

The last thing i want to do is hurt him

And I'm not walking into heartbreak eyes wide open.

Besides, the relationship we do have is so dear to me. I love him as a person.

But I'm not in love with him. And at that I shall lay it to rest

So, dear hypothetical parallel world, take good care of us. He may always be my "what if"

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I was talking to a coworker recently and offhandedly said I wasn’t exactly competent at a lot of things. He reared back in obvious visceral disagreement that made me stop midsentence.

“What do you mean you’re not competent?”

“I guess I mean compared to the people I’m surrounded by? I’m not very handy, I guess.”

He looked baffled.

I tried to illuminate with a story. So at the sex shop we needed to vacuum every night, right? But one time after my days off I could tell the carpets hadn’t been vacuumed since I last saw them. I asked the other girls why not. It turned out that the screw that held the handle on the vacuum had been stripped and it wouldn’t stay in. Why was that down to a single screw? Bad design.

So any attempt to vacuum meant the handle just popped off when the screw jumped ship. I looked over the vacuum. I found a junk drawer. I found the biggest screw I could that still fit in the hole wrapped it in tape to bulk it out. Then I shoved/screwed it in place. Then I duct taped the opening so that fucker couldn’t pop out. Voila, a working handle.

The other girls were utterly delighted that I’d fixed the vacuum but I was painfully aware that my solution was neither elegant nor long term.

My coworker listened. Finally he said, “I think being competent just means you have the ability to learn a skill you lack, and you can do that. Your solution worked, and you were the one that tried to fix the problem.”

I digested that and agreed, but admitted any new skill learned would prompt me to be a huge baby about it.

i just feel like you guys should see this thread about foxes

I wish it was easier to talk about mobile phone addiction without sounding like a boomer