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today is a heartbreak anniversary for me

i've found comfort in writing letters i'll never send to you.

believe me, i've thought about sending them to you so many times.

i've even labored over which combination of words would wound you the most, what might penetrate the thick, stubborn armor you wear to shield yourself from anything remotely resembling culpability, the armor that deflects any word vaguely shaped like criticism and all the words you paint as criticism so that you may dismiss them more easily.

but really these letters will never be sent to you.

first, because i don't actually think you'd understand. i mean, you'd pretend you do, because you'd like to think you understand me, but you never did. you'd pretend you understand, of course, because that's what you think smart and mature and sensitive people (such as yourself, you surely think) do. you always did like to think of yourself as an empath. i'm sure you choose to misunderstand what the word really means, in favor of your idea of it. you were always very good at that. no, you wouldn't understand, you'd misunderstand on purpose so you could walk away unscathed like you always do. ever the self-protector. so what would be the point?

no, these letters are for me. for me to continue the arduous, tedious slog that is dissolving the resentment i feel for you.

i write them to remind myself that closure is one-sided and should not be conflated with "justice". to remind myself that closure will never come in the form of a moment where i deliver a perfect, surgical monologue that shatters you, or a message from you in my inbox pleading for forgiveness that i can gleefully dismiss.

there are no consolation prizes in heartbreak. you don't get a trophy for years committed to the cause. there's no scoreboard that highlights my relationship stats against yours. there are no points for all the unsung effort i put in, all the nights spent thinking about how to save us or whether you'd ever notice we needed saving. i mean, should a system exist, i'd have the better score and still lose.

because the ways in which you broke my heart make it harder for me to fall in love again. the ways in which you broke my heart make me feel more vulnerable, make me wonder how i let my judgment get so eroded, make me fear that maybe i should have settled for you and dealt with the unhappiness, that that was the best i could do. the ways in which you broke my heart have made me lament time lost on you and made me terrified of wasting my time on the wrong person. it made me more comfortable being lonely.

but the ways in which i broke your heart only made it easier for you. the ways in which i broke your heart were like missing a step. you feel a little lurch in your stomach that reminds you oops! ought to be more careful next time.

there is no credit given for time and effort served in a relationship. it doesn't fit on a resume, or in conversation unless i want to come across like a pompous blowhard. you certainly wouldn't bring it up on a first date with someone new. "i actually used to be terrible and selfish and short-tempered, but i'm much better now because she suffered through it for years and had the courtesy of telling me for the eleventy-fifth time when she finally couldn't stand it anymore..."

and that's what makes closure so painful for me. embarrassingly enough, i actually do want a tiny medal for what i went through. i want to be acknowledged for all the times i fell on my sword for you. my unhappiness was so quiet for so many years. all the screaming i did in my head never got released when i left. it got stuck there. it somehow had to become even quieter. i never got the chance to be properly, loudly, publicly mad at you. after all of it, i am still doing that part quietly by myself.

my resentment for you is like a balloon. for so long, i've tied it to a string and that string around my wrist, hoping one day i can pull the balloon close to my chest, stab it with something pointy and watch it burst open. but every day i waste waiting for that impossible outcome is just self-administered poison.

so instead, i've opted for the second best option: i've decided to write a list of all the things i regret doing for you and all the things i resent you for. a list of amends that will go un-amended. i write them here in the hope that the further i push them away from me, the closer i will get to freeing myself from pining for the closure i am denied. that instead of preserving that balloon for a day that won't come, i can slip the string from my wrist and let the balloon float far from me...

i regret that i will never hear you tell our friends that you fucked up. not just once, but at every possible opportunity.

i regret that i never told people how you made me feel until it was over.

i regret not doing so out of fear that it would make me sound mean and immature, and ruin any possibility of keeping the friends of yours that i made.

i resent you for being so blindsided by my unhappiness as if it magically appeared one day and was not, in fact, the result of years of your behavior.

i regret that i was so kind and tender to you when i was so entitled to rage and pain.

i regret that i protected you and your ego because it was tidier and nicer to tell people that we grew apart.

i regret that because of this charity, you've preserved so many friendships with my friends and family, when i'm a villain to yours.

i resent you for all the times you made me feel small because you were the small one and needed to feel bigger.

i resent you for making me feel like my needs were greedy and outlandish.

i resent you for treating my needs as optional whims that would disappear if repeatedly ignored.

i resent you for all the times you felt entitled to my body without making me feel loved. that you were too stupid to understand what my lack of enthusiasm meant, even when i explained it.

i resent you for all the times you spoke down to me in front of people i love and people that loved me.

i resent you for all the times you spoke down to me when no one was around just to keep the habit sharp.

i resent you for believing that, in spite of this, you respected me. how laughable you are.

i resent you for all the comments you made about my body and what you would change about it.

i resent you for repeatedly trying to hurt me on purpose.

i resent you for using me as a punching bag because it meant you could bounce back faster when you felt insecure.

i resent you for all the times you took me and the care i gave you for granted.

i resent you for making me feel like taking care of you was me making bad choices about how to spend my time instead of what it really was: an act of love.

i resent you for only showing me love when it was convenient for you.

i resent you for performing your love for me when we were in front of other people and dropping the act in private.

i resent you for not noticing the ways i tried to make you appreciate me.

i resent you for making me feel like i needed to be someone else, someone smaller and more like you.

i resent you for never ever putting me first, deliberately putting things i asked for at the bottom of your list.

i resent you for acting like all the things you did and liked were very, very important, and the things i did and liked were trivial.

i resent you for making me an angry person.

i resent you for calling me angry when i tried to defend myself.

i resent you for all the times you made me cry and all the times i hid my tears from you.

i resent you for never holding me or consoling me when i did cry in front of you. do you know how embarrassing and intimidating it is to be stared at when you cry in front of your lover?

i regret being too afraid of leaving you years earlier.

i resent you for preventing me from moving on because you didn't want me to.

i resent you for being too much of a coward to ever have an honest conversation with me.

i resent you for sending me mixed messages because it made you feel powerful to have me in squirming your grasp.

i resent you for making promises you always had every intention of breaking.

i resent you for gaslighting me about behavior you willingly participated in.

i resent you for treating me carelessly, like a stranger, when i was most vulnerable.

i resent you for crossing my boundaries because you wanted to.

i resent you for being so unbelievably gross, so tactless, so slimy.

i resent you for being entitled.

i resent you for some of my darkest days and for acting like you didn't know.

i resent you for being too stupid because it would feel really, really, really, really, reeeeeally good to send this to you.

too bad...

big, long exhale.

up, up, and away.

#breakup #heartbreak #closure #letter to you #love #writing #late night thoughts #late night thinking #healing #moving on

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Today, in pointless observations...

Illustrator. Illustration. Illustrious. Illusion (...Michael, tricks are for whores). Illuminating. Illegal. Illicit. Illegible....

I became acutely aware that in some fonts (many of them basic, everyday, sans serif fonts that you might encounter in professional-desk-life jobs), the capital i, I, is shorter than the lowercase L, l.

Of course, my friend, the serif used on my outward-facing communication apparatus and the sans serif used by your personal feed betray this observation. BUT if you're, say, typing into Google, crafting an email, you may see this! Avenir, Futura, Calibri... all DO THIS.

Doesn't it seem a little, ya know, RUDE to our friend capital I? That the lowercase l lumbers over it? You're not even a capital letter, l!

Friend, I am tenacious and easily distract-able. You better bet that I Googled this posthaste!

Well, sweet user Cai provided an answer on the web site graphicdesign.stackexchange.com (direct link here). Friend, if minuscule, barely-visible-to-the-naked-eye factoids about fonts make you squeamish, proceed with caution.

This is not unique to the I vs. l debate! In many fonts, capital letters are bound by the same height. ABCDEFGHI, etc., are all on equal footing, so to speak. Cai goes on to point out that ascenders (letters that ascend such as b, d, f, h, k, l, t) and descenders (letters that descend such as g, j, p, q, y) are not bound by the same height rules as capital letters. This is for increased readability and also design aesthetic.

Behold, our friend capital I being the short friend amongst these ascenders. I also found in this trial that, lowercase t is actually shorter than capital I!

Well, what a saga. I feel smarter and ready to face strangers at parties with this extremely fussy and likely yawn-inducing tidbit.

Hope you feel like this was a good use of your time!

#font #fonts #typeface #blog #new unread message #group chat #group text

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Hi there,

Just stopping by say you're exactly where you're supposed to be, doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing, and doing your very best at it.

[newunreadmessage]

You know what, come to think of it...

I'd like to talk about Olivia Rodrigo, too.

What a thrilling time to be enjoying pop music made by young women, to feel liberated by music that speaks for the teenage girl I was and speaks to the adult me now. What a wonderful time to be taking it Seriously, too. The feelings of young women are valid, not frivolous!!!

(An aside: Now would be a good time to tell you, friend, that I'm fond of exclamation points and use them often.)

So when you gonna tell her that we did that, too? She thinks it's special, but it's all reused That was our place, I found it first I made the jokes you tell to her when she's with you Do you get déjà vu when she’s with you?

LIKE WHAT?! The power of this! The honey in her voice, the venom in her words. The assuredness, the daring, the nerve! She's 18! What was I doing when I was 18? Repeat-listening to "We Belong Together" by Mariah Carey on my iPod mini?! I've dated myself here, but still.

This track follows the incredible debut "Driver's License", which I can only describe as The Ultimate High School Heartbreak Anthem. The dignity she gives to the newfound independence of driving. How that feeling, that she'd planned and hoped to share with a lover, is punctured by her lover moving on with someone new. The sense of longing that comes from an empty passenger seat and driving past places that carry the ghost of your ex. The small moments of a short life made massive and important and meaningful.

And I know we weren't perfect but I've never felt this way for no one And I just can't imagine how you could be so okay now that I'm gone Guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me 'Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street

What a treasure.

#olivia rodrigo #deja vu #drivers license #driver's license #group chat #group text #new unread message #blog

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You know what I've been getting into lately...

Taylor Swift? Hear me out, I know this is absurd. One of the most prolific pop artists of our generation and all time? And I've been "getting into her lately"? The audacity! I know.

I think that in a Major Visible Celebrity Feud, there is a tendency to choose sides, and my friend, I was #TeamKanye. It was just how I was at the time, and in Kanye I gravitated to the indubitably great music and the permission to be brash, bold, mad as hell, and confident-bordering-on-arrogant (in moderation, of course).

But in many ways, I wasn't ready to be open to Taylor. I mean, is there anything more terrifying than a teenage girl? What I mean by this is: teenage girls feel every emotion with their whole hearts; they're unafraid of leaping without looking; they're unapologetically thirsty for life-altering experiences be it heartbreak or all-consuming love. How scary is it to bask in feeling wounded? How scary is it to be so emotionally exposed? How scary is it to be messy and in-progress and to do it loudly and in public and on purpose?

I missed out on all that. Sometimes when you are given permission to be something, you become so paralyzed by that freedom that you are instead stunted by your own fear of it. And it is comparably easy to be angry and brash and smug, and much more difficult to be nakedly vulnerable, emotional, evolving, and sad.

And now Taylor is wiser, more lived-in, both as a person and as an artist. And so am I. (Look at me! Growth! *Jeb-Bush-please-clap.gif*)

Point is, what a beautiful, raw album Evermore is (I prefer it to Folklore). What a stirring collection of songs that span all angles of love, loss, missed connections, and reflections.

Sorry I'm late! But glad I made it!

#taylor swift #evermore #folklore #blog #group chat #group text #dear reader #tswift

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Hi, I thought of a show you might like!

Didn't you say you were looking for something to binge watch? I'm not sure about you but I feel a little true-crime'd out, and I think I want something that makes me feel something, you know?

Are we on the same page about this? Cool! If not, feel free to add it to your queue and forget. It'll be there, and I'll be there, when you get around to watching it and want to talk.

Here it is: Halt and Catch Fire.

Hey, isn't that the show that came after Mad Men and Breaking Bad that no one's ever heard of or watched? Yes, that's the one and bear with me, friend! This show is an under-watched darling and it wants you to please give it a chance.

Here's my pitch: On a micro-level, it's a show about technology and invention and innovation, but it's really about ambition, the fallibility of creators and their creations; clashing dreamers and pragmatists; and what we give and give up for our most daring projects. It's a sentimental show that treats engineers with the same tenderness as most media treat artists, and it's really beautiful. And dare I say, I prefer it to Mad Men!

One small warning, my friend: Season one tried to recreate Don Draper to middling success. Seasons two and onward instead ask: why aren't we focusing on the characters that are actually interesting... and then it does!

Find it on Netflix. 4 seasons. Be patient with the first.

I'm re-bingeing as well, so be patient as I spam you with as much restraint as I can muster.

#tv #television #halt and catch fire #hatc #tv recommendations #television review #amc #blog #group chat #group text

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You have one new, unread message.

It's from me! Hi, new friend.

This blog is the little blue dot in your inbox, the red circle with a number one on your Messages app, your group chat without the group and, I suppose, without the two-sided chat. I'm here to stop by, ask how your day went, share news and memes and tweets, gush about the latest something, pooh-pooh the next nothing, and ever so occasionally, tell you something about me.

I'd like to be your reliable constant and hopefully your friend. Plus, all mine think I'm a little "much".

So, cheers! Welcome aboard.

*Insert that famous quote from Casablanca about friendship here.*

#blog #unread #new friends #group text #hello #group chat