Recently I took a trip home to New Hampshire. Usually, trips home are filled with a mix of excitement and nostalgia. This time, I knew the trip would have a different meaning. I left New York for four days with hopes of gaining a little clarity on what exactly it means for me to be a twenty-five-year-old living in New York City in 2013. That sentence alone is a lot to digest.

Any part of that sentence is a lot to take in, actually.

Twenty-five.
New York City.
2013.

Holy cannoli.

When I begin to take other things into consideration, like relationships, friendships, big career moves, late nights, early mornings, paychecks, student loans, cable bills, electricity, physical health, mental health, and the fact that some days I forget to brush my hair and then I wonder if people will notice that I didn’t brush my hair or maybe they’ll think I have that cute endearing “messy hair” thing going on…Well it all begins to pile up.

That was a really long run on sentence, which is quite reflective of how I’ve been feeling lately.

And also, it’s definitely not the whole cute, endearing, “messy hair” thing.

People are PROBABLY thinking…Girlfriend needs to hit up Walgreens where a brush only costs like…$7.00.

It dawned on me recently that people speak often about creating a life of lasting happiness, yet they’ll endure an awful lot to stay unhappy, all with the fear that something better may never come along. It’s such a backward way of thinking, and I am so guilty of it. I am the biggest offender.

What would happen if we just cut ourselves a break?

During my trip home, I had a conversation about a recent event I had attended. Jokingly, I said the words: “I’m not going to lie, I looked FOXY!”

It was said in a playful tone, but the reaction I received was a mix of disbelief and judgment.

I defended my claim (because that night I was wearing a dress so elegant and expensive, I had to RENT it. It was admittedly safety pinned to my bra.) Rarely am I ever in a situation so fancy that I actually have to safety pin myself in. It was a proud moment.

And I WAS proud, I was proud that I had the self-esteem to admit that I looked and felt amazing. However, I was treated as if believing that for one night out of the ENTIRE year I looked show-stoppingly attractive somehow made me a terrible person.

What would happen if we just, you know, stopped pressuring ourselves to have our crap together ALL the time?  What if we took five minutes to admire the work that we’re doing, or the way that we look, or the hurdles we’ve overcome to get where we are now. Somewhere along the way we have been programed to believe that we are not enough. We must be more. We must be more attractive. We must be more successful. We must be more intelligent. We must be more ambitious.

What if we complimented ourselves? Try it. I feels really good. I’m a great writer. I rock at surprising people. I really like my big green eyes and the little ring of yellow in them. I LIKE that I’d rather wear combat boots or converse sneakers than stilettos most days. I’m witty. I have a lot to offer the world. Some doors in my life may be closing and others will be opening and that’s perfectly okay.

What if we accepted our flaws and our vices? I’m impatient. I’m hard on myself. I don’t know when to walk away.  I’m bad at math. I talk a lot. My laugh is obnoxiously loud. I’m clumsy. I perpetually spill things on myself, and on the floor, and on those around me. I bury myself in my work. I make mistakes. Sometimes I make things more difficult for myself. I forget to eat breakfast a lot.

What if we forgave ourselves? I mean, REALLY forgave ourselves. Let’s do it. Let’s forgive ourselves for the moments when it’s really hard to love somebody else. Let’s not expect ourselves to always be able to love perfectly.

Hell, let’s not expect ourselves to EVER love perfectly.


What are some of your answers to these what ifs? How might your life change if you decided to actively cut yourself a break? When you have a moment, think about a few of these things in relation to your own lives.

I hope, every day, you find time to be kind to yourself.

Whenever people ask me how New York City is treating me, I always feel like I have multiple personalities. My answer is usually somewhere between, “Well this week a homeless man told me he was a convicted felon and threatened to spit in my face” and “I stumbled upon a sale at Bloomingdales and now New York is the best city EVER.”

I guess you could say it gives me comfort knowing that in New York, I’m never alone. Literally. There are people everywhere. ALL.THE.TIME.

As you can see, my feelings about living in New York definitely fluctuate:

Because every time I accidentally walk over a subway grate in heels I look like this:

Or I have to walk through Times Square:

No REALLY though….Times Square:

And when I’m furniture shopping for my apartment:

When I realize I’m definitely not going to make it to the laundromat this week:

How I react whenever the comedy club people approach me on the street:

When I see people taking touristy pictures and I creep in the background:

When the train doors are closing as I’m going through the turnstile:

And when I’ve made it on the train before the doors have closed:

Better yet, when I make it to my destination without getting lost:

And then I pay my rent, which, in New York, is the same as a mortgage payment:

Most of the time, I’m just trying to juggle my work life and my personal life:

But by the start of a new week I’m ready to take New York City by storm:

And then this happens, and it all starts again:

Dr. Kelly Flanagan,

On behalf of all women, daughters, mothers, fathers, and future husbands, thank you for this post. I’ve written a letter back, for my father, all fathers, and all men who someday hope to become fathers. You may never read this, but I want you to know that your post helped me to press pause in my busy day to think about all of the ways my father has shaped who I’ve become.

Dear Daddio,

I’m all grown up now. At least, I like to think I am. I like to think that because I have a job with a fancy title, a New York apartment, and a savings account with ACTUAL savings in it, that I have it all figured out. Some days, I like to think that my sense of independence (inherited from my mother), combined with my competitive nature and occasional stubbornness (let’s be honest, those traits are all you), will be enough to carry me safely through each and every challenge.

Recently, I realized I don’t know the first thing about love.

And I called you.

Dad, I’m not the girl who hides beer bottles in the back of her closet anymore.

Trust me, I know I can’t get anything past you. You know I’m not okay, simply by the way I answer the phone.

Dad, I understand that you may have judged the people that I’ve dated (and rightfully so, a few of them were doozies), but thank you for never judging me.

I remember there was a time when I told you I wanted you to keep your nose out of my business. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean it one bit.

There was a time when I didn’t want your opinions on my high school relationship, which you later renamed, “The Thing That Wouldn’t Die.” I’ll never forget how horrified I was when you told me that I wasn’t allowed to hang out at his house until you met his parents. At sixteen, I couldn’t comprehend the urgency and necessity behind that demand. I was convinced you were simply trying to ruin my life.

Dad, thank you for treating me like precious cargo.

I didn’t want your opinions on the boy with the tattoos. He was running from the world, and I wanted to be the person he was running toward. He was a walking contradiction. Hot tempered, unless he was reading poetry. Smoking a cigarette, unless he was playing guitar. He disrespected authority, but I’ll never forget the fear in his eyes the first time your car screeched up the cliffs overlooking the beach where he and I sat, two hours past my curfew.

He called you sir. That’s when I knew it was over.

There was a time when I didn’t want to hear your thoughts on my long distance relationship in college. You watched, helplessly, as he stretched his arm across countries and oceans, and ripped your little girl’s naive quick-to-trust heart out. He poured salt in my chest and waited for me to shrivel up like a pathetic snail. Heartbreak has a funny way of teaching us life’s most important lessons. Struggle is never permanent.

You said, “I told you so.”
I slammed the refrigerator door, and begged you not to be right.
But to just be my dad.
“FOR LIKE, FIVE MINUTES!”

For the record, Dad, you WERE right.

And that doesn’t mean I won’t school you in a game of basketball every now and then, old man. You know better than anyone that I’ll kick my heels off and take you to town, even if I’m wearing a dress. What can I say, you raised a little girl that can hang with the guys. I still believe Larry Bird was the greatest passer of all time, 9 times out of 10 I’ll pick a sports bar over a fancy dinner, and if there’s a juke box, my money is going to a Bruce Springsteen classic.

All jokes aside, Daddio, when I’m trying to balance my love life and my personal life on a seesaw, and they’re both about to fall off, I know there is one man who will always even the scale.

Thank you for teaching me that it’s okay to be alone, but that I have no reason to ever FEEL alone.

That my self worth does not lie in anybody else’s approval.

That I am just as strong on my own as I am with a man in my life.

Thank you for still loving me, even when I called you a ‘Douchebag’.

Thank you for still loving me, even after I hung up on you.

Thank you for still loving me, even when I didn’t love myself as best as I could.

You’re still my hero, Daddy. Superman has nothing on you. I hope someday, should I ever have a son, that he’ll grow up to be half the man you are.

All my love,

Your Biggest Fan

I knew Boston and I were meant to be when, at my first Red Sox game with my father, a man wearing a “Playboy” shirt spilled a cup of ice cold Budweiser down my back. Actually, at the time I’m not sure I knew that’s why I would come to fall hopelessly in love with Boston, but I was seventeen, and thought my father believed me when I told him “I had never had a sip of beer”. It was sweltering at Fenway, and I had to sit on a spare shirt just to keep my legs from sticking to the chipping green seats, but I sat, content, watching baseball soaked in beer with my old man.

Sweet Caroline, good times never seemed so good.

Growing up, Mass General Hospital felt like a second home. When my brother was sick, my mom would pick me up from kindergarten, and we’d drive what felt like five hours into the center of Boston to visit him. When you’re little, everything takes five hours, even if it really only takes five minutes. I would bring an accumulation of smudged get well soon cards and the stickers I’d collected from the doctor’s visits to put on the end of his bed. The nurses at Mass General never minded the loud little girl who constantly plastered Little Mermaid stickers all over hospital property. In a world filled with masks, tubes, and beeping sounds, you would think a six year old would have felt out of place, but not in Boston.

It was like Disney Land, but with ice cream. And stickers.

My best friend and I took a “road trip” to Boston when we were 18.  I say “road trip” because we thought we were embarking on a day full of independent badassery, when really, we were only driving 40 minutes south. Meghan wanted to go for the ballet, and I wanted to go on an adventure. This would become a constant in our friendship. We filled the tank with gas, our stomachs with iced coffee, and hit the wide-open road in my white ford focus.

We thought we were SO cool, but an hour and half later we were SO lost. We found ourselves driving the wrong way up a one-way street, wrestling each other for the steering wheel, and trying to explain to my father through laughing fits over the phone that we had no clue where we were going.

We were not cool. Boston took us in anyway.

The line for Mike’s Pastry on a daily basis is always longer than the line to get into Best Buy on Black Friday, but I’ve never missed a stroll down the cobble stone walk ways in the Italian North End to scoff down a cannoli…or three. My family and I would wait in that impossibly long line just to have a taste of sweet fresh ricotta stuffed into crisp hand made shells. We always fought for the table by the window. Covered in powdered sugar and chocolate chips, you’d think we were hoarding desserts in preparation for a long winter hibernation.

“Cannolis, party of five?”

Nope. Just the three of us. We just REALLY love our cannolis.

There’s something about Boston. It always feels like home, even when it doesn’t. Even when the city tries to love you and you have no intention of loving it back, it will win you over. I had been home from my six-month journey to Australia for ONE day when my friends dragged me to Boston for an impromptu birthday celebration. I was jetlagged, exhausted, and sad to be home. The last place I wanted to be was in some crowded Harvard bar surrounded by jagged accents, forced into making small talk with strangers wearing backwards baseball hats.

They would pronounce my name “CAHHHLEY.”

Like a scene from Good Will Hunting, some guy would ask me out for coffee, and I’d suggest eating a bunch of caramels.

“…Because when you think about it, it’s as arbitrary as drinking coffee. “

But that’s Boston for you. It knows where you’ve been, and doesn’t care much where you’re going, because you’re here now. That’s what matters.  You’ll have a good time whether you like it or not. Every time I enter the city, I inhale a new kind of excitement, and when I leave I exhale relief.

Until next time, Boston.

There will be no shortage of journalists, and bloggers, and starving artists, and writers, and every day people over the upcoming weeks detailing the tragedy in Boston. I hope there is never a shortage of people willing to write when there is a desperate need for human compassion and understanding. I hope the amount of people brave enough to put pen to paper, or fingers to keys, or lips to a microphone with hopes of reaching one soul never lessens. There will be moments for us all over the next five, ten, twenty years, where evil finds us and threatens our sanctuary. There will be moments where stare at the television, tears in our eyes, praying to whatever deity we may or may not believe in that if we can just get through this one thing, we’ll stop cursing. We’ll stop smoking. We’ll stop lying. We’ll stop drinking whiskey. We never mean it, but it’s there. That deep down urge to halt everything just to have that moment of inner peace.

It is in our most desperate moments, we must remember the moments that mean the most to us. There is good in this world, and we must find it. We must remember the good moments. These are the moments that will carry us through the ash, and the rubble, and the fire. These moments, which have been camouflaged as commonplace, are the moments that we should remember most of all.

Because with spare shirts on hot sticky days, and stickers, and ice cream. With the cannolis, the laughter, and the adventure. With the spilled beer at baseball games, backwards caps, and finding somebody else who can quote Good Will Hunting, we really do have everything we need.

We have it all, and nobody can take that away from us.

Boston, thank you for the moments.

NOTE: My heart goes out to everyone affected by the Boston Marathon tragedy. I was fortunate, and all of my family and friends in the area were safe and unharmed. Thank you to everyone who emailed and checked in, I am truly grateful for you all. If you need somebody to talk to, as always, please feel free to reach out to me: carley {at} findingravity {dot} com

When I first started my now not-so-little blog a year ago, I envisioned myself as being the kind of blogger that my readers felt like they could know and be friends with in real life. I promise I don’t mean that to sound creepy, but every once in a while I like to get conversational on my blog.

Sort of like right now.

Two days after I started Findingravity, I created a custom email (carley@findingravity.com) with hopes that if people wanted to reach out to me, they would. Not for weird things, like, you know, selling ice over the Internet, or agreeing to marry in exchange for a Green Card.

I just wanted to develop my blog into a place where storytelling could happen freely. I wanted this to be a space where people would come to if they needed a break, comic relief, or to read about a quirky girl with a clumsy nature, and a general distaste for following the rules.

Mostly, I wanted my readers to know that I was a real person, just like them.

When I say readers, at the time that included my Mom, Dad, and my best friends, who I think only read my blog because I asked them to tell me if I sounded like an idiot. They always said no, and I still can’t decide if that makes them good or bad friends.

For the first month or two, I received a continual stream of automated emails that started like this:

-Dear Owner of Http://findingravity.com
My name is literally all over my blog. It’s in my post signature, it’s in my about section, and most importantly, it’s IN my email address. You can do better.

-Dear Middle Aged White Female
I mean, I work in social media marketing. I get that companies have demographics. BUT, isn’t leading with it a bit crass? No? Just me?

-Dear Caley…
What’s a Caley?

The questions and comments I received seemed so impersonal, most came from people who wanted to use the space on my blog to benefit their business. It was because of this that I decided not to accept offers for advertisements on my blog, even though YouTube and Range Rover now get to decide for me when their ads will run at the bottom of my posts.

Whatever, Range Rover. I don’t even own a car. I sold it to my ex boyfriend before I moved to New York City, and the transmission died three days later. SO CLEARLY, I was/am in no position to spend $70,000 on a car.

Blogging has expanded my human capacity for honesty in storytelling. Connecting with people on a personal level intrigues me, not because I’m sitting here plotting your demise, but because I think it’s pretty great that we’re all on this big planet, separately, but together. Over the last few months, I’ve received emails from people, REAL people, asking everything from new music recommendations, to travel suggestions, and even love advice.

First of all, I’m probably the last person I would go to for love advice, only because my advice usually becomes a ramble that sounds a lot like the way a five year old would give love advice. I would probably tell you:

“Love really big and don’t stop, even when it’s hard. Never stop loving, even if it’s a tree, or a piece of art, or a cup of tea, love it big…Because if you stop loving, you’ll probably understand things more, and that’s not fun.”

“Oh yeah, and if you can find a guy who doesn’t mind that you’ll share your heart but you won’t share your Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, hold onto him. And if you find a girl who shares her Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups with you, marry her, because she’s a better woman than I’ll ever be.”

I’ve seen a lot of bloggers create FAQ pages, but I don’t really think I’m cool enough to have a FAQ page. I’m not cool enough for a lot of things actually, like a kindle, or an iPhone that comes with Siri. If I had a FAQ page, it would probably just end up looking like this:

“What’s your name?” –Carley, not Caley

“What is your ethnicity” –White Female, not middle aged

“Will you marry me for a green card” -Not today, but good luck

Instead, I’m opening the floodgates, and giving permission for you to ask me anything you’d like, on the basis that these questions are appropriate. Given that I’ve already disclosed the time I blew my nose on my sleeve, the time I publicly made a gender fender bender, and the time I went to class with green hair, I’d say this leaves a lot to be discovered.

Want to know my biggest fear? (We all know it’s sharks but I also REALLY hate cockroaches, and those people in Times Square who work for the comedy clubs.)

Want to know what my favorite book is? (Catcher in the Rye. I wanted to BE Holden Caulfield when I was 15. I kind of still want to be him.)

Want to know my favorite food? (I’d probably sell your soul AND mine for a packet of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. If you don’t consider that a food, then I probably don’t understand you as a person.)

For the sake of trying to become more innovative with the way I tell stories, I’ll be answering these questions, and turning them into blog posts. Who knows, I might even vlog about a few of them.

So fire away, blogosphere. My truths are yours for the taking. Feel free to leave your questions in the comments, or shoot me an email. I’ll be giving a shout out to the person (and their blog, if they have one) who asked the question.


Bring it.

I woke up to this song this morning, in that lingering space between conscious and asleep, where one foot was still in whatever I was dreaming about, and the other foot was itching to get into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. You know that place? Where, if somebody were to ask you a life or death question that needed an immediate answer, you would probably mumble “Yellow”, or “Seventeen”, or “My purse is in the oven.”, and roll in the opposite direction.

I woke up to this song slowly.

It’s funny how some people hear the music, while others only hear the words.

I always hear words, and two or three lines into the song I realized I haven’t always been a beautiful girl.

Actually, there was a long period of time where I knew what the word beautiful meant, and I could only identify it in other girls. I saw lengthy legs, and belly buttons, and long wavy hair, and pearly white picket fence teeth, and wondered why I had those things in my possession, but they simply didn’t translate the same. I felt like I was born to be an artist, but I didn’t know how to use my paintbrush.

I didn’t wear them the same way.

They wore me.

When I was fifteen, I asked my mother why all of the other girls had boyfriends, and nobody had asked me out yet. I defined my self worth by how many other girls were holding the hands of boys who would only break their hearts. In high school, I had plenty of friends, and a notable social repertoire, but nobody knew that I secretly snuck into the library at lunch to bury myself in Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, and Ayn Rand.

When lunch was over, I returned to what I thought was mediocrity.

I only allowed myself to be that girl in between the lines, because when I was fifteen, those things weren’t beautiful to everybody. Instead, I tried to learn how to apply make up (and failed). I tried to understand what boys my age wanted (and failed). I tried to dress myself fashionably (and MY GOD, I failed).

Soon, I forgot what it was to even want to be beautiful. I figured it was something I was never meant to be, the same way I forgot that I wanted to be a ballerina when I was little, but never got around to taking ballet lessons. I also wanted to be a Ninja Turtle. Still trying to figure out a way to make that happen.

I just never got around to being beautiful.

Now, I am 25, and I feel beautiful. It has nothing to do with my clothes, or my friends, or my build. It actually has nothing to do with the way I look at all. It’s the comfort I take in my vulnerable moments, whether that means sharing a new part of myself with somebody, or facing the day bold and bare faced. Vulnerability is something I had to grow into, along with my legs, but once I learned how to appreciate both, I walked taller. Sometimes, I catch myself in vulnerable moments that long ago, I would have tried to hide. The minute you learn to appreciate vulnerability, you learn things about yourself that you never would have known.

It’s admitting to a stranger that after eight months, New York City doesn’t always feel like home.

It’s dropping my things, or losing my phone in a bar, or spilling coffee on my crotch, all of which happen regularly.

It’s not being afraid to say crotch on a public blog.

It’s getting overly (and embarrassingly) excited when somebody else appreciates E.E. Cummings the way that I do.

It’s an incandescent feeling, when you realize you’re perfectly content skipping the Sunday social scene because you’re just getting out of the shower at 3pm, making yourself a cup of tea, and sitting on the brownstone steps of your Brooklyn apartment with your journal.

It’s scrunched up noses, messy hair, no make up, and a pair of jeans I’ve had since I was 19 that I don’t have the heart to throw away, because some things, and people, and jeans, you’re just meant to hold on to.

It’s that sweater from the men’s section of H&M, and combat boots with worn out toes.

I guess deep down, it’s wanting to prove to some fifteen-year-old girl, that blue converse sneakers will always be an acceptable alternative to stilettos, writing will always be beautiful, and that reading will always be cool.

And also, I wouldn’t mind proving to my parents that “Ninja Turtle” would look amazing on my resume.

So there seems to be a few new knights sitting at the Findingravity round table. While being Freshly Pressed is certainly an amazing experience, mostly I’m just overwhelmed by the fact that there aren’t enough excited/dancing/do the dougie-ing GIFs on the internet for me to express how happy I am, and how welcome I want all of my new readers to feel.

I wanted to give a little background on this blog, because I know you all probably lead superhero lives outside of the blogosphere, and don’t have time to sift through the last year of Findingravity. Or maybe you do.

I started Findingravity just over a year ago, with hopes of finding a creative outlet. That’s a fancy way of saying I was really restless and bored, and I needed a starting point. I was working four jobs, nannying, coaching volleyball, substitute teaching, and working nights at a restaurant, but I was craving something more intellectual. I taught High School English for five months in Australia, and came home to America with hopes of landing a teaching job in my own country. To my dismay, no matter how many applications I sent out, nowhere seemed to be hiring. Over a teary conversation with my mom on the phone, told her that it felt like I had lost my sense of gravity. I was just floating through life with no direction. I’m pretty sure I also cried, blew my nose in my sleeve, and wasted a tank of gas sitting in the car. (Come at me environmentalists, I totally left my car running the whole time.)

It’s been quite the journey to get here:

I was Freshly Pressed once, and then twice. (Thank you, thank you!!)

My blog lead me to applying for and nailing my dream job in NYC. It also helped me nab my own column with LA Family Magazine.

I’ve talked about relationships and been super vulnerable to a bunch of strangers

I’ve dissected writers block and the creative process

I told you all about my older brother who passed away

And my fear of sharks

Findingravity hosted an anti-bullying campaign

And talked about my love of music here, here, and here

That should get you started!

To the right you’ll see a menu with a few different buttons, these link to all of my social media sites. You can shoot me an email, find me on Pinterest, check out my fly pics on Webstagram (Instagram), listen to some tunes from my 8tracks, and follow me on Twitter where opinions expressed are purely my own, and are most likely ridiculous, but you you’re already here, so I’m assuming you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Findingravity ALSO has a Facebook page. Click like (do it, I double dog dare you) and be up to date on all Findingravity related news. This includes any cute Kid President videos I find, FG giveaways, music I dig, and even blog posts by OTHER bloggers that I dig and want to share with the rest of the world.

This blog is a steady mix of humerous self deprecation (you DID read correctly when I said I blew my nose in my sleeve) and vulnerability. While I definitely toggle with and internal debate of what parts of my life I want to share openly with the world, I’m not afraid to talk about the battle wounds that brought me here.

If there is something in particular you’d like me to write about, or talk about, or if there is something you are itching to know, feel free to shoot me an email: carley (at) findingravity (dot) com.

Fist bumps all around, and I look forward to taking the next part of this adventure with you.

Let’s do this!

Let’s play a game called, “fiction or non-fiction.”

“We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time.” –Jack Kerouac

“Stay five more minutes.”
“I really should go, it’s already so late.”
“Just five more minutes. Just one more song.”

Of course, it was always just one more song.

And he lit one more cigarette and played me one more song, and one last time I hummed the words to “Trouble” by Ray Lamontagne while I clumsily flipped through pages of my coffee stained edition of “On The Road.”

It was always just one more song

It always IS just one more song, isn’t it?

One more song, one more glass of wine, one more stolen secret. Soon enough it was one more night spent alone on the cold hard wood floor of my bedroom, reading crumpled up notes and torn out pages from e.e. cummings, left on my windshield from previous days.

One more I told you so.

He never made eye contact with me in moments like those. Instead he only stared at the guitar pick dangling from my neck, the first one I ever picked up. He knew the story, but he always asked to hear it anyway, and I told it each time as if for the first time. And I knew all the words to his favorite songs by heart, but still, he played them anyway, each time as if for the fist time. And I knew he couldn’t stay, and we didn’t make sense, and it wouldn’t work out. Still, I said, “Hello, Darling.” I asked to hear about his dreams, and his family, and his favorite poems. I asked to hear about his past, knowing I would someday be part of it, and his future, knowing it wouldn’t include me, each time as if for the first tme.

Somebody once told me that if somebody else asks you not to hurt them, they’d be the first ones to hurt you, so I learned to walk away before they had the chance to turn me into the girl that people felt sorry for.

Poor thing. She never saw it coming.

My habits were formed with intention. If I wasn’t around to feel the heartbreak, then it never existed to begin with. I played peekaboo for so long that I started to believe if I couldn’t see it, the monster was not there. I parted ways with friends, and lovers, and ideas, and concepts, and beliefs.

How human it is to part ways with these versions of ourselves, knowing that only so many skeletons can fit in the storage closet before you have to find a new home for them.

I practiced leaving over and over, and not once did I ever wonder how it would feel to the person watching me walk away

“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.” – Jack Kerouac