Honestly, though — not to be rude — what did you expect? She was your friend with benefits, and when you enter a FWB situation, that usually sets the standard that there should be no strings attached (even if one party does develop feelings). You make it sound like your friendship with her is more for the benefits than the friendship. Also, isn’t that kind of a double standard? You’re allowed to get your rocks off to anything with a vagina, but she flirts and kisses a dude and she’s a slut? What’s wrong with being sexually liberated?

The there, their and they’re thing bugs me. So does the you’re and your thing. To and two, too. I can overlook those things, and I’m a lot more tolerant if I really like someone. But man, does it really grind my gears when people confuse then and than. I just don’t even understand how it’s possible to confuse them. I will end every conversation where that particular issue springs up. No warning, no explanation. Ugh.

Who is seeing Incubus at the Tacoma Dome in Tacoma, WA on September, 05, 2012? Who is going to see Incubus (as in, couldn’t care less about Linkin Park)? Who wants to go see Incubus in Tacoma?

You.. You’re the person I want to talk to. None of my friends like Incubus, but I’ve been a fan for thirteen years and I need a concert buddy. I’ve already purchased the tickets. Hot girl, awesome band, just sayin’… think about it. Lol.

What if we stopped waiting to get happy and just started being happy? Is that an “easier said than done” kind of scenario? I tend to take a “happiness is a choice” stance, but is it really? Seems hard to stand by when each day, lately, has felt like pulling teeth just to get through.

One day last week, I literally didn’t leave my bed and just cried off and on from 10AM until 7PM, with fifteen minute breaks here and there to regulate my breathing before another sad song popped up on the iPod and I was in hysterics again. I keep being told that this is a “grieving process” and that I could feel this way for months, but it almost seems unacceptable.

I went through so much and was forced through so much in the last year. I dated someone who wasn’t right for me, and wasn’t good to me. I held out, in hopes that eventually he’d come around and be what I needed him to be, and that was unfair, on my part. I knew he was wrong, I knew what I wanted was elsewhere, and still, I stayed. I never saw my friends, the one and only time I did in the course of one year, was guilt-tripped into staying home so “she wouldn’t have to be alone with the kids.” I missed my dad, I was angry at my mom. I was trying to figure things out with school. My business keeled over. I had no money. I sold my most meaningful possessions. I bit my tongue in the times when I should have spoken up and kept holding out for better days or hoping someone would come to my aide and help me take on the situations I was being put in, and that was probably my biggest mistake. I was so angry no one was there. I was waiting on a hero instead of being my own savior. I should have stood up for myself, and I should have done it sooner rather than later. I should have been more cautious about the people I was opening up to and trusted. There were individuals who shouldn’t even have been given the time of day.

It makes sense that I would be feeling all of these different emotions, and it’s a day-by-day ordeal, but I wish I could just move on and let go. I think the hardest part about that, is that my heart wasn’t broken by some dumb guy that didn’t treat me well, but that it was family who felt that they could take advantage of me like that; that it was family whose priorities were — and are — askew. I am literally heartbroken in ways I’ve never experienced before. This will scar. And I can promise you, that relationship is done for in its entirety.

The day I left, my brother said verbatim, “You are dead to me.” He said that five years ago, and I was naive enough to put it behind me. I was forgiving, I was trusting. Never again. For the first time in my life, I felt absolutely nothing for him. I’ve never been more content with someone else’s decision for me. I’m dead to you? That’s okay. That’s perfectly fine, actually. So long as your children are not being prioritized in your life, I want nothing to do with you anyway.

What’s not okay is the loss I feel in terms of those kids. It pains me that they have been abandoned by every leading female figure in their lives. That the “mother” currently running the show is not a mother but a dictator, and an abusive one at that. It hurts me to know that they aren’t getting what they absolutely deserve — a sense of safety, a sense of individuality, a childhood. They are being robbed of what should have been their God-given right — their ability to dream, to think for themselves, to be exactly who they are at any given moment of any given day. That, my friends, is such a shame.

I hope, with absolutely everything in me, that when they turn eighteen, there’ll be a knock on my door, so I can welcome them with open arms. They will never be knocked to their knees by their heads for not being able to answer a homework question. There will never be welts on their hips for not putting their glasses away. There will never, ever be a time where they will ever be called dumb, or stupid, or retarded, or fat, or told that they are not good enough. Because the only truth in that, is that people telling them that, are not good enough and not deserving enough to know otherwise. They are beautiful, intelligent, creative, funny, and loving. They deserve so much more than the bullshit cards they’ve been dealt, and it is a terrible indecency that’s been done to them and it is tragic that no one, no matter how many files are reported, has stepped in. And it is a travesty that one single individual could pull the wool over everyone else’s eyes so easily. But I have something others don’t have — testimony, and proof. Physical evidence. And I will never let her live it down, and the best part, is that I don’t have to do a thing — she’ll forever be a miserable, lying, cheating hag. She’ll forever know, in the back of her mind, that someone knows a truth that others don’t. It will eat her alive. She will go to her grave never once being contented by the life she lived.

If that’s not justice, I don’t know what is.

What I know is that I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be miserable any moment longer than is necessary. I don’t want to make excuses for why I’m not happy. I don’t ever want to be that person bringing others down because I’m not right with myself.

I’ve always been okay on my own. I’ve always known how to be alone. I need to get back to that. This town is lonely, I’m learning. You know, “People are strange when you’re a stranger.” But it doesn’t have to be. I need to find a way back to myself so that I can start accepting the weird inadequacies I feel here by not knowing a soul. When I’m right with me, I’m right with the world and friendships can be built on a smile.

So, instead of dwelling on what’s said and done, and done and gone, instead of working myself into a crying frenzy with an abundance of different emotions, I’ll recognize and pinpoint what I’m feeling, allow myself five minutes to sit in those emotions, and then I’ll put it to rest. When I’m sad, when I’m frustrated, when I’m angry, when I’m bored.. I’m challenging myself — right here, right now — to find a way to change that. To stop waiting to be happy, and just be. A run down by the river. A bike ride through town. A library card. A thrift store. A music shop. A photo tour. A house party. An unfamiliar face. All of that and more — that’s what’s going to fill the void.

I’m in repair and in for the long haul.

PS, I walked five miles to take that picture. :)