Let's Pretend This Will Work

by Maddie Dawson

“Don’t we all need our mommies?”

I am not loved. I am not loved. I am not even seen.

The WORST realization

I realize I’m now about to cry for real. I hate how every time I’m angry, it comes off as tearful. I so want to hold it together.

“Well, I just think that when that first love comes along, it brings with it a huge thunderclap of feeling—something so amazing that we get overwhelmed with it. And that it’s tempting to think that it’s the only love there ever could be in the world. But then it ends. Most of the time it ends. And then, a long time later, we look back and see that that whole experience of love was just a little kiddie pool we were paddling around in. And that actually a really huge ocean awaits us.”

Is it too much to ask that I be first in some guy’s heart?

I used to ask myself this question a lot in my 20s

The truth, as told by La Starla, is that the path you’re on may simply be a little detour that leads you to the real path you’re supposed to be on, where all your happiness is hanging out, waiting for you.

I took her hands in mine, because I understood something I didn’t know before—how grief and love can show up in the same moment and be quite comfortable together.