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I felt myself calming down. My best friend always de-escalated me.
The only problem with anger is that it burns hot and fast. It doesn’t tend to burn long.
Places I knew were less stressful for me because I had a sense of how loud it was going to be, how crowded.
They are a constant reminder that we don’t choose our sexuality, because who in their right mind would choose to be attracted to men. They are completely worthless as partners.
“But remember, you can’t spell disappointment without men,”
For the first time in weeks, the electric hum of my anxiety softened. I could actually feel the almost-constant flow of cortisol that I’d been dealing with shut off. I could breathe again.
will however accept your invitation to be invited and never come. That sounds like an excellent time. I also enjoy not answering calls, not networking, never leaving the house, and hanging out with my dog.
“Do the TikTok lesbians know how to remove old wallpaper? Because that’s the kind of content I need at the moment.” “Oh, yeah. They know everything. It’s where I learned how to fold a fitted sheet.”
The weird thing was, she seemed to like me too, for some reason. I couldn’t imagine why. It filled me up. It made me smile when I thought back on it. Probably because I’d been feeling so flawed and rejected for the last few months and suddenly I wasn’t. At least to her.
didn’t usually watch new shows. I just rewatched the same ones over and over. I liked the familiarity, the predictability. If I rewatched a show, there were never any surprises. No emotional jump scares. I didn’t have to process new feelings or stress over cliffhangers. I knew where it was going and how it would end. Music too. When my anxiety is extra high, new music is too draining to process. I’d lean on old playlists. A lyrical safe space, the comfort of repetition. And my anxiety hadn’t been as high as it was right now in longer than I could remember.
Eating was intimate. It took me a long time to truly feel comfortable doing it in front of someone. It took me a long time to feel comfortable doing a lot of things in front of someone.
had to remember that not everyone overthought everything the way I did. Wouldn’t it be amazing to live like that? To not carry that burden around with you. To not feel constantly overwhelmed and overstimulated and second-guess every little thing.
“You never realize you’re living the best time of your life,” I said softly. “It happens and then it ends, and you only see it for what it was after.
He wasn’t just living what was happening. He was living what might happen. An infinite number of what-ifs, fueled by his anxiety, each one experienced like they were going on simultaneously, eating away at him, terrifying him, tormenting him. And once he started down that path, it was so hard to stop the progression. It was a self-perpetuating cycle of emotional destruction.
Being harmless to each other.
thinking that I was stressing her out would stress me out.
It was hard to feel anxious when the situation is so informal. And I was starting to realize it was hard to feel anxious around her in general. Most of the time when I did, it was in the lead-up to seeing her, not the actual spending time with her, and it was my own overthinking that got me there.
“I always think that when we’re quiet, we’re agreeing to be harmless to each other. That we’re just sharing the same space and letting each other exist exactly as we are, and neither of us would hurt or upset the other one.”
He was so sweet, and kind, and funny, and self-deprecating, and awkwardly lovable. I had this deep urge to take care of him and baby him and just love all over him.
It was weird to say, but she made me feel alone—the way I felt when I was by myself. Calm and unaffected. Like it was just us here and not a hundred other people. I liked being alone. With her.
if you’re with someone who doesn’t speak your language, you’ll spend a lifetime having to translate your soul?
I’d leave my comfort zone. I had to. Because that’s where she was. And for her I would go anywhere.
It was knowing that leaving was an option that gave me the courage to try.
This was the kind of date that never ended. It turned into breakfast the next morning and then dinner the following night and then finally after so many sleepovers you just move in with each other because being together is so organic that doing anything else would be ridiculous.
My life was a fairy tale.
“We’re all a little broken, Briana. We are a mosaic. We’re made up of all those we’ve met and all the things we’ve been through. There are parts of us that are colorful and dark and jagged and beautiful. And I love every piece of you. Even the ones you wish didn’t exist.”
There’s a special peace in sleeping next to someone you love. When you slip into the dark holding them and wake up and they’re still there and you know that everything that matters is just opening your eyes away.
But if you don’t deal with trauma, it just circles back around.
I didn’t like this part, where everyone was going to stare at us. But I very much liked the marrying-the-love-of-my-life part, so it was worth it.
It was just the two of us, alone together, showing up. Because that’s what love does. It shows up. And I’d never stop doing it. I kissed my bride.
