I hope that when you experience it, you feel a little of the tenderness that inspired it.

Full poem here.

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He chose you, so what?

I’ve probably had this conversation more times than I can count, across different friend circles, and somehow we always arrive at the same debate: is it really a “flex” to be the chosen friend?

The one men approach every time you go out. The one who gets the attention, the compliments, the lingering looks. The one who somehow becomes the visible one in the room, while the other friend is left feeling invisible, inferior, or—perhaps the word we all become uncomfortable naming—jealous.

And jealousy has a way of revealing itself later. Not necessarily through some dramatic confrontation, but in those little slick comments that seem harmless enough when they leave the mouth.

“You’re so beautiful. I wish I was as pretty as you.”

“I’m not conventionally pretty like you.”

“I don’t get approached when we go out. You always get approached.”

And maybe there is some truth to that. Maybe there really is a difference in how the world responds to women who fit the mold. We would be lying if we pretended otherwise. Pretty privilege is real. Colorism is real. The politics of desirability are real. Some women move through the world receiving a kind of softness that others are forced to live without.

And that can create the illusion of unfairness. Or is it an illusion?

Somewhere along the way, we started confusing being chosen with being valued.

And those are not the same thing.

I see it from both perspectives because I’ve lived on both sides of the coin. I’ve been approached, and I’ve also stood beside friends while men approached them instead. If you’re the “pretty friend”—and by pretty, I mean deemed attractive by societal and patriarchal standards—it can feel strange. People start placing assumptions on you before you’ve even said a word. Assuming you’re better than them, stuck up, privileged, or somehow unaware of what it feels like to be insecure.

When you’re just existing. Being yourself. Carrying your own insecurities like everyone else.

Yes, bad bitches get insecure too.

There is something disorienting about being perceived before you are known. To have people assign a personality to your face, a character to your body, a life to your beauty. As though attractiveness somehow makes you immune to loneliness, rejection, insecurity, or the unspoken wars you fight inside yourself.

And when those assumptions come from a friend, it hurts. Or, honestly, really irritates you because you thought they knew you better than that. I’ve never been the type to compare myself against my friends, but I know comparison has become both normalized and paradoxically taboo to speak about aloud. We all know it exists, yet we rarely admit how deeply it can shape the way we see one another.

I know I’ve probably written this in another article, but… comparison is the thief of joy.

On the flip side, when you’re the friend who isn’t chosen, you can start to feel small. Less than. Invisible. You start wondering: Why am I not good enough? What does my friend have that I don’t? And that isn’t a great feeling either. It follows you into rooms like a shadow cast against dim light, echoing even after the attention has moved somewhere else.

Because it is difficult to watch someone receive what you secretly wish someone would give you and not wonder what that says about you. Or to sit with the unnerving question of what that attention represents to you, and why some part of you feels like you need it in the first place.

That is where the wound begins.

Now there’s a rift within the fabric of the friendship, because jealousy has nowhere to go but into the spaces between you, creating a secret competition in the mind of one friend while the other remains completely oblivious.

And perhaps that is one of the saddest things about the way women are taught to experience beauty. We are encouraged to see one another through the eyes of an audience, measuring our worth through external validation shaped by the male gaze.

Who was noticed?

Who was approached?

Who got the free drink?

Who got asked for her number?

Who did he think was beautiful?

Who did he choose?

We turn these moments into evidence. Evidence that one woman is winning and another is losing, when really, we are all standing inside the same system that taught us to believe male attention is a prize.

Unpopular opinion: being “the chosen one” isn’t the prize you think it is.

Pretty privilege has its perks, but being deemed “chosen” by these low-vibrational buffoons isn’t one of them.

Because what exactly have you won?

A man’s attention?

His temporary fascination?

The opportunity to be desired by someone who may not even know how to see you beyond your face, your body, or what possessing you might say about him?

Which brings me to my next point: men who are only nice to and “respect”—and I use that word loosely—women they’re physically attracted to do not respect women!

They respect what they want from them.

It’s performative.

Nine times out of ten, it’s about getting some pussy, stroking his ego, or simply proving to himself and his friends that he could get her. Because God forbid a man lets a woman mind her business without needing to insert himself into her existence.

And eventually, once he gets what he wanted, the “nice guy” act starts to slip. The attention fades. The effort disappears. The admiration becomes conditional. And slowly, you begin to see the person underneath the performance.

*and, scene*

The irony?

They don’t necessarily treat the “baddies” well either.

They fumble the woman they spent so much time dreaming about because they were better at wanting her than actually knowing what to do with her once they get her. Or worse, they stop paying attention to her beyond what she does for their ego and how she makes them feel.

She was the fantasy. Not the woman.

And I think that distinction matters because if your kindness disappears the moment a woman is no longer useful to your desire, then it was never kindness. If your respect only exists when you want access to her presence, her body, her aura, then it was never respect. If you can treat one woman like a goddess because you want her, while treating another like she is invisible because you don’t, then what you have demonstrated is not an ability to honor women.

You have demonstrated an ability to perform for women you desire.

There is a difference.

And this is where I want us to be more honest with one another, too.

I don’t think being the chosen friend is worth the fallout over a good friendship, simply because a man decided which one of you he wanted to talk to that night at the bar. It isn’t worth creating a private competition or crossing that line into frenemy territory, nor worth second guessing yourself.

I don’t want another woman’s beauty to become evidence of my inadequacy, and I don’t want my beauty to become evidence of hers.

Because if you don’t respect the humanity of women as a whole, you don’t respect women. Not just the women who fit neatly into the mold, but the women with cute bellies and imperfections, crooked teeth and darker complexions, short-haired queens and Africana features, coils that sometimes nap, tall Amazonians, our seasoned aunties, disabled baddies, unconventional beauties, alternative divas, awkward babes, and even the pretty princesses.

All of us.

The women who are immediately noticed and the women who are often overlooked.

The women who are desired loudly and the women who have spent years wondering what it would feel like to be desired at all.

The woman who walks into the room and turns every head.

The woman who walks into the same room and wonders if anyone saw her.

Both deserve to feel human there because being chosen by a man is not a measure of your worth. And another woman being chosen before you is not proof that she has more worth than you. We have to stop allowing male attention to become the tape measure we use against one another.

Because men will choose.

And men will unchoose.

Beauty standards will change. Desire will move. The room will shift. Someone else will become the newest face of whatever the world has decided is beautiful, and if our sense of worth moves with it, then what exactly did we ever choose for ourselves?

Maybe the real flex isn’t being “the chosen friend.”

Maybe it’s being able to sit beside another woman while she is being chosen and never once mistake her attention for your lack of self-worth.

Maybe it’s being approached by a man and knowing that his desire does not make you more beautiful than the woman standing beside you.

Maybe it’s looking at the woman who wasn’t approached and never allowing her to feel like she disappeared simply because someone else was noticed.

I don’t want us fighting over who gets chosen. I want us to stop auditioning for a crown that was never ours to fight over.

You get a crown! You get a crown! You get a crown!

I want to be the woman who looks at another woman and sees a sister, not a rival for a man’s attention. The woman who understands that there was never a hierarchy in our humanity—only one we were taught to believe in.

I have never been good at pretending that I don’t care. If I miss you, then I miss you openly, because my heart has never been interested in acting like it doesn’t. If your name crosses the quiet landscape of my mind, I still want to build a bridge between where I am and where you are. If the possibility of hearing from you brightens my day, I cannot dim the light inside me just to make it easier for others to understand. And If I’m waiting, then I’m waiting. I know the risk of leaving a chair empty for someone or something who may never return, but I would rather hold space for that hopeful possibility than fill every silence with something meaningless.

The world keeps telling me these things should be hidden, tucked underneath an invisible cloak wrapped tightly around my being, stitched from pride and self-preservation. Somewhere along the way, longing became something to conceal, honesty became something to ration, and affection molded itself into something you were only allowed to reveal once someone else had gone first. We celebrate nonchalance like its emotional intelligence. We wear it like a badge of honor, praise people who take too fucking long to answer like tomorrow is already promised, loving in the shadows, never revealing too much. When did the act of caring become a humiliation ritual? When did it become embarrassing to yearn with your whole chest?

I am both the act of love and the embodiment of love itself.

One of my favorite mantras is: “I am loving, I am loved, I am love.” So, I don’t think I ever learned how to be embarrassed by the expression of loving deeply, fully. Even in the ruins of my greatest heartbreak, I could never bring myself to look at the pieces of myself I gave away and call them foolish. I refuse to believe that a heart willing to open is something to apologize for. We romanticize distance, applaud emotional restraint, and mistake detachment for depth. And since when did we collectively decide that whoever cared the least had somehow mastered love the most? That’s bullshit.

What kind of world have we built if the highest form of composure is convincing everyone we could leave at any moment? I have spent enough time in that world to know I don’t belong there. Because I am not nonchalant. I am chalant. And maybe chalant is a forgotten virtue. Maybe somewhere in history we buried it beside sincerity, convinced ourselves that surviving was more important than feeling. But I have never wanted to survive love. I have only ever wanted to live inside it.

Until someone can meet me where I have always existed—fully, openly, without fear of being moved—I will stay waiting. Because I would rather wait for a love that knows how to hold me than accept one that only knows how to visit.

People speak about waiting as though it is passive, as though it is a bus stop you unwillingly occupy while life continues moving around you. But waiting has never felt still to me. Waiting is participation. It is making coffee for one while your hands instinctively reach for a second mug. It is slowing your pace because somewhere inside you, your body still believes someone will catch up. It is leaving the porch light on, not because you are certain someone is coming home, but because hope has never learned how to lock the front door. Hope is always the last one awake in the house. Even after everyone else has gone to bed, it still checks the window one more time.

Waiting changes the architecture of your life. It builds rooms for people who may never arrive. It teaches your eyes to mistake strangers for familiar footsteps. It convinces your hand to reach for a phone that hasn’t vibrated until your pocket remembers the shape of anticipation better than your fingers remember rest. And is that so wrong? People think waiting lives inside clocks, but it doesn’t. It lives in muscle memory. It lives in the stories you instinctively save because there is someone you imagined telling them to. It lives in the extra place setting your hands almost reach for before your mind remembers you’re eating alone. There are people whose absence has lasted longer than their presence ever did, and somehow they still occupy more square footage inside me than those who never left. Every person I have loved has built another room inside the house of me. Some stayed long enough to decorate it. Some left before the paint dried. Somehow I still find myself building.

Maybe that is the slow ache of waiting—the way it asks the heart to hold what the hands cannot. Not because it is empty, but because it is unbearably full. Full of conversations that never happened. Full of embraces suspended in another timeline. Full of words rehearsed in the quiet that never found a home. A tether between what was and what’s still to come. And waiting isn’t always just about another person. Sometimes we wait for reciprocity. For recognition. For someone to choose us with the same certainty we choose them. Sometimes we wait for permission to stop hoping, only to realize hope has roots that grow deeper than our own resolve

Chalant has weight. And when it has nowhere to go, it doesn’t dissolve into the ethers. It settles beneath the ribs like rainwater caught inside the curve of a leaf after a storm. It fills the lungs until even breathing feels like remembering. The moon has never apologized for moving oceans and the sun has never said “I’m sorry” after shining bright and alone all day. Yet, somehow we are expected to apologize for moving toward one another. We are told not to revolve around anyone, as though gravity itself were something shameful. But I have never known gravity to beg. It simply holds. Maybe love, and our ability to care deeply about someone or something outside of yourselves was always meant to work in the same way. Perhaps that is why nonchalance has become so desirable. Not because people care less, but because they are afraid of discovering just how much they do.

Nonchalance isn’t confidence. It’s insurance.

If I pretend you never mattered, then I never have to admit your absence rearranged me. If I answer late enough, maybe I can convince myself I wasn’t hoping to hear from you at all. If I never reach out first, I never have to know whether you would’ve reached for me return. We negotiate intimacy like a business transaction, measuring every confession against the possibility of rejection, as though vulnerability is poor strategy and whoever cares less somehow wins. But love was never meant to be negotiated. Cathedrals were not built by people afraid of devotion. They were built by hands that understood some things are worth spending a lifetime reaching toward, even if they never live to see the finished ceiling.

If our lives crossed, I want to believe it meant something. Maybe only for a season or only for a chapter. Maybe only long enough to leave fingerprints on each other’s souls before life turned the page. I refuse to dishonor that by pretending I was untouched. There are people I carry with me the way museums carry fossils. They preserve the shape of something long after it has stopped breathing because what remains is still worthy of reverence. I don’t think love disappears when people do. I think it becomes part of the exhibit. We return to it quietly, forehead pressed against the glass, remembering the shape of something that once made us feel alive.

People often say they’re protecting their peace, but I wonder how often we’re really protecting our fear. Fear asks us to mute our excitement, soften our tenderness, and swallow our longing before it reaches the surface. It tells us that if we make ourselves appear untouched, rejection will lessen the wound. But my feelings have always roared loudly inside me like a tigress on the prowl. It has always entered like light through stained glass—gentle enough to warm me, powerful enough to color everything it touches. It has always rearranged the furniture inside my soul before I even realized someone had walked through the door.

So here I am, waiting patiently.

Not because waiting guarantees arrival, and not because every story circles back to the people we hoped it would, but because waiting reminds me that my heart is still capable of making room and welcoming new places, people, and things. There’s a delicate balance to it, but I’d rather become a warm home with multiple guest rooms than a fortress no one ever dares to enter. Keep your nonchalance; a policy against disappointment. Against grief. Against ever having to admit that another human being had the power to move the furniture inside your own soul.

I have never wanted to be insured against love. If caring leaves me aching, then at least I know I lived honestly. If waiting leaves the porch light burning a little longer than it should, then let it burn.

Ecru hibiscus bellows beneath the weight of mid-July

Cancer season unbuttons the oldest wound—
my mother’s silence
stitched beneath my tongue

The rich red wine center of the bloom
holds sweetness
long enough
to kiss the unforgiving sun

Inside me,
sweat gathers
like an underground stream
searching for daylight

You stand between me and the heat,
your shadow
the gentlest lie I’ve ever believed

How cruel
that a body can feel like shade
while carrying the very heat
that withers me

Love and betrayal
should never share the same breath,
yet here they bloom together
among the rose-mallow,

Their petals open
like hungry mouths
made only for summer’s appetite

Perhaps we were always
just a July thing—

Too bright to keep,
too beautiful to survive this evitable inferno

When autumn asks
what became of us,

I will say

The hibiscus knew first:

Some flowers
are made only
for one unbearable season

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I am tired in places rest does not touch,
A tiresome soul that has carried so much

There is a rage inside me—burning, unfree—
A fire, I learned was not safe to be

And there is a sadness, as wide as the sea,
Deep blue waters living in me

I stand between them, fire and tide,
Two ancient storms I cannot divide

The fire says—speak, the fire says—rise,
The fire says—don’t you dare soften your eyes

And then the water replies—

Grieve what you lost, and all that you knew,
Mourn what was taken, lay rest to all that never grew

I listen…and listen…until breaking in two,
For both of them spoke, and both hold the truth

I am not whole, I am not still—
I am the meeting place of pain and strong will

Not rest, nor sleep can quiet this sound—
This life’s divided between what’s lost and what’s found

Living in between all that should have been…
And all that I have learned to survive within

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I’m aware this may ruffle some feathers—but some conversations are long overdue.

Let’s talk about it.

The hetero bedazzled bandits are multiplying like Cash Money Records “taking over for the ‘99 and the 2000.” At this point, I’m convinced there’s a dissertation waiting to be written on the relationship between heterosexual masculinity, excessive rhinestones, and the ever-evolving performance of gender. Somebody in sociology, psychology, or cultural studies needs to get on that.

And let me be clear: I do not subscribe to the tired notion that bedazzled jeans, rhinestone hoodies, or embellished streetwear signal homosexuality. That analysis is both intellectually lazy and painfully juvenile. My critique is far less dramatic: it’s simply a fast-fashion aesthetic that has run stale.

Heterosexual men wearing bedazzled clothing is hardly a cultural revelation. Rhinestones, pearls, embellishments, and ornamental menswear have existed for decades. The line between men’s and women’s fashion has never been as rigid as people imagine, and history offers no shortage of examples of male opulence, extravagance, and adornment. What has changed is the extent to which contemporary fashion—through luxury brands, streetwear, celebrity stylists, and social media—has reframed ornamentation as a gender-neutral form of self-expression, making it more socially acceptable for heterosexual men to embrace sparkle without having their sexuality questioned.

And in theory, I’m all for it. My issue is not with the rhinestones.

My issue is with the hypocrisy.

Many of the same heterosexual men proudly participating in this aesthetic expansion remain deeply invested in policing every other challenge to traditional gender norms. These are the same men who still recoil at anything they perceive as feminine, who weaponize phrases like “that’s gay” with a mixture of contempt and insecurity, and who scrutinize the mannerisms of gay men as though masculinity were a fragile social contract constantly under threat. What fascinates me is the selective nature of their progressivism. Gender fluidity is embraced when it’s presented in the form of a rhinestone jacket, a pearl necklace, or a designer glitter boot. Yet that same openness often disappears when conversations shift to women’s autonomy, domestic labor, emotional expression, or the redistribution of gendered expectations.

These are the same men who still believe a woman’s place is in the kitchen while refusing to recognize cooking and cleaning as basic life skills. The same men who tell women to stay in their place, soften their voices, and shrink themselves to accommodate male comfort. The same men who bristle when a woman occupies traditionally masculine spaces, performs masculine-coded roles, or exhibits the very assertiveness routinely celebrated in manhood.

So, forgive me if I struggle to view the rhinestones as evidence of some grand ideological evolution. If gender norms are truly being dismantled, then the work cannot begin and end with a sequined matching set. Otherwise, we’re not witnessing liberation. We’re witnessing aesthetic experimentation masquerading as social progress.

And if a man can wear a rhinestone jacket without his masculinity being questioned, perhaps he can survive being called “Cinderfella”. Don’t shoot the messenger.

You are wearing glitter jeans, but you hate women, and hate gay people/men? I find it odd that while men’s fashion seems to be progressing past harmful rhetoric suggesting that more feminine-leaning attire is emasculating, the mindsets and harmful ideologies towards women and queer people are only getting worse. The “straight” men who can push past societal gender norms when getting dressed hates the communities that influenced it?

We call that the lazy patriarch.

Fashion can be radical, but there is very little happening here that women and queer people haven’t already done let’s be real. What fascinates me is how some men can embrace femininity when it’s packaged as a trend, yet remain deeply uncomfortable with it as a principle. How are you policing queer men, dictating how women should dress and behave, yet unable to perform the very forms of masculinity you claim to defend? Can’t change a tire, assemble a bookshelf, or hop on the grill. The contradiction is striking. Meanwhile, every men’s section looks increasingly identical—a sea of rhinestones, embellished denim, and trend-chasing uniformity masquerading as individuality.

And because heterosexual men, in particular, have historically had so much to say about how women should look, think, speak, and move through the world, I find the performance especially revealing. Some wear confidence like a costume, adopting the aesthetics of self-assurance while masking insecurity or simply following the latest fashion script. Hypocrisy has never been alpha behavior. I don’t care what that male-centered toxic masculine podcast said.

You want to be the loudest one in the room but the saxophones are even louder. Playing a tune that’s actually scaring the hoes.

Mr. Glizzard of Oz please fall back. Your outfit is so blinding it actually hurts. In a room full of rhinestones, embellished denim, oversized bell-bottoms, and enough sparkle to blind a small village, I can’t help but wonder when subtlety became unfashionable. Contrary to popular belief, many women still appreciate the classics: a crisp button-down, tailored slacks, dark-wash denim, a well-fitted cardigan, a quality watch. The quarter-zip era deserved a much longer run if you ask me. A little bling has never hurt anybody, but why are some of y’all dressed like the final boss of a disco ball convention?

What intrigues me is how quickly individuality becomes conformity. The moment a trend gains traction, entire men’s sections become replicas of one another—same rhinestones, same silhouettes, same aesthetic formula. For a demographic that often prides itself on leadership, dominance, and independent thinking, the enthusiasm for fashion herd mentality is interesting. At some point, the excessive sparkle stops reading as self-expression and starts reading as performance. And I have to ask: what a peculiar way to assert authority—lighting up like the star on top of a Christmas tree.

I recently watched an Instagram reel of a man going viral after showing his date outfit on FaceTime. One glance at the rhinestone-covered ensemble and the woman canceled the date. Naturally, he went on a tangent about how people shouldn’t judge others based on their clothing choices. But let’s be clear: she wasn’t judging all outfits—she was judging that outfit. Full transparency, I would’ve canceled too. Not because bedazzled clothing is a moral failing, but because fashion is a form of communication, and that fit was delivering a message I wasn’t interested in receiving. Compatibility matters, and sometimes the rhinestones tell the story before the first date ever gets the chance.

Bro, you’re out here dressed like Michael Jackson and surprised she told you to beat it.

They say never judge a book by its cover, but sometimes you can read a book by everything but the title—by the spine you touch, the texture of the paper, the boldness or restraint in its typography, the way visuals spill off the page before you even commit to the first sentence. And this bedazzled cover is telling me exactly what I need to know about a certain archetype of man.

The “I’m the prize” type. The man who demands respect but struggles to extend it. The loud, hyper-performative charisma meant to mask insecurity rather than resolve it. The one who wants to appear like the leader of the group, the one who wants you to believe he spends money, gets attention, “gets b******,” and moves through the world untouched by doubt. Mr. Performative. Mr. DoWhatISayNoQuestionsAsked. And underneath all the rhinestones, not much of a personal style—just a carefully assembled illusion of one even though everyone is playing the same hand.

Not here to judge—well, maybe a little—but mostly just pointing out the contradiction: the fashion has evolved, the rhinestones have multiplied, but the misogyny and homophobia have remained largely unchanged. The aesthetics shifted; the ideology didn’t.

I already know some men will be up in arms about it. I honestly don’t give a fuck.

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Growing up on Disney made me impressionable. Credulous, even. I was enchanted by fairytale endings cloaked in fairy dust and crystallized in glass slippers, by towering castles, slain dragons, and the comforting mythology that goodness was always rewarded with love. But the most intoxicating fantasy was always the prince—the noble knight in shining armor, whose arrival signified deliverance. In the theater of my young imagination, I was that princess, the damsel in distress waiting for Prince Charming to appear with a life-altering kiss that felt like resurrection. I believed love would rescue me from poverty, shield me from hardship, soothe the anxieties that stalked my childhood, and somehow save me from myself. Long before I had the language to articulate it, I had internalized the seductive fiction that salvation would arrive embodied in a man who was designed just for me; that healing, security, and wholeness were not things I could cultivate within myself, but gifts bestowed by someone else’s devotion.

Disney had made me delusional.

Not uniquely so, but collectively so. Like countless other women, I had been swept into the same enchantment, seduced by a narrative so pervasive it masqueraded as truth. We were taught to mistake fantasy for destiny, to confuse longing with inevitability, and to believe that somewhere beyond the horizon a resplendent love story awaited us, ready to confer meaning, security, and completion upon our lives. It was a spell woven so skillfully into the fabric of our girlhoods that many of us carried its enchantments well into womanhood, long after the fairy dust had settled and reality had begun demanding a different kind of magic.

From classics like Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel, I absorbed the same alluring promise: that a woman could ascend from rags to riches, be elevated to royalty, and spend the rest of her days beside a brave, chivalrous man who would provide stability, opulence, and a kingdom to call her own. Disney lied. Or accurately, Disney sold a fantasy so seductive that I never thought to question it. I was just a little black girl, after all, too young to recognize that this contagious affliction of grandeur was never truly written with girls like me in mind. Yet I inhaled it all the same, allowing its myths to settle deep within my imagination and distort my understanding of love, womanhood, and self-worth.

Ironically, my favorite princess was always Mulan, the Chinese heroine who resisted every attempt to mold her into a palatable version of femininity. Though she tried to honor her family by conforming—by shrinking herself into the shape of a “lady” deemed worthy of marriage—it was never her true nature. Her spirit was too expansive, her heart too untamed, her courage too formidable to be dimmed into submission. She was not waiting to be rescued; she was becoming the hero of her own story. Perhaps that was what resonated with me long before I possessed the language to explain it.

She never needed a man; she was what a man needed.

Her entire country needed her. She saved her people through acts of bravery, discipline, kindness, precision, and an unshakable heart. And she prevailed. She earned the Emperor’s blessing, restored honor to her family, and even had a man come knocking on her door afterwards—only after she had already proven herself as a force in her own right. Mulan was that girl. And yet, despite everything she embodied, she is still dismissed in subtle ways, still questioned, and debated in terms of whether she qualifies as a “true” Disney princess. As if heroism must be softened or romanticized in order to be validated.

And after decades of a glaring lack of representation, Disney finally said, “here—damn,” and gave us Princess Tiana from The Princess and the Frog. A hardworking, exceptionally gifted Black woman with a passion for cooking and an unwavering dream to own her own restaurant in New Orleans. She spends her life laboring in the shadows—working long hours, sacrificing rest, and disciplining her desires into relentless ambition. Even then, she is positioned beside a wealthy white “best friend,” a relationship that often felt less like mutual intimacy and more like proximity to a world she is never fully permitted to inhabit. And yet, in a narrative twist that feels almost too symbolic to ignore, Disney gives her a storyline in which she must kiss a frog—only to become one herself for most of the film. Yes, the frog ultimately becomes a prince, but the metaphor lingers uncomfortably beneath the surface, echoing that familiar saying: you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. But what does it mean when even the entry point into a Black princess’s love story requires her to be transformed, diminished, and temporarily dehumanized before she is deemed worthy of romance?

Well I’m done kissing all these frogs. If I kiss another one I might end up like Tiana and turn into one and that’s not the happily ever after I’m looking for.

The Disney princess syndrome was never designed for Black women—hell, for women in general—but today it’s about us. It is an overly romanticized condition, a cultural script that needs to be dismantled and burned. And yet, many of us are only slowly coming to terms with the inevitable truth: That man is not coming to save you, sis.

And for many of us, especially black women, especially dark-skinned black women, that realization accumulates slowly over time, through experience, repetition, disappointment disguised as preference. We are told we are desirable in theory but debated in practice, praised with conditions, loved with caveats, and often evaluated against standards we were never meant to comfortably fit. And if you are a dark-skinned black woman like me, you become familiar with the coded language: “pretty for a dark-skinned girl,” “black women are too difficult,” “too aggressive,” “too loud,” “too much”—a never-ending catalogue of projections that has little to do with who we are and everything to do with how we are perceived.

Shut the fuck up already. We’re tired.

The list goes on and on—each one another entry in the long, exhausting catalogue of negative connotations attached to being a black woman. Always getting the short end of the stick. The psychological warfare, the inherited residue of systemic disdain toward Black women, stretches back generations—back to slavery—and still finds ways to linger in the architecture of our minds, shaping perception, distorting worth, whispering doubt where there should be certainty. And yet, even within that, there is resistance. We rise. Like a Maya Angelou poem unfolding like a cold glass of water on a hot summer’s day, we persist, we endure, we learn to block out noise never meant for our survival, and we pour back into ourselves with radical, sustaining devotion. Still, after all of that resilience, there remains a longing that refuses to be disciplined away. At the center of it all is something disarmingly simple: the desire for connection, for companionship, to be loved in return with the same fullness with which we love others. We want love in all the languages it speaks—physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. We want a love that mirrors our capacity rather than diminishes it, that recognizes us without translation, that meets us without asking us to shrink in order to be held.

Is that too much to ask for?

With the rise of modern dating spectacles—shows like Love Island, Love Is Blind, Temptation Island, and Married at First Sight—it becomes increasingly clear that everyone is, in their own way, searching for love. But women are often socialized into these narratives already intoxicated by idealization: the belief that a man is coming to save you, provide for you, protect you, honor you, and ultimately embody the “prince archetype” we were raised to recognize in fairy tales. Meanwhile, we enter these spaces wide-eyed, half in fantasy, half in hope, still conditioned to expect a Cinderella ending—still believing someone will arrive to rescue us from the life we are actively trying to build ourselves out of.

But the reality of this climate is bleak. Too many of these men are nowhere close to a prince, or savior—they are, more often than not, inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, and operating within their own cycles of detachment and excess. Feral, freaky frogs ready to kiss, suck, and fuck as many princesses as he can. If you think he is coming to save you in this climate, think again…no the fuck he’s not.

Men were not raised on Disney princess narratives, nor shaped by the same mythologies of romantic idealism. From the beginning, many have been socialized into frameworks that center entitlement, dominance, and emotional distance rather than reciprocity or care. And in the present moment, something else is also becoming visible: regression, where emotional labor is increasingly displaced onto women, and where effort, accountability, and intentionality in love are often treated as optional rather than foundational. Too many are encouraged—explicitly or implicitly—to be pursued rather than to pursue, to receive rather than to build, to move through connection without discipline or emotional responsibility.

And in that imbalance, women are left carrying the weight of expectation, hope, and heartbreak simultaneously—trying to construct meaning in spaces where reciprocity is inconsistent at best. It leaves many questioning not only the people they encounter, but the very frameworks they were taught to believe in.

Women—especially black women—have, over generations, adapted at an accelerated pace, often outpacing the emotional and relational dynamics available to them. In doing so, many of us have developed new strategies for survival in love: becoming more self-reliant, more guarded, more independent, sometimes even adopting traits traditionally coded as masculine simply to protect our emotional labor from being depleted. In some cases, this shift manifests as detachment—moving through relationships with clearer boundaries, reduced expectation, and a hardened understanding of what is and is not being offered.

There is also a growing sense that the roles have inverted: that women are increasingly carrying the weight of emotional leadership while men are permitted to remain in states of inconsistency, passivity, or avoidance. But even this reversal is not a true solution—it is another distortion. Because women transforming reluctantly into the “the prince” in a system that was never built for mutual wholeness does not heal the imbalance; it simply redistributes the exhaustion. We find ourselves caught between adaptation and exhaustion, between self-protection and the lingering desire not to have to armor ourselves at all.

Fuck Disney’s illusions.

This is a reckoning. If none of these roles existed—no princess waiting, no prince arriving, no performance of pursuit or withdrawal—then what would remain is something far more fragile and far more honest: two people meeting each other without mythology, without scripts, without the inherited burden of who they are supposed to be in love. Perhaps love, in its most uncorrupted form, is not rescue or pursuit at all, but recognition—an unforced seeing of one another that does not require one person to diminish so the other can feel powerful.

For black women especially, this imagined love asks for something radical: to be met without conditions, without comparison, without having to prove softness in order to deserve care. To be loved not as an exception, or as a challenge, not as a stereotype corrected, but as the blueprint. And maybe that is the truth underneath all the Disney dust, cultural noise, and narratives we were sold and later had to survive: that we were never meant to be completed by someone else, but to be met—fully, equally, and without distortion—in the love we choose, and the love that chooses us back.

Throw the glass slippers away chile—there was nothing sexy about sitting in a dusty cellar waiting for a man to come save you anyway.

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I feel like I’m still searching for a place, a person, a feeling that doesn’t exist. If I had to describe what it looks like or what it feels like, I wouldn’t be able to. How can I long for something I can’t even put into words? Something I’ve never touched, never known, and somehow deeply miss. Yet, I swear I’ve tasted it sweet promises like the last drop of honey lingering on my tongue. Like the wind whispering in your ear one second, then gone the next. I just know I haven’t found it yet. The feeling sits in me like heart palpitations, the beating following me wherever I go, reminding me that there is still something more waiting for me. Like trying to capture smoke in my bare hands, I reach for it and it slips away before I can make sense of it. I don’t know what it is, only that I feel the absence of it. And somewhere deep within me, I believe it’s the thing that will finally make something in me whole. The missing piece.

Other cultures have tried to name this feeling, to bottle it into a single word. Saudade, a Portuguese word, describes a deep emotional longing for a person, place, or experience that is absent, often carrying a yearning for something that may never have existed at all. The Welsh have hiraeth, a homesickness for a home you can no longer return to, or perhaps one that never truly existed in the first place. There is even anemoia, the feeling of nostalgia for a time or place you’ve never known. These words come close. Close enough to make me pause, even feel seen for a moment. But none of them fully capture the complexity of this longing, this endless search for peace, for home. There is something about it that remains just out of reach, beyond language, beyond definition.

A beautiful frustration that even the most beautiful words humanity has created still fall short of describing this particular ache. So I try to visualize.

If peace had a face, and I could trace its features, I don’t think I would describe it the way people usually describe beauty. I wouldn’t say it looked like a rose or compare it to anything meant to be admired from a distance. I would simply say it looked like peace. Its shape would be carved from the endless planes of blue skies during a silent midafternoon haze, softened by the patient curves of Caribbean waters meeting the shore. It would carry the warmth of the sun resting on glistening skin, the kind of warmth that asks nothing of you except to be still long enough to receive it.

It looks like amnesia from every worry that has ever followed me, every burden that has clung to my shoulders, every fear that has stolen a piece of my heart. It feels like a long exhale in a field of baby’s breath and sunflowers, where the air is crisp and nothing is asking anything of me. Like closing my eyes without the fear of having to open them too soon.

It looks like justice personified.

A full-blown reckoning for those who mistook my love for weakness, who met my sincerity with harm, who left me carrying wounds I never deserved. And for a moment, standing in the presence of that calmness, I imagine what it would feel like to be free of all of it.

Oblivion upon them! No remorse.

It looks like lush hills and sharp mountain trails, with ice caps holding the purest drinking water—untouched and unpolluted by man. Peace is handsome. Well put together. Liberated. It carries the beauty of long hugs met with soft neck kisses and quiet reassurance, the kind of love expressed through presence, support, and deep understanding rather than words. There is loyalty in peace’s eyes, something consistent and unwavering, something that does not leave when things become heavy. And safety rests softly on the surface of its lips—not spoken loudly, but felt instantly, like entering somewhere your body recognizes before your mind can explain why.

Peace looks like a full belly, financial freedom, and an ease with productivity’s guilt finally loosening its grip.

It stands tall, dressed in knowledge and wiser decisions, carrying a balance of passionate fire and angelic desires that no longer war with each other. I imagine peace wrapping me in slow, golden hours—softness that looks like resting without apology; lingering lazy laying and lollygagging without shame. Time intentionally poured into hours that melt into days without regret, or urgency, without the feeling that I am already behind.

It looks like the color green, serene.

If peace had a face, that’s what I imagine it would look like. I’m still searching—still yearning—for this feeling, this person, this place that may ever exist. And still, I move through the world hoping it does. Maybe one day I’ll find it. Or maybe it will always feel like something just beyond the reach of my hands.

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I can’t stand low effort.

Low-effort texts, low-effort friendships, low-effort energy in general — and please don’t get me started on low-effort men. The ones who are always present but never arrive. Watching your life like premium content while contributing nothing but a weak signal and confusion. The kind who treat conversations like it’s a luxury they’re taxed on, barely opening their mouths to speak. The kind who behave like a bouquet of flowers requires a board meeting, when roses are literally $10 sitting at the nearest grocery store. The kind who have never planned a date, never built a moment, never curated a feeling — but will still send “wyd” like it’s a personality trait.

The kind that will have my p**** dry up like the Sahara as soon as you try to serve me crumbs.

I’m done with low-effort experiences, people (especially men), places, things, and any other nouns in between. Baby Christina’s gone. Not missing, not confused, not “working on herself” in some soft-focus, candle-lit way—just gone. The version of me that used to entertain crumbs and call it a meal has clocked out, turned in her badge, and left the building without a farewell speech.

We’re in a new era now. Christina will leave you to blow bubbles in that bath tub gasping for air and start hauling ass around the corner, down the street, and off into the sunset far away from you. No slow exits, no lingering goodbyes—just a clean pivot and a disappearing act that turns into motion. She’s got somewhere better to be.

Lack of consideration is a non-negotiable, and in this new era of my life, I’m not settling. The healed version of me is a little meaner, a little more structured, operating on a strict internal program—and I’m not negotiating with that either. Somewhere along the line, everybody collectively decided effort was optional. Too lazy, too half-assed, too quick to tap out before even trying, all driven by the illusion that there are unlimited options and someone, somewhere, will eventually accept crumbs like it’s a full Thanksgiving plate and say thank you while being fed from the palm of your hand. We’re not doing that around these ways.

Breadcrumbing is a form of manipulation.

It’s that “just enough” act—where someone gives you a flicker of attention, a crumb of affection, just enough to keep you orbiting them, but never enough to actually feed you. Never enough to grow anything real. Never enough to meet your needs, just enough to keep you hoping they might eventually try harder.

And somehow, that’s become the default setting—romantic, platonic, all of it. People are out here rationing effort like it’s a luxury item, handing out micro-doses of presence and swear up and down it’s connection. But let’s be honest: it’s not connection. It’s maintenance-level, bottom of the barrel effort to somebody who wants full access to you.

This ain’t Hansel and Gretel.

It’s always been quality over quantity over here. And when you’re a highly sensitive, high-value, self -aware person, you don’t really get the privilege of pretending crumbs are a meal. Settling will drag you—slowly at first, then all at once—until you’re second-guessing your intuition, your standards, your entire internal compass.

So no, I’m not asking why I should settle when I am the entire loaf and then some. The kind of loaf you can slice, stretch, toast, turn into something that feeds whole tables—and I’m still in the oven, still rising. Meanwhile, what you’re offering is a low-effort experience I no longer have the appetite for. As an empath, as someone who knows—humbly but clearly—that I bring something substantial into every room I walk in, I can’t afford to entertain what feels half-baked. And let’s be fully transparent: there’s no reward for being “nice” at your own expense. There’s no prize for endurance in places where you’re being given less than you give. Only depletion. Only distortion.

In a world full of half-hearted effort and people allergic to consistency, I love someone who doesn’t mind showing up. Someone who knows exactly what they’re looking at and moves accordingly—because access to me is not accidental, it’s intentional. And I treat it that way. And best believe, what I require, I can also reciprocate. I pour into you, you pour into me. No confusion, no guessing games, no emotional vending machine behavior. Just mutual effort, mutual regard, and energy that actually flows both ways.

It could all be so simple.

I hate when a man can cyber-stalk you to death, tell you he “loves your energy,” and still never show up in real life. No date, no effort, no romance—just lust, lurking, and wandering eyes behind a screen. And I equally can’t stand a one-sided friendship either. You don’t get to gaslight me into thinking I’m the “bad friend” when you’ve made little to no effort to check in, call, plan anything, or show up for me the way I show up for you. We’ve really lost the plot on reciprocity.

Breadcrumbs don’t build anything—they just leave you starving. And I need a full course meal.

Christina!! Christina!! Christina’s gone.

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I still believe in romance…

I still believe in a man undressing me with his eyes,
studying every inch of me
like devotion deserves detail,
saving my gaze for last—
two dark brown pools pouring into each other,
silent and deep enough to drown restraint

I believe in the art of noticing
In fingertips that memorize
In the inhale before the touch
In the ache of anticipation running on borrowed time
like a jazz note hanging in a smoke-filled room

I believe in slow kissing—
the kind that dissolves time at the edges,
where mouths speak in tongues softer than language ever could

Melting into each other’s arms,
moving in one rhythm,
heartbeats synced in harmony,
our bodies playing each other
like violins beneath dim light

I believe in ear nibbles,
red wine stains on full lips

Sade spinning in the background while the room glows amber and low

I believe in you
taking your time with me

Because there is no rushing art
when a masterpiece is breathing in front of you

Got you studying every curve like my personal anthropologist

Reading my body like ancient poetry written in brown skin, soft hips, and quiet temptation

I believe in warm breaths
against the nape of my neck,
in trembling exhales and wandering hands,
in the delicious unevenness of breathing
right before surrender opens its velvet mouth

And right there—
between want and worship,
we venture toward our own hallelujah,
slow and sacred
like lovers turning desire
into religion against silk sheets

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It’s been almost 8 months since my miscarriage. And 8 months since the man I thought I loved assaulted me. Some days it still sits heavy on my chest, raw, like it just happened yesterday. I never thought I would experience pregnancy again after having my son at the tender age of 20 years old. Back then, motherhood came with so much shame, doubt, and people quietly counting me out before my life had even really begun. I went through the ebbs and flows of trying to prove to everyone — and honestly sometimes even myself — that becoming a young mother was not the end of me. I graduated with honors while carrying pain nobody could see. I was homeless with a toddler, scared and trying to survive, then somehow found the strength to land a corporate job, save every dollar I could, and get my first apartment all on my own with my baby beside me. Since then, I’ve continued rebuilding myself piece by piece, elevating, excelling, growing into a woman I fought so hard to become. And eventually, the same people who doubted me began admiring me, apologizing to me, asking me how I did it. 10 years later and we’re thriving, traveling, laughing, creating, growing, elevating. Me, my son, and our dog against the world.

So I truly never thought I would have another child. And I definitely never thought I would experience the feeling of being in love again. Especially in times like these, where dating feels so dark and emotionally disconnected, where people crave intimacy but struggle to hold honesty, or accountability. If you’ve found your person, cherish them deeply. Love them gently. Hold onto them. And if you’re still out here navigating it all like me, I honestly think the safest thing you can do is pour back into yourself. Trust me focusing on you is the best thing you can right now. But anyways… when I found out I was pregnant, despite all my fears, a soft part of me began blooming again. For a moment, I allowed myself to believe that maybe after everything I had survived, life was finally about to meet me with something real.

Or at least that’s what I thought it was between me and my most recent partner. Love. And maybe what I was really in love with was the potential of who he could become if he ever fully applied himself, if he ever healed, if he ever chose discipline over destruction. And I admit maybe that hope led me down a rabbit hole of delusion. Because the truth is, nobody who truly loves you will harm you physically, mentally, emotionally — and especially not while carrying their child. That realization alone has been one of the hardest things for me to sit with. I try not to stay angry. I try not to set the sadness fill me up or let depression make a home out of me. But grief is strange like that. It comes in waves. Some days the water is calm enough for me to return to myself, to laugh again, to work, to create, to remember there is still life waiting for me beyond the pain. And honestly, this year has also been one of the most transformative and creatively abundant years I’ve had in a long time. It’s like something inside of me cracked open and all these hidden parts of myself came pouring out. New visions. New skills. New creative directions I was too afraid to explore before. I’ve been pushing myself in beautiful ways, learning how to turn my pain into something living instead of letting it bury me alive. My relationship with art became the safest love I’ve ever known. My sanctuary. My witness. (Read my other article, “I’m In A Romantic Relationship with the Arts.”) And maybe my biggest takeaway through all of this has been realizing that God gave me the gift of expression for a reason — the ability to take the little worlds inside of me, all this grief, softness, heartbreak, beauty, survival, and shape it into outward expressions not only of pain, but of healing too.

What’s the expression? Time heals all wounds. I don’t know if I believe all that anymore. I think time teaches you how to carry things differently. I think it teaches you how to live around the ache without letting it consume you whole. And yeah, some days I feel almost back to “normal” — as normal as someone can be after experiencing the kind of betrayal that rewires the way you see love, trust, and even yourself for a little while. As normal as one could be after loving someone who either never truly loved me back or manipulated me into believing what we had was genuine.

I was physically assaulted by this same man while pregnant with his child. Even typing those words still feels unreal to me sometimes. Like something I watched happen to another woman instead of myself. And honestly, that moment was enough to make me want to disappear entirely. To close my eyes and detach from a world that, for a while, felt so determined to break me. What hurt almost as deeply as the violence itself were the people who defended it. The people who told me they hated me. That I deserved to be abused, lied to, manipulated, discarded. That his hands around my neck were somehow my fault. Him pushing me down the steps and breaking my foot was my fault. And when I lost the baby… somehow, in the quietest parts of my mind, I began believing that was my fault too. That’s the kind of damage abuse does to you. It rearranges your inner voice until guilt starts sounding more believable than compassion.

And guilt is still the one feeling I haven’t fully escaped. It follows me into my sleep. Haunts me in small quiet moments. I replay everything over and over like my mind is trying to rewrite the ending. If I had eaten more. If I hadn’t fallen into depression. If I hadn’t been carrying so much stress and anxiety. If I had never fallen in love with him at all. It becomes this tsunami of should’ve, would’ve, could’ve crashing against my mind like waves with nowhere to go. Those are the harder days. The days I drown inside my own hopelessness, rage, grief, and sadness. Because while I was left trying to survive the wreckage, he got to walk away. To pretend I never existed. To spread false narratives through mutual spaces and communities as if I was the villain in a story written with my blood. He gets to play the victim while I’m left here alone, trying to gather pieces of myself I didn’t even realize had shattered.

And still, through all of it, I’ve been doing the work. The ugly, exhausting, soul-stretching kind of work that nobody really applauds because most of it happens behind closed doors, in the privacy of your own unraveling. It felt like God stripped my entire garden bare so I could finally see what was truly rooted within me. My ego deflated. My heart broken. I lost the identity I once clung to so tightly, and the woman I used to be no longer felt familiar to me anymore. There were so many tears. There are still so many tears. Some mornings grief still greets me before sunlight does. But even through all of that, somewhere beneath the turmoil, I still found a mustard seed of warmth, ff perseverance. Of reverence to continue. An understanding that even after devastation, something inside me still wanted to bloom. God saying he’s not done with me yet.

An unwavering faith of surrendering that restarted my garden.

And now, there is an abundance of fruit being bore from the labor of my healing. From the painful, sacred process of recreating and reimagining myself. The engineering of learning and unlearning. Of forgiving myself for surviving the only ways I knew how. I didn’t heal alone either, and I think that’s important to say out loud. It was my village — the people who believed my truth when I was too exhausted to keep explaining it, the people who met me with softness instead of judgment, kindness instead of suspicion. They helped me till the soil. They watered my roots when I felt emotionally dehydrated and spiritually empty, allowing natural photosynthesis, God, time, and my own willingness to survive do the rest. Slowly, tenderly, I began restoring myself into full bloom. And it was also therapy. The art. The writing. The nights I cried into journal pages until they became poems. My poetry book, Asking You To Consider Me Is Too Close To Begging, was born from that season of my life. A season that was only eight months ago, yet somehow already feels like several lifetimes away from the woman I was back then.

8 months of hard work, healing, praying, creating, surviving — and I still have my days. I still have moments where grief sneaks up on me quietly and sits beside me like an old ghost that knows its way back home. The truth is, I’m the kind of person who carries pain well. Too well, honestly. You probably wouldn’t know anything was wrong just by looking at me. I’ve mastered the art of functioning while breaking apart internally. I’m a high-functioning depressed Black woman carrying the weight of an entire world on my shoulders at all times — my lifestyle, my career, my bills, motherhood, my brilliant 12-year-old son who still needs me soft and whole, even my dog depending on me every single day. Everything rests on me. And sometimes it feels like if I allow myself to completely undone, my whole world will collapse alongside me. So no, I haven’t always had the luxury of falling apart out loud, even during the nights where disappearing from this world replayed in my mind over and over again like my favorite song on repeat. But I can still hear my granny’s voice echoing through me, steady and familiar like gospel passed down through generations:

“Never look like what you’re going through.”

And carrying yourself with integrity and divinity, no matter the background noise, is something I will continue to do. But I also have to tell the truth about what it costs sometimes. We live in a society where black women are often not believed when they say they’ve been harmed. And we are also living in times where black women are being harmed now more than ever — even killed — and still, too often, the world asks what she did to cause it. It is always somehow still her fault. That kind of reality forces you to develop an invisible armor, something you wear just to move through the world safely.

But some days that armor is weak. Some days it cracks. Especially when I’m triggered. What looks like me functioning, smiling, navigating life on the outside is not always what’s happening inside. On the inside I’m malleable. Playdoh, slime, putty, ready to mold into whatever form my grief tells me to take.

Ebbs and flows I guess.

With Mother’s Day recently passing, I challenged myself to sit with the feelings I usually try to outrun. The grief. The loss. The silence. I want to keep moving forward because I am doing well — I really am. I’m proud of this woman I’m becoming, even on the days I feel like I’m falling short or I’m too hard on myself for slipping. But I’m also learning that healing doesn’t mean bypassing pain. Sometimes it just means allowing yourself to feel it without abandoning yourself in it.

Those are my post Mother’s Day reflections.

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Nowhere was safer
than in my nana’s arms

Her skin, soft as velvet—
I melted into her as if I had always belonged there

Her warmth felt like a doorway,
something close to heaven
I didn’t yet have words for…

God’s haven perhaps

She smelled of bergamot and lavender,
the scent rising from her floral gown
like the sweetest lullaby

Pastels seemed to live around her,
soft colors resting on her honeyed skin,
wrapping us both in something tender,
something almost sanctified

A matriarchal tether between old and young,
she the root from which my branches quietly grew

I never wanted to let go

Inside me, a little girl
smiled and clapped her hands—
I hadn’t heard her laugh
in such a long time

When I finally loosened my arms,
I only looked at her

Regal

Her eyes—
deep, patient pools of pure divinity—
and I wondered
if I could disappear into them,
become even a small reflection
of all that she was

All that she still is

Her skin golden like the sun,
her curls pinned into careful coils,
her cheekbones high and certain

Those cheeks—

The only piece of her I carry
in my own reflection now

And her saucer—white and blue—
resting on my windowsill

Her finest china,
held in my reverent keeping

I guard it
like it still holds her touch

Because nowhere has felt safe
since she got her wings

I call for her in my dreams

And sometimes—
in the softest, most secret part of me—
I find myself longing
for the day I meet my fate

Just to hug her again

(Dedicated to Edna Tyler Billingsley, my granny)

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Sometimes I feel like a portal, like I exist as a gateway to carry people from who they are to who they’re meant to become. A step stool on their road to sit upon the throne to their personal elevation. I pour into them—support, care, pieces of myself I don’t always know how to get back—until they can finally stand on their own.

And then they leave.

Not always in a way that’s meant to hurt me, not always with intention, but they leave… and I’m still there, quiet and emptied, wondering if I was ever meant to be anything more than a moment in someone else’s becoming.

I feel like a revolving door, people passing through me, taking what they need and trusting that somehow I will find a way to replenish myself. As if that’s just what I do, and I mean I do...but I’m not a vessel meant to be emptied and forgotten. I want to be held too. I want to be considered in the same gentle, attentive ways I give to others. And when that doesn’t happen, it doesn’t break loudly—it’s softer than that. It’s a slow ache. An unconventional, unwarranted kind of grief.

There’s something deeply lonely about feeling unseen in a world that still expects something beautiful from you yet never wants to acknowledge you. As if you’re meant to keep giving, keep glowing, keep becoming, without ever being fully recognized as you already are, with the greatness you already possess.

Because I’m not something shallow. I’m not something meant to be skimmed or passed through.

I am immersive. I am deep. I want to surround you, to hold you in the soft weight of me, to pull you under in the best way. I want to fill your lungs with the waters of me until you can taste all of it—not just the easy parts, but the depth, the history, the intimate places I don’t show everyone. I want you to know me slowly. To stay long enough that I don’t feel like something temporary.

I want you to dive into my lore, to sit with the stories that made me, to trace the timelines of who I’ve been and who I’m still becoming.

Create cannons and split timelines.

I want you to see me for who I truly am—light in its purest form, soft but bright, the kind that almost hurts to look at but somehow you don’t turn away. The kind you stay with, even as it overwhelms you, even as it leaves its mark on you, like fingertips wrinkled from being in water too long.

I want to touch you like Adam reaching for God.

A Michelangelo love story—that fragile, almost connection, where everything is felt in the space between. I want to be seen as both the artist and the muse, the one who creates and the one who is worth being created for.

And maybe that’s why it hurts the way it does…I want my creations to matter. I want what I put into the world to mean something, to be felt, to linger. I crave visibility in a way I don’t always like to admit, because I know how easily that craving can turn into something else—something hollow. Wanting to be experienced by the masses means risking only knowing myself through what is digestible, what is trending, what people find easy to hold for a moment and then let go of. And if I don’t fit into that, if I don’t align with what’s easily understood or widely accepted, it can start to feel like I disappear.

But I don’t want to perform for attention. I don’t want to reshape myself just to be acknowledged. That has never been my nature. I am not here to beg to be seen, or to make myself smaller, softer, simpler just so I can be consumed more easily. There’s something in me that resists that, even when it would be easier to give in.

Because I don’t want to be experienced in fragments—pieces of me here, parts of me there—people deciding who I am based on glimpses that were never meant to hold the full weight of me. I don’t want to be something people pass through lightly, like a place built for temporary joy and easy exits. I am not shallow enough for that, and I don’t want to pretend to be.

And still, there’s this quiet pressure everywhere, this unspoken message that you are only as valuable as the attention you receive. That if enough people aren’t looking, then maybe you don’t matter in the way you thought you did. It’s hard not to feel that sometimes, even when you know better. Especially when you know better.

Because the truth is, attention like that rarely stays. It moves quickly, always reaching for the next thing, the next moment, the next person. And there’s something almost disorienting about trying to exist in a world that moves like that, where depth is often overlooked for what is immediate.

So I sit with that contradiction—wanting to be seen, but not like that. Wanting to matter, but not at the cost of losing myself just to be understood.

And I try to make peace with that.

I tell myself I don’t chase, I attract. I remind myself that if I can touch even just one person deeply—really touch them, in a way that lingers—then that should be enough.

But in the quiet moments, when everything settles…
I can admit that sometimes, it still doesn’t feel like enough.

Like I am not enough.

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Impermanence is the art of loving something while watching it change, while also knowing it can’t stay forever. It is the way a floral arrangement first arrives like a promise—eucalyptus curling like soft green breath, marigolds glowing like held sunlight, baby’s breath delicate as a whispered vow, and red roses arranged like a heartbeat you can almost touch. You place it at the center of your world and, without meaning to, begin to believe it will always look like that: untouched, whole, eternal in its beauty. Every time you pass it, it feels like a small magical reunion. A reminder to pause. To soften. To love the moment you are in without questioning its ending. And maybe, in some gentle way, the nourishment and lifeforce inside your handpicked arrangement reminds you to water your own soul.

But love, even in its quietest forms, begins to show its impermanence. The marigolds begin to bow their heads as if tired of holding so much light. The roses loosen their grip, petals falling in perfect symmetry, like they are letting go one memory at a time. The water from the vase once full, now disappears, and what once felt alive in your space begins to feel like a memory you are still standing beside. You touch it and it changes under your fingers—fragile now, crunchy, almost like it is asking to be remembered rather than kept. And it hurts, not because it is gone, but because it was once so alive in your care.

And still, you keep returning to it. You keep loving it even as it fades, reluctant to buy more flowers, create a new arrangement just yet. Still grieving the old one. That is what makes it romantic—the way we stay present with something we know we cannot keep.

How does the saying go? “Nothing lasts forever”…

And yet we love as if, for a brief moment, it might. I think that is what makes letting go so heart-wrenching: we are always falling in love with something or someone we are not allowed to hold onto forever. Everything has it’s respective time, and its important to honor those expiration dates. Still, if I had known the last time was the last time, I would have stayed longer in it. I would have memorized every second like scripture, drawing out seconds to hours to days. I would have held time the way you hold a newborn baby. Tenderly, preciously, soft and careful.

Memories replay like video clips inside the loud, overthinking noise of my mind—scenes cutting in without warning, bright and vivid, then gone before I can hold onto them. My lips linger on yours a little longer than the average embrace, as if time itself could be persuaded to hesitate with us. Letting my feet dangle in the ocean waves just one day longer, pretending the tide will not notice my refusal to leave. There is a kind of prayer in it—the quiet meditation on a grassy hill, the stillness before everything changes again. One more joyful leap into the air. One more laugh that feels like it could last forever if I don’t think too hard about it ending.

I reach for the world as it is slipping—one more hug from the curious toddler I once knew, now growing into someone I can no longer fully hold in the same way. One final friendship date with someone who has already begun to feel like memory while still standing in front of me. One more touch of my grandmother’s hand, memorizing the warmth of it as if love could be preserved through pressure alone. And in all of it, there is this ache: that we are always living in “one more” moments, never realizing we are already inside the last time until it has quietly passed.

Memories and intrusive longings; languid, lingering loops, always rushing in as if trying to be remembered before they disappear again.

And in between each fragment, there is the noise of everything I never said, everything I wish I had done differently, everything I am still trying to make sense of long after it has ended. It feels like living inside a screen that keeps buffering between past and present, as if my heart cannot decide which version of time it belongs to.

I have never been good at goodbyes. I cling too long, chasing sunsets as if they might confess something to me if I just stay a little longer. Always holding on to something or someone longer than I should. And maybe that is the most human kind of romance—not perfection, but acceptance in the face of impermanence. Because even as everything changes, even as moments slip quietly into memory, we can still choose to look at it with tenderness while it is here. And release it with love when it is time to go.

Loosening your grip is an act of love.

As I get older, I understand that it is normal to release. True freedom begins with learning to see clearly what is already in front of us, rather than what we wish or assume to be there. It recognizes that letting go is not a loss of love, but a form of honesty—an acceptance that everything we hold will, in some way, change or pass. Reality is often urgent and unstable—burning, collapsing, or quietly shifting beneath us—yet we fail to notice because our attention is softened by attachment, habit, and desire. We hold on not because we are blind, but because seeing clearly can feel like grief.

It is difficult to open our eyes to the present moment because it asks us to release the comfort of illusion: the belief that things will remain as they are, that moments can be preserved if we love them hard enough, hold on longer than we need too. In that sense, a gentle estrangement becomes necessary—not as cold detachment, but as a gentle step back from our own longing. To see the world, and ourselves, without distortion is to witness beauty without possession, love without control. And in that clarity, something softens. We begin to understand that nothing is meant to be held forever to be real. In loosening our grip, we do not lose life, we finally meet it as it is.

Letting go is a gateway out of self-suffering and into the archway of freedom.

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Art makes me cum. Bringing me to my knees, surrendering beneath its ecstasy.

Deep passion—something embodied. Art impregnates my sacral and solar plexus, realigning my chakras, filling my creative belly until I am full—overflowing—with inspiration. It moves through me in waves, from film to painting, from video editing to poetry, from writing to photography to modeling. Ideas gather within me, and I soon birth them, giving life to new creative projects that feel both intimate and infinite.

This year, my relationship status is simple: I am married to the arts.

And in that devotion, I’ve become more discerning. All low-effort love, all nonchalant energy, all breadcrumb offerings—I release them. I no longer hunger for what leaves me empty. I am now eating from a buffet that I have prepared myself. More than that, I am the table. And the tablecloth, the fine China, the golden cutlery, and the chairs that gather around me, holding space for all that I am, okay! I have discovered a new lover—one that does not waste my time, one that teaches me patience, one that shows me how pain can be transformed into something luminous.

With art, even my wounds become beautiful. They turn into prismatic hues, curated brushstrokes, and graphite pressed gently against paper. Sometimes they are spoken aloud, trembling and honest; sometimes they live in digital forms, collaged or fluidly through passing moments. There is no limit to inspiration, no expiration date on this love. It is expansive, infinite, and ever-evolving.

Art takes its time with me. And I have learned to surrender to its rhythm.

There is something hypnotic about the way it pulls me under—like swimming deep into the ocean and, instead of reaching the seafloor, discovering stars. Art has never abandoned me. It has never made me feel small or unworthy. It has never taken from me without giving something richer in return. Instead, it has made me a lover, a creator, a woman devoted to her craft.

These past seven months of abstinence have been sacred. What once felt like absence has become abundance. I’ve learned that giving my body to the wrong person can leave me stagnant, even when the chemistry feels undeniable. I’ve experienced what it means to mistake lust for love, to believe I was exchanging energy in fullness, when in reality I was being drained—of time, of spirit, of self.

Stepping away from that has given me something priceless: my autonomy.

I’ve reclaimed my body. I’ve reclaimed my energy. I’ve cleansed my yoni and my heart—not just through ritual, but through intention. Through herbal steams, therapy, release, and a conscious return to myself. I chose my passions over my distractions, and in doing so, art found me again.

In the habitual rituals of daily life—walking, journaling, nourishing my body, resting deeply, drinking less, meditating, dancing—I began to feel my spark return. And that spark reignited my creative whimsy. What started as a way to process pain through familiar mediums became something much larger.

One idea led to another.
Idea turned project.
Project to vision.
Vision to manifestation.
Turned into hard work, consistency, and dedication.
Then to a tangible reality.
And eventually, completion.

I began writing more, designing more, then started dreaming of books. I pushed myself into new creative territories—video editing, storytelling, immersive art experiences, painting, digital collage. I found inspiration in nature, in movement, in stillness. I stepped in front of the camera, then behind it. I performed spoken word for the first time ever, and recently applied for my first art show.

I became someone who says yes to her own expansion.

And now, there is this beautiful reciprocity—this sacred exchange. I make love to art, and art makes love to me. It is playful and passionate, but also disciplined, something that deepens the more I commit to it.

I am still in awe of how much lives inside of me—how much was waiting, patiently, for my attention, my care, my devotion.

And maybe that is the greatest love story I’ve ever known:
not the one that took from me,
but the one that led me back to myself.

I am madly, romantically, passionately in love with the arts.

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For a while, my vision was clouded. I used to pray for the days clarity would find me again. It felt like I was living inside a fog, a soft gray tapestry draped over everything I knew. I stopped noticing. The world moved, and I moved with it—but without seeing. I became blind to the tightrope beneath my feet, the one I had been walking all along.

To survive trauma and live in grief is to drift. To heal, gently, is to face the ache, the anger, the weight of it all—and still choose steadiness. To hold it without letting it swallow you whole.

I was a devoted fixer. I gave and gave until there was nothing left of me to hold. My love poured outward, endlessly, while my own glass sat empty. I lived in the act of tending to others, of lifting, of carrying—until there was no one left to carry but myself. No distractions disguised as love. No more tragic love stories to be told. No one to hyper fixate on. No one to lose myself in. Just me.And for the first time in years, I turned inward. I was my next greatest project.

I found refuge in writing, in my art, finding my voice. In letting something honest take shape through my hands. Grief began to move through me instead of settling inside me. Pain loosened its grip, slipping through slowly, softly. And somewhere in that release—I began to heal.

Walking it away.
Reading it away.
Dancing it away.
Crying it away.
Painting it away.
Journaling it away.

I moved through the cold stillness of winter and into the gentle unfolding of spring—a new season, a tender beginning.

Spring found me softly, like a petal resting in my coils. Nature has always known how to remind me—nothing stays the same.

Change is inevitable, growth is divine order.

I walk the same paths, pass the same trees, yet everything has changed. They have changed. What once bloomed in blush one day, now breathes in greens—emerald, sage—alive in a different way the next.

The birds call out, and I am reminded to speak my own truth.

And somewhere, without force, without effort—I began to notice again. The art of re-noticing. And Not just noticing. Seeing.

I see light scatter across water, little diamonds flickering and gone just as quickly. I see ducks drifting, carried by the ease of the moment. I see a pair of cardinals linger, their brief presence like a whispered memory. I think of Grandma Bee and Grandaddy Dipper, reflected in their red feathers—there, in the small, perfect grace of something meant only to be witnessed, not captured. You know cardinals mate for life. I see the careful tension in a parent’s shoulders as they let their child wander just a step further than before. I see the bees return, hovering and humming, drawn to field flowers and the sweet aroma of my vanilla perfume. Pollinating from flower to flower, doing the lord’s work. I hear warmth soften in a voice after feeling how certain words land exactly where they are needed. I see feeling still alive in old brushstrokes, something created long ago reaching forward into now. I notice the gentle order of blooming—daffodils first, then tulips, then roses—each arriving in its own time, never rushing, never late. I feel the sun rest against my skin, like it has been waiting for me to feel it again. And for the first time in a long time…

I notice myself.

Growing.
Becoming.
Healing.

My smile returns—not as something worn or painted on, but something geniune. I honor the boundaries that hold me. I recognize what is meant for me, and what is not. Morning light filters through my blinds, and I receive it with gratitude—another day, seen through God’s eyes.

My eyes.

Gifted not just with sight, but with vision. With the ability to see beyond what is in front of me. To feel the sacred woven into the ordinary. To witness something greater, present in everything, to see God in everything again.

I am home here.

I weep with joy, tears spilling across my face. It feels good to notice again. To let the film dissolve. To meet the soft glow of hope returning. To believe in gentle days. In brighter ones.

I got the eyes of God back.

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Adulthood scatters us into constellations of connection—work friends, childhood echoes, creative kin, lovers-turned-strangers, strangers-turned-home. Some orbits overlap, brushing against each other in familiar rhythms, while others drift alone, whole and self-contained. Still, each one leaves its trace, a gentle fingerprint pressed into who we are becoming. We build what we call safe spaces—soft rooms made of laughter, late-night confessions, and half-healed stories told in full trust. Within them, we unfold, shifting gently into different versions of ourselves depending on who is watching, who is listening, who is holding the mirror. And slowly, without realizing it, we begin to archive each other—moments stored like quiet electricity in the body, memories that return unannounced, shaping how we see ourselves through the reflections we’ve been given.

But beneath all this tenderness, there is something we rarely name. A subtle taboo that makes your chest tighten. A toxic shift in the air breezing through the sky like chem trails painted in the sky. We say we want community—we speak of it like something whole, something necessary, something that might save us from the loneliness we pretend we’ve outgrown. Yet wanting community and sustaining it are not the same. There is a cost to closeness. And when the moment comes to pay it—when discomfort knocks, when comparison slips in uninvited, when someone beside you begins to rise—something in us hesitates. Admiration, once effortless, begins to bend. It tilts, almost imperceptibly at first, into comparison. Comparison sharpens itself into competition. And competition, left in the dark long enough, ferments into something heavier, something harder to hold: resentment.

It doesn’t arrive loudly. It lives in the pauses between claps, in the delayed replies, in the way support becomes measured instead of freely given. What happens when your friend becomes the one being chosen? When their name fills rooms yours has yet to enter? When the light finds them first? Do you move closer, or do you step back into the quiet safety of distance? Do you celebrate fully, or do you shrink—smiling with your mouth while something deeper within you begins to harden? We don’t like to admit it, but sometimes the hardest victories to witness are not those of strangers, but of the people who know us best. Because their growth reflects something back to us we may not be ready to face. Because their becoming forces us to confront our own waiting.

Let’s keep it a buck—no one likes to feel like someone else is doing better than them, especially not the people closest to us. The ones we love can become the hardest mirrors to face. Because community, as beautiful as it sounds, is fragile. It starts to crack the moment jealousy takes root—when admiration quietly turns into comparison, and comparison into competition.

We say we want connection, but flinch when it asks us to celebrate others without measuring ourselves against them. When their growth feels like a threat, something shifts. The energy changes. Because it’s one thing to love people when you feel equal—it’s another to love them when they’re rising in ways you aren’t.

And this is where community is truly tested—not in the easy moments, but in the ones that ask something of us. To choose love over ego. Presence over pride. Honesty over performance. We say we want community, but communal connection requires witnessing—not just the parts of people that comfort us, but the parts that challenge us to expand. Not everyone is ready for that. So we gather, we laugh, we call it friendship. But somewhere, in the spaces we don’t examine, we are still learning how to let each other rise without feeling like we are the ones falling.

And avoidance done got real comfortable.

Dressed up as peace, labeled as boundaries, moving slick like it ain’t slowly erasing people in real time. To avoid is to withdraw, and to withdraw is to fade into the background—less calls, dry texts, stories watched but never responded to, until one day they’re just… gone. And we hide behind that “you don’t owe nobody nothing” complex, using it to dodge the hard, human parts—the honesty, the discomfort, the choosing to speak and having intentional conversations instead of slipping away. So instead of clarity, we leave folks sitting in confusion, piecing together silence, wondering what shifted, what they did, what it all meant. And truth be told, some of that silence carries jealousy we don’t even want to name—because admitting that, even to yourself, feels like something that could eat you alive from the inside out like a flesh-eating virus.

But cutting someone off completely? Apparently, that doesn’t always feel right either, not when a part of that person still wants to stay close, still wants to be near your light. So, they linger—half in, half out—watching from the background, quiet but present, your new ghost follower, disguising resentment as “support” but secretly praying on your downfall. A small smile forming in the far corners of their mouth when they see you “failing”. Them, telling themselves it’s nothing while comparison keeps whispering. And avoidance can only stretch so far before it turns on you, before all that unspoken, unprocessed feeling pulls you under, got you spiraling in your own head, seeing things that aren’t even there, feeling like everybody moving funny, when really… it started with what you couldn’t face within yourself. And best believe, as soon as I catch on and realize it’s you not me, now I’m the problem. My directness to call you out now becomes your scapegoat to finally have the balls to hate me out loud.

If refusing frenemies makes me the problem, then let stepping away from that energy be my solution.

Comparison is the thief of joy. And whole time, I was applauding the bloom of your successes while you were cheering for the shadows of my stumbles.

The moment you start comparing yourself inside the very spaces that were meant to hold you—within the safety of your community, the intimacy of your friendships—you’ve already begun to lose something. Because admiration and jealousy can’t live in the same place for long; one will always bend into the other. And if you haven’t done the necessary shadow work of turning jealousy into inspiration, it won’t just sit there—it will sink its weight into you like an anchor, pulling you under into resentment. Emotional maturity is understanding that your life isn’t better or worse than anyone else’s—it’s simply different, unfolding in its own time, in its own way. What’s meant for you will not pass you, no matter who is shining around you. And true friendship, real community, is being able to stand in someone else’s light without dimming your own—to celebrate them fully, without keeping score, without shrinking, without letting comparison rewrite the love that was once pure.

Real friendships, real communities, don’t shy away from discomfort—they sit in it like sunlight through storm clouds, letting it warm and unsettle them at once. They don’t ghost, mute, or slip away when the air thickens, when someone else rises, when jealousy murmurs in the corners. They don’t offer conditional support and fake love. They stay. They listen. They speak truth with care, letting the tension stretch, fold, and eventually dissolve. Because community growth doesn’t flourish in the comfortable spaces—they root in the spaces we dare to feel fully, to face together, and to hold without wincing.

I am a museum—a collection of trials and tribulations, of memorabilia and nostalgic revelations. I am the little girl still seated gently inside this vessel, her face lit with wonder at simple pleasures and frivolous things. I am also the wounds that tell the story of redemption, the quiet proof that healing is not the absence of pain, but the transformation of it. The lines of my scars, carved by battles I had to endure, stretch across me like marbled floors—each step a testament to survival.

My ceilings reach toward something divine, held up by towering Roman columns that rise like skyscrapers, unshaken by the weight they bear. Along my walls are etchings of both triumph and failure, inseparable, equally sacred. My smile lives there too—set into golden frames that hold the canvases of my becoming, each one a memory that shaped me into who I am. My stained-glass windows have known sorrow more often than they should, yet they still welcome the light, breaking it into prismatic colors that spill into every corner, warming even the quietest parts of me.

Down my corridors stand sculptures of who I have been, arranged in perfect, almost poetic symmetry. Porcelain versions of every soul I’ve encountered—painted, sewn, and carved into the fabric of my experiences, my lessons, my many ego deaths. This is what I am: a place of constant creation, where growth is not gentle, but intentional—where I take what has tried to break me and mold it, repeatedly, into something worthy of being called a masterpiece.

I am the keeper of quiet things, a sanctuary where time softens its voice and every object hums—just barely—with stories it almost remembers. I am a conversation between the living and the gone, a bridge of memory and presence. Within me, there are galleries where laughter still echoes in my ribs, and exhibits of old pain that continue to heal. Some rooms shine brighter than others, illuminating everything the light touches, while other rooms remain closed, their doors marked “staff only” in a language only I can read.

My skin is not merely a surface; it is a collection of fingerprints from the world—every touch that lingered, every one that left too soon. My heart is the main hall, vast and unyielding, holding crystal chandeliers of grandeurs, overlooking the limitless bounds of my time capsule. Sometimes it is crowded, overflowing with memory and motion; sometimes it is unbearably quiet, sacred and untouched, reminding all who enter that to witness is enough—but to understand, one must move with patience and respect.

I am a museum—meant to be seen, not touched. Caress me with your eyes. Inhale, breathe in all of me. Study the details in my crown molding, the way light catches on every curve, for physical touch is forbidden in the corners of this space of my own curation. Reaching me requires depth. I am like trying to grasp smoke with your bare hands, impossible to contain. My museum is one that envelops you not the other way around. Like the cautionary black line on the floor telling you not to go past a certain point, I am the reverence where presence is enough and closeness does not grant you permission to overstep your bounds.

Study me.

You can walk through me and take it all in if you want but don’t mistake that for knowing me. You can gaze, admire even, but not touch. You get to notice what I choose to show, not reach for what I’ve kept behind closed doors. You might think you’ve seen it all just because I let you stand close, but most of my beauty isn’t on display. It lives in the hidden passageways, parts of me that aren’t here for casual hands or passing curiosity.

If you’re here, be here with respect, for respect is not optional—it is the only way to engage with what lives inside me.

And let’s be clear…you aren’t entitled to anything inside the walls of my museum, and no, none of what you see here is for sale. So, take your time, wonder if you need to but understand that not everything in me is yours to hold.

What made you think that? Because I let you in, you think everything here became yours to reach for? Too many people think they deserve access to things they’ve never taken the time to truly see. They touch without understanding, skim the surface and call it knowing, as if depth were optional and not something earned with care. But you don’t get to claim parts of me you haven’t honored, don’t get to touch what you haven’t taken the time to appreciate. This isn’t a place for careless grabbing, pulling, and tugging—it’s a space that asks for patience, consideration, respect, for a willingness to go deeper. A place of learning, elegance, and wonder. And if you can’t do that, then you don’t get access at all.

So make sure that your soul gains more than your hands as I welcome you to the phenomena of my museum where the sentience of every corner ask that seeing deeply is the only way to truly enter.

Hard truth—you don’t have FOMO (fear of missing out); in reality, it’s an unhealthy desire to be included in everything, a desperate longing for belonging that blurs the line between connection and self-abandonment. That craving will have you showing up in spaces that don’t reflect you, aligning with people who don’t protect you, and participating in low-vibration energy just to avoid feeling left out. But the real loss isn’t what you miss—it’s yourself, because when inclusion outweighs integrity, you stop choosing and start performing, shrinking your standards just to stay in the room. The crowd isn’t always conscious, and if you don’t question where you’re being led, you’ll follow it into places that drain you. Don’t be another clown in the circus.

Real power is discernment—understanding you don’t need to be everywhere or with everyone to be whole, and having the strength to stand alone rather than dilute who you are just to belong.

FOMO is an illusion that has you participating in acts of harm toward yourself and others, driven by a quiet sense of isolation that makes loneliness and discomfort rise to the surface. It doesn’t feel good to be the odd one out or to go against the grain, because choosing to miss certain moments becomes a form of self-sacrifice in the name of integrity—and in adulthood, that rarely gets applause. There’s no pat on the back for following your moral compass, but what you gain is far more valuable: a regulated nervous system, a mind of your own, and real peace. When you release the relentless need to be included, your body softens—shoulders drop, booty cheeks unclenches, brows ease —and you can return to a simple truth: quality over quantity. Because if you give every experience and everyone unlimited access to your presence, your doorway becomes too wide, and before you know it, everyone is holding a key.

I am a woman of depth, and it is really Is that deep. It will always be about the principle for me.

Your fear of missing out, this need to appease the majority and belong in every space—even when it goes against your gut—has become dangerously normalized, disguised as connection when it’s really self-abandonment. Not every room is meant for you, and real belonging should never cost you your truth.

Are you even having fun? Is it worth it? Are these safe spaces? Do the people surrounding your experience offer you anything other than just bodies in a room?

Or did you let fear win—nurturing anxiety with imagined scenarios that don’t even exist if you simply don’t go, don’t show, don’t force your way into certain spaces? You find yourself carrying the weight of other people’s thoughts, opinions, and judgments—people who can’t even close their own karmic loops—using FOMO as justification for their own escapism, while you lose yourself trying to keep up.

Do you even know who you are past the fear of being included?

The fear of missing out has become a gateway to vindicate. emotional immaturity, poor communication, lack of accountability, cattiness, weird behavior, and avoidance. Modern culture packages it as “protecting our peace,” but it’s really an illness—a fear not of missing out, but of being excluded, ostracized, isolated. I get it; that fear can warp your mind, creating a false sense of security: not missing out, dodging hard conversations, ghosting, following the popular crowd even when it violates your better judgment, supporting toxic people or groups and calling it “community”.

FOMO has made people fake.

But how can we heal if no one calls out the behavior or the damage it causes—to ourselves and others? Silence only lets FOMO control us. True growth begins when we speak the truth.

How do you bring justice to integrity—by standing in your truth when the world grows quiet around you, when solitude weighs heavy, and when doing right feels inconvenient?

And just because you lack emotional attunement or the emotional intelligence doesn’t give you the right to treat me any kind of way—or expect me to stay silent when I call it out.

I am not a sheep but a shepherd.

The real question is what do you feel like you’re missing out on? Not s***.

Seeking the right opportunities, the right events, the right social settings, the right communities (on and offline) rather than chasing everything separates the blind yearners from the clairvoyant discerners.

May my energy never find you—not in passing, not in hunger, not in curiosity dressed up as praise. Spare me the soft theft of “I love your energy,” as if I were something to sip from, something to be tasted and taken. I have learned the shape of my own warmth—how to gather it, how to keep it close, how to wrap myself inside it like a heated blanket, sealed and untouchable. Here, I am whole. Here, I am untouched. And any hand that reaches for me only to take will leave exactly as it came—empty.

When you carry a natural magnetism—some quiet, radiant force that burns from within and spills outward—you become something more than ordinary presence; you become alchemy. Everything you touch softens, shifts, turns—if not to gold, then to something warmer, something more alive. You are the sun filtering through the trees, light slipping between shadows without asking permission; you are the shimmer on water, scattering like diamonds across a restless surface. There is something in your bones that holds inspiration, something in your spirit that carries rainbows long after the storm has passed. A gift from God, or whatever name you give to that sacred, unteachable spark. It is the thing people reach toward without understanding, the thing they try to name and never quite can—the unseen, the ungraspable, the felt.

But even a God-given gift carries its shadow. What burns bright enough to warm will also draw what hungers. There is a quiet balance to it—light and dark, blessing and burden—because a flame does not choose what it attracts. Like moths to fire, they come: the desperate, the hollow, the ones who know how to shape-shift into whatever feels safe enough to get close. Not all of them arrive with honesty. Some come as seekers, some as mirrors, some as takers dressed in soft language and careful hands. They circle, they linger, they learn the rhythm of your light—not to honor it, but to borrow it, to feed from it, to feel for a moment what they cannot generate within themselves.

And proximity alone is enough. To stand near you is to feel something real, something electric—an unspoken high that keeps them returning, not for you, but for the way you make them feel. So they wait, patient and quiet, hoping to find a seam in your unseen armor, a soft place in your boundaries, a moment where your guard lowers just enough. Not to love you, but to take from you—an ounce, a flicker, a fragment of that warmth you were never meant to give away so freely.

Through experience, I’ve learned that people don’t always see you—they see the idea of you, the fantasy they’ve stitched together from fragments you never meant to offer as a whole. They take a glimpse, a sliver of your light filtered through their own lens, and build a version of you that fits their hunger, their story, their need. It isn’t you—it’s something softer, easier, more convenient to hold. And once they’ve convinced themselves it’s real, they run with it, stretching that inch into miles, mistaking access for entitlement, proximity for permission.

To be kind and still protect yourself is a balance so delicate it almost feels impossible—like standing on a scale that can tip to either side at any even moment. Lean too far one way and you abandon yourself, pouring endlessly until there’s nothing left but quiet resentment. Lean too far the other way and the world is quick to name you—cold, distant, difficult, villainized in a story that was never yours to begin with. If you are too open, you are taken from; if you are too guarded, you are misunderstood. They will call you kind until you set a boundary, and the moment you do, the language changes—suddenly you are “too much,” “too hard,” “too something” they can no longer access.

But the truth lies somewhere in between, in that quiet, steady knowing that your kindness is not meant to cost you yourself. That your energy is not a public resource, not something to be negotiated or earned through guilt. You are allowed to be warm without being consumed, open without being emptied, present without being possessed. And anyone who mistook your protection for cruelty was never meant to experience you beyond the surface anyway. Perceived through filtered lenses.

And your perception of me is not my responsibility!

Your gaze upon my aura has never truly been about me—only about the way I make you feel. A contract you drafted in your own mind, signed on my behalf without consent, binding me to a role I never agreed to play. Your hunger to feast on my energy, my magic, my kindness, is simply to consume all of me until your belly’s full. You reach for me not to know me, but to take from me, to have me pour endlessly into your empty cup while my own pitcher runs dry. And your attention, your presence, your nearness—it all hinges on the feeling, the fleeting high you chase in the briefest moments we brush shoulders. Not me. Never me. Just the echo of what I give.

I am not the charger to your phone running on 10% ready to replenish your battery, nor am I your oasis in the desert that you prayed for. I am not here to offer you the fruits of a garden you never labored in. I tilled the soil with my own hands, planted every seed with intention, nurtured it with care, with patience, with love—while time did its quiet work and nature carried the rest. What grew here is not accidental, and it is not yours to take. You do not get to arrive at harvest and call it access. You do not get to use me—and I would sooner let the fruit fall and return to the earth than feed a hunger that only knows how to consume. And nobody talks about how exhausting it is to be the person who sees through everyone. To understand people in ways they do not even understand themselves, and still be expected to remain open, gentle, giving. It is a lonely clarity sometimes, this knowing. But it is also a protection. Because once you see, you cannot unsee—and you learn, slowly, that not everything you grow is meant to be shared.

Reciprocity is my love language.

Your intentions were never pure. Or to pour into me…or feel me. You never ask what inspires me, what brings me happiness, what my deepest regret is or it what ways I plan to shape the world. Did you notice the way my eyes lit up after getting a new book, or the calm that washes over me after spending a day at the park. We are far beyond simple pleasantries and asking me what my favorite color is when you really want to know what color my areolas are proves your lack of depth. Yet you still try to swim in my waters, unaware of the storm headed your way excited to drown you.

*deep sigh*

Consideration is the highest form of selflessness, and our mirrors are not reciprocal.

And asking you to consider me feels too close to begging.

The next time you find yourself wondering how someone might benefit you, pause—and ask yourself, in what ways do you benefit them? Not in fleeting attention or borrowed warmth, but in something real, something mutual, something that does not require one person to be emptied for the other to feel full. Because connection was never meant to be consumption, and anything that only flows one way is not connection at all—it is taking, dressed up as need.

Feel me?