What do you do when life becomes so repetitive that you start losing inspiration?

And when was the last time you stopped long enough to ask yourself what you actually need—not what your children need, your parents need, your partner needs, your job needs, or everybody else who has gotten used to needing something from you?

What do you need?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

One of my pen pals gifted me a book called The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz, and I’ve been reading it while I’ve been here in Vietnam. I don’t know if she knew how much I would need this book when she sent it to me, but the timing couldn’t have been better.

It’s one of those books that makes you stop reading every few pages because something you just read starts a completely different conversation in your head.

Ruiz talks about love, but this isn’t really a book about finding a relationship or keeping a man or woman. He talks about the relationship we have with ourselves and how that relationship follows us into every other relationship we have.

He talks about fear. Judgment. Expectations. The emotional wounds we carry around without realizing how much they’re affecting the way we love people and the way we allow people to love us.

And while I was reading it, I kept thinking about my own life.

I’ve been restless ever since I got to Vietnam.

Today I finally decided I needed some fresh air, so I ordered a Grab and came to Soho, this coffee shop in Vũng Tàu that sits right across from the beach. I ordered myself a passion fruit drink that cost me about two dollars, found a place to sit and started writing this while staring out at the water.

It’s cloudy as hell today. The sky is completely overcast because there’s rain coming, so I’m definitely not getting one of those beautiful sunny Vietnam beach views.

But I actually don’t mind it.

I just needed to get out of the house.

I’ve been spending almost every day with my grandma since I got here. We eat breakfast together every morning. We run errands together, go to the grocery store, come home and spend the majority of our day around each other. Somewhere along the way, we fell into this little routine without either of us really planning it.

The funny thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever had a life with this much routine.

My normal life is sporadic as hell.

I’m used to being responsible for myself and waking up without knowing exactly what I’m going to do that day. Some days I’ll spend hours writing. Other days I’ll wander around a city, find somewhere I want to eat and just go. I’ve traveled places simply because I felt like it. Half of the shit I’ve done in my life probably started with me randomly thinking, You know what would be fun?

Having my grandma with me has made me slow down.

She’s elderly now, and she walks a lot slower than I normally do, so when we’re out together, I walk right beside her. I’m paying attention to the traffic, watching the motorbikes coming from every damn direction and making sure we’re both able to cross the street safely because traffic in Vietnam does not play.

Without even thinking about it, I’ve started paying attention to whether she’s tired, how far we’re walking, whether she’s hungry and whether she’s okay.

Nobody asked me to do any of that. My grandma isn’t controlling me or stopping me from going anywhere by myself. It’s just something that naturally happens when you’re with someone you love and you know you have to move through the world a little differently with them.

And I think that’s what has made me understand caregiving in a way I didn’t before.

I mean a very small glimpse because I would never compare what I’m doing to someone raising children or caring for a sick family member.

But I understand something now that I didn’t understand in the same way before.

Taking care of somebody requires you to constantly consider another human being.

Your day is no longer built around one simple thought: What do I want to do today?

There are other things attached to it.

Who is going to watch the kids? Is someone staying with Mom? Can Dad be left alone? Who’s picking everybody up? What are we doing about dinner?

And somewhere underneath all of that is another question that probably gets asked more than any of the others:

Who needs me?

After enough time, I can understand how somebody could completely lose themselves inside of being needed.

You love your family. You love your children. You love the person you’re caring for.

But you can love somebody deeply and still need some time that belongs only to you.

I don’t think we talk about that enough.

Sometimes you want to go somewhere without coordinating anything, sit quietly without listening for somebody calling your name, or make one decision without first thinking about how that decision affects everybody else.

That doesn’t make the love any smaller.

It just means you’re a person too.

Today my grandma went to visit her siblings, which is actually one of the main reasons we’re spending so much time in Vũng Tàu in the first place. She wanted to be closer to them so she could easily get a taxi and visit whenever she wanted.

So she’s getting her sibling time today, and I’m sitting here with my little two-dollar passion fruit juice and the ocean.

Everybody wins.

Sitting here by myself, though, made me realize how much I’ve missed this.

Wandering around without having anywhere I need to be. Being curious. Having enough quiet in my head to write.

I’ve missed doing something simply because I wanted to do it.

And maybe that’s why The Mastery of Love has been hitting me the way it has.

One of the things Ruiz keeps bringing you back to is how much of our happiness, love and fulfillment we place in somebody else’s hands.

We create expectations around how people should love us—what our parents should do, what our partners should know, what our friends should remember, and how somebody should show up for us because of everything we’ve done for them.

Then when they don’t, we’re hurt.

I’ve been guilty of that.

Especially with my father.

Before I came to Vietnam, my dad and I got into an argument because my birthday came and went and he didn’t even wish me happy birthday.

He didn’t buy me a cake.

And listen, I am a grown-ass woman. I can go to Walmart and buy my own birthday cake.

It wasn’t about the fucking cake.

It was the thought.

My father could go to Walmart and buy himself a 24-pack of beer. He could remember a friend’s party. He could make time for whatever he considered important.

But he didn’t have that moment where he thought, It’s my daughter’s birthday. Let me get her something.

And that hurt.

Especially when I thought about how many times I’ve considered him, the things I’ve done for him and all the times I’ve made sure he was okay despite the differences we’ve had over the years.

Somewhere inside of me was an expectation that because I loved him a certain way, he should know how to love me that way too.

Reading this book made me question that.

Maybe some of our deepest disappointment comes from waiting for people to become who we think they should be instead of accepting who they’ve repeatedly shown us they are.

That’s a hard thing to sit with.

Because acceptance doesn’t mean what somebody did was okay.

Sometimes acceptance is simply saying:

This is who this person is. Now what am I going to do with that information?

I can tell you what I’m learning I don’t want to do anymore.

I don’t want to spend my life trying to squeeze love, consideration or effort out of somebody simply because I believe they should give it to me. Nor do I want to keep score, measuring what someone owes me against everything I’ve done for them.

That’s exhausting.

I can’t spend the rest of my life standing in front of somebody with an empty plate asking them to serve me something they’ve never learned how to cook.

And that brings me to probably my favorite idea from this entire book.

Ruiz tells a story about having a magical kitchen.

Imagine you have a kitchen where you can have any food you want. You’re completely fed. Then somebody comes to your door offering you food, but there’s a condition attached to it.

You wouldn’t need to accept the condition.

Why would you?

You already have food.

But when you’re starving?

That’s different.

And when I read that, I immediately thought about emotional hunger.

When you’re emotionally starving, crumbs can feel like a feast.

That sentence has been fucking with me ever since.

Because emotional hunger can look like so many things.

Affection. Attention. Validation. Companionship. Reassurance. Sex. Being desired, chosen, protected or considered. Having someone finally ask, Are you okay? after you’ve spent years asking everybody else.

Maybe you’ve spent your whole life being the strong one and someone finally tells you, I’ve got you.

Or nobody has touched you with tenderness in years.

You’ve been overlooked for so long that somebody remembering the smallest detail about you suddenly feels enormous.

You become so accustomed to doing everything yourself that someone opening a door, planning a date, paying for dinner, checking whether you made it home safely or remembering something you told them feels like you’ve hit the relationship lottery.

And those things are beautiful.

But the book made me wonder about something else.

Do they feel extraordinary because they truly are, or because some part of you has been starving for them?

That made me think about the man I’m currently dating, who I originally met at Whole Foods about a year ago.

I had to ask myself something I probably wouldn’t have asked before reading this book:

Was I emotionally starving when he came into my life?

Had I been going without something for so long that finally receiving it from someone made it feel bigger than it actually was?

Because I remember how good it felt to be treated a certain way—to feel considered and feminine, to have somebody make me feel like a princess or a queen.

And I don’t want to take anything away from the way he treats me, because there is something beautiful about someone intentionally making you feel special.

But the book made me look at it from another angle.

Maybe some of what felt extraordinary was actually the kind of care I should’ve already believed I deserved.

That’s a very different thing to realize.

When you’ve been emotionally starving, somebody remembering the little things about you can feel enormous. So can having someone check on you, make plans instead of leaving everything up to you, or simply be affectionate, thoughtful, protective and consistent.

Those things do matter.

But I don’t want them to feel valuable because I’ve been deprived of them. I want them to feel valuable because I’m receiving love from someone who is adding something beautiful to a life that was already full.

Read more

I’ve traveled to a lot of places, and that’s actually what I…

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I still can’t believe we’re already here.

My birthday is in two days, and next week I leave for Vietnam. I’ve been looking around my office lately, and every corner of the room …

Read more

I don’t believe numerology can tell you every single thing that’s going to happen in your life. So if you ever come across someone claiming they can predict every detail of your future, I’d encourage you to take that with a grain of salt.

That’s just not how I personally look at numerology.

To me, numerology is more like checking the weather before you leave the house. If there’s a good chance it’s going to rain, you’ll probably grab an umbrella. If it’s going to be 100 degrees outside, you’ll probably dress a little differently. The weather forecast isn’t making it rain. It’s simply giving you a better idea of what you might be walking into.

That’s exactly how I look at these monthly forecasts.

I’m not here to tell you what will happen next month. I’m here to help you understand the season you’re currently in so you can move through it with a little more awareness.

Some parts of this month’s reading might hit home immediately. You might read something and think, “Wow… that’s exactly what I’ve been feeling.” Other parts might not resonate at all, and that’s completely okay. You know your life better than anyone else. Take what speaks to you, leave what doesn’t, and trust your own intuition.

Every month, I’ll sit down and write these the same way I’d write a letter to a friend. I’m not trying to convince you that numerology has all the answers because I don’t think it does. What I do think is that it gives us another way of looking at our lives. Sometimes that’s all we need. A different perspective. A little reassurance. Or maybe just the reminder that we’re not the only person who’s ever felt this way.

So wherever you’re reading this from, I’m really glad you’re here.

Before we get started, let me quickly explain how this forecast works.

There are two sections you’ll want to read: your Life Path Number and your Personal Year Number.

Your Life Path Number is who you are at your core. It represents your natural strengths, your challenges, and the lessons you’ll continue learning throughout your lifetime.

Your Personal Year Number is different. It changes every year and reflects the season you’re currently walking through.

I like to think of it this way:

Your Life Path is who you are.

Your Personal Year is the chapter you’re currently living.

Neither one tells the whole story by itself. Reading both together usually gives you a much clearer picture.

If you don’t know your Life Path Number yet, don’t worry. It’s actually much easier to calculate than most people think.

I’ll use my own birthday as an example.

I was born on August 5, 1988.

August is the eighth month, so that’s 8.

My birthday is the 5th, so that’s 5.

Then I add together each digit of my birth year:

1 + 9 + 8 + 8 = 26

Then reduce it again:

2 + 6 = 8

Now I add those three numbers together:

8 + 5 + 8 = 21

Then reduce one last time:

2 + 1 = 3

That makes me a Life Path 3.

Go ahead and calculate yours before you keep reading.

Once you know your Life Path Number, scroll to that section first. After you’ve read it, come back and read your Personal Year Number. One explains who you are. The other helps explain why this particular season of your life may feel the way it does.

One last thing…

Read this with an open mind.

You don’t have to agree with everything I say. You might read something and think, “That doesn’t sound like me at all,” and that’s okay. But if you come across a sentence that makes you stop for a second… don’t just scroll past it because it’s uncomfortable.

Those are usually the moments worth paying attention to.

Alright, enough of me talking.

Let’s figure out your number.

Life Path 1

If you’re a Life Path 1, let me ask you something.

How many times have you talked yourself out of doing something because you didn’t feel ready?

People usually see you as independent, ambitious, confident, and driven. And yes, you probably are all of those things. But what people don’t always see is how much pressure you put on yourself behind the scenes.

You can spend so much time trying to make the right decision that you end up delaying the decision altogether.

You tell yourself you need one more certification.

One more class.

One more year of experience.

One more sign that you’re making the right choice.

Sometimes those things are necessary.

Sometimes it’s just fear wearing a really convincing disguise.

August feels like a month where you may have to stop waiting for complete certainty and trust that you already know enough to take the next step.

That doesn’t mean being reckless or making a huge decision overnight. It means being honest about whether you’re still preparing or whether you’re hiding inside preparation because taking action feels uncomfortable.

Confidence almost never comes first.

Most of the time, confidence shows up after you’ve already started.

The people you admire probably weren’t fearless when they took their first step. They just reached a point where staying where they were felt worse than the possibility of failing.

And I have a feeling some of you are getting very close to that point.

When it comes to work, August may bring your attention back to something you’ve been avoiding.

Maybe you’ve been thinking about applying for another position, but every time you read the job description, you immediately focus on what you don’t have.

Maybe you’ve been wanting to ask for a raise, take on a leadership role, or finally speak up about the fact that you’re doing more than what you’re being paid for.

Or maybe you already know you’ve outgrown your current environment, but leaving would mean starting over, and that part scares you.

Here’s what I want you to remember.

You do not have to meet every single qualification before putting yourself forward.

Skills can be learned.

Experience can be gained.

And sometimes the only difference between you and the person who gets the opportunity is that they were willing to ask for it.

Stop automatically counting yourself out.

Let someone else decide whether you’re qualified instead of rejecting yourself before they even get the chance to consider you.

For those of you building a business, August may challenge you to stop comparing your beginning to someone else’s middle.

There will always be someone with a larger audience, more money, better equipment, more connections, or years of experience ahead of you.

That doesn’t mean there’s no room for what you’re creating.

At some point, you have to stop studying how everyone else did it and allow yourself to figure out how you want to do it.

You’re a Life Path 1.

You’re not really here to copy somebody else’s path anyway.

You’re here to create your own.

Relationships may feel a little different this month because you’re being asked to let people see more than just the capable version of you.

You’ve probably become very used to handling things on your own. Even when you need support, your first instinct may be to figure it out yourself instead of asking anyone for help.

Part of that comes from independence.

Part of it may also come from not wanting to feel disappointed.

If you never ask, no one can let you down.

But they also never get the opportunity to show up for you.

August may bring a conversation where you have to be honest about what you need instead of expecting someone to notice on their own.

That may be uncomfortable for you.

You don’t always enjoy feeling vulnerable, especially when you’re accustomed to being the person who seems to have everything under control.

But needing reassurance, support, affection, or help does not make you weak.

The people who genuinely care about you are not waiting for you to become some perfectly healed, successful, and completely self-sufficient version of yourself before they decide you’re worthy of love.

Let them know you.

Not just the strong version.

The real version.

For those of you who are single, be mindful of anyone who makes you feel like you have to prove your worth.

You do not need to chase someone, convince them to choose you, or perform for their attention.

You may enjoy the challenge at first, but eventually, constantly trying to earn someone’s interest becomes exhausting.

Pay attention to whether someone is actually meeting you halfway.

Financially, August is asking you to look at what you’re building rather than what you’re trying to prove.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your money or buying nice things. But be honest about whether some of your spending is connected to wanting people to see you a certain way.

Are you investing in the future you say you want?

Or are you spending money to create the appearance that you’ve already arrived?

Those are two very different things.

One can create long-term freedom.

The other gives you a temporary feeling of validation and then leaves you with the bill.

This may be a good month to put more money toward something that gives you stability later. That could mean saving, paying down debt, investing in your business, taking a course, or buying something that actually supports the life you’re trying to build.

Just make sure your financial decisions are coming from intention and not pressure.

You don’t have to prove that you’re doing well.

You need to make sure you actually are.

The biggest lesson for you this month is learning how to move before every doubt disappears.

You may still feel nervous.

You may still question yourself.

You may still wonder whether you’re making a mistake.

Life Path 2

Can I tell you something I’ve noticed about Life Path 2s?

Out of all the Life Paths, you’re usually the first person to notice when someone isn’t okay.

Someone can tell you they’re “fine,” and within five seconds you’re thinking, “No… something feels off.”

That’s your gift.

You notice the little things most people miss.

A change in someone’s tone.

The look on their face.

The energy they bring into a room.

The problem is… people like you don’t just notice what other people are carrying.

You start carrying it with them.

And after a while, it becomes so normal that you don’t even realize you’re doing it anymore.

You’re usually the person everyone runs to when life falls apart.

The friend people call.

The family member holding everyone together.

The one checking in on everyone else.

But somewhere along the way, you quietly stopped checking in on yourself.

When was the last time someone asked how you were doing…

…and you answered honestly?

Not with, “I’m good.”

Not with, “I’m just tired.”

I mean honestly.

This month, I want you to pay attention to how often you automatically say yes.

Not because you want to.

Because it feels easier than saying no.

There’s a difference.

You have a huge heart.

Please don’t lose that.

Just remember that having compassion for someone doesn’t mean you’re responsible for carrying what they’re carrying.

When it comes to work, August may ask you to stop being everyone’s safety net.

You’re incredibly dependable, and people know that. Because of that, you may find yourself taking on extra responsibilities, fixing problems that aren’t yours to fix, or saying yes simply because you know you can handle it.

But just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

If you’ve been thinking about asking for more support, having a conversation about your workload, or even exploring a new opportunity, don’t talk yourself out of it because you feel guilty about leaving people behind.

A workplace will figure things out after you leave.

Your responsibility is to build a life that feels aligned with you, not to make yourself indispensable at the expense of your own well-being.

Relationships may bring a different lesson this month.

Pay attention to whether the people around you are meeting you with the same care you so naturally give them.

I’m not talking about keeping score.

Healthy relationships aren’t always fifty-fifty.

But they should feel mutual.

You shouldn’t always be the one checking in first, making the plans, smoothing over the disagreements, or carrying the emotional weight of the relationship.

If something has been bothering you, August feels like a good month to finally say it out loud.

The people who truly care about you can’t meet a need they don’t know you have.

For those of you who are single, ask yourself if you’re attracted to people who make you feel loved… or people who make you feel needed.

There’s a difference.

Financially, August is encouraging you to be just as generous with your future as you are with everyone else.

You’re naturally thoughtful.

You’re the one buying the birthday gift, picking up the dinner bill, or helping someone who’s fallen on hard times.

Those are beautiful qualities.

Just don’t forget that your future deserves that same kindness.

Before spending money this month, ask yourself one question:

“Is this helping me build the life I want… or am I trying to make someone else comfortable?”

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is say, “I can’t this time.”

That doesn’t make you selfish.

It means you’re finally including yourself in the list of people you care for.

So here’s the question I want you to sit with this month.

If you stopped feeling responsible for everyone else’s happiness…

What would you finally give yourself permission to do?

Life Path 3

Can I tell you something I love about Life Path 3s?

People usually meet the version of you that makes everyone laugh.

You’re funny.

Creative.

Expressive.

You can walk into a room and somehow make people feel lighter without even trying.

People are naturally drawn to your energy.

Some of the funniest people are carrying some of the heaviest things.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

I’ve always felt like Life Path 3s process life through creativity.

Whether it’s writing, photography, music, cooking, painting, content creation, decorating, or whatever your creative outlet happens to be…

Creating isn’t just something you do.

It’s how you make sense of your life.

It’s how you process heartbreak.

It’s how you celebrate joy.

It’s how you turn experiences into something meaningful.

If I’m being honest, I think some of you have been hiding behind your creativity a little, too.

How much of yourself are you editing because you’re worried people won’t understand you?

Maybe it’s something you’ve wanted to write.

A video you’ve been afraid to post.

A story you’ve never told.

An idea you’ve kept in your drafts because you weren’t sure how people would respond.

I understand that feeling.

Not everyone is supposed to understand you.

They’re not your people.

The people who are meant to connect with your story can’t do that if they only ever meet the polished version of you.

August feels like a month to stop asking, “Will people like this?”

Start asking, “Does this feel true to me?”

Those are two completely different questions.

When it comes to work, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve been sitting on an idea that’s been following you around for months.

Maybe even years.

You keep telling yourself you’ll start when everything is perfect.

When you have more experience.

More followers.

More confidence.

More money.

Perfection has a way of moving the finish line every time you get close.

At some point, you have to stop preparing and let your work exist.

Not because it’s perfect.

Because it’s ready enough.

If you’re building something creative, August is encouraging you to stop leaving your best ideas in your notes app, your camera roll, or your drafts folder.

Someone can’t benefit from something they’ve never had the chance to see.

Relationships also feel important this month, but maybe not in the way you expect.

I think you’re craving depth.

You can have a hundred conversations and still feel lonely if none of them are real.

Pay attention to who makes you feel like you can take the mask off.

The people who don’t expect you to always be entertaining.

Always be positive.

Always be “on.”

Those are the relationships worth investing in.

If you’re in a relationship, let your partner see more than the version of you that has everything together.

If you’re single, don’t mistake chemistry for connection.

Find someone who’s curious about who you are when the conversation gets quiet.

Financially, August feels like a good month to invest in your gifts.

Sometimes buying better equipment, taking a class, hiring a mentor, or simply creating more space in your schedule isn’t an expense.

It’s an investment in the person you’re becoming.

The only thing I’d be mindful of is spreading yourself too thin.

Life Path 3s are idea people.

Your mind doesn’t stop creating.

And that’s beautiful.

But not every idea needs your attention right now.

Sometimes your next breakthrough doesn’t come from starting something new.

It comes from finally finishing what you’ve already started.

So here’s the question I want you to sit with this month.

What part of yourself have you been editing out because you’re worried people won’t understand it?

Life Path 4

Have you caught yourself wondering lately…

“Is all of this hard work actually going to pay off?”

If there’s one thing I know about Life Path 4s, it’s that giving up usually isn’t the problem.

If anything, you work too hard.

You’re the person who shows up early.

Stays late.

Does the things nobody else wants to do.

You’ll sacrifice today’s comfort if you believe it’ll create a better tomorrow.

Building something meaningful usually takes a lot longer than people expect.

I have a feeling some of you are starting to wonder if all this effort is actually leading somewhere.

Most people post the harvest.

Very few people post themselves planting seeds.

You’re looking at everyone else’s highlight reel while you’re still pouring the foundation.

Brick by brick.

Day after day.

It’s not glamorous.

Nobody’s clapping yet.

Sometimes nobody even knows what you’re working toward.

That doesn’t mean you’re behind.

It means you’re still building.

One thing I’ve noticed about Life Path 4s is that you’re so focused on what’s left to do that you rarely stop and look at how far you’ve already come.

You reach one goal…

…and immediately replace it with another.

You check something off the list…

…and instead of celebrating, you ask yourself why it took so long.

That’s exhausting.

August feels like a month to finally give yourself some credit.

Not because you’re finished.

Because you’ve earned the right to recognize your progress.

When it comes to work, don’t mistake slow progress for no progress.

Your career may feel quieter than you’d like right now.

You might not get the recognition you think you deserve.

You may wonder if anyone notices how much you’re carrying.

People notice consistency more than they notice big moments.

Keep showing up.

Keep doing good work.

Your reputation is being built every single day, even when it doesn’t feel like anything is happening.

If you’ve been thinking about changing jobs or making a career move, don’t make the decision simply because you’re tired.

Make it because the next opportunity genuinely aligns with where you’re trying to go.

Relationships are asking something different from you this month.

I think you’ve gotten so used to taking care of responsibilities that sometimes you forget the people you love don’t need a project manager.

They need you.

Be present.

Put your phone down.

Take the weekend trip.

Go to dinner.

Have the conversation you’ve been putting off because work felt more urgent.

The people in your life won’t remember every hour you worked.

They’ll remember how you made them feel when you were with them.

Financially, you’re usually one of the smartest Life Paths.

Planning ahead comes naturally to you.

Saving makes sense to you.

Building security matters.

Just don’t become so focused on preparing for tomorrow that you forget to enjoy today.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with treating yourself every now and then if you’ve worked hard for it.

Life isn’t only about building the future.

It’s also about living the present.

Have you been so focused on reaching the next milestone…

…that you’ve forgotten to appreciate the person you’re becoming along the way?

Life Path 5

Can I take a wild guess?

If your life starts feeling too predictable…

You get restless.

It’s almost like something inside you starts whispering, “There has to be more than this.”

Routine might make other people feel safe.

For you?

Too much routine can feel like you’re slowly losing pieces of yourself.

You need movement.

New experiences.

Interesting conversations.

Different places.

Different people.

You just want to feel like life is still unfolding.

That’s why people are always calling you adventurous, spontaneous, or free-spirited.

What they don’t always understand is that you’re not chasing change because you’re irresponsible.

You’re chasing change because it makes you feel alive.

But can I ask you something?

When you want to change your life…

Are you running toward something?

Or are you running away from something?

Those two things can look almost identical.

I’ve met a lot of Life Path 5s who love to travel, move to a new city, change careers, start over, or jump into the next exciting opportunity.

And honestly…

Sometimes that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.

But sometimes a new beginning is just a really good distraction from a conversation you’ve been avoiding with yourself.

Only you know which one this is.

One of the things I admire most about Life Path 5s is your courage.

While other people are still overthinking every possible outcome…

You’ve already booked the flight.

Submitted the application.

Said yes.

That willingness to take chances has probably opened doors you never could have planned for.

Just don’t let every feeling of restlessness convince you it’s time to change everything.

Sometimes you’re not being called to leave.

Sometimes you’re being asked to grow where you are.

When it comes to work, August feels full of possibility.

If you’re anything like most Life Path 5s, you’ve probably got a notebook, camera roll, or Notes app filled with ideas.

Business ideas.

Creative projects.

Places you want to visit.

Things you want to learn.

Dreams that still make you smile every time you think about them.

The challenge has never been coming up with ideas.

The challenge is choosing one.

You don’t need ten more ideas.

You need one that you stay committed to long enough to see what it’s capable of becoming.

Freedom doesn’t always come from starting over.

Sometimes freedom comes from staying long enough to build something that eventually gives you more choices.

Relationships may also have you rethinking what freedom really means.

Some of you have convinced yourselves that commitment and independence can’t exist together.

I don’t believe that.

The right relationship shouldn’t make your world feel smaller.

It should make you excited to build an even bigger one together.

If you’re single, don’t automatically mistake unpredictability for chemistry.

Sometimes peace feels unfamiliar simply because you’re used to chaos.

Financially, August is asking you to slow down just enough to think before you say yes.

You love experiences.

And honestly…

I hope you never lose that.

Life is short.

Go on the trip.

Try the restaurant.

Make the memories.

Just don’t let short-term excitement quietly steal long-term freedom.

Before you spend money, ask yourself one question:

“Will this bring me joy after the excitement wears off?”

If the answer is yes, enjoy it.

If not, it might be worth sleeping on.

I want to leave you with one final thought.

One of your greatest gifts isn’t your ability to adapt.

It’s your ability to reinvent yourself without losing who you are.

That’s rare.

Life is going to change.

Some plans will fall apart.

Others will come together in ways you never expected.

Trust yourself enough to know that you’ll figure it out.

You always have.

So here’s the question I want you to sit with this month.

What kind of life are you actually chasing…

…and are your daily decisions bringing you closer to it?

Life Path 6

Can I ask you something?

When was the last time you let someone take care of you?

Not because you were having a terrible day.

Not because you finally reached your breaking point.

Just because you needed it.

If you’re a Life Path 6, I have a feeling that question isn’t as easy to answer as it should be.

You’re usually the one everyone depends on.

You remember birthdays without setting reminders.

You make sure everyone gets home safely.

If someone in your family is struggling, you somehow feel responsible for helping them figure it out.

When someone you love is hurting, it almost feels like you’re hurting too.

Taking care of people has become so natural that you rarely stop to ask yourself…

“Is this actually mine to carry?”

And I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about you.

I also think it’s one of the things that leaves you exhausted.

Somewhere along the way, I think a lot of Life Path 6s started believing that love is something you earn.

The more you give…

The more you sacrifice…

The more you tolerate…

The more worthy you become.

But love was never meant to be measured by how tired you are at the end of the day.

August is asking you to pay attention to where your energy is going.

Not because you should stop caring.

I hope you never lose that part of yourself.

But because there’s a difference between supporting someone…

…and rescuing them.

Support helps people grow.

Rescuing can accidentally keep them from ever learning to stand on their own.

I know that’s a difficult lesson when helping people is one of the ways you naturally show love.

You may also be realizing that not everyone loves the way you do.

That can be a painful realization.

You give without keeping score, so it’s easy to assume everyone else does too.

Sometimes they simply show love differently.

And sometimes…

The relationship isn’t as balanced as you’ve been telling yourself it is.

If you’re constantly pouring into someone who rarely pours back into you, eventually compassion turns into resentment.

Pay attention to that this month.

When it comes to work, you’re probably the person everyone relies on.

You’re dependable.

Organized.

Responsible.

People know that if they ask you to do something, it’ll get done.

The downside?

Dependable people often get rewarded with more work instead of more appreciation.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed lately, ask yourself…

Have people started expecting you to say yes because you’ve never given them a reason to expect anything different?

It’s okay to set a boundary.

It’s okay to ask for help.

It’s okay to let someone else carry the weight once in a while.

Relationships are reminding you this month that healthy love goes both ways.

You shouldn’t always be the one checking in first.

Always fixing the problem.

Always holding everything together.

The people who love you should create space for you to fall apart sometimes too.

If you’re single, don’t choose someone simply because they need you.

Choose someone who sees you.

Those are two very different things.

Financially, be mindful of making decisions out of guilt.

Life Path 6s are incredibly generous, especially when it comes to family and the people they love.

There’s nothing wrong with helping.

Just don’t let guilt become your financial advisor.

It’s okay to say no if saying yes puts your own stability at risk.

Taking care of yourself isn’t taking something away from someone else.

Before I leave you with one last thought…

I want you to remember that home isn’t just a place.

It’s a feeling.

You’ve spent so much of your life creating that feeling for everyone around you.

Now it’s time to create it for yourself too.

So here’s the question I want you to sit with this month.

If you stopped believing it was your job to carry everyone else…

What would your own life finally have room for?

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Life Path 7

Can I tell you something I’ve always admired about Life Path 7s?

You’re not interested in knowing what happened.

You want to know why it happened.

People have probably called you quiet, private, or hard to read.

Some people mistake that for being distant.

I don’t.

I think you’re just careful about who you let into your world.

Trust isn’t something you hand out easily.

People earn it.

And honestly…

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

You notice things other people overlook.

While everyone else is focused on what’s happening, you’re usually wondering what’s happening underneath it.

You don’t care much for small talk.

You’d rather have one conversation that changes the way you see the world than twenty conversations that don’t really say anything.

The downside is…

That can feel lonely sometimes.

Not because you’re antisocial.

Because it’s hard to find people who want to meet you at that depth.

August feels quieter than usual.

And before you convince yourself that something is missing…

I want you to consider something.

Maybe this isn’t loneliness.

Maybe it’s space.

Space to think.

Space to breathe.

Space to hear yourself again.

For someone like you, some of your biggest breakthroughs happen in the quiet.

Just don’t let solitude slowly become isolation.

There’s a difference.

Can I ask you something?

Is there a decision you’ve been researching for months?

Maybe you’ve been reading every article.

Watching every video.

Making pros and cons lists.

Waiting for one more sign that tells you exactly what to do.

Life Path 7s are incredibly thoughtful.

You like understanding things before you act.

That’s one of your strengths.

But eventually…

There comes a point where no amount of thinking will teach you what experience can.

Some answers only show up after you’ve taken the first step.

If you’ve been thinking about changing careers, starting a business, moving somewhere new, or having an important conversation, August may be the month to trust yourself a little more.

You’ve spent enough time gathering information.

Now trust your own wisdom.

When it comes to work, your ability to focus deeply is one of your greatest gifts.

You don’t need constant recognition.

You’re driven by purpose more than applause.

Just be careful that your pursuit of knowledge doesn’t quietly become procrastination wearing a different outfit.

Some ideas don’t need six more months of research.

They need your willingness to begin.

Relationships may also ask you to let someone a little closer this month.

I know that’s easier said than done.

Protecting your heart has probably kept you safe more than once.

But it may have also kept genuinely good people at a distance.

You don’t have to tell everyone your story.

Not everyone deserves that.

But someone does.

If you’re in a relationship, let your partner see the parts of you that don’t always have the answers.

If you’re single, don’t assume everyone will hurt you simply because someone else did.

People shouldn’t have to pay for wounds they didn’t create.

Financially, August feels like a month to invest in things that help you grow.

A class.

A mentor.

A book.

A trip that changes the way you think.

Those kinds of investments often stay with you much longer than the excitement of buying something you didn’t really need.

Before I leave you with one last thought…

I want you to remember that not every question in life has an immediate answer.

Some answers only make sense after you’ve lived through the lesson.

You don’t have to understand this chapter while you’re still in it.

One day you’ll look back, connect the dots, and realize life was teaching you something all along.

So here’s the question I want you to sit with this month.

Is there a decision you’ve been overthinking…

…that your heart quietly made a long time ago?

Life Path 8

When was the last time you reached a goal…

…and actually let yourself enjoy it?

If you’re a Life Path 8, it probably didn’t last very long.

You hit one milestone…

…and your mind immediately starts thinking about the next one.

That’s just how you’re wired.

People often see you as ambitious.

Driven.

Someone who’s always building something.

Whether it’s a career, a business, financial security, or a legacy for your family, you’ve never been someone who’s comfortable settling.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

People love saying Life Path 8s only care about money.

I’ve never believed that.

I think money represents something much deeper.

For some of you, it’s freedom.

For others, it’s security because you know what uncertainty feels like.

And for some, it’s proof that every sacrifice you’ve made meant something.

The money was never the goal.

It’s what the money allows you to build.

August feels like a month to ask yourself a different question.

Not, “How do I make more?”

Instead, ask yourself, “What kind of life am I building all of this for?”

Those aren’t always the same thing.

I’ve met people who looked incredibly successful from the outside…

But secretly hated the life they’d built.

I’ve also met people who made far less money…

Yet woke up excited about the life they were living.

Only you get to decide what success looks like.

When it comes to work, your leadership naturally stands out this month.

People trust your confidence.

They look to you when decisions need to be made.

The best leaders don’t feel the need to have all the answers.

They ask good questions.

They listen.

They help other people grow.

That’s the kind of leadership people remember.

If you’ve been thinking about taking on a bigger opportunity, starting a business, asking for a promotion, or stepping into a leadership role, August feels supportive of those kinds of moves.

Just make sure you’re building something that actually excites you.

Not something that simply looks impressive to everyone else.

Relationships may ask you to slow down for a minute.

Your mind is almost always thinking about the future.

The next goal.

The next problem to solve.

The next opportunity.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

Just don’t let the people you love start feeling like they only get whatever time is left after everything else is finished.

Sometimes one fully present conversation means more than an entire weekend where you’re physically there but mentally somewhere else.

If you’re single, ask yourself whether you’re looking for a partner…

Or someone who fits into the life you’ve already planned.

The right relationship shouldn’t feel like another achievement to unlock.

It should feel like someone you genuinely enjoy building a life with.

Financially, this is naturally one of your strongest areas.

You’re good at thinking long-term.

You understand the value of building wealth.

Just remember that money is a tool.

It’s meant to create freedom.

Not become the thing you spend your entire life chasing.

Some of the best investments you’ll ever make won’t show up on a balance sheet.

They’ll show up in your relationships.

Your health.

Your peace of mind.

Your memories.

You don’t have to earn your worth by constantly producing.

Your accomplishments are something to be proud of.

But they were never meant to become your identity.

Who you are has always been worth more than what you’ve achieved.

If success could no longer be measured by money or accomplishments…

What would your life tell you that you truly value?

Life Path 9

How many versions of yourself have you had to say goodbye to?

If you’re a Life Path 9, my guess is…

Probably more than most people realize.

I’m not just talking about breakups or losing people you love.

I’m talking about friendships you quietly outgrew.

Careers that no longer felt like home.

Dreams you had to let go of because life took you somewhere you never expected.

If there’s one thing Life Path 9 teaches over and over again…

It’s that sometimes life asks us to let go before we’re ready to receive what’s next.

I think that’s one of the reasons you have so much compassion for other people.

You’ve lived through enough endings to know what it feels like when someone is just trying to hold themselves together.

That’s why people feel safe around you.

They don’t have to pretend everything is okay.

They know you’ll meet them with understanding instead of judgment.

Just don’t forget that you’re still healing too.

Life Path 9s have a funny way of convincing themselves they’ve moved on simply because they’re functioning.

You’re going to work.

Paying the bills.

Showing up for everyone else.

From the outside, everything looks fine.

Healing isn’t measured by how productive you are.

What are you still holding onto simply because it’s familiar?

Maybe it’s a relationship.

Maybe it’s guilt.

Maybe it’s an old version of yourself that doesn’t fit anymore.

Or maybe it’s simply a story you’ve been telling yourself for so long that you don’t know who you’d be without it.

One of the things I admire most about Life Path 9s is your ability to see the bigger picture.

While everyone else is arguing over who’s right…

You’re usually wondering how everyone got here in the first place.

You understand that people are shaped by their experiences.

That makes you incredibly compassionate.

Just don’t confuse understanding someone with giving them unlimited access to your life.

You can forgive someone…

…without giving them another opportunity to hurt you.

Those are two completely different things.

When it comes to work, August feels like a month to reconnect with your purpose.

You may find yourself asking whether the work you’re doing still feels meaningful.

If you’ve been feeling restless, don’t automatically assume you need a completely different career.

Sometimes it’s not the work you’ve outgrown.

It’s the reason you’ve forgotten.

Reconnect with what made you care in the first place.

Relationships also feel important this month.

If you’re in one, be honest about what you’ve been carrying quietly.

You don’t always have to be the strong one.

If you’re single, don’t assume every ending means you’ve missed your chance.

Life Path 9s know better than anyone that endings often make room for the right beginning.

Financially, August is reminding you that receiving is just as important as giving.

You’re naturally generous.

With your time.

Your money.

Your heart.

But generosity and self-neglect are not the same thing.

Let people show up for you too.

Accept the compliment.

Let someone buy dinner.

Receive without feeling like you immediately have to give something back.

Your past will always be part of your story.

It just doesn’t have to keep writing your future.

What would become possible…

…if you finally made peace with the chapter you’ve been afraid to let go of?

What About Master Numbers? (11, 22 & 33)

One of the questions I get asked the most is whether someone with a Master Number should read their Master Number or their reduced Life Path.

My answer is simple: read your reduced Life Path.

Master Numbers (11, 22, and 33) carry additional lessons and heightened potential, but they’re still rooted in their reduced Life Path. That means:

• Master Number 11 → Read Life Path 2

• Master Number 22 → Read Life Path 4

• Master Number 33 → Read Life Path 6

For this monthly forecast, I’ve chosen to focus on the core Life Path energies. If you have a Master Number, you’ll likely recognize yourself in both, but your reduced Life Path is the forecast I recommend following each month.

Now Let’s Talk About Your Personal Year Number

Now that you know your Life Path Number, let’s figure out your Personal Year Number because this is the part that changes every year.

I like to think of it this way.

Your Life Path Number is who you are.

Your Personal Year Number is the season you’re currently walking through.

Your Life Path stays the same from the day you’re born until the day you die. If you’re a Life Path 4 today, you’ll still be a Life Path 4 twenty years from now. That number represents your natural strengths, your challenges, and the lessons your soul will continue learning throughout your lifetime.

Your Personal Year is different.

It changes every year, which means the energy surrounding your life changes too. Some years naturally feel like a fresh start. Others ask you to slow down and build. Some bring unexpected opportunities, while others encourage healing, reflection, or letting go before the next chapter begins.

Have you ever looked back on a particular year and thought, “Everything changed that year.”

Maybe you got married.

Started a business.

Moved across the country.

Lost someone you loved.

Had your first child.

Went through a divorce.

Changed careers.

Or maybe nothing dramatic happened on the outside, but you came out of that year feeling like a completely different person.

That’s exactly why I love Personal Years.

They don’t tell you what is going to happen.

They help explain why certain themes seem to keep showing up.

Instead of fighting the season you’re in, you can start working with it.

For example, if you’re in a Personal Year that’s all about building a strong foundation, it probably isn’t the best time to compare yourself to someone who’s in a year full of rapid change and exciting opportunities. You’re not behind. You’re simply in a different chapter.

It’s the same reason farmers don’t get frustrated when they’re planting seeds while someone else is harvesting. They understand that every season has its purpose.

Life works much the same way.

How to Calculate Your Personal Year Number

The formula is actually much simpler than your Life Path.

Take your birth month and birth day, then add them to the current year.

Let’s use my birthday as an example again.

Birthday: August 5

Current Year: 2026

• Month: 8

• Day: 5

• Current Year: 2 + 0 + 2 + 6 = 10 → 1

Now add them together.

8 + 5 + 1 = 14

Reduce one final time.

1 + 4 = 5

That means I’m in a Personal Year 5 for most numerology systems.

However, I do want to acknowledge something because some of you may have heard a different method.

There are two common schools of thought in numerology.

The first says your Personal Year changes on January 1st, which is the method I used in the example above and the one you’ll find in many numerology books.

The second says your Personal Year changes on your birthday, because that’s when you begin a brand-new personal cycle around the sun.

After studying both methods, I’ve found myself leaning more toward the birthday-to-birthday approach because, in my own life, that’s when I’ve noticed the shift in energy the most. The themes don’t seem to suddenly change on January 1st. They usually begin changing around my birthday.

For example, even though the calendar says 2026, I personally still feel like I’m wrapping up my Personal Year 4 until my birthday in August. Once my birthday arrives, that’s when I feel myself stepping into the freedom, movement, and change of a Personal Year 5.

You don’t have to agree with me, and you’ll probably find numerologists who teach it differently. That’s completely okay. Numerology isn’t about convincing anyone that there’s only one correct method. It’s about finding the system that consistently reflects your own lived experience.

For this monthly forecast, I’m using the birthday-to-birthday method. I think it does a better job of matching the way our lives naturally unfold, and you’ll notice that’s the approach reflected throughout the Personal Year forecasts below.

Now that you’ve figured out your number, let’s take a look at the season you’re currently in. Remember, this isn’t about predicting your future. Think of it as understanding the weather before you walk outside. You still get to decide where you’re going, but it helps to know whether it’s a day to plant seeds, weather a storm, or enjoy a little sunshine.

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If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or are worried you may harm yourself, please reach out to someone you trust or contact a crisis service in your area. If you’re in the United States or Canada, you can call or text 988 to connect with the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You don’t have to carry what you’re going through by yourself.

Happy Tuesday, you guys.

I’ve been sitting at my desk today, working, writing, designing, answering messages, and trying to get through everything I need to finish before I leave the country.

Yesterday, I received an email from someone at Google.

I don’t know if you remember, but a couple of days ago, I made a post explaining that the return address on my Letters Beyond Borders envelopes throughout May, June, and the first week of July was incorrect.

Instead of the envelopes having my correct office number, 1505, it had 1503.

I still don’t understand how it happened. Somewhere between me, my assistant, and hundreds of envelopes going out into the world.

That meant all of the letters you mailed back to me were being delivered to the office next door.

Last Friday, I actually walked over to the building and tried to find the office myself, but I got lost. I don’t know how I got lost when the building is literally right next to mine, but somehow I couldn’t find the correct floor. I was walking around that building completely confused, trying to figure out where months’ worth of letters had gone.

Then yesterday, someone from Google emailed me and said, “Hey, we’ve been receiving a lot of mail for you. Can you provide us with a good address so we can get it to you?”

They could have returned every letter to the sender.

They could have left them sitting in a pile.

They could have thrown them back into the mail and decided it wasn’t their responsibility.

Instead, this person saw my name on envelope after envelope, Googled me, found my email address, and reached out to make sure the letters eventually made their way into my hands.

I appreciate people like that so much.

People who take an extra step when they don’t have to.

People who understand that something may not belong to them, but it still belongs to somebody.

Soon, all of those missing letters will finally be with me.

I don’t think I can explain how grateful that makes me feel.

Every letter matters to me.

Every person who takes the time to fill out an application to join Letters Beyond Borders matters to me. Every story you trust me with matters. Every envelope you address, every stamp you place in the corner, every page you sit down and write when you could be doing a thousand other things—it all matters.

You share your lives with me, and I share mine with you.

We laugh together. We cry together. We pray for one another. We celebrate birthdays, new jobs, heartbreaks, babies, healing, disappointments, dreams, and all the strange little things that happen between one letter and the next.

I started Letters Beyond Borders only a few months ago, and now there are more than four hundred of you.

Sometimes I sit back and think, How did this even happen?

Something that began as a simple desire to write to people has grown into a community stretching across the world.

I have a much bigger vision for it. I can already see what it could become. But even if it never became anything more than what it is today, I would still be grateful, because it has reminded me that people want to be known.

People want to feel like their lives matter to someone.

They want somewhere they can put the things they have been carrying.

And sometimes those letters make me look at parts of myself that I have been avoiding.

One of the letters I recently received came from a pen pal who asked me a question.

I’ve been thinking about it for hours.

You know how I am. When something sits heavily in my heart, I have to write while I am still inside of the feeling. I can’t wait until next week, when I’ve had enough time to make it sound prettier or more reasonable.

My best writing comes from whatever I am feeling right now.

So I opened my laptop.

The question was:

“If he’s such a wonderful man, what are you afraid of? Why won’t you let him love you?”

I don’t think my pen pal meant it judgmentally.

I think she asked a question that many people have probably wondered, especially those of you who discovered me through the story of the Whole Foods Guy.

Some of you have followed me for more than a decade. You watched me move from Dallas to Los Angeles. You watched me build businesses, lose things, start over, return to Dallas, fall apart, rebuild again, and now prepare to move across the world.

Some of you just found me last week.

Depending on when you arrived, you know a different version of me.

You know whatever part of my life was visible when you started watching.

That’s the strange thing about social media.

People can know so much about you while also knowing almost nothing about you.

You can watch someone build a business. You can see where they travel, what they eat, who they date, what they are afraid of, what made them laugh that morning, and what made them cry the night before.

You can know their favorite dessert, their birthday, the cities they have lived in, and the name of the man they are falling in love with.

You can watch their life every day and still not know what it took for their heart to arrive at that moment.

People see a good man.

They see someone showing up for me, caring about me, traveling to see me, including me in his life, and making an effort.

What they don’t always see is everything my heart survived before he ever walked back into my life.

They don’t see the home I grew up in.

They don’t see the bruises.

They don’t see the little girl who learned very early that love and pain could come from the same hands.

They don’t see the seven- or eight-year-old child who had to run out of a room because an adult touched her in a way she already knew was wrong, even though she didn’t yet have the words to explain why.

They don’t see the relationship where being slapped felt familiar enough that I stayed.

They don’t see the husband I thought I would grow old with.

They don’t see the phone calls, the highway, the hospital, or the moment my entire future disappeared.

They don’t see the bathroom floor, the knife, the pills, the ambulance, the charcoal, the psychiatric floor, or the version of me who didn’t want to wake up the next morning.

Those experiences don’t disappear because a kind man enters your life.

Healing does not work that way.

Love does not work that way either.

I’ve reached a point where I can tell these stories without completely falling apart.

That doesn’t mean they are easy to tell.

There are things I have healed from that I still have to take a breath before saying out loud.

But I also know there is someone reading this who has been trying to understand why they react the way they do.

Someone who has questioned why being loved makes them uncomfortable.

Someone who has met a good person and still felt the urge to run.

Someone who keeps telling themselves, “Nothing bad is happening, so why am I so afraid?”

Maybe this will help you understand that fear does not always begin with the person standing in front of you.

Sometimes fear is much older than the relationship you are currently in.

I grew up in a strict Vietnamese household.

My parents came from Vietnam and were given an opportunity to build a life in America. They did not have much. They were trying to survive, raise children, work, pay bills, and understand a country and culture that were completely different from the one they knew.

They made sure we had food.

They made sure we had clothes.

They made sure we went to school and received an education.

They gave us what they understood children needed to survive.

I can acknowledge that while also acknowledging the ways I was hurt.

Both things can be true.

Sometimes people believe that forgiving your parents means pretending nothing happened.

I don’t believe that.

I can forgive my father and still say he abused me.

I can understand that he disciplined his children in the only way he knew and still say that the way he disciplined me caused harm.

I can love my parents and still speak truthfully about my childhood.

In many Asian households, children are expected to excel.

You need good grades. You need to behave. You need to make the family proud. You don’t talk back. You don’t embarrass your parents. You don’t question why the rules are the way they are.

And if you disappoint them, you will hear about it.

Sometimes loudly.

Sometimes with a flip-flop, a belt, a stick, or whatever else is close enough to reach.

People laugh about Asian parents throwing slippers at their children because it is such a common cultural joke.

But there are parts of it that were never funny.

Growing up, I did not know I was being abused.

I thought that was what happened when children got in trouble.

I thought fathers hit their daughters.

I thought love could include fear.

I thought home was supposed to be the place where you were fed, clothed, protected, and also afraid of making one wrong move.

I was the oldest of three children, and somehow I was almost always the one who got hit.

I would take the blame for my siblings. Sometimes I would get in trouble for being outside too long, climbing on a mailbox, coming home late, or doing the normal things children do when they are curious and still learning where the boundaries are.

I was not an easy child.

I can admit that.

The stricter my parents became, the more I learned to do things behind their backs. I lied. I snuck around. I tested every rule. I probably drove them crazy.

But I was also a child.

I would go to school with bruises and marks on my body.

My teachers noticed.

They would pull me aside and ask if I was okay at home. They took me to the office. They documented the bruises. They took pictures.

Eventually, someone called Child Protective Services.

For a period of time, I was removed from my home and sent to stay with another family while my parents were investigated.

Can you imagine being a child and not fully understanding why you cannot go home?

Not knowing what abuse means, but knowing that adults are looking at the marks on your body and telling you that something is wrong?

At the time, I did not have the emotional language to understand any of it.

I only knew I wanted my family, even though my family was also where I had been hurt.

That is one of the most confusing things about childhood trauma.

Children do not stop loving the people who hurt them.

They often learn to blame themselves instead.

You start believing that if you were quieter, smarter, more obedient, less emotional, less difficult, or less yourself, perhaps the people you love would not hurt you.

You don’t think, “My parent does not know how to regulate their anger.”

You think, “I made my parent angry.”

You don’t think, “This adult is responsible for protecting me.”

You think, “I should have known better.”

Then you carry that thinking into adulthood.

You become someone who is always trying to be good enough not to be hurt.

Around seven or eight years old, I experienced something else that changed how safe I felt around people.

I was at my aunt’s house, sitting on a bed and playing with my toys.

My uncle put his hand between my inner thighs.

His face came close to my neck.

I remember feeling uncomfortable before I even understood what was happening.

My body knew.

That is something I have never forgotten. Sometimes a child’s body understands danger long before her mind knows what to call it.

I screamed, ran out of the room, went downstairs, and crossed over to my grandmother’s place.

I was crying and trying to explain in Vietnamese, “Chú đụng vào con.”

My uncle touched me.

My grandmother tried to calm me down. She told me to breathe. Later, she told my mother, and she confronted my aunt. She asked why her husband was behaving that way with a child and told her she needed to watch him.

But families are complicated.

Especially when speaking the truth would disrupt marriages, relationships, holidays, and the version of the family everyone is trying to protect.

Nothing went further that day, and I think some people decided that meant it was not serious.

But a child does not measure harm by how far an adult managed to go.

The harm was in what happened.

The harm was in knowing that an adult I was supposed to trust looked at me in a way no adult should look at a child.

The harm was in having to see him again.

For the rest of my life, whenever there was a family holiday, dinner, birthday, or special event, I would see my uncle.

I stayed cordial.

I said hello.

I kept my distance.

I think some family members believed I forgot because I was so young.

I did not forget.

Children remember more than adults want to believe.

Even now, I can still see that room.

I can see the bed.

I can remember where I was sitting.

I can remember running.

I can remember the panic in my body before I knew enough about the world to understand what I was panicking about.

When those kinds of experiences happen early, they affect the way you understand love, trust, safety, affection, and your own instincts.

Then I grew up and dated a man named Seth.

We had known each other since high school. Eventually, he moved to Port Arthur.

He struggled with alcohol and gambling, and I was constantly sending him money.

When he lost, he needed more.

When I did not send it, he became angry.

I would drive eight hours to see him, and the visits were rarely peaceful. There was always a problem. There was always something he needed. There was always some way I had disappointed him.

I remember one day I refused to do what he wanted, and he slapped me across the face.

And I stayed.

I stayed because, at that point in my life, being hurt by someone who said they loved me did not feel as abnormal as it should have.

It felt familiar.

That is difficult to admit.

People often ask why someone stays in an abusive relationship.

They imagine abuse begins on the first date.

They imagine a man introduces himself, takes you to dinner, and slaps you before dessert.

It doesn’t usually happen that way.

It grows inside the relationship.

It arrives after attachment, memories, apologies, promises, financial dependence, shared plans, and the belief that the person you met in the beginning is still somewhere inside the person hurting you now.

And when you grew up in an abusive home, your definition of what is unacceptable can become distorted.

You tell yourself, “He only hit me once.”

You tell yourself, “He was angry.”

You tell yourself, “He had been drinking.”

You tell yourself, “He is going through something.”

You tell yourself, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

You tell yourself anything that allows you to stay attached to the person without having to admit they are not safe.

I think a part of me believed that if someone was not hurting me, they did not really love me.

That was the language I had been taught.

I had to unlearn it.

Eventually, that relationship ended.

Then I met Michael.

Michael was one of the sweetest and most handsome men I had ever known.

For the first time, I experienced a love that felt different.

I thought we were going to grow old together.

I believed I had finally reached the part of my life where everything before him would make sense.

Maybe all the pain had led me to this person.

Maybe this was the relationship that would rewrite everything I thought love was.

Then, in July 2012, ten days before my birthday, Michael died in a car accident after an eighteen-wheeler collided with his vehicle on his way to work.

The night before he died, he was taking pictures of me while I slept.

It was around midnight, maybe one o’clock in the morning, and the flash kept hitting my face.

I opened my eyes and said, “Babe, go to sleep. Why are you taking pictures of me?”

He said, “You’re so beautiful. I just want to take pictures of you before I leave.”

Before I leave.

I remember thinking, Leave where?

It was the middle of the night.

Where was this man planning to go?

Was he leaving me? Was something happening that I did not know about? Why did he keep saying it that way?

I was tired and annoyed by the flash, so I told him to stop and went back to sleep.

I later learned that while I was lying next to him, he had texted his ex-girlfriend and tried to see her that night.

She did not respond, and they did not meet.

That discovery added another kind of pain to a day that was already impossible to survive.

The next morning, I was getting ready for work.

I had just stepped out of the shower when I saw him sitting on the corner of the bed.

He wanted me to apologize.

I said, “Apologize for what, Michael?”

He told me I had been mean to him the night before when he was trying to take pictures of me.

I said, “You were taking pictures of me at midnight while I was trying to sleep. The flash was in my face.”

He said again, “I know, but you’re so beautiful. I wanted to take pictures of you before I leave.”

There were those words again.

Before I leave.

At the time, I still did not understand them.

I apologized.

He forgave me.

Looking back, I am grateful we had that conversation.

Imagine losing someone after an argument and being left with the knowledge that the last words you exchanged were angry ones over something that did not matter.

That morning, I was supposed to drive him to work because his car needed an oil change. We had plans to attend my friend’s boyfriend’s birthday celebration that weekend, and we wanted the car ready for the trip.

He told me not to worry about it.

He said he would drive himself and get the oil changed after work.

“I’ll see you when I get home,” he said.

I kissed him at the door.

I told him to have a good day at work.

Normally, he called me as soon as he arrived.

Seven o’clock came, and he had not called.

Then 7:30.

Still nothing.

His manager called me.

“Is Michael coming in today?”

I said, “What do you mean? He should already be there.”

His manager told me he had never arrived.

I called Michael.

Voicemail.

I called again.

Voicemail.

Again.

Voicemail.

My body knew before my mind was willing to accept anything.

Something was wrong.

A couple of hours later, one of my uncles called and said there had been a terrible accident on Interstate 35. A car involved looked like Michael’s.

I ran downstairs, got into my car, and drove toward the highway.

By the time I arrived, the traffic had cleared and the scene was gone.

Then Michael’s mother called.

There had been an accident.

They were taking him to Harris Hospital.

I rushed to the hospital and waited.

I waited while people tried to tell us what had happened.

I waited until we had to identify his body.

The man who told me that morning, “I’ll see you when I get home,” never came home.

I don’t want to go into every detail about what happened with his family afterward. That part of the story has its own pain. Grief can bring people together, but it can also make people cruel. Everyone is suffering, everyone wants someone to blame, and sometimes the person closest to the one who died becomes the easiest target.

The years 2012, 2013, and 2014 were some of the hardest years of my life.

I had to grieve Michael.

I had to grieve our future.

I had to grieve the children we would never have, the home we would never grow old in, and the ordinary mornings I had assumed would continue for decades.

That is another thing people do not always understand about losing a partner.

You are not only grieving the person who died.

You are grieving every version of yourself you were supposed to become beside them.

Before Michael died, I had already been struggling emotionally.

There were moments when my life became so dark that I tried to end it.

Twice.

I am not saying that casually.

I am not saying it for shock.

I am saying it because it happened, and because I know somebody reading this has been in a bathroom with the door locked, believing everyone else would be better off if they disappeared.

One day, I was in the bathroom cutting my wrists.

I had also taken hydrocodone and other medication because I wanted the pain to stop.

Michael was in the living room playing video games.

After I had been in the bathroom for too long, he started asking if I was okay.

I did not answer him.

Eventually, he forced the door open and saw me sitting there with a knife in my hand.

He called 911.

The paramedics came. At the hospital, they gave me activated charcoal because of what I had taken.

I will never forget it.

For days afterward, everything leaving my body was black. That is one of those details people do not put into the dramatic movie version of a suicide attempt.

There was nothing beautiful about it.

There was no peaceful fading away.

It was frightening, humiliating, painful, messy, and very real.

Afterward, I was placed under a seventy-two-hour psychiatric observation at JPS.

I was sent to the tenth floor.

I remember sitting in a common area with other patients when a man next to me said, “There’s a ghost beside you. Do you want to say hello?”

I said, “No. How about you leave me alone?”

He kept talking to me, and I remember sitting there thinking, I am not crazy. I made a terrible decision, but I am not crazy.

I know now that even the way I thought about the people around me came from fear and ignorance. We were all there because our minds had taken us somewhere we could not safely navigate alone.

Some people were experiencing psychosis.

Some were severely depressed.

Some were manic.

Some had nowhere else to go.

Some had probably been abandoned by every person who was supposed to protect them.

And I was not better than any of them.

I was simply someone whose pain had taken a different shape.

At one point, I needed to use the restroom, but the patient restroom was occupied and dirty. I asked one of the staff members if I could use the employee restroom.

I said, “I promise I’m not crazy.”

I was working in healthcare at the time, and I think I believed that if they knew I was educated, functioning, and able to speak calmly, they would understand that I did not belong there.

But pain does not care what job you have.

Depression does not care whether you went to college.

Trauma does not care whether you can look put together in front of other people.

You can spend all day caring for patients and still go home unable to care for yourself.

Every day, we sat in group sessions.

We talked about what we were feeling, why we had tried to hurt ourselves, what had brought us there, and what we needed to do to leave safely.

Eventually, I was discharged.

My parents picked me up because the staff did not want Michael to take me home. They believed the relationship might have contributed to what happened.

It wasn’t because of him.

At least, I don’t remember it being because of him.

I still cannot fully explain what was happening inside of me during that period. I only remember being tired of hurting.

I wanted the pain to stop, and for a moment, I could not imagine another way to make it stop.

That experience changed how I see people.

Working in healthcare changed it too.

I have met patients who could not sleep because their minds would not stop.

Patients experiencing panic attacks who believed they were dying.

Patients asking for medication because they needed relief from something they did not know how to name.

I used to see people come in asking for Wellbutrin, Xanax, or anything that might quiet their minds long enough for them to breathe.

Medication can help people. I want to be clear about that.

There are people alive today because they had access to the right treatment and medication. I would never tell someone to stop taking something prescribed by their doctor.

But medication cannot always resolve the experiences underneath the symptoms by itself.

Sometimes people become so focused on numbing the pain that they never have the support, safety, or resources to understand where the pain began.

That is why I encourage people to talk.

Go to therapy if you have access to it.

Speak with a counselor.

Find a psychiatrist who listens to you instead of only writing a prescription and sending you home.

Talk to someone you trust.

Write the letter you never plan to send.

Say the thing out loud.

Your feelings need somewhere to go.

Maybe that is also part of why I created Letters Beyond Borders.

There are so many people struggling quietly.

People who wake up, go to work, smile, answer emails, take care of children, post beautiful pictures, and then lie awake at night wondering how much longer they can keep carrying everything by themselves.

Sometimes a letter gives them somewhere to put it.

Sometimes being witnessed is enough to help someone make it through another night.

So when my pen pal asked me, “If he’s such a wonderful man, what are you afraid of? Why won’t you let him love you?” I knew I could not answer that question with one sentence.

It is not that I will not let him love me.

I do let him love me.

But I also allow myself to move carefully.

People see caution and call it fear.

Sometimes it is fear.

Sometimes it is wisdom earned through experiences you would never choose for yourself.

I have loved people who hurt me.

I have trusted people who did not protect me.

I have built a future with someone and watched that future disappear in a single morning.

I know how quickly life changes.

I know that someone can love you deeply and still leave the house one morning and never return.

I know people’s feelings change.

I know the person standing in front of you today may not be the same person six months from now.

That does not mean I believe everyone will hurt me.

It means I no longer rush simply because other people are impatient to see the ending.

What is the point of rushing love?

Why should I commit to someone simply because he is kind to me?

Kindness matters. Showing up matters. Consistency matters. But those things are not debts I repay by handing someone my entire life before I am ready.

A man can be wonderful, and I can still need time.

Both things can be true.

People act as though receiving love means you must immediately know what to do with it.

But when love has been tied to abuse, abandonment, betrayal, or loss, healthy love can feel unfamiliar.

Sometimes chaos feels more recognizable than peace.

Sometimes your nervous system distrusts calm because calm was always what came right before something bad happened.

Sometimes the hardest person to trust is not the person loving you.

It is yourself.

Can I trust myself to recognize danger?

Can I trust myself to leave if something changes?

Can I trust myself not to lose my identity inside another relationship?

Can I trust myself to survive another loss?

Can I love someone without turning them into the center of my existence?

Can I let someone close without asking them to carry every wound I have not yet learned to hold?

Those are the questions underneath the question.

I still have things to sort through within myself.

That is not an insult to the person I am dating.

It is actually one of the most loving things I can admit.

It would not be fair to place all of my unresolved trauma into another person’s hands and tell him it is now his responsibility to heal what he did not break.

A partner can love you.

A partner can support you.

A partner can sit with you while you are struggling.

But they cannot become your therapist, your savior, your entire support system, and the only reason you wake up in the morning.

That is too much weight to place on another human being.

It is exhausting to love someone who refuses to open up, but there is also a difference between refusing to open up and opening slowly.

I do open up to him.

He knows parts of me that social media does not.

Our relationship is not exactly what people imagine it should be, and it does not need to be.

The dynamic between two people belongs to those two people.

Social media has made people feel entitled to relationships they are not inside of.

Someone watches a few posts and builds an entire narrative.

They decide who is more invested.

They decide who is afraid.

They decide who should move, who should commit, who should apologize, who should get married, and when the relationship should reach the next step.

They want to skip to the ending.

But why are we rushing toward the finish line?

For what?

Life is not a checklist where you go to school, find a career, get married, have children, buy a house, and then receive a certificate saying you completed life correctly.

That was the version of success my mother understood.

Go to school.

Become a nurse.

Get married.

Have children.

Build a respectable life.

There is nothing wrong with that life.

It is beautiful for the people who want it.

But it is not the only beautiful life available.

Success means something different to every person.

Maybe success is marriage.

Maybe it is motherhood.

Maybe it is building a business.

Maybe it is leaving an abusive home.

Maybe it is waking up without wanting to die.

Maybe it is moving to another country at thirty-seven because you finally have the courage and freedom to do it.

Maybe it is learning to receive love without abandoning yourself.

Maybe it is simply choosing a life that feels like your own.

People’s timelines are different because people’s lives are different.

Someone might be thirty-seven and unmarried, but you do not know that she was married before and buried her husband.

Someone might be forty-two before having her first child, but you do not know how many miscarriages, appointments, injections, IVF treatments, prayers, disappointments, and years of trying came before that child.

Someone might be living with their parents at thirty, but you do not know whether they are caring for a sick mother, rebuilding after a divorce, paying off debt, or starting over after losing everything.

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I just wanted to go somewhere far away, even if it was only for twenty-four hours.

Paris came to mind for two reasons. I had been craving the banana dessert from Cédric Grolet for months, and there was a love lock I had placed on Passerelle Debilly in 2022.

Back then, I was in Paris with someone I was in a relationship with. We did what thousands of tourists do when they visit the city. We wrote our names on a padlock, attached it to the bridge, and threw a key into the Seine. The idea is that the lock represents a love that will last forever.

I kept one of the keys. I still don’t know why, because keeping it didn’t mean I doubted our relationship or expected it to end. At the time, I believed in the love we had and in the future I thought we were building.

The relationship eventually ended after I learned that he had cheated on me and gotten another woman pregnant. She later gave birth to twins. After everything came out, that lock no longer represented love to me. It represented a moment with someone who was no longer in my life.

Call me superstitious, but I think love locks are a curse. I don’t like the idea of trying to lock love into place and throwing away the key. People stay together because they continue choosing one another, not because their names are attached to a bridge somewhere in Paris.

I’m in a different season of my life now, and my relationship with my current partner is entering another phase. I didn’t want that old lock attached to a memory with someone from my past while I was moving forward with the person in my life now. The relationship had ended, but our names were still locked together somewhere in Paris as if nothing had changed.

I wanted to remove it because I didn’t want to feel like I was holding on to a memory or a moment with someone who was no longer in my life.

Friday night, I booked the flight.

I arrived in Paris at around 5:00 p.m. and checked into my room at the Pullman Hotel. I ordered room service, opened the window, and spent the evening watching the Eiffel Tower twinkle from my room.

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Maybe your partner is deployed.

Maybe you’re dating a pilot or a flight attendant.

Maybe one of you accepted a job in another state because it was the right career move, even though it meant putting your relationship to the test.

Maybe you met someone while traveling and neither of you expected to fall for someone who lived thousands of miles away.

Or maybe this isn’t even about a romantic relationship.

Maybe you’ve watched a friendship slowly change because life pulled the two of you in different directions. One of you got married. One of you had kids. One of you moved away. Before you knew it, you were wishing each other happy birthday on Instagram instead of calling each other the way you used to.

I’m asking because I’ve never really done long distance before.

Not in a romantic relationship.

And if I’m being completely honest, I don’t even think I’m very good at long-distance friendships either.

I don’t think I realized that until recently.

In a few weeks, I’ll be living in Vietnam for six months, and the guy I’m dating lives in California.

Even typing that sentence feels strange because just as we’re rebuilding our relationship, we’re about to make it even more complicated.

Sometimes life has a really interesting sense of humor.

Josh and I have known each other for almost a year and a half.

When I was living in Los Angeles, we dated for a little while. Life took us in different directions, and eventually I found myself in another relationship. That relationship ended, but somehow Josh and I never completely disappeared from each other’s lives.

We stayed friends.

He kept reading my writing.

He’d text me after I published something and tell me how proud he was of me.

Whenever I came up with another crazy idea, he never made me feel ridiculous for dreaming so big. If anything, he encouraged me to dream even bigger.

Looking back now, I think he has always been one of my biggest cheerleaders, even during the seasons when we weren’t together.

I’ve been thinking a lot about timing lately.

I used to believe that if two people were meant to be together, everything would naturally fall into place.

I don’t know if I believe that anymore.

I think it’s possible to meet someone wonderful and still not be in the right season of your life for that relationship.

Sometimes you’re still healing from something else.

Sometimes you’re chasing a dream that doesn’t leave much room for another person.

Sometimes you’re still trying to figure out who you are.

That doesn’t make the connection any less real.

It just means the timing wasn’t.

When Josh and I found our way back to each other, it didn’t feel like we were starting over.

It felt like we had been given another chance to meet each other as the people we’ve become instead of the people we were a year ago. We already knew each other’s stories. We had already seen each other through different seasons of life. The only thing that had really changed was us.

And maybe that’s why writing this feels so vulnerable.

Because this isn’t someone I casually dated for a few weeks.

This is someone who has quietly been part of my life for a long time.

He’s seen different versions of me.

The ER nurse who was exhausted all the time.

The woman trying to figure out what came after nursing.

The writer who took a chance on herself.

He’s watched me change, and somehow he never stopped believing in me.

I think that’s part of the reason I care so much about getting this right.

The last couple of nights have been a little different.

Josh and I usually FaceTime before we go to bed.

It’s never been something we had to put on the calendar or remind each other to do. It just became part of our routine. We’d tell each other about our day, complain about work, laugh about something completely random, and then we’d say goodnight.

It became one of those little rituals that you don’t really think about until it’s missing.

The last two nights, we haven’t talked.

As I’m writing this, I keep telling myself that it’s only been two days.

He’s already told me that work has been overwhelming. He’s in the middle of a really big project, and I know it’s been taking a lot out of him mentally.

I believe him.

That’s not the part I’m questioning.

The part I’m trying to understand is my own reaction.

Almost immediately, I noticed myself doing something I’ve done for years.

I started answering questions he hadn’t even been asked yet.

I told myself he was probably exhausted.

I told myself he probably fell asleep.

I told myself he’d been staring at a computer screen all day and simply didn’t have anything left to give.

Maybe every single one of those things is true.

But I also caught myself wondering why I was so quick to explain away something that had already started bothering me.

That realization stopped me.

Because I’ve worked really hard over the last few years to stop talking myself out of my own feelings.

There was a version of me that would convince herself that everything was fine simply because she didn’t want to be seen as difficult.

If something hurt, I’d tell myself I was overreacting.

If something felt off, I’d tell myself I was reading too much into it.

If someone disappointed me, I’d immediately start building a case for why they probably had a good reason.

I became really good at extending grace to everyone except myself.

I don’t want to be that person anymore.

At the same time, I also don’t want to become someone who assumes the worst because one small thing changed.

So I’ve been sitting with it instead.

I’ve been asking myself a different question.

What is this actually bringing up in me?

Because if I’m honest…

I don’t think two missed FaceTime calls are what’s bothering me.

I think they’re reminding me of something much older that I haven’t fully made peace with yet.

I think that’s why this has been sitting so heavily on my heart.

Because this feeling didn’t start with Josh.

If I’m really honest with myself, I think it started years ago.

When I packed up my life and moved from Dallas to Los Angeles, I never once thought I was also packing up the relationships I had here.

I knew I was leaving Texas.

I knew I was leaving my apartment.

I knew I was leaving the hospital I worked at.

I knew I was saying goodbye to everything that felt familiar.

What I didn’t realize was that I was also leaving behind the version of my friendships that only existed because we all lived close to each other.

I just assumed we’d figure it out.

I really believed we would.

I’d come home every few months.

We’d grab dinner.

We’d text throughout the week.

We’d FaceTime whenever we missed each other.

I don’t know why I believed that so confidently.

Maybe because when you really love someone, you don’t think distance is going to change anything.

You just assume you’ll always find your way back to each other.

At first, that’s exactly what happened.

Everyone checked in on me.

People wanted pictures of California.

They wanted to know if I liked working in the emergency room out there.

They wanted to know if I had made friends yet.

If I missed Texas.

If the beaches were actually as beautiful as they looked in the movies.

I remember feeling so loved during that time.

I remember thinking, We’re going to be okay.

I really believed that.

Then everybody just kept living their lives.

Some of my friends got married.

Some had babies.

Some bought houses.

Some changed careers.

I was working twelve-hour shifts in the emergency room, trying to survive, trying to adjust to a completely different city, and trying to figure out who I was becoming.

Nobody did anything wrong.

That’s the part that makes it so difficult to explain.

There wasn’t a fight.

Nobody decided they didn’t care anymore.

Nobody intentionally walked away.

Life just kept asking all of us to keep moving forward.

Looking back now, I honestly couldn’t tell you when everything changed.

I couldn’t tell you the last time we all talked every day.

I couldn’t tell you when the group chats became quieter.

I couldn’t tell you when seeing each other turned into, “We should get together soon.”

It happened so slowly that I don’t think any of us noticed it while we were living through it.

Now I’ll be scrolling through Instagram and realize someone had another baby.

Or their daughter started kindergarten.

Or they bought a house.

Or they celebrated another anniversary.

And I just sit there thinking… How did I miss all of this?

Then I remind myself that nobody forgot to tell me.

I just wasn’t there anymore.

I wasn’t part of their everyday life.

Social media makes that feeling really confusing sometimes.

You know what’s happening in someone’s life because you saw the pictures.

You know they went on vacation.

You know they got promoted.

You know their kid lost another tooth.

You know all these little details about their life, so your brain almost convinces you that you’re still close.

But you’re not.

You’re watching their life.

You’re not actually living it with them anymore.

I think that’s been one of the hardest parts of getting older for me.

Realizing that you can still love someone and slowly stop being part of each other’s everyday lives.

I don’t think love disappeared.

I think proximity did.

And maybe that’s what I’ve been afraid of this whole time.

Maybe that’s why two missed FaceTime calls affected me more than they probably should have.

It wasn’t really about those two nights.

Those two nights just reminded me of how quietly distance can change a relationship if nobody is paying attention.

Maybe I’m connecting things that aren’t connected.

Maybe I am overthinking.

I honestly don’t know.

But that’s where my mind went.

Writing all of this also made me realize something about myself that I don’t think I’ve ever admitted before.

I think this is one of the reasons I love traveling so much.

Every time I travel, I meet incredible people.

We’ll spend three or four days together exploring a city, trying different restaurants, talking about our lives until two in the morning, and by the end of the trip it feels like we’ve known each other forever.

Then it’s time to go home.

We hug goodbye.

Sometimes we exchange Instagram handles.

Sometimes we actually stay in touch.

Most of the time, life keeps moving for both of us.

And I’ve always been okay with that.

I think it’s because there was never an expectation that we were supposed to build a life together.

Our paths crossed.

We shared a few really beautiful days together.

Then we kept walking.

That felt natural.

Josh doesn’t feel like that.

I don’t want him to become another person I once shared a beautiful chapter with.

I want to know how his day was.

I want to hear him complain about traffic.

I want to argue over where we’re going to eat dinner.

I want all of those little ordinary moments that nobody posts online because those are the moments that actually build a life with someone.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been grieving these last few days.

Not something that’s happened.

Just the possibility that distance could quietly take those moments away if we’re not intentional about protecting them.

There’s something else I’ve been carrying around that I haven’t really known how to put into words.

Josh has been talking about buying a house in Dallas for a while now because he wants to be closer to me.

This isn’t something he mentioned once and forgot about.

He’s actually been looking.

Every now and then he’ll call me after touring a house, and we’ll talk about it. Sometimes he’ll tell me the layout was nice but something felt off. Other times he’ll say, “I could see myself living there, but I couldn’t picture us there.”

I don’t know why that sentence stayed with me, but it did.

Every time we have one of those conversations, I walk away feeling grateful and guilty at the exact same time.

I’m grateful because I know exactly where his heart is.

He’s not looking at houses because he loves Dallas.

He’s looking because he wants to be closer to me.

When I really stop and think about that, it makes me emotional.

I don’t think anyone has ever wanted to rearrange their life just to make loving me a little easier.

That’s not something I take lightly.

But almost immediately after feeling grateful, I start feeling guilty.

Not because he’s doing anything wrong.

Because I don’t even know if Dallas is where I want to build my own life anymore.

That’s such a strange sentence for me to write.

If you had asked me that question a few years ago, I would’ve answered without even thinking.

Dallas.

Of course Dallas.

My family is here.

I grew up here.

Some of the best memories of my life happened here.

It’s the place I’ve always called home.

At least I thought it was.

The more I’ve traveled over the last few years, the more complicated that answer has become.

Every place I’ve visited has left a little piece of itself with me.

Some cities made me feel more creative.

Some made me slow down.

Some made me wonder what life would’ve looked like if I had stayed a little longer.

Now I’m about to spend six months living in Vietnam, and I have no idea what’s waiting for me there.

Maybe I’ll come home realizing Dallas is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Maybe I’ll come home realizing that I’ve been holding onto an idea of home that no longer fits the person I’ve become.

Maybe I’ll discover a version of myself that I’ve never had the chance to meet before.

I honestly don’t know.

That’s not a sentence that comes naturally to me.

I’ve always been someone with a plan.

Go to nursing school.

Become an ER nurse.

Move to California.

Leave nursing.

Take a chance on writing.

Even when my decisions looked risky to everyone else, they still felt clear to me.

This doesn’t feel clear.

It just feels important.

Something inside me keeps telling me to go.

Not because I’m running away from anything.

I think I’m running toward something.

I just don’t know what it is yet.

And maybe that’s why it’s been so hard for me to respond whenever Josh talks about buying a house here.

I don’t want him making such a big decision because of me while I’m still asking myself where I want to build my own life.

That doesn’t feel fair to him.

It’s not because I don’t see a future with him.

I do.

I just don’t know what city that future exists in yet.

Maybe that’s the conversation we’re really going to have to figure out together.

Not today.

Maybe not even this year.

But eventually.

Because I know who I want beside me while I’m figuring life out.

I’m just still trying to figure out where life is actually taking me.

I think that’s why I’ve been writing so much lately.

Writing has always been how I make sense of my life.

Sometimes I don’t even know what I think until I see the words staring back at me.

I’m sitting here thinking I’m writing about a long-distance relationship.

Now I’m not so sure.

I think I was writing about distance.

The way it changes people.

The way it changes friendships.

The way it changes families.

The way it quietly asks you to trust someone you’ve chosen, even when you can’t physically be beside them.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be on a plane to Vietnam.

That sentence still doesn’t feel real.

I’ve wanted to do this for so long, and now that it’s finally here, I catch myself thinking about all the things I’m excited for.

I’m excited to wake up in a different country and build a routine that doesn’t exist yet.

I’m excited to discover little coffee shops I’ll probably end up visiting every morning.

I’m excited to get lost, meet new people, make mistakes, learn the language a little better, and collect stories that I don’t even know are waiting for me yet.

I think this next chapter is going to change me.

I just don’t know how.

The timing is funny because Josh is also going to be in Vietnam for a wedding.

For a little while, we’ll actually get to be in the same city.

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That sentence still feels a little unreal to say out loud.

This is something I’ve told myself I was going to do, and now I’m finally seeing it through. I don’t think I’ve ever lived outside of the U.S. for that long before, so of course there’s a part of me that knows this is a big risk.

But at the same time, it doesn’t feel as scary as people might think.

I have family there. I have a new home waiting for me. And I know I’m going to meet so many new people and make so many new friends along the way.

I’m going to have new routines, new stories, new memories, and a completely different life for six months.

And honestly, I need that.

Right now, with everything going on in my life and with my family situation, I feel like there’s nothing left for me here in Texas that I need to keep holding on to.

I’ve spent so much time trying to fix the broken family I already have that I’m finally starting to admit how exhausting it has been.

There comes a point where you have to ask yourself how long you’re going to keep trying to repair relationships that continue to drain you.

Especially when deep down, you’re ready to start building a family and a life of your own.

As my birthday gets closer and I get older, I think about that a lot.

I think about how badly I want a family of my own one day. A home that feels peaceful. People I don’t have to beg to meet me halfway. A life that doesn’t constantly feel like I’m trying to prove that I deserve to be loved, considered, or included.

And maybe going away for six months won’t give me all the answers.

But I know staying here and continuing to feel stuck won’t either.

I know this move is going to give me stories to tell.

I know I’m going to meet people I haven’t even crossed paths with yet.

I know I’m going to experience things that I would have never experienced if I kept convincing myself to stay where I am comfortable.

And even if everything doesn’t go exactly the way I imagine, I know I’m not going to regret going.

That’s the part I’m sure about.

I used to think quitting my job in the medical field was the biggest risk I had ever taken.

At the time, it felt terrifying walking away from something stable, something I had spent years doing, and something I knew I was good at.

But looking back now, leaving was not the hardest part.

It gave me my life back.

I don’t miss working 12 to 14-hour shifts.

I don’t miss coming home with my back hurting, my feet hurting, and barely having enough energy left to enjoy my own life.

I don’t miss feeling like my entire existence revolved around work, sleep, and recovering just enough to do it all over again.

Now, I have freedom.

I have peace.

I get to write.

I get to create.

I get to follow whatever my heart is interested in at that moment.

I finally enjoy what I do, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like my life belongs to me.

So now I keep asking myself, how many more risks am I willing to take?

Because eventually, I’m going to be 50.

Then 60.

And I don’t want to look back at my life and realize I spent all of my younger years being afraid to do the things I really wanted to do.

I don’t want to keep waiting for the perfect time, because I’m starting to realize the perfect time probably doesn’t exist.

Sometimes you just have to go.

You have to trust that you’ll figure it out once you get there.

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Not because you’re expecting them to solve your problems, but because there’s something comforting about knowing someone you love is willing to sit with you while you sort through your thoughts. Sometimes, that’s all we really need.

Have you ever reached for your phone to call that person, only to realize they were probably busy? Maybe they were at work, in a meeting, taking care of their kids, driving home, or simply living their own life. Did a small part of you feel disappointed, even though you knew they hadn’t done anything wrong?

Or maybe you’ve been on the other side of it.

Maybe you were the one who missed the call because you couldn’t step away. You were in the middle of work, sitting in an appointment, helping a customer, or taking care of responsibilities that couldn’t wait. By the time you finally looked at your phone, your heart sank because all you saw were missed calls and unread messages. Your first thought probably wasn’t, “Why did they call me so many times?” It was, “I hope they’re okay.”

I think this is one of the quiet struggles that comes with adulthood.

We’re all trying to be present for the people we love while also showing up for the lives we’ve worked so hard to build. We have jobs, deadlines, responsibilities, families, commitments, and people depending on us. As much as we’d love to drop everything the second someone we love needs us, life doesn’t always make that possible.

That doesn’t mean we love them any less. It just means we’re human.

A few days ago, I found myself needing my person.

I was overwhelmed with everything surrounding my sister’s baby shower. It wasn’t one specific thing that pushed me over the edge. It was the accumulation of little moments, unspoken emotions, and the invisible weight that quietly builds until one day you realize you’re carrying more than you thought you could.

What surprised me most wasn’t how overwhelmed I felt.

It was what I wanted in that moment.

I didn’t want to open my journal.

I didn’t want to sit down at my laptop and write.

I didn’t want to post on Threads.

I didn’t want to text my Mermaid group.

I didn’t want advice.

I just wanted my person.

Not because I expected him to fix anything.

There wasn’t really anything to fix.

I simply wanted the comfort of talking to someone who knows my heart. Someone I don’t have to explain myself to. Someone who could sit with me for a few minutes while I untangled everything I was feeling.

And that’s when I realized something.

Sometimes the hardest part about loving someone isn’t learning how to communicate.

It’s learning how to ask for them.

As I sat with that thought, I started wondering how often we expect the people we love to somehow know what we need without us ever saying it out loud.

We convince ourselves that if someone truly knows us, they’ll hear it in our voice. They’ll notice it in our silence. They’ll instinctively know the difference between us calling to chat and us calling because we’re barely holding ourselves together.

But how could they?

The people we love aren’t mind readers.

They only know what we’ve chosen to share.

I think we forget that sometimes.

We expect understanding without communication.

We expect clarity without conversation.

And somewhere along the way, we become disappointed when people don’t respond to needs we never actually expressed.

Then I found myself thinking about something that happened last year, early on in my relationship with my partner.

At the time, I was working in the ER.

If you’ve ever worked in healthcare, you know there are days when your entire world becomes the patient standing in front of you. Your phone stays in your locker for hours, and you don’t think about it because you’re focused on taking care of the people who need you most.

That day, my partner was having a really difficult day emotionally.

He called me.

Then he called again.

And again.

I had absolutely no idea.

By the time I finally got to my locker during my break, I opened my phone and saw a screen full of missed calls.

My heart immediately dropped.

I wasn’t irritated.

I wasn’t frustrated.

I was terrified.

When someone repeatedly calls you while you’re working in the ER, your mind doesn’t think, “Maybe they just need to vent.”

You think someone was in an accident.

You think someone got hurt.

You think something terrible happened.

I called him back immediately.

Thankfully, he was okay.

He had simply needed me.

Looking back, neither of us was wrong.

He wasn’t wrong for reaching for the person he trusted most.

And I wasn’t wrong for being fully present with the patients who needed me.

We were simply two people trying to love each other while also honoring the responsibilities that were in front of us.

That conversation stayed with me because it revealed something we had never talked about before.

To him, calling me multiple times meant, “I really need you.”

To me, multiple missed calls meant, “Something terrible must have happened.”

We were speaking two different emotional languages without realizing it.

And that’s when everything changed.

Somewhere along the way, I think we’ve confused emotional support with emotional responsibility.

They’re not the same thing.

I don’t think the people we love are supposed to carry our emotions for us.

I think they’re supposed to remind us that we don’t have to carry them alone.

There’s a difference between asking someone to solve your problems…

…and asking someone to simply sit beside you while you work through them.

One creates pressure.

The other creates connection.

Once we understood that, we stopped expecting each other to guess.

Instead, we decided to create something that belonged only to us.

A simple sentence.

Whenever one of us is emotionally overwhelmed, we don’t repeatedly call or send message after message hoping the other person understands what’s happening.

We send one sentence.

“Can we pause the world for five minutes?”

That’s our phrase.

Those words don’t mean, “Drop everything you’re doing.”

They don’t mean, “Ignore your responsibilities.”

They don’t mean, “Fix this for me.”

They simply mean,

“When you’re able, I need my person for a few minutes.”

Sometimes he’s in the middle of a meeting.

Sometimes I’m still at work.

Sometimes one of us has to wait.

And that’s okay.

Because the expectation was never immediate availability.

The expectation was simply this:

“When you can, come find me.”

That one small change removed so much unnecessary hurt.

It removed the guessing.

It removed the assumptions.

Most importantly, it reminded both of us that being emotionally available isn’t always the same thing as being immediately available.

Those are two very different things.

As I reflected on all of this, I realized it had very little to do with romance.

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I literally just woke up from a nap. It’s like 2:45 in the afternoon, and the first thing I wanted to do was open my laptop and tell you guys about my weekend.

I don’t know what is going on with my body, but today has just been rough. I woke up coughing my lungs out, rubbed Old Man all over my chest and forehead, and now I literally smell like menthol.

Let’s just say… the last two days have been a lot.

Josh and I had breakfast with my grandma this morning.

I somehow ended up having to pee on a pregnancy stick yesterday.

And I think somewhere in between all of that, I learned something about love.

I’ll explain.

But first… how was your Fourth of July yesterday? Did you guys grill? Did you eat good? I hope you guys did because I could barely keep anything down.

This morning was probably one of the sweetest mornings I’ve had in a really long time.

One of you guys actually recommended the Riverwalk Cantina inside the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, so thank you for that suggestion.

Yesterday I called my grandma and told her, “Grandma, I’m taking you to breakfast tomorrow. Oh… and I want you to meet someone too.”

She said, “Okay. Just tell me what time I need to wake up.”

I told her five in the morning.

So this morning Josh and I got ready, drove about forty-five minutes to Fort Worth to pick her up, and then another forty-five minutes to Grapevine.

Josh is driving, I’m in the passenger seat, and my grandma is sitting in the backseat.

I turned around and asked, “Grandma, are you excited for breakfast?”

“Yeah.”

Then she tells me she couldn’t sleep last night.

“Why?”

“Because I was scared I wasn’t going to wake up in time.”

“Grandma… why didn’t you just set an alarm?”

“I did. But I was scared my alarm would go off, and then I’d go right back to sleep.”

I don’t know why, but hearing that just made my heart melt.

She was so excited to spend the morning with us that she barely slept.

Eventually we made it to the Gaylord, found the restaurant, checked in, and they showed us to our table.

Josh sat to my left, my grandma sat across from me, and then all three of us got up to grab food from the buffet.

They had biscuits and gravy, grits, bacon, sausage, an omelet station, a chilaquiles bar, pastries… pretty much everything you could think of.

Now, my grandma is probably one of the pickiest eaters I know.

Her food can’t be too salty, and since she wears dentures, the texture has to be just right.

She took one bite of the scrambled eggs, looked at me, and was like, “I don’t like it.”

I started laughing.

“What’s wrong with it, Grandma?”

“The eggs aren’t good.”

Honestly… I knew exactly what she meant.

She worked as a housekeeper at the Hilton for years, so she’s eaten more hotel breakfasts than I probably ever will. She told me hotel scrambled eggs are usually soft, fluffy, and have melted cheese mixed in. These were overcooked and kind of firm.

Then she tried the oatmeal.

That wasn’t any better.

It was too hard for her to chew.

I felt bad because I really wanted her to enjoy the food.

But then I realized…

The breakfast wasn’t really about the food.

It was about spending time together.

Somewhere during breakfast, I told my grandma that Josh was going to Vietnam too.

She looked over at him and asked, “How long are you going to be there?”

He smiled and said, “I’m not sure yet. We’ll see what happens.”

And somehow that one question turned into my grandma telling Josh about what life was like for her and my mom growing up in Vietnam.

They used to bathe in the river because that was their only source of water.

Every single day they woke up wondering what they were going to eat.

I don’t know why my grandma decided to tell this story so early in the morning, but there I was… sitting at the breakfast table trying not to cry.

She told us that some days they couldn’t afford meat or vegetables. It was just one small bowl of plain white rice that she and my mom would share between the two of them, and somehow that was enough to get them through another day.

Then she started talking about the banana trees near their house and how they would pick bananas whenever they could because every little bit helped.

I’m just sitting there crying.

I looked over at Josh, and he wasn’t saying anything. He just reached over, grabbed my hand, and rested it on my thigh.

That somehow made me cry even harder.

Then my grandma started talking about how everything changed after my mom came to America.

She told us she knew Vietnam wasn’t going to give my mom the life she deserved, so when she had the opportunity to send my mom to America first, she told her to go.

I can’t even imagine that.

Being a mother and telling your daughter to leave without you because you know she’ll have a better life somewhere else.

I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand that kind of sacrifice.

She also started telling Josh about working as a housekeeper on a military base in Vietnam. That’s where she eventually met an American man.

Honestly, that’s a story for another day because it’s incredible all by itself.

The whole reason she brought all of this up was because she’s excited to go back to the city where she grew up. She wants to visit her old neighborhood and give back to the community that raised her.

Josh looked at her and said he wanted to see it too.

He wanted to see where she grew up.

I don’t know why, but hearing him say that meant a lot to me.

After breakfast, Josh paid for all of us, and then we drove my grandma back home.

The drive back was pretty quiet.

When we pulled into her driveway, she opened the car door, and I heard her start talking to me in Vietnamese.

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Or maybe you’ve become so busy surviving that you forgot to ask yourself one simple question:

What actually makes me feel alive?

I think that’s where I’ve been.

June really did a number on me.

The relationship ended, and with it went the phone I’d been using. Before I had time to catch my breath, my laptop ended up with water damage. Then I found myself attending two funerals while quietly carrying heartbreak of my own. Family was already weighing heavily on my heart, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, I still expected myself to sit down and write as though life hadn’t completely interrupted me.

Looking back, no wonder I couldn’t.

For weeks, I convinced myself I had writer’s block.

I’d open my laptop, stare at the blinking cursor, type a few sentences, delete them, and tell myself I’d try again tomorrow.

Tomorrow came.

The same thing happened.

People assume writing is something you can schedule.

Sit down.

Open your laptop.

Start typing.

I’ve never worked that way.

My writing has always followed my life.

When I’m curious, the words come easily.

When my heart is heavy, they wait for me to catch up.

It wasn’t until the very end of June that I realized I’d been asking myself the wrong question.

It wasn’t writer’s block.

I wasn’t running out of words.

I was running out of experiences that made me feel alive.

That realization explained something I’d never fully understood about myself.

People often ask why I’m always traveling, writing letters, or disappearing to another corner of the world.

The answer has never been that I’m searching for another destination.

I’ve been searching for connection.

The best stories I’ve ever written didn’t come from sitting alone in a room.

They came from conversations.

From strangers who trusted me with pieces of their lives.

From handwritten letters that somehow made the world feel a little smaller.

From my grandma, whose stories always seem to arrive exactly when I need them.

I’ve started to realize that’s simply how God made me.

Some people make sense of the world through music.

Some through art.

I’ve always made sense of mine through people.

Their stories become part of me.

Then, somewhere along the way, they become part of my writing.

That’s why losing my spark scared me so much.

I thought I had lost my gift.

Looking back now, I think my gift was simply asking me to go live again.

And that realization led me to another question I couldn’t stop thinking about…

A few weeks ago, I came across a clip from an old movie.

In it, the character says something along the lines of this:

“If you’re lucky, life gives you about seventy-five summers. Seventy-five autumns. Seventy-five winters. Seventy-five springs.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Not because of the number itself.

Because it quietly changed the way I was looking at my own life.

I stopped thinking in years.

I started thinking in seasons.

How many summers have I already spent working?

How many springs slipped by because I was too busy chasing the next milestone?

How many ordinary days did I rush through because I assumed there would always be another one?

Working in healthcare taught me a long time ago that tomorrow isn’t promised.

I’ve watched families walk into an emergency room believing they still had years left with someone they loved, only to leave carrying a future they never imagined.

That changes you.

It changes what success looks like.

It changes what feels urgent.

And before I knew it, I found myself asking a completely different question.

How do I want to spend the seasons I still have?

When I finally answered that question for myself, I realized the answer wasn’t a place.

It was people.

For weeks, I kept telling myself I needed to find my spark again.

Looking back, I don’t think I ever lost it.

I had simply drifted too far away from the people who have always brought it back.

My grandma has been reminding me of that for years, even if neither of us realized it at the time.

Every conversation somehow ends the same way.

“Keep writing.”

“Keep traveling.”

“Keep creating.”

For the longest time, I thought she was encouraging my work.

Now I realize she was protecting something much more important.

She was protecting the part of me that feels most alive.

When June knocked the wind out of me, she never asked when I’d publish another story.

She never told me to hurry up and feel better.

She simply reminded me that there was still so much life waiting for me.

Sometimes the people who love us most don’t carry us through the hard seasons.

They quietly remind us who we are until we’re able to remember it ourselves.

Then I realized something else.

My grandma isn’t the only reason I keep writing.

You are.

Every letter that arrives through Letters Beyond Borders.

Every message that begins with, “I thought I was the only one who felt this way.”

Every story you’ve trusted me enough to hold.

Those moments matter more to me than any number ever could.

People often ask what keeps me motivated.

It isn’t views.

It isn’t followers.

It isn’t another milestone.

It’s knowing that something I’ve lived through might help someone else feel a little less alone.

That’s what keeps me coming back to the page.

For the longest time, I thought writing was my purpose.

Now I think writing is simply how I live out my purpose.

My purpose has always been people.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved traveling.

Not because I enjoy collecting passport stamps.

Because every place introduces me to someone I never would’ve met otherwise.

Every conversation changes me a little.

Eventually those conversations become stories.

Then those stories somehow find their way back to all of you.

It’s a beautiful cycle when I stop and think about it.

You trust me with your stories.

I trust you with mine.

Somewhere in the middle, we remind each other that none of us are as alone as we sometimes feel.

If you’ve ever wondered why I continue sharing so much of my life here…

That’s why.

I’m not writing because I’ve figured life out.

I’m writing because I’m still living it.

And if something I’ve learned helps someone else keep going…

Then every difficult season was worth walking through.

Finding my purpose also changed the way I think about family.

When I was younger, I believed family was something you were born into.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned it’s also something you build.

That wasn’t an easy lesson for me.

For a long time, I thought loving people meant holding on tighter.

Maybe if I explained myself one more time.

Maybe if I showed up a little more.

Maybe if I tried harder.

Eventually, everything would work itself out.

Life has a way of humbling that belief.

Watching my dad has taught me more than he probably realizes.

There was a time when I couldn’t understand him.

I used to wonder why he seemed so content living a quieter life, keeping his circle small, and no longer trying to repair relationships that clearly didn’t want to be repaired.

Part of me thought he’d given up.

Now I think he simply found peace.

The older I get, the more I understand that some relationships aren’t waiting for one more conversation.

They aren’t waiting for one more explanation.

Sometimes you’ve already done everything you could.

The kindest thing you can do—for yourself and for them—is accept that you’re walking different paths.

That was a difficult lesson for me because I’ve always believed people could find their way back to each other.

Sometimes they do.

Sometimes they don’t.

Either way, life keeps moving.

Instead of grieving the relationships that never became what I hoped they would, I started paying attention to the ones that quietly never left.

My grandma.

The friends who answer the phone before I can even finish saying, “Can we talk?”

The people in this community who celebrate my wins, encourage me when life feels heavy, and somehow notice when I’ve gone quiet.

Sometimes I’ll open one of your letters or read a message from one of you and just sit there smiling.

Not because of what you wrote.

Because I’m reminded that none of us are walking through life alone.

When I first started writing online, I thought I was building an audience.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I was building a family.

Not one connected by blood.

One connected by choice.

One conversation.

One story.

One letter at a time.

Maybe that’s why moving across the world doesn’t feel nearly as lonely as people imagine.

Yes, I’m leaving Dallas.

But I’m not leaving home.

Home was never one city.

It was never one house.

Home has always been the people who make me feel seen, understood, and loved exactly where I am.

I’ll still have my grandma.

I’ll still have your letters.

I’ll still have this community.

I’ll still have the conversations that remind me why I started writing in the first place.

Once I understood that, leaving became a lot less scary.

Because I finally realized I wasn’t searching for somewhere to belong.

I’ve already found that.

Now I’m simply taking all of you with me into the next chapter.

And oddly enough…

That’s the perfect place to tell you about Josh.

If you’ve been reading my stories for a while, then you already know Josh and I have never had the easiest journey.

There were seasons when I honestly thought we’d missed our chance.

Life kept pulling us in different directions, and after a while I made peace with the idea that maybe we had entered each other’s lives simply to change one another.

Then life surprised us.

Somewhere along the way, we found our way back to the conversation.

Only this time, something felt different.

Neither of us was trying to force the story.

We were simply getting to know each other again.

For the first time, that felt like enough.

Maybe that’s what growing up looks like.

Not having every answer.

Trusting that you don’t need one before taking the next step.

The timing still makes me smile.

Here I am packing my life into two suitcases, getting ready to spend the next six months in Vietnam.

At the very same time, Josh will be there for a wedding.

Out of every country in the world, our paths are about to cross in the one place that’s been quietly calling my heart for years.

People keep asking me what I think is going to happen.

The truth is…

I have no idea.

A year ago, that uncertainty would’ve terrified me.

Today, it feels strangely peaceful.

I’ve stopped trying to write the ending before I’ve had the chance to live the middle.

Because this trip was never really about finding a husband.

It’s about building a life that feels like home.

When I picture my future, I don’t immediately picture a wedding.

I picture a home.

A dining table that’s almost never empty because someone is always stopping by.

Music playing while dinner is cooking.

Fresh fruit on the kitchen counter.

Books scattered around the house.

Long conversations that somehow stretch late into the night because no one wants to leave.

A place where my future children—if that’s part of God’s plan for me—grow up surrounded by curiosity, kindness, and stories.

That’s the life I’ve been dreaming about.

Vietnam feels like the place where I finally get to begin building it.

Of course I hope Josh falls in love with that life.

Not because I need someone to complete it.

I’d simply love to share it with someone who finds beauty in the same ordinary things I do.

Slow mornings.

Neighborhood cafés.

Evening walks where no one is looking at the time.

A life that’s a little quieter.

A little slower.

A little more intentional.

I hope he sees the woman I’ve been slowly becoming.

The one who’s finally giving herself permission to build a life that reflects who she is instead of who she thought she was supposed to be.

If that journey eventually leads us to marriage, I’ll thank God for writing a story neither of us could have planned.

If life has something different in mind, I’ll be grateful for that too.

Because somewhere between losing my phone, damaging my laptop, saying goodbye to people I loved, and preparing to leave for Vietnam…

I found something I wasn’t expecting to find.

I found myself.

And maybe that’s what love was supposed to do all along.

Not rescue us.

Not complete us.

Simply meet us after we’ve had the courage to become who we already were.

More than anything, I’m looking forward to finally living the story instead of trying to predict it.

Whatever waits for me in Vietnam…

I have a feeling it’s going to change my life.

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First of all… greetings from my new MacBook. I cannot tell you how happy I am to finally be typing this on an actual keyboard again instead of trying to survive off my phone. I feel like I’m officially back in business.

Also… how is June already over? Like, where did the last six months go? In just a few weeks we’ll be packing our bags for Asia, and if everything goes according to plan, maybe I’ll even be signing a marriage license on 8/8. (Manifesting. 🤞)

But before we get there…

The last week has been absolute chaos.

I flew to Vegas for court.

I somehow ended up driving to California.

Surprised Josh at his front door after accidentally disappearing off the face of the earth for almost a week.

Bought myself a new MacBook.

Binge-watched Off Campus.

And somehow managed to question every friendship and relationship in my life.

But first…

Can we just take a second?

There are over 4,200 of you here now.

Like… what??

Every time I open Substack, there’s more of you. Every day I get messages from people telling me they found me through Threads, Letters Beyond Borders.

It’s honestly kind of surreal.

So if you’re new here… welcome. ◡̈

If you’ve been here for a while… thank you for continuing to stick around through all of my questionable life decisions.

Seriously though, thank you.

This little community has become one of my favorite parts of my day.

And speaking of Threads…

That app is absolutely insane.

One day I’ll spend an hour writing something I’m really proud of…

Thirty-seven likes.

Then I make one stupid joke about flying to California to get the D…

Boom.

Half a Millions of views.

Thousands of comments.

People who have never heard of me suddenly have very strong opinions about my life.

Like… guys.

I promise there’s so much more to me than hopping on airplanes for a man.

I’m a writer.

I love food.

I travel.

I’m building Letters Beyond Borders.

I have approximately fourteen hobbies and twenty-seven unfinished business ideas.

But somehow the internet collectively decided,

“Nah… that’s the girl who flew across the country for some dick.”

I mean…

They’re not wrong.

But they’re also missing the point.

So…

You’re probably wondering…

“Monica… why the hell are you need to go to court in Nevada? What the fuck did you do now?”

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If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the last seven days... this is why.

Everything that could’ve possibly gone wrong started that Saturday night.

I had just gotten home after hanging out with some friends. My family was picking me up at four o’clock the next morning because we were leaving for South Padre Island, so all I wanted to do was finish packing, take a shower, get a couple hours of sleep, and be ready before my mom got there.

Earlier that evening, Kyle had texted me asking if he could come over.

I told him, “Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll be home in a little bit, but you’ll have to leave early because I have to be up at four in the morning.”

He said okay.

When I pulled into my driveway, I noticed his truck was already parked outside my house. I grabbed my bag, locked my car, and started walking toward my front door.

He was standing outside waiting for me.

I smiled and said, “Come on in.”

He looked at me and said, “No... I don’t want to come inside.”

I remember stopping for a second because I thought that was strange.

I looked at him and asked, “Why?”

He said, “Can we talk?”

So I turned around and walked over to his truck.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He looked at me and said, “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

I remember just staring at him.

“Do what?”

“This,” he said. “Whatever this is between us.”

If I’m being honest, I don’t remember every single thing that was said after that. I wish I did, but it was almost eleven o’clock at night, I was exhausted, and all I could think about was the fact that I had to wake up in a few hours for our family trip.

What I do remember is standing there in the dark, next to his truck, listening.

He told me he didn’t feel like himself anymore. He said he had been losing focus at work, and somehow it all circled back to me. He felt like every time he tried getting closer to me, I took ten steps back.

I remember standing there thinking, What do you mean?

In my head, I kept replaying everything.

We spent time together.

We went out to eat.

We talked almost every day.

So when he said I wasn’t giving him enough attention, I genuinely didn’t understand where that was coming from.

It wasn’t until a few days later, while I was sitting on the beach in South Padre, that I kept replaying that conversation.

And you know what’s crazy?

I don’t think he was completely wrong.

Looking back now, I think things between Kyle and me started changing after the day Kyle met Josh in person.

I don’t know why.

I really don’t.

Nothing happened that day where I thought, This is the beginning of the end.

It was just... different after that.

Every time Kyle and I hung out, I found myself getting irritated over the smallest things.

First it was the toilet paper.

Then it was the mango sticky rice.

Then it was the ring Josh bought me at Pandora.

Before anyone thinks those were actually the reasons... they weren’t.

I don’t even think I cared about the toilet paper.

I don’t think I cared about the mango sticky rice either.

Those little moments were just easier to focus on than asking myself the bigger question.

Why does something feel different?

I wasn’t trying to hurt him.

I wasn’t trying to choose one person over the other.

I was simply trying to figure out my own feelings while doing everything I could not to hurt two people I cared about.

Looking back now, I don’t think I’m built for a polyamorous relationship.

I know there are people who make it work, and I genuinely respect that.

But loving two people at the same time was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to navigate because no matter what decision I made, someone was going to get hurt.

Including me.

At one point Kyle looked at me and said, “I’m not cut out for a polyamorous relationship.”

And honestly...

I don’t think he was either.

Then he said something that stayed with me.

He told me he felt like I had used him as a bridge to reconnect with my ex.

That one hurt.

Not because I thought he was trying to be mean, but because after sitting with it for the last week, I can understand why he felt that way.

When Kyle and I first started seeing each other, things were really good between us.

Good enough that we ended up sharing a phone plan.

Then Josh came back into my life.

None of it was planned.

I was just acting on my emotions.

And if there’s one thing I learned from all of this...

I don’t recommend trying to love two people at the same time.

The conversation kept going, but eventually it got to a point where it felt like we were both talking and neither one of us was really listening anymore.

Then he looked at me and said he thought we should just end things.

There was a long pause.

Then he asked for the phone back.

I don’t know why, but that was the part that made me angry.

Not because the phone wasn’t his—it was. He bought it for me, so technically it belonged to him.

It was the feeling.

I’ve always hated it when people do something nice for you and then, during an argument, it suddenly becomes something they can take back or hold over your head.

When I do something for someone, I do it because I genuinely want to.

I don’t keep score.

I don’t expect to collect on it later.

So I reached into my bag, handed him the phone, and said,

“Here.

Take your fucking phone back.”

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Lately, I’ve been thinking about that question more than I care to admit.

Not because one person came back into my life, but because several people from different chap…

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Halfway through the meal, I looked up from my plate and found myself wondering how we got here.

Not here as in the restaurant.

Here.

This versio…

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I also can’t believe how far I’ve come when it comes to love.

For years, I was the woman who made peace with being single. After my husband passed away in 2012, I dated here and there. I tried. I opened my heart. I got it broken. And after a while, I think a part of me started wondering if maybe love was just something I had already experienced once, and maybe that was it for me.

Maybe I wasn’t meant to find it again.

Maybe I was meant to be the fun single friend with the good stories.

Maybe I was meant to travel, write, eat good food, flirt with strangers, and come home to myself.

And don’t get me wrong, I loved that version of my life too.

But there were moments when I would see people finding love on Hinge, Bumble, at airports, in coffee shops, while traveling, in the most random places, and I would wonder, What are you doing that makes love find you so easily?

And now look at me.

I am literally dating two men at the same time.

Ten years ago, if you had told me this would be my life, I would have laughed in your face.

Where was I even going to find two men?

Not just two men who liked me.

Two men who cared about me.

Two men who wanted to show up for me.

Two men who, apparently, both know how I like my chicken wings.

But we’ll get to that.

Because last night, Lambo Guy and Whole Foods Guy finally ended up in the same room.

Lambo Guy, aka Kyle.

Whole Foods Guy, aka Josh.

And me?

I was sitting in the middle of the couch questioning every life decision that led me to this exact moment.

As you guys know, Josh has been in town. He’s staying with me until Friday, and since he lives in California, I’ve been trying to spend as much time with him as possible.

Kyle lives here in Dallas.

He’s close.

He’s accessible.

He can see me any day of the week.

Josh has to get on a flight.

So in my head, I was trying to prioritize time in a way that made sense. But when you’re dating two people, there is no handbook. There is no perfect schedule. There is no little shared custody calendar where one man gets Monday through Wednesday and the other gets Thursday through Saturday.

Although, at one point, that is exactly how it started to feel.

Like I was the child in a divorced parents’ custody arrangement.

One parent gets me for the weekend.

The other parent gets me on weekdays.

Except both parents are grown men I’m romantically involved with, and I am the problem.

Kyle had actually made a steakhouse reservation for us last weekend, and I told him no because I wanted to see Josh.

And I know that probably didn’t feel good.

Because from his side, it probably looked like I was choosing my ex over him.

But from my side, it wasn’t that simple.

Josh doesn’t live here.

Kyle does.

And I’m learning in real time that dating two people is not just about feelings. It’s about time. It’s about proximity. It’s about reassurance. It’s about making sure nobody feels forgotten, even when nobody is technically doing anything wrong.

Yesterday, Kyle got off work at 7.

He called me and said he wanted to stop by, see me, and hang out for a bit.

I said, “Okay, but I have a friend here.”

He said, “That’s fine.”

And I said, “Okay.”

Very calm on the outside.

Completely panicking on the inside.

After I finished working, I went home and told Josh.

“Kyle is going to come over and hang out with us. Hope you’re cool with that.”

Josh looked completely unbothered.

“Yeah, that’s cool.”

And that was it.

Just, “Yeah, that’s cool.”

Now, in my head, I’m like, Okay. Great. This is just friends hanging out.

Except it wasn’t just friends hanging out.

It was me, my ex-boyfriend who flew in from California, and the man I’m currently dating in Dallas.

But sure.

Friends.

I asked Josh what we should get for dinner, and he said, “Whatever you want, babe.”

So naturally, I picked Wingstop.

Because Wingstop is close, easy, and even though they did me dirty with that merch box launch, I am still willing to give them my money.

I texted Kyle and asked if he wanted Wingstop.

He said yes.

I asked what flavor.

He said lemon pepper.

Josh ordered mango habanero.

I got Korean barbecue and garlic parmesan.

All flats, of course.

About an hour later, Kyle texted me.

“I’m outside.”

I went downstairs to meet him at his car.

He got out, hugged me tight, kissed me, and said, “Hi, baby.”

I asked him how work was.

“Work is work.”

I laughed a little because that is exactly the kind of answer a man gives when he has already used all of his words at the hospital.

Before we walked inside, I looked at him and said, “I just want you to know, my friend Josh is here with us, okay?”

He nodded.

“That’s cool.”

And I just stared at him for a second because why was he so calm?

This man was about to walk into my place knowing my ex-boyfriend was upstairs, and he was acting like we were about to go watch a basketball game with the boys.

Meanwhile, I felt like my entire nervous system was preparing for a fire drill.

We walked upstairs to the kitchen, and Josh was already there.

I took a breath.

“Josh, this is Kyle. Kyle, this is Josh.”

They shook hands.

“What’s up, bro?”

“What’s up, man?”

Very normal.

Too normal.

Almost suspiciously normal.

I did what any woman would do when standing between two men she’s romantically connected to.

I started talking about Netflix.

“So… what should we watch?”

Because nothing diffuses emotional tension like pretending the biggest problem in the room is choosing a show.

I told them Wingstop should be here soon, and we all went up to the third floor where the big TV is.

They sat down.

I told them to find something to watch.

And for a second, it almost felt normal.

Almost.

Like I was hanging out with two friends.

Like this wasn’t one of the strangest emotional experiments I had ever accidentally walked myself into.

The doorbell rang about thirty minutes later, and the Uber Eats guy dropped the food off at the front door.

I told them, “You guys hang out. I’m going downstairs to grab the food.”

I went down, got the Wingstop, brought it all the way back up, and started passing out boxes.

Kyle got his lemon pepper.

Josh got his mango habanero.

We had fries, ranch, lemonade, sodas, all of it.

Nobody could decide what to watch, so I put on Euphoria.

Because apparently, when your life already feels emotionally chaotic, the best thing to do is add Euphoria to the background.

We opened our boxes and started eating.

I was dipping my fries in ranch, minding my business, trying to act like I was not sitting between two men who both knew way too much about me.

And then it happened.

Josh reached into my box.

At the exact same time, Kyle reached into my box.

Both of them grabbed one of my flats.

I froze.

In my head, I’m like, Why are both of you touching my food when you both have your own food?

Then I looked over at Josh, and he was taking the bones out of the wing for me.

I looked over at Kyle.

He was doing the same thing.

At the same time.

I wanted to scream.

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I can’t fully explain it yet.

I don’t know if it’s because I moved back to Dallas. I don’t know if it’s because I’m finally giving myself perm…

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It was just one of those days where we were doing normal everyday things, but because he was here in Dallas, it felt different.

I woke up yesterday morning and saw a text from him.

“Good morning, just booked feet massage for ✌🏽 at 2.”

And I immediately responded back:

“I love that for US! 🤭🥳”

Now, I had no clue why this man randomly decided that we needed a foot massage.

My feet weren’t hurting.

I wasn’t walking around talking about, “You know what sounds good today? Somebody rubbing on my toes.”

But I didn’t question it.

I was down.

At this point, if Josh tells me we’re doing something, I’m usually just like, okay.

Tell me what time I need to be ready.

That’s it.

Around 2 o’clock he came and picked me up, and we drove over to this foot massage place.

I think it was called Yiyo Foot Massage.

The place was packed.

There were rows of massage chairs everywhere and people getting foot massages in every direction I looked.

And I remember thinking, damn.

This place must be good.

The guy started drying my feet off and putting lotion on my legs. Then he started working his way down to my feet, in between my toes, my heels, all of it.

And while all of this is happening, Josh is over there talking.

The entire time.

This man booked us a foot massage and then spent the foot massage talking to me.

He kept leaning over trying to ask me questions.

“Babe.”

“What?”

“What do you want to eat later?”

I looked over at him.

“We’re really doing this right now?”

“What?”

“We’re getting a foot massage.”

“And?”

“And you’re still talking to me.”

He started laughing.

“I’m just asking.”

“We can go to the Thai place later.”

“Okay.”

A few minutes passed.

“Babe.”

I looked over.

“What now?”

“Are you liking it?”

I looked at him.

Then I looked at the man massaging my feet.

Then back at Josh.

“Why don’t you let your guy rub your feet and put the towel over your face and be quiet?”

He started laughing again.

The thing about places like this is everybody is whispering.

But somehow every whisper feels loud.

Every time one of us said something, I felt like the whole room could hear us.

A few minutes later one of the employees walked by and put a plate of candy next to Josh.

I think it was guava candy.

At least that’s what it tasted like.

He picked one up.

“You think this is good?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s guava.”

He ate one.

Then another one.

Then another one.

Maybe fifteen minutes later I looked over and the entire plate was gone.

Gone.

Every single piece.

I stared at him.

“Damn. You big back.”

“Mind your business.”

“Was it that good?”

“It was good.”

I started laughing.

Then I looked over and my massage guy was really focused on my pinky toe.

And apparently Josh noticed too.

“Babe.”

Immediately I knew where this was going.

“No.”

“Babe.”

“No.”

“He is really massaging the hell out of your pinky toe.”

“Josh.”

“I’m serious.”

I started laughing.

“He just added more lotion.”

“Stop.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Leave my pinky toe alone.”

Now both of us are trying not to laugh in the middle of this quiet foot massage place while this poor man is just trying to do his job.

The massage was supposed to be an hour long.

When we first sat down, I remember thinking, damn.

An hour?

What am I supposed to do for an hour?

Just sit here and let somebody massage my feet?

But somewhere in the middle of it, I actually started relaxing.

And then Josh looked over at me.

“Babe.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you say your hand was hurting?”

I looked down at my wrist.

“Oh yeah.”

For the last couple weeks, I’ve been writing pen pal letters nonstop.

My hand had been sore.

My wrist had been sore.

Everything had been sore.

“You should have him massage your hand.”

I looked at him.

“You know what? You’re right.”

So I asked the guy if he could spend some time working on my hand and wrist.

And let me tell you something.

The moment he started massaging my hand, I felt like I saw God.

I didn’t realize how much tension I had been carrying until somebody started working it out.

And that’s when it hit me.

The foot massage was never about my feet.

Because my feet were perfectly fine.

My hand wasn’t.

My wrist wasn’t.

I’ve been writing a whole bunch of letters.

Every chance I got, I was sitting at my desk writing.

Writing before breakfast.

Writing after dinner.

Writing before bed.

Writing whenever I had a free moment.

And suddenly it made sense.

This man didn’t randomly wake up and decide we needed foot massages.

He booked the massage because I kept complaining that my hand hurt.

And instead of telling me to slow down, he found somebody else to deal with it.

Which, honestly, felt very on brand for him.

By the time the hour was over, I felt amazing.

We both stood up and thanked our massage therapists.

I told my guy, “Xie xie.”

My Chinese vocabulary is basically limited to food orders, thank you, and survival phrases.

But I was trying.

We made our way to the front desk while Josh paid.

Then I told him I needed to use the restroom.

“Okay.”

So I headed down the hallway.

The restroom was occupied, so I was standing there waiting when I saw the guy who had worked on my feet and hand walking by.

I reached into my purse and handed him a twenty.

“Thank you.”

He smiled.

I used the restroom, washed my hands, and walked back toward the front.

Josh was already outside waiting for me.

When we got to the truck, he opened the door for me and I climbed in.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, I looked over at him.

“Did you tip your guy?”

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

“I tipped them forty dollars.”

I looked at him.

“Oh.”

“What?”

“I tipped mine too.”

He started laughing.

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

“I already tip them for us.”

“Well, I didn’t know that.”

“I know.”

“I saw him in the hallway and just gave him twenty dollars.”

He shook his head.

“That’s okay.”

Then he smiled.

“It’s probably their lucky day anyway.”

And somehow that felt like the most Josh answer possible.

A few minutes later we were sitting in Dallas traffic on our way to my favorite Thai restaurant in Bishop Arts.

And that’s where things got even better.

We got stuck in traffic on the way.

Not a little traffic.

Dallas traffic.

The kind where everybody collectively agrees to move five feet every three minutes.

We’re just sitting there.

He’s driving.

I’m in the passenger seat recording a video because apparently I felt the need to document the traffic situation.

Now, I have one of those privacy screen protectors on my phone.

Which means if the brightness isn’t all the way up, I basically can’t see anything.

I had my phone ridiculously close to my face trying to watch the video back.

Out of nowhere, he looks over.

“Girl.”

“What?”

“Can that phone be any closer to your face?”

I immediately started laughing.

Then he shook his head.

“Babe, do we need to schedule an eye doctor appointment next?”

I lost it.

Absolutely lost it.

And the worst part is I wish I had caught that part on video.

Because the second he said it, I got embarrassed and stopped recording.

But I swear I laughed for the next ten minutes.

Eventually we made it to Sweet Rice.

If you live in Dallas, you already know.

If you don’t live in Dallas, just know this place has some of my favorite Thai food in the city.

The second we sat down, I already knew what I was ordering.

Pad See Ew.

And mango sticky rice.

Obviously.

Josh ordered the pineapple fried rice.

And another mango sticky rice.

We placed our order and just sat there talking while we waited for our food.

A few minutes later everything came out.

Now let me tell you something.

This man loves mango sticky rice.

And every time I see him eat it, it makes me laugh because when I first met him, he had never had mango sticky rice before.

He didn’t know what it was.

Now look at him.

He was over there eating it like somebody was about to take it away from him.

One bite.

Another bite.

Another bite.

I looked down at my noodles.

Then back at him.

Then back at my noodles.

Then back at him.

“Damn, are you going to eat your main entree?”

He looked up.

“Why are you worrying about me?”

“Because you’ve eaten half your dessert and haven’t touched your fried rice.”

“I’m getting to it.”

I started laughing.

Because he wasn’t getting to it.

He was tearing up the mango sticky rice.

It made me weirdly happy.

I don’t know.

I just know it made me smile.

Eventually I finished my noodles and started working on my mango sticky rice.

Everything was perfect.

The food.

The conversation.

The fact that neither one of us had anywhere else we needed to be.

Then a few minutes later the server walked over holding another mango sticky rice.

She set it down on the table.

I looked at her.

“What is this?”

“Your mango sticky rice.”

I looked at the table.

Then back at her.

“We already got ours.”

She smiled and pointed at Josh.

“Oh. He ordered another one.”

I turned and looked at him.

“You ordered another mango sticky rice?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

He shrugged.

“Yeah, I know you’re going to want something sweet later tonight.”

I just stared at him.

Because who thinks like that?

“You always want dessert later.”

And the annoying thing was that he was right.

Completely right.

I don’t know why that made me so happy.

It was just one of those little moments where you realize somebody has been paying attention.

Not because you told them to.

Not because they’re trying to impress you.

They just know you.

And before I could stop myself, I was sitting there thinking:

Yeah.

I really love this man.

By the time we finished eating, we were both full.

At least I thought we were.

We got back in the truck and started heading home.

The Dallas heat was doing what Dallas heat does, and between the foot massage, the traffic, and enough Thai food, I was ready to sit down for a little bit.

We went back to my place.

For maybe an hour or so, we just hung out.

We were just existing in the same space together.

Eventually one of us looked at the other and said the thing that always gets us into trouble.

“What do you want to do now?”

The dangerous thing about asking that question is neither one of us ever says, “Let’s stay home.”

I looked at him.

“We should go do something.”

He looked back at me.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

So naturally, I opened my phone.

A few minutes later I found a comedy show at Addison Improv.

It was Old School Comics versus New School Comics.

I had never heard of any of them.

Neither had he.

But that wasn’t really the point.

We just wanted to go laugh.

“You want to go?”

“Yeah.”

That was it.

Tickets purchased.

Problem solved.

A little while later we pulled into Addison and headed upstairs to the showroom.

The host stopped us before we sat down.

“Do you guys want to sit in the front or the back?”

Before I could even answer, both of us said:

“Front.”

At the exact same time.

We looked at each other and started laughing.

Because if you’ve ever been to a comedy show before, you already know sitting in the front is a terrible idea.

That’s how you get roasted.

That’s how you become part of the show.

That’s how you end up being somebody’s material for the next ten minutes.

But apparently neither one of us cared.

They seated us right in the front row.

The server came over and explained we each had to order two items.

The problem was we had literally just eaten.

Nobody was hungry.

I ordered a bottle of water and a pineapple juice.

Josh ordered two bottles of water.

The show started a few minutes later.

Every comedian was funny.

The younger comics were funny.

The older comics were funny.

But there was one guy that absolutely stole the show.

This man walked onto the stage wearing overalls and a cowboy hat.

He looked like he had just finished fixing a tractor before coming to perform stand-up.

At one point he asked the audience:

“Anybody here ever been skydiving?”

The room got quiet.

I raised my hand.

“Yeah.”

He pointed at me.

“Did you like it?”

“I loved it.”

He smiled.

“Perfect. Then you’ll appreciate this story.”

And let me tell you.

The story that followed had me and Josh laughing so hard we were practically crying.

Now before he told us the skydiving story, he had to give us some background information about himself.

Apparently every time he gets nervous or has anxiety, he gets hard.

The entire room started laughing.

Then he started talking about his dating life.

He was like, “The problem is, under normal circumstances, I can’t get hard.”

Everybody started laughing again.

One time he was dating a woman and couldn’t get hard, so he asked her to put on a clown costume.

A clown costume.

Apparently he’s terrified of clowns.

By now, me and Josh are already laughing.

Then he goes, “Remember that for the next story.”

He started telling us about when he used to be a skydiving instructor.

One day this guy showed up because his wife bought him a skydiving experience for his birthday.

The guy was terrified.

They’re sitting in the plane getting ready to jump and the guy is already crying and trying to back out.

Eventually they jump.

The guy is strapped to him while they’re falling through the air.

Everything is going according to plan until one of the parachutes fails.

The comedian paused and looked at the audience.

Then he goes,

“Unfortunately, I have a condition.”

The entire room lost it.

Because everybody remembered the clown story.

According to him, the second the parachute failed, he got hard.

Now this poor guy is thousands of feet in the air and can feel something poking him in the lower back.

Finally, he tells the guy,

“One of the parachutes failed, but we have a second one. Just stay calm. We’re going to land safely. We might tumble a little bit when we hit the ground, but we’re going to be okay.”

He deploys the second parachute.

It works.

They make it safely to the ground.

After they land, he asks the guy how he liked the experience.

The guy just looked at him and walked away without saying a word.

At this point, me and Josh are laughing so hard we can barely breathe.

Then he tells us that eventually word got around.

Next thing he knew, a bunch of gay men started booking skydiving appointments with him.

I looked over at Josh and he had tears in his eyes from laughing.

Honestly, that guy was probably my favorite comedian of the entire night.

By the time the show ended, my face hurt from laughing.

You know when you’ve been laughing for almost two hours straight and your cheeks start hurting?

That’s exactly where I was.

We walked out of the showroom still talking about the comedians.

Still repeating jokes.

Still laughing.

I don’t even remember who brought it up first, but somehow the conversation shifted to dessert.

Which honestly shouldn’t surprise anybody.

Because if you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you already know dessert is always part of the plan.

I looked over at him.

“Babe, can we go get dessert?”

He started laughing.

Then he turned his phone around and showed me the screen.

This man was already searching for dessert near me.

I swear we are the same person sometimes.

“What about Salt & Straw?”

“I’m down.”

And just like that, we were off again.

Now if you live in Dallas, you know Salt & Straw just opened.

If you don’t live in Dallas, just know the line was ridiculous.

There were people everywhere.

The line wrapped around the building.

Everybody was standing outside trying to get ice cream.

We walked up and immediately looked at each other.

Absolutely not.

Then we noticed a sign saying we could order ahead using the QR code.

I looked at him.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Yep.”

A few minutes later, both of us had ordered the ice cream flight.

Four flavors for me.

Four flavors for him.

Eight flavors total.

Because apparently moderation wasn’t part of our plans that day.

When our order was ready, we grabbed everything and headed outside.

There weren’t any tables available, so we ended up sitting on the curb.

And honestly? It was perfect.

We popped all the lids off and started passing them back and forth.

“Try this one.”

“No, try this one.”

“This one’s good.”

“No, this one’s better.”

One spoonful after another.

The lavender one.

The milk tea one.

The strawberry one.

Some olive oil flavor that sounded questionable but somehow worked.

I don’t even remember all the flavors.

I just remember sitting there with him.

Cars driving by.

People walking around us.

Both of us passing ice cream back and forth like two little kids.

We sat there until we couldn’t eat another bite.

There was still ice cream left.

Neither one of us could finish it.

I put the lid back on mine.

He put the lid back on his.

And we just sat there enjoying the moment.

Eventually I looked over at him.

“I kind of want tacos.”

He didn’t even hesitate.

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“Let’s go.”

And somehow that answer still makes me smile every time.

Now if you’ve ever gotten tacos from a gas station and they only accept cash, you already know those tacos are about to slap.

Every single time.

I don’t make the rules.

That’s just how it works.

By the time we pulled into Fuel City, we’d already had a full day.

A foot massage.

Thai food.

A comedy show.

Ice cream.

And tacos still sounded like a good idea.

Before we got there, we’d each taken a gummy.

A hundred milligrams.

Now if you’ve ever taken an edible before, you know sometimes it doesn’t hit you right away.

One minute you’re completely normal.

The next minute you’re standing in line for ice cream wondering why everybody looks extra friendly.

I don’t think it really hit either one of us until Salt & Straw.

Because by the time we got to Fuel City, we were both feeling fantastic.

Josh jumped out and got in line to order the tacos.

I went inside the gas station to grab a fountain drink.

I walked around looking at snacks for a minute.

Picked something up.

Put it back.

Picked something else up.

Put it back.

Then I spotted Pop Rocks.

And immediately grabbed it.

A few minutes later they called Josh’s name.

He grabbed the tacos, I grabbed my fountain drink, and we headed back to my house.

Now the thing about Fuel City is that every single time I go there, I end up ordering way more food than I actually need.

But somehow this time we showed restraint.

We only ordered two tacos.

One for me.

One for him.

Which honestly was probably for the best because we’d already spent the entire day eating.

By the time we pulled into my driveway, the gummy had fully kicked in.

And instead of going inside, we just sat there.

The truck was off.

Neither one of us seemed interested in moving.

I opened the taco container.

Grabbed my steak taco.

Handed him the other one.

And we just sat there eating.

Talking about the comedy show.

Talking about the comedians.

Talking about absolutely nothing important.

The kind of conversation you have when you’ve already spent an entire day together and somehow still haven’t run out of things to say.

I remember looking over at him while he was eating and thinking how funny it was that we’d managed to fit so much into one day.

A foot massage.

Thai food.

Traffic.

A comedy show.

Ice cream.

Now tacos in my driveway.

And I still wasn’t ready for the day to end.

By this point, the gummy was definitely doing its job.

Now I don’t know what edibles do to the rest of you guys.

But every single time I take one, my mouth gets dry and I get super horny.

I don’t know why.

That’s just what happens.

I’m sitting there eating my taco, sipping on my drink, feeling fantastic.

Then I remembered the Pop Rocks.

The Pop Rocks.

The same Pop Rocks I had bought inside the gas station a few minutes earlier.

I reached into the bag and pulled them out.

Looked at the packet.

Looked at Josh.

Looked back at the packet.

And immediately a question popped into my head.

“Have you ever had Pop Rocks on your dick before?”

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