Hello Coco : A diary

Author: coven

  • Being Mean: A Coping Mechanism in My Relationships

    When I was young, my parents would take bets on my relationships to see how long they would last. Rude right? It was because they said I was so mean to the boys. It hurt my feelings at the time because I felt like it meant that something was wrong with me.

    I took pride for a little while that I was mean to them because it made me feel superior. My dad even egged it on, probably because he was nervous about me dating as dads are. Also boys at that age were fucking idiots and I felt like I had to be mean to get my point across.

    Over the years the meanness had persisted in different ways/degrees. I’ve gone to therapy, have talked about it and tried to understand it without it actually going anywhere. My last relationship suffered quite a bit from it, but she would call it my ‘night spicy-ness’ as at the end of every day I would get pointy. It impacted our sex life and her overall comfortability around me. In the last year of our relationship, it reached an all-time high. I still remember lying in bed hearing her say,

    “I know my girlfriend is somewhere in there, I’m just waiting for her.”

    I think that level of meanness in the last year was triggered from internal dissonance. I wasn’t doing what I felt I needed to in my soul and instead working against it to try to be more ‘comfortable’ in that relationship. This was all happening on the back end though and I wasn’t ready to face it, which I feel made it even worse.

    The meanness of when I was younger I feel was triggered from not feeling like I can be authentic because I was emotionally stunted.

    Now that I am experiencing guys all over again, ass-deep in therapy, and having mini-realizations about how guys repress their feelings and have a hard time emoting/opening up, I’ve been practicing being gentler with myself and them- look at me go!

    With that gentleness, I’ve been filtering my thoughts through an extra layer of ‘how would they interpret what I am about to say?’ or ‘how would I feel if they said this to me?’ 8 times out of 10, I rework the words in my mind or forego it altogether. It makes me feel bad when I realize how many times, I actually do that and how long I’ve been going without the filter. Getting out of that negative mindset is a new obstacle for me. I should be celebrating the self-awareness, but it’s making me nervous at how far I’ve come without it and how I’ve been perceived.

    So, I’ve been doing this work and then in comes fucking Carter.

    The first time we met we had drinks, talked about our sexual preferences and hooked up in the same night. The second time he just came over and we fucked. This time, he came to pick me up to go out to a few bars in the area. The plan was that we would go out, he would use my panty vibrator and then we’d fool around in his car until we got back to my place. It was a solid, well-thought-out plan in my books. We are so sexually in-sync that I didn’t see any flaw to it.

    I jumped into his car, and he immediately made a comment about my swaying the car, cracking a joke about his suspension. I asked what these lights were on his car, and he gave me a passive, dick-ish answer. The rest of the next hour went just like that – being poked and prodded by every question and answer I’d give until he started making comments about girl friend groups and how there is always a ‘D.U.F.F’ and then proceeded to ask if I was one. I slapped him with my purse and told him if he planned on getting laid he should shut his fucking mouth.

    What happened next was the most interesting part. He shut up, started playing around on his phone, and sat on the opposite side of the booth. He made me work to turn the night back around as I persuaded him to come join me on my side. He apologized for being so mean, but I knew there was something else going on behind the scenes I wasn’t seeing. I asked him about it and he said he genuinely feels like this was his personality and I felt that. I felt that unsettling feeling of permanence as I’ve felt it thinking about how I’ve always struggled with it.

    Although the night went exactly as planned sexually & logistically, I began to realize that I couldn’t quite get comfortable, and he picked up on it. I couldn’t quite relax enough to truly just enjoy the sex and the foreplay beforehand. I became self-conscious of my razor-burn, how I looked on top, my facial expressions…everything because I knew how mean he could be that perhaps he had internal thoughts about them.

    Then it clicked this morning when I woke up, Carter is a lesson for me. Perhaps a little Karma too.

    What I am beginning to learn:

    1. Other people struggle with keeping ‘nice-ness’ in the forefront of their brain when interacting with partners of any degree (I just hadn’t met anyone else like this until Carter).
    2. Whether it’s a personality trait is actually a mystery, but I feel mine are from triggers, communication struggles and learned patterns that I believe can be helped. Maybe it’s time I dig into it further.
    3. Even if you are emotionally detached from the person you are sleeping with, what they do/say will impact the quality of sex. That is perhaps a reason why my sex life with my prior person was such shit.

  • Approaching Sexuality at 30: Straight to Bisexual to Questioning. All Over Again.

    I’ve had sex with four different guys in the last month and a half.

    Mind you I haven’t had sex with a guy for 7 years beforehand because I was in a relationship with a woman – so, it does kind of feel like I’m walking back into my twenties and trying to experience things all over again, just through a different lens.

    I feel I do give myself some grace for that, but I can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt or judgement coming from behind it. Perhaps it’s the internalized notion that what I am doing is slutty, irresponsible, un-ladylike, whore-ish. I’ll be honest, some of the kinks that have come to light from my ventures definitely make me feel like I am treading further in that direction.

    After that first time with Drake, I was hooked. I just didn’t realize that it could feel that good, that I could get off by a man being inside me. I know my 23-year-old self never experienced that. Most if not all the guys I had slept with back then got off leaving me high and dry. It was like a transaction; except they didn’t understand I needed something in return. It created this idea that men were inherently selfish, and that penetration wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.

    I had heard [from where, who the fuck knows] once way back when that only 20% of women can actually orgasm from penetration and that thought kind of made me give up on it altogether. If external stimulation was all most women could really experience, then what’s the point? I guess in that scenario the point would be to give pleasure to them, but none of them even attempted putting my pleasure first so I was S.O.L.

    I find myself asking if I only dated women despite men. I’ve been asking myself if I could see myself dating women again based on these new experiences. I would have to ask myself at that point if I was only thinking that because the sex these last 5 years wasn’t good, but we stuck around for comfortability.

    I think sadly I have to just admit that as 30-year-old woman I haven’t had a lot of quality sexual experiences. I’ve had mind-blowing sex with 1 woman in my life, and a lot of amazing sex with these men in just the last month. It makes me sad, but also excited to see what else I’ve been missing out on.

    I’ve been craving to write about it, to experience them all over again.

    Drake had this remarkable way of sliding into me at the perfect angle to hit my g-spot every. time. He’d made twirls with his hips, spelling god-knows what. He’d whisper in my ear asking me what I like and then give it to me without a second thought. There were moments where each push inside me, we’d make eye contact connecting on breath, feeling literally everything between us until we’d both come.

    Wesley spooned me on the couch as we watched a movie. He caressed my back and hips, playfully pulling them ever so slightly closer to him making my eyes role at the subtle feel of his hard cock against me. When he caught on to me moving with him, he started to trace my neck with deep, breathy kisses making my entire body shutter and press into him deeper. He took me to his bed, ate me out beautifully and then let me ride his fingers until I came.

    Then there’s Cade from last night who talked dirty to me at a packed bar for a good 45-minutes before scooting my chair closer, tucking his hand between my crossed legs and squeezing so hard I about came right then and there. We went back to my place, and he played with me for a long while before everything turned feral. He spanked me hard and let me ride his cock as he took me from behind. I was so wet, begging for more.

    So, yeah – can you blame me? I ask myself really, the person who is casting the most judgement.

    Part of me feels that me listening to my primal needs, wants and desires is a way of honoring this sexual liberation. Leaning into feeling good and experiencing good sex shouldn’t feel like I’m doing something wrong. I think that I will even out and adapt balance, but for now I’m just learning how to let go and let myself enjoy this part of life.

    I just want to learn how to embrace it without the judgement. The internalized slut-shaming of my generation and gender expectations. How the fuck do I do that?

  • Breaking the Cycle: Compassion for Men, Mental Health & Intimacy

    I took a 7 year break from men. From the ages 23 – 30, I dated women and tried my best to forget men existed for all the hurt I felt from high school and college. It wasn’t their fault, we were all just figuring things out at that age, but it was my first impression of intimacy, and it stained me.

    The sex that felt transactional, harshly pornographic, and hasty made me feel like I was just a body – that I couldn’t have a deep romantic relationship with them.

    Experiencing men now, I’ve began to realize that the world did guys dirty. Obviously, they have their privilege, but the men that I have personally experienced have this underlying sadness. They are hurting and don’t know how to express it.

    I think you could probably guess that a romantic relationship with a woman is highly communicative. We’re in-tune with our cycles, hormones, feelings, and the complexities behind them. Women are also generally more likely to get vulnerable. Testing that theory; if a woman was crying in public people wouldn’t be all that surprised, but if a man was crying in public people would think something is deeply wrong. It’s a bias we all contribute to whether we like it or not and that’s just because the world taught men to suck it up.

    I’m meeting these thirty-something men and I’m seeing it all over their faces. When I bring up a boundary, call them out on being shitty, or even harmlessly tease – I see their eyes glaze over and they get defensive, quiet or completely refuse to acknowledge it, dodging the words altogether.

    Over the years, we’ve developed this kind of man-hating culture because of all the really bad news coming to light on celebrities and college boys assaulting women and covering it up. Don’t get me wrong, there are a LOT of bad men out there doing all sorts of fucked up shit, but I feel the over-arching generalizations have made the state of men’s mental health even worse. They are more scared than ever to open up, again just judging from my personal experiences.

    One guy I have been talking to, Drake, struggled to even form words when I asked him a vulnerable question around loneliness. He stumbled and I could see him trying to change the topic completely out of discomfort. I did everything in my power to show him he could be safe and say what was on his mind and it was like pulling teeth. Trying to know the push and pull balance is a new dynamic for me, coming from a prior relationship where everything was on the table.

    Another guy I had been talking to, Jesse, just didn’t engage with me when I would ask slightly personal questions. Everything was a soft spot, even me asking when his last relationship was. He became defensive, snapped at me to derail the conversation, and would ghost me for hours only to respond on a completely different topic. Don’t get me wrong, I know that I don’t know these men very well and they could very well have past traumas that I could never understand – but I was gob smacked at the stark difference between interacting with women these last 7 years and then my first interactions with men being so alike to one another.

    My biggest question, obviously stemming from the ignorance of the male experience, is why they wouldn’t want to try and help themselves – to feel better. To go to therapy and try to break past those barriers. I suppose some feel that is what they have to do to fit in and that perhaps it’s not wrong. I suppose others are too imbedded in their traumas and experiences to see that they can help it. And some are just perhaps stubborn and don’t believe they need the help.

    Regardless of whatever it may be, it breaks my heart. Talking, and having intimacy with these men as a 30-year old woman, has changed my entire outlook on men. As sad and twisty it is to admit, it has healed some of my inner-child’s harsh beliefs from judgement to compassion. It has built some bridges for me from difficult memories into re-framed sad ones.

    I had been really mean to men when I dated them back then because they kept hurting my feelings in so many different ways. I don’t make excuses for them but reapproaching those memories with 8 years of therapy and a fresh perspective, I can at least try to understand and not take them as personally.

    So, where do I go from here?

    I think it’d be difficult for me to say that I won’t date a man who can’t communicate, express their feelings appropriately, or have a hard time doing the work to better themselves, but I’m beginning to realize that a boundary I need to have is balance. I can’t work with a man who won’t try.

    For those who can’t or won’t try, for their own reasons, I have compassion, but my heart can’t save theirs even though I do have so much love to give.

    The tricky part is knowing for certain what side of it they are on. There are men who say they are trying, but the proof isn’t there. You want to believe in them, root for them and give them the support but it’s a torturous game of figuring out when to walk away.

    I had to walk away from Jesse because my alarm bells wouldn’t stop going off and I began to feel that perhaps one day I wouldn’t be safe with him. Jury is still out on Drake and this new guy I’ve been seeing – Wesley – seems to be the first out of about 5 guys that hasn’t shied away from a vulnerable question.

    I didn’t think that this period of sexual experimentation and discovery would lead to me reflecting on every experience with a man that I had ever had, but I’m so grateful for it. But I’m equally as sad processing it all through.

    I have this deep desire to cup these men’s faces between both my hands and tell them it’s okay. That everything will be okay. That they are safe. I wish them all the love they could possibly imagine and that whatever is holding them in a vice grip will just let them breathe already.

  • Navigating Life Changes: Unpacking Layers of Identity

    There have been some stark moments lately where I’m realizing there are even more layers to who I am and that’s scary. I thought I knew every angle and crevice of my personality and desires. Now there’s this hunger to unveil more and more, ripping up each layer like floorboards of an old house. It’s overwhelming and electrifying, and I can’t slow down.

    It all began when I ended a very safe and healing 5-year relationship with a woman (we’ll call her Erin). She taught me what a healthy relationship should look like and how to comfortably live with another person while still holding independence. I owe so much of my growth to that experience and her. It just couldn’t work out – we weren’t right for each other for a lot of reasons.

    I don’t think it’s talked about enough how intense it is to just change you’re entire lifestyle after a long relationship like this one. You’re removing an entire person from your life, from your bed every night, from your current and future plans. It rewired my brain and now all I can think about is – ‘What now?’

    I began to take stock of my life; the first thing being how I was taking care of myself -how I looked. I asked myself: “How do I want to feel about the way that I look?” The answers always drilled down to confidence. I wanted to look and feel confident.

    So, I got Lasik; my biggest insecurity being my glasses. I updated my wardrobe, where for the last few years I almost always wore sweats. I started experimenting with my hair and makeup, where I would usually throw on a hat and didn’t want the work of taking off the makeup so I would forego it altogether out of laziness.

    —It’s a little funny now when I look back to see how depressed I actually was in that relationship. Getting out of it and on the *right* SSRI changed my fucking life. I was in such a funk and completely blind to it because of all the weed I smoked – chalking it up to just resting, just relaxing, just taking it easy, just me being me. —

    After all that, I began to exercise regularly – wanting the feeling of being refreshed, feeling strong and again, confident. For the last two years I had been insecure of how much weight I had gained which resulted in high cholesterol. I was consuming so much sugar out of comfort, and she was too – we were enabling each other constantly. Add in weed and well, you can see how it can get out of hand.

    Almost three months out of the relationship and I’ve dropped a considerable amount of weight out of eating healthy, exercising, and regulating my emotions exclusively. Taking myself out of the disgingenuine relationship began saving my health.

    The snowball kept snowballing and I didn’t want it to stop. It became addicting – still is. I told my therapist, “I don’t want it to stop! What else can I do?”

    I decided my next exploration would be my sexuality. For the last 7 years, I’ve only been with women. The last guy I had been with I was just 23 years old. I was very unsure about everything in life then – though I still am in a lot of ways – I was in a completely different place filled with insecurity and unhealed trauma. I had no tools.

    I’m 30 now and I’ve gone to years and years of therapy and with all the healthy moves I have been making, my libido had picked up which made me think more…creatively. What sounded good. Like food, what could I go for? Between all the smut books I had been reading and my curiosity to what men were like now, I knew I had to move in that direction.

    I was so scared at first because 1. what if Erin found out and so soon after our breakup? She would be heartbroken. 2. what if it is awful? What if it brings up triggers?

    The very last thing I had wanted was to put myself in a situation where I would come out of it feeling the same ways I had felt when I was young: used, unheard, and transactional. I decided that whatever happened with these men that I would tell them exactly what I wanted and make sure it happened. I wouldn’t settle for an experience my younger self cried over countless times. I started coming up with a plan to do just that, and doing it discreetly so that Erin or anyone would never find out without my control. This was mine.

    Something amazing happened from that. I’ll call him Drake. He was the first guy I met on Tinder who made an effort. He made me a little scared with how forward he was, triggering me on a small level, but I summoned the courage to tell him to chill the fuck out and if he wanted it to move forward it would be on my terms. Luckily, he took it very well and the mutual respect only grew from there as he texted me every day for a week until we met up, hopping on the phone once for two hours just so I’d be more comfortable first.

    He came over on Valentines Day of all days – by accident. He swept me up in a kiss in the first moment, ripping the bandage off in an instant. It quickly escalated but it lasted forever, in the best way. It happened a few times with sweet moments tucked in the middle. He made it feel comfortable and safe. He made me feel desired. He asked questions and leaned into my answers. He helped me grasp in that moment that sex with men didn’t need to feel the way I only knew it to be.

    Don’t get me wrong, the guy has his flags and I would never consider a relationship with him, but I’m so grateful for the experience and the mutual intentions for connection. I walked away (barely) with a new outlook and giddiness to an entire side of my sexuality that I can now feel confident can be pleasurable and accessible.

    It made me emotional for a few days, just processing the experience. How my body felt and at what times, what things he did that I enjoyed and perhaps what I wanted to try next.

    Tinder came through again with another guy, we’ll call him Jesse. He was more subtle, actually barely forward except for his pet names for me – “Queen” and “Baby” that I guiltily throbbed for. I began to notice his insecurities, lack of communication and time management, and worst of all – his drinking problem. Things escalated anyways and I let him grab me in big bear hugs that would melt me to the core. I would let him grab my hand and kiss the back of it as he looked in my eyes and said something sweet. Two weeks of talking and it appeared he craved the ‘girlfriend’ connection more than the physical, and I was kind of okay with that.

    We eventually had sex and I was pretty curious to see how it would feel compared to Drake. Would he also know what to do and how to do it? Would I feel just as safe and comfortable? I couldn’t help a little nervousness as we didn’t have as direct conversations like Drake and I about what we liked and didn’t like. Jesse didn’t get my spiel on ‘I won’t accept anything but quality’ as I told Drake from the start – but that was because Jesse didn’t come off as threatening as Drake did in the beginning with his fuck-boy talk. Jesse was also more shy.

    I approached everything with Jesse differently and it showed. It showed in Jesse’s comfort to be a little too drunk, it showed in me letting myself be drunk along with him. It showed in Jesse’s lack of focus on me in that moment…his inability to take direction and make consistent effort to ensure I was having as good as a time. The sex certainty wasn’t bad, but it was nothing compared to Drake and I felt that in my heart. My younger self felt it a little, she was a little disappointed in me.

    I’ve let her down a lot these last seven years. Not calling it quits when I should have with Erin. Not taking care of my physical and mental health. Staying in a job that was chiseling away at my peace.

    I owe it to her to make up for it, so I told Jesse that I needed to move on. Even though I loved the sweet platonic things he would do, I knew I couldn’t let myself feel less on the physical end. I knew his drinking problem wouldn’t let up for me to do that. It was surprisingly difficult. I had grown attached to the sweetness and because of that, i strung him on a little bit more than I should have.

    There was a lesson there that I needed to learn. A reminder that sometimes I have to override my feelings even when it sucks, that I have to parent my younger self from making choices that would hurt me in the long run even though it felt good. It also brought to light a feeling of lack – a deep desire for hugs, comfort and general connection. Something I’m actively trying to fill with my friendships, a dependable love.

    So, after all this glorious snowballing and lesson-learning and sexual awakenings, I’ve let myself reap the benefits in other parts of my life. The confidence leaked into work – which resulted in taking on new projects and receiving accolades for my work. It leaked into my friendships – opening up for more vulnerable conversations. I have been becoming more myself – getting my sparkle back as they say – and leaning into my truest thoughts and desires. People have been noticing and telling me how excited they are for my changes, which snowballed me even more.

    I will say, I’m still adjusting to this side of myself. Learning who she is, how much is too much. When to fold and when to press forward.

    I’ve now redirected to my job. If this HR career is something I actually want for the rest of my life or something I have kept with out of comfort and my long-lasting depression.

    I know that I would write full-time if I could. But the confidence hasn’t leaked in that direction just yet and I know that full-time writing isn’t common. Not only are the odds against me, but I feel that my ADHD brain sends me on unorganized tangents. That I miss important details, themes or connections that would strenghten my writing. That I lack outline and general structure.

    I joined a creative writing group to help with this, which is such a huge step out of my comfort zone, but it’s once a month. This blog is anonymous, and I’m scared for anyone I know to see it; critique it. My best friend reading my diary when I was younger still triggers me today. I have a lot of fears around my writing still.

    I know that if I want that to change that I need to make big uncomfortable changes as I’ve done so far in other areas of my life. So, what would big uncomfortable changes look like? How can I melt the confidence into this?

    The snowball must continue – I won’t let it stop, at least not yet. If I let it, this could perhaps be the biggest roll.

  • From Silence to Confidence: Reclaiming My Story

    It’s been sometime since I last wrote here. Truthfully, life has completely taken over and I’m glad it did. I’m sitting in a corner of my new apartment, looking out to everything I built for myself just in the last month.

    A magical thing happened when I started to write. I began to dream about what different experiences could feel like and subconsciously, experiences that I wanted for myself. I read somewhere that you should ‘write what you want to read’ and I had been craving something with meat to it – something that will have me second guessing who I’ve become these last 30 years and who I actually want to be for the next 30.

    Since the beginning of December I ended a 5-year relationship, moved into a studio apartment, dreamed up another idea for a story, went to a swing dancing class by myself, signed up for a creative writing group, dyed my hair and even got Lasik. And it all happened because I really wanted it to. If my characters could have adventures and happiness, so could I.

    With all of these changes a new sense of self-confidence has emerged, both on my own and interacting with other people. Confidence that I’ve got this and I can have what I want, if I just fucking go for it. It’s snowballed into the most essential thing I’ve always needed from the very start, the sole reason I began to start writing again, and that was to be heard.

    I ended my last relationship thinking to myself that my ex was perfect just the way she was and I just wasn’t feeling it. After some time to myself, I started to take note of my feelings in the closure process. I realized that I was dating someone that inherently prioritized her own voice above mine. It’s funny (sort of), I look back and think of all the times she’s blatantly interrupted me both one-on-one and in social settings, sometimes completely changing the subject as if whatever I was saying was unimportant. I look back and remember all the moments when she would ask me how my day was and completely check out. I remember asking for something and her twisting it so it would benefit her too.

    Not many people know that I grew up in an emotionless and uncommunicative household. I’ve come to realize that I was allowing myself to perpetuate my past. I allowed myself to be unheard because that’s what I have known.

    My younger self used to dream of my comments being posted on websites when dial-up was still a thing and I had only 30 minutes of computer time. I told myself after seeing “How to lose a guy in 10 days” for the first time that I would be Andy Anderson someday. I loved Harriet the Spy, observing and writing everything she saw. My journals had receipts, little drink umbrellas, movie stubs, and flowers and leaves. From a young age all I wanted to do was to be heard and connect.

    So, here I am starting over at 30 and doing my best to reconnect to the little girl that felt so free and open to share everything with the world as it came, no filter and no fear.

  • Therapy & Character Development: Writing my first book

    I have had this story in my head for years. Whenever I had felt a subtly glimmer of inspiration, I would build it in my mind little by little but never actually putting it into words.

    Over the course of the last year and a half, I went through some of the worst bouts of depression. I wrestled with the thought of feeling meaningless, like I had nothing really to live for. I didn’t have drive or motivation in my career. I smoked weed to get through a lot of the long days and nights. I had been growing apart from the person I had been dating and with all these things combined I was severely under stimulated.

    I would scroll through TikTok, searching for keywords like ‘passion’ and ‘quarter-life crisis’ just to figure out what other people were saying. I was looking for guidance on what to do with my life.

    I don’t know what exact moment sparked this next chapter, but all I know is that it took 3 and a half weeks of isolation and a tiny spark of inspiration to just open up my laptop and begin writing an outline for the story I had always wanted, but was never brave enough, to write.

    The issue was that I knew the story would be personal, regardless of whatever fiction I sewed into it, there was going to be raw and real feelings -my heart- knitted into most of everything I wrote. Not because I meant to do it, but because it’s all I knew. It wasn’t till later did I realize that I needed it to be that way.

    I put it off for so long because I thought that if I had decided to actually publish it, that people in my life would actually read it. The people who are not actively addressed, would know who they were in the story.

    Even if I didn’t publish it though, there was fear someone would find it and read it. Like my best friend read my diary in my sophomore year of high school, causing a rift between us for two years. The summers after that, I would burn my journals on solo camping trips after finishing them for exactly that reason. Fear. Fear that someone would read something they didn’t like and that I would lose them.

    You’re probably thinking, “Damn, what the fuck are you writing in those journals?”

    Everything. You know those thoughts that you know are not healthy, not politically correct, not censored – your ‘monkey brain’ thoughts that you are conditioned to think from your environment, your background and your own personal experiences and traumas. Those.

    What she read that day was directly about her and how I felt about the decisions she was making with her life. Thoughts that were harsh and unguarded, but needed to be picked out from my brain and laid out on paper where they could rest and I could let it go.

    Writing has always been my therapy. With this new book that I continued to write, pushing through the fear, I have digested my most difficult feelings. I have gotten closure from my parents, went after what I truly desired, and worked through things that I never knew lived deep beneath my skin.

    I kept asking myself when writing it, ‘Is this too much of me – should I make it more fiction?” I laughed to myself because a lot of it was/is fiction, just things that I actually wanted to happen in my life. I was writing for the person I was, am and wanted to be without realizing it.

    So, as I was developing this character, I began to develop the person I really want to be. She’s still in progress by a large sum, but I’m starting to get to know her more, what she really wants and how she’s going to get there.

    Fast forward a few months later and I’m sitting in an almost empty apartment, the person I just broke up with going solo on their family trip as I count down the few days I have before I move into my new studio apartment. Alone. Well, with two very cute cats, but alone.

    I started this book thinking it would be a gutsy project, only to find that it has opened my eyes to an entirely different world that I want to be actively apart of and build from the studs.