So the question remains, how can we avoid this? How can we avoid putting the people we love into suffocating cages? Where, like any animal, they’ll eventually want to break free. I don’t have the answers, but I’m impossibly curious.

Thank you for reading, and as always, any criticisms or input related to the discussion are not only welcomed but encouraged. Happy Saturday from Daniel Island, SC.

Thanks so much for reading, and as always, all feedback is welcome and encouraged.

Happy Monday <3

Not to mention the magic that each encounter captures. The magic of a city or a life that’s different than your day-to-day. Meeting in places neither of you belongs to and constructing cities you do belong to into something entirely new. They’ve entered your world, and now your world isn’t quite the same. The uncertainty of when you’ll see each other next. It’s hard not to romanticize, and it’s easy to get addicted to.

Unfortunately, the beauty that comes with distance comes with a lack of reality. The ability to ignore the future. The future is remote to begin with, but even more so in situations of faraway love. It’s fuzzy and ignorable. It’s easy to view with a light heart and rose-tinted glasses. It’s a rolling hill that's difficult to find flat ground on. It’s easy to turn a blind eye to the lack of substance or imagine significance where there isn’t any.

My unsolicited, and honestly untrustworthy advice? Forget the pros, forget the cons, and kill the overthinking. Don’t make lists of why or why it shouldn’t work. View it through the warm, fuzzy, faraway lenses. In stark contrast to the recent boyfriend-hating Vogue article, I say fuck it. Fall in love, get hurt, wear your heart on your sleeve. Nothing is more embarrassing than falling into the new era of loneliness and self-preservation to the point of experiencing nothing at all.

We spend too much time thinking of how we are being perceived, and there’s nothing more embarrassing than that. So kiss your boyfriend, and maybe sometime soon I’ll let my guard down and do the same.

Happy Friday, everyone. And as always, all feedback is welcome and encouraged.

I think the best explanation of this feeling was said by Holly Golightly in the greatest piece of cinema of all time, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. ” Have you ever had the mean reds? No. The blues are because you’re getting fat, or maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of”. I implore all fearful avoidants to give this movie a watch to get a good look at what reality is for us; it’s incredibly sobering.

Keeping your heart and mind safe isn’t worth it at the expense of meaningful relationships, connection, community… It’s okay to be seen without your guard up. to be understood, to show people who care for you even the ugliest parts of yourself. It’s okay to have ugly parts of yourself. If you’re anything like me, you’ve been lying for so long you’ve started to believe it yourself. I don’t care, it doesn’t matter, it’s whatever. But that’s not true, is it? You do care, and it does matter, and it hurts, and it’s embarrassing, and it’s scary.

I don’t know what I hope to gain from making the thoughts I normally keep safe in my journal available for anyone to read… I guess I am trying to connect in some way. I hope that you might read this and understand me. Or better yet, feel seen and understood yourselves. Do something you're afraid of today, I promise I will too.

Happy Thursday.

I’ve always written for fun and am hoping to grow my writing style, grammar, vocabulary, etc. Any notes or criticisms are welcome and encouraged. Thank you for reading <3.