I don’t have a mommy to run to for love. I don’t have a daddy to run to for love. I feel orphaned. I don’t think I know what love is.

I hate that it’s so hard for me to eat food or feel full.
I hate that food makes me feel sick just looking at it.
I hate that I’m always trying to stay just well enough to manage my day and to not start feeling sick.
I hate how often I get sick it’s exhausting.
I’m tired of giving people a happy response.

I think my ex broke my heart way deeper than I ever realized. I think he put me in a jar with a lid and kept me there. Not to be loved or looked at or consoled with. Just to preserve me for when he needs.

It’s funny how we trade pain for other pain.
For painful breakups, we trade the pain for drugs or partying or a rebound or whatever.
When survival in life is painful, we trade that pain for a soul sucking job that ruins life’s purpose.

Sometimes I think about why I move with the wind. The courage it takes to stay and the courage it takes to leave a place both hurtful and loving. To go into the unknown in pursuit of listening to my soul more closely while leaving behind people I have come to love so earnestly and unselfishly. I think I stay in this wind current because I’d rather be a leaf in the wind than a stationary rock weathered by time. The weathering hurts, and as strong as I am I'm not sure I'm a rock. I do not know what lies before me. I entered this city under the shroud of nighttime carrying the past day, past life, past love with me into this new and unexplored life.

I don’t like when people religiously and vocally promote New York City as the only and best city to exist. I don’t like when I don’t make time to read my books. I don’t like when friends start to exclude me from their lives like we are strangers. I don’t like explaining Arkansas to people who ask where I’m from. I don’t like when I run from myself and my feelings.

I like that I have people to run to when I’m scared of my feelings. I like when I cry about things that hurt because it feels less hurtful after. I like the books, words, little things, and people I collect. I like that I’m from Arkansas, and I really like that I left Arkansas. I like that I’m choosing to move to a city that I chose for no other reason than it being a place that makes me happy.

I don’t like this bedroom I’m sitting in because it holds all the memories of a past I’d like to leave behind. I don’t like that I didn’t get an ending or explanation. I don’t like that I don’t know you.

I like myself and my inner world, and I’m selfish with it now because I learned from you.

I don’t like that I gave you 150% of myself, I want it back.

One of my first jobs was working as a volunteer at a science museum in Little Rock as a camp counselor for kids. During my interview they asked me “if you could be any animal what would you be?” And I just said a flamingo because I love pink and I’d like to fly. They loved my answer (even tho it felt flat to me) because they said most candidates said they’d be a dog or cat. (Which first of all is dumb, of all the animals you want to be a dog or cat? They dodged a bullet not hiring those people in my opinion). My mom told the flamingo story to everyone in our family and now every Christmas my aunt buys me flamingo items. I have 2 stuffed flamingos of varying sizes and flamingo pajamas currently. I don’t even really like flamingos that much. I truly just like pink and want to fly, and i guess flamingo check those boxes.