Unsent Love Letters

From Dallas to the University of Missouri and back again, I'm mourning the loss of leaving my college town by rediscovering Dallas as a 24-year-old. Assistant editor at a magazine, meaning I'm literally living my dream.

[alexeth625]

Boss isn’t here today so I might take myself to a working lunch at Coley’s.

With a cocktail. This is what being an adult is about, right? 

[alexeth625]

Relationships r weird n hard

How important is it, in romantic relationships, to love someone for more than just how they treat you as a girlfriend? 

This is the problem with dating after college. It’s rarer and rarer to go from friendship to crush to dating to married. 

When you meet someone online it’s automatically “are we or aren’t we?” You don’t have time to build a friendship OUTSIDE of a romantic relationship. It’s both and, simultaneously. And that’s...a lot. 

[alexeth625]

Melatonin

Two thoughts: 

1. I didn’t sleep well and am a groggy mess today (even still at 2:30), so I think I need to just be done with it. It does not work for me. Stop trying to make melatonin happen, ALEX.

2. This spring when I was SOBBING to Cody about the fact that I was having so much anxiety about our relationship that it was affecting my body in ways I had never experienced before - including not being able to sleep - instead of getting defensive at all or even scared about where we might be headed, in his very steady way he showed up at my house with some melatonin gummies. He’s definitely the typical man “you have a problem - let me solve it for you in a very practical way” type. But oh man do I miss that sweetness. Someone who wanted to take care of me, even if it was sometimes a little misguided. 

I miss him so much lately, and yet I mostly know I did the right thing. Can I just fast forward to the part where this all makes sense? I don’t want to wait years for that perspective. I hate this so much. 

[alexeth625]

Cody said we either talk intentionally about getting back together or he doesn’t want to talk at all. I knew it was going to come to this but I don’t think I’m ready.

[alexeth625]

We were something don’t ya think so?

Roarin’ twenties, tossing pennies in the pool

And it would’ve been fun,

If you would’ve been the one.

[alexeth625]

A friendly reminder

My best friend who just turned 29 finished building a house with her husband a year after their dream wedding in the Dallas suburbs this month. It’s a beautiful master-planned community that’s built to seem like it’s *not* master planned. You know the kind.

Their house probably cost at least $400,000. 

Soon they’ll start trying for a baby. As soon as the baby is born, she’ll likely never go back to work. Everything is going according to her dream plan, if you’re on the outside.

It is so easy to be so jealous. Their house is beautiful, she got to pick out every finish and color and hardware which is basically my dream. Her husband is telling her to not worry about cost when it comes to furnishing their new house.

Meanwhile, I just broke up with the best person I’ve ever been with, have no prospects in sight (although I don’t really want any at the moment), and I really can’t imagine a world where I could afford a house like that - partnered or not.

But we also went to dinner this week where she told me in no uncertain terms that their first year of marriage has been incredibly difficult. She opened up to me that they had been in fights while they were engaged that were so bad that they had thoughts about calling off the wedding. And with the added stress of building a house it hasn’t gotten any better. In fact, it sounds like it’s gotten worse. So much so that they’re putting off having a baby until “their relationship gets better.” YIKES. 

She told me how proud she was of me (very rare for her) for listening to my gut and breaking up with Cody and being confident enough to be on my own. At times it sounded like she was jealous of my situation. Me. A poor (compared to her), single woman (the horror) who has to think about money constantly, is unsure if I’ll ever find someone to have a baby with, and is excited to have 900 square feet to call my own compared to their 2,500. 

At their wedding, her vows were “Tony, you are the biggest example of Jesus’s grace in my life.” 

FROM KNOWING WHAT I KNOW NOW, THAT IS FALSE. IT JUST IS. 

Their dynamic is one I know that I’d never want for my whole life. You can keep your $400,000 house. I will have my freedom and my sanity.

Don’t be jealous of other people. You never know what they’re hiding. Cultivate your life to be how you want it, and learn to love the situations you’re in as best you can. It’s the secret to life people, I know it. 

[alexeth625]

I’m looking for a mind at work.

[alexeth625]

Settling Down

Should I give up sunsets for marigold mornings? Should I look for rainbows or wait for the rain? Is happiness on the highway? Or it is parked in the driveway? Should I lean on you, babe? Or should you lean on me?

Am I looking for comfort? Am I looking for an escape? Am I looking for you? Am I looking the other way?

I'm a wild child and a homing pigeon Caravan and an empty kitchen Bare feet on the tile with my head up in the clouds I'm one heart goin' both directions One love and a couple of questions Am I settlin' up or settlin' down? Am I settlin' up or settlin' down?

I could plant a pretty garden, or just send myself flowers Be a jet-set Friday or a Sunday hometown girl I could stay a little lonely or let you get to know me Yeah, I could love a picket fence if it wrapped around the world

[alexeth625]

I’m doing it.

I had to go to the bank today so they could write me a cashier’s check for $21,850 that I will take to the title company tomorrow so that they can give me the keys to my very first HOME.

A GOOD chunk of my life savings is about to leave my account, for two bedrooms and two bathrooms, some big ass closets, a deck, and a kitchen that I can call my very own.

Before I met C, this was something I had dreamed about probably since I was 24. Owning a home. By my own damned self. Since I moved back to Missouri I’ve looked at several places, and put an offer in once time a couple of years ago. But I didn’t get it.

When we met, for a while I dropped that dream, and I wasn’t sad about it in the slightest.

When I got the call that my offer out of three others was accepted, I dropped to the ground, knees and face on my Target rug in my tiny apartment, on the phone with my agent still. And something in me knew that even though C and I decided buying would be a good idea to give us more time to sort out engagement/marriage, etc. - we could always rent it out after we married - that my next step would be owning this home, by myself. Something in me knew that this decision was it. I didn’t choose him.

I do want to be married, and I did (do) truly love him, but I think I’m doing the right thing. I miss him, but not in the “I’m dying without him” sort of way. I wish I had figured this out sooner - he wouldn’t be hurting so much right now. 

For some reason, I’ve prayed for him more this past week than I did our whole relationship. God, Please comfort him and bring him the peace that only you can. Help him see how we wouldn’t have worked. Give him the courage and strength to try love again. I know he’ll make someone so incredibly happy one day. Those words have been on repeat in my mind. 

[alexeth625]

My mother is the type of person

who prioritized paying for my education (she had to work her way through school and it took her five years to finish), but then resents me for being farther along than she was at my age. 

[alexeth625]

I need to learn the art of sitting at a bar by myself and chatting with whoever wants to, the bartender(s), or just being comfortable just...sitting there.

[alexeth625]

I did it. I broke up with Cody.

By the end of this month I will have:

-broken up with my boyfriend of more than a year and a half.

-closed on and moved into a condo that will be the first piece of real estate I’ve been able to call my own.

-participated in my first peaceful protest.

-turned 29.

I feel lonely, but not in the worst way. I feel sad, scared, but mostly brave.

[alexeth625]

I just saw Little Women and I have a lot of feelings

Greta Gerwig’s Jo March can make a girl who is probably about to get engaged feel a LOT of things.

In the movie, she goes on about how women are good for more than being ornaments to society - they have MINDS! And she enjoys her liberty too much to marry - there’s too much else to do.

And we live in almost 2020, not 1870 or whenever the hell this takes place, but I do feel that, too. Today. Still. Jo March made me feel like I’m about to sell out.

Cody is modern enough, and supports me in absolutely everything I do, but I think Jo was getting at something else, too. It is true that - for a woman - to be bound to another person, is to decidedly NOT do some things. It is to decidedly NOT be a few people you might have been. And that feels limiting. It does.

Sometimes I feel like I am 1000 different people.

And Cody probably understands 600 of those women, and 200 more he’ll grow to understand over time, as they reveal themselves, and the other 200 might just fade away completely.

Those 200 other women that I could have truly BEEN, had they been cultivated, will just be a part of me that changes into what works for he and I, as a team.

There is beauty in that, too. It is worth it to lose those 200 other women to make a life with someone. To me, anyway. I’m starting to understand just why it isn’t worth it to everyone.

Understanding 1000 women is a tall order for anyone, let alone a MAN. And he tries. Oh, does he try. Isn’t that all I can ask?

I will lose those 200 lives when I bind myself to him, but I will gain just that many, too. It IS scary. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t thinking hard enough.

I am allowed to grieve those other lives and those other women I might have been and love him and want a life with him all at the same time.

Here is a pic of me, feeling all the things, courtesy of Greta Gerwig.

[alexeth625]

The pandemic hit and I’m not engaged yet, because I don’t want to be. 

I’m finding myself wanting to be understood by whoever “my person” is maybe more fully than I thought I needed to be. 

This is scary and hard and devastating. If not him, then who? Am I ok if the answer is “maybe no one”?

I thought at age 28, almost 29, I wouldn’t spend a year and a half with a person unless he was the one. I thought I was smarter than this.

[alexeth625]

I’ll admit something kind of ugly about myself

Sometimes I can’t wait to be a mom because I think it really will distract me from the existentialism that plagues most people who are remotely aware of the world around them. 

I won’t have time to worry about if my career is fulfilling enough; it will be hard to not have hope for the world when I see it through the eyes of a child. I will busy myself with making their immediate world good, and being the best mom I can be. Who can have time for anything else? 

Maybe I’ll be even MORE moved to act and make the world a better place for them, but I think mostly I’ll be tired and distracted from the worst of it. 

I follow a lot of activists (who are also parents) on Twitter who refuse to stop looking unflinchingly at our world, and work tirelessly to make it better. They are my heroes. It must be doubly heartbreaking, frustrating, and exhausting as a parent, yet they keep going, and we need them. 

I can’t see myself as ever having that much courage, that much gumption, or that much relentless hope. I am a coward, thank God for people who are not. 

[alexeth625]

I just saw Little Women and I have a lot of feelings

Greta Gerwig’s Jo March can make a girl who is probably about to get engaged feel a LOT of things.

In the movie, she goes on about how women are good for more than being ornaments to society - they have MINDS! And she enjoys her liberty too much to marry - there’s too much else to do.

And we live in almost 2020, not 1870 or whenever the hell this takes place, but I do feel that, too. Today. Still. Jo March made me feel like I’m about to sell out.

Cody is modern enough, and supports me in absolutely everything I do, but I think Jo was getting at something else, too. It is true that - for a woman - to be bound to another person, is to decidedly NOT do some things. It is to decidedly NOT be a few people you might have been. And that feels limiting. It does.

Sometimes I feel like I am 1000 different people.

And Cody probably understands 600 of those women, and 200 more he’ll grow to understand over time, as they reveal themselves, and the other 200 might just fade away completely.

Those 200 other women that I could have truly BEEN, had they been cultivated, will just be a part of me that changes into what works for he and I, as a team.

There is beauty in that, too. It is worth it to lose those 200 other women to make a life with someone. To me, anyway. I’m starting to understand just why it isn’t worth it to everyone.

Understanding 1000 women is a tall order for anyone, let alone a MAN. And he tries. Oh, does he try. Isn’t that all I can ask?

I will lose those 200 lives when I bind myself to him, but I will gain just that many, too. It IS scary. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t thinking hard enough.

I am allowed to grieve those other lives and those other women I might have been and love him and want a life with him all at the same time.

Here is a pic of me, feeling all the things, courtesy of Greta Gerwig.

[alexeth625]

1. I didn’t get my bosses job that I interviewed for. I was slightly devastated, but it’s true that I wasn’t quite ready for it. The salary would have been amazing, but the stress would not have been. All in all, interviewing was a great experience. I hadn’t been rejected from anything in a while. I was due.

2. Cody and I have started concretely making plans for what we’re going to do to his house this year, and how we can make it our house when I move in. He is giving me a lot of leeway and wants me to feel like it’s mine, too, even though he has lived there for four years without me and is pretty proud of what he’s done to it, too. It all feels like the world’s most natural progression. I can’t wait till we’re family. He told me he’s ready. and then I was so overwhelmed that I cried.

3. After a week without him and only my family, I am relishing these last few days off work. His house is so deliciously quiet. I can cook with a podcast on. I can read and write and relax. I could do it and love it for at least two more weeks. I’m at Uprise Bakery waiting for Little Women to start at ragtag. I’m thinking about getting a glass of wine. At noon on a Monday!

4. In February, it will mark three years of being in Columbia, again. Best. Decision. Ever. I feel like the little girl in that YouTube video who is just singing affirmations to herself on the bathroom counter. I LOVE MY LIFE! I love my family! I love my job! I love my boyfriend! I love Uprise Bakery! I can do anything good! I love Mizzou! I love Columbia and its community! Everything is awesome!

[alexeth625]

Five things on Friday. Is that a thing we do anymore? Lulllz I’ve been gone from Tumblr for too long. 

1.  My school’s commencement ceremony went off without a hitch, but ya girl is tired after about a million last-minute script changes. 

2. I have a searing headache. I need a drink that isn’t this baby diet coke that I stole from the faculty green room.

3. I cannot really have a drink at any point in time this weekend, because my boss left and I’m doing her job and mine for the foreseeable future, meaning I will be working all weekend. 

4. I am freaking out about this because my boss was a superwoman, but I can’t audibly freak out (which is truly one of my favorite things to do), because I’m applying for her job and therefore have to act like I! Can! Do! This! 

5. I have an interview for her job next week so among all the giant projects we have to get things done for, I have to freak out and prepare for that. But job interviews DO call for a professional nail appointment, so I got them done last night and of course wanted to show them off here. 

6. I’ve been wearing my hair natural AF lately in order to give it a break from so much heat (#finethinhairproblems), and I think I’m actually starting to like it like this????