[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, well, good to confidently answer the podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: We're absolutely sure we don't know everything. [SPEAKER_00]: And we are in New York, baby, baby, oh baby. [SPEAKER_00]: NYC, we are in the city. [SPEAKER_00]: Ugh, where's my house keeping? [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I feel like we have so much ketchup on besties. [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously I'm in a hotel room. [SPEAKER_00]: Cheese. [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, me and Hippo are in the city.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you hear noises in the background here, you want to give us a sniff? [SPEAKER_00]: You can't eat the mic. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, he just wants to eat the little fuzz cap. [SPEAKER_00]: But we are so excited to be in the city. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, we just decided to celebrate a big milestone that we had last week, which was finishing the fucking book. [SPEAKER_00]: That's right. [SPEAKER_00]: I did it. [SPEAKER_00]: I finally, fucking finished. [SPEAKER_00]: My second book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you know what? [SPEAKER_00]: I said, I can celebrate in some way, because this was a really big one, a really tough one, a really hard one. [SPEAKER_00]: And the other house kicking, a house kicking, oh my god, instead of housekeeping, a task kicking, now y'all. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, other house geeking. [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, we didn't have an episode last week. [SPEAKER_00]: We just let that one slip right on by. [SPEAKER_00]: We just let that one go right through our fingers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, right right right right right under us. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, because me and the athlete are now officially long distance. [SPEAKER_00]: He is in Europe doing his career soccer thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hopefully will have like something cool to announce about that soon question mark, but I was really sad because it was his last weekend in town and it was also birthday three before and I felt like I was just doing a lot of like athlete driven like [SPEAKER_00]: activities to try and make more core memories for us before he left.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I decided last minute if he was going to have to fly to Europe, I'm a book on the book and trip and fly to New York City, which is why I didn't get a podcast out because I [SPEAKER_00]: had to pack and leave and I did and it's been very fun and the feeling for me to be out here hippie is not doing so good with this because I think the I'm not joking when I say this I think the ground is too dirty for him like he gets dirty paws and then he gets itchy
[SPEAKER_00]: And right now his butt is going crazy itchy he just had his anal glands expressed before you ask so I know it's not that but it's his allergies and I think being in any environment and in a new. [SPEAKER_00]: a bunch of allergens, trees, freaking roots, dirt dust, and watch. [SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna scoot your butt right on my bed. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't you scoot your itchy butt on my bed? [SPEAKER_00]: Come here. [SPEAKER_00]: I want you itch in your scootch.
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, it could be a million different things. [SPEAKER_00]: I had to buy some food that he doesn't normally eat. [SPEAKER_00]: I gave him some new cookie for his birthday. [SPEAKER_00]: He just turned five last week. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god. [SPEAKER_00]: And it could be a combo bunch of stuff, just not being in his environment that he's used to being in. [SPEAKER_00]: So he has an HES.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you see him scooting his tune around in the background, don't be laughed. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's all that I was keeping. [SPEAKER_00]: But this episode is going to be a little bit about the book. [SPEAKER_00]: That's right. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a sneak peek a couple of [SPEAKER_00]: It's like part of the first section. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like technically a chapter, but it has these little sub sections I want to read to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I finally finished this freaking book, man. [SPEAKER_00]: It was so long overdue. [SPEAKER_00]: You've heard me talk about it before. [SPEAKER_00]: It's the breakup book. [SPEAKER_00]: It is a formally titled screaming crying throwing up. [SPEAKER_00]: And other ways not to ruin your life after a breakup. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've changed the title already. [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know which one's better. [SPEAKER_00]: I genuinely don't know which one's better.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you are a listener and you're like an OG listener, DM me, [SPEAKER_00]: And I want to give you the two offerings I have and I want you to honestly tell me which title you like better. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll explain why I picked a new title because honestly my group chats Lauren and Zach they were saying that screaming crying throwing up is kind of like such an internet term that it might like not last.
[SPEAKER_00]: As a trend and it might feel like old in a little bit, which I could see, I could understand that, but I do like the new title a lot and I think it actually goes along with the buckle up that like the theme of the book. [SPEAKER_00]: But yes, I wanted to finally tell you guys it is done. [SPEAKER_00]: It is off to copy editing. [SPEAKER_00]: So basically, I spent a year and some change.
[SPEAKER_00]: a year and a half writing this one and I wanted to make it smaller than my first book. [SPEAKER_00]: It ended up being like nineteen pages over my first book over a hundred thousand words. [SPEAKER_00]: I got to cut that down, right? [SPEAKER_00]: My first book was way too freaking big. [SPEAKER_00]: I did not want this one to be as big as that one. [SPEAKER_00]: So we're gonna have to do some edits. [SPEAKER_00]: So basically I just vomit everything out, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I try to make it make sense, but I've already caught like a thousand errors. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I set it off to copy editing with my publisher. [SPEAKER_00]: And basically I get a week and a half or two weeks off where they go through and they copy edit it. [SPEAKER_00]: Then they send it back to me to approve all the changes. [SPEAKER_00]: And in the meantime, I get to work on all the fun stuff like the design, the marketing, et cetera, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, they have an amazing design team over there. [SPEAKER_00]: I thought catalog they've made some of your favorite books like a hundred and one essays that will change what you think. [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, the mountain is you like any beautiful book you've seen in a bookstore thought catalog probably made it. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm excited because like I'm ready for another book of a ready to put another one on the shelves y'all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and of course because I am mentally unwell, I've already decided I wanted to write a novel. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, [SPEAKER_00]: a story instead of nonfiction.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to like try writing something the book talk girlies will fall in love with and I already did an outline and I have a fantastic idea for like a thriller bestie story that genre if that makes sense for you there's also comedy it's feminism I can't explain it all right now [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but I do think that this reading is going to take a sec. [SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like we should just like dive in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll try to break for a break in between half ways as hipposcoochus is booty. [SPEAKER_00]: This poor dog. [SPEAKER_00]: I need to get him some Ben and Jill's mom. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Here we go. [SPEAKER_00]: This chapter is titled patriarchal programming and the trappings of the first love. [SPEAKER_00]: As read to you by yours, truly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Patriarchal programming is something I can't ignore, because I'm a woman with a mostly woman, femme queer audience, and it's important to acknowledge how this programming shapes our heartbreaks. [SPEAKER_00]: As much as I don't want to subscribe to it, I can't help but see the proof in the statistical pudding.
[SPEAKER_00]: Little girls and fums, especially in developed societies, are taught that their entire worth and identity [SPEAKER_00]: are wrapped up in the status of their relationship. [SPEAKER_00]: That the partner standing next to us is a reflection of our success. [SPEAKER_00]: That the taller, hotter, richer, more actualized, inclusive, intersectional, feminist of a man that we snag the better.
[SPEAKER_00]: or if you live in a conservative place, the more masculine, traditional religious and controlling the better. [SPEAKER_00]: It's the white picket fence, all-american dream that says only successful marriage, successful relationships and in marriage and children. [SPEAKER_00]: As if we're all just going to ignore the fact that the divorce rates are hovering around sixty percent and would be higher if we factored in everyone's suffering in silence, in dead and marriages.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet we still act like marriage is the highest form of love [SPEAKER_00]: make it make sense, babes. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not our fault. [SPEAKER_00]: The shit gets encoded into our DNA young and then hammered in by media movies and books. [SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever heard that the original sin is being born female? [SPEAKER_00]: Clinical psychologist Anne Wilson-Shave reminds us that the belief women aren't inferior starts with a Bible story.
[SPEAKER_00]: God banished Adam and Eve from Eden and declared that Eve would birth children in pain because she tempted Adam. [SPEAKER_00]: But did anyone ask what role Adam played in that temptation? [SPEAKER_00]: What was their dynamic before the Apple incident? [SPEAKER_00]: What was he wearing? [SPEAKER_00]: Kidding, but also not. [SPEAKER_00]: If a guy says he wants to marry you on the first date, or condition to think it's romantic, bold, vulnerable.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if a woman says it, [SPEAKER_00]: She's a psycho, a stage five cleaner and emotional time bomb. [SPEAKER_00]: The patriarchal chokehold is never clearer than in sex and the city, when big tells Kerry he's moving a Paris. [SPEAKER_00]: She says she'll go with them. [SPEAKER_00]: She can write from anywhere and he tells her not to uproot her whole life and expect anything from him. [SPEAKER_00]: the actual fuck big.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I watched this episode, I should not, this was the moment I realized, I've been letting men treat me like a cherry on top of their lives. [SPEAKER_00]: Never a full scoop, never even part of the bowl. [SPEAKER_00]: They had their jobs, friends, dreams, autonomy, and sure, that's healthy. [SPEAKER_00]: But women, we're taught that we should make men the entire ice cream shop. [SPEAKER_00]: I used to think, why wouldn't we merge world?
[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't that the point of a relationship? [SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, [SPEAKER_00]: one that takes years of heartbreak to unlearn. [SPEAKER_00]: This kind of programming teaches women at the deepest level that being female means being in service to men. [SPEAKER_00]: Blah, fuckin' yuck. [SPEAKER_00]: I wish I could say I was the baddest bitch of bitches who never fell for that. [SPEAKER_00]: But L.O.L. [SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been sipping the Patriarchy Kuwait since birth. [SPEAKER_00]: In my case, surf via the church. [SPEAKER_00]: I was taught I was only as good as my untouched clean body. [SPEAKER_00]: Then came my tragic case of the Pick Meason Middle School where male validation trumped everything else. [SPEAKER_00]: I tried to cure it by merging what I liked, sports, theater, with what they liked. [SPEAKER_00]: so I could get attention and be a totally cool and chill girl about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I became a sports reporter from my high school's morning TV show, genuinely loved the camera and athletics, thanks dad, but also used my press badge to pull boys out of class for interviews that were really just make out sessions from the parking lot. [SPEAKER_00]: I filmed games, edited highlights, and gave morning updates on the morning new school show program, Patriot Primetime.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I felt accomplished until I realized I was just performing cool girlhood for male attention. [SPEAKER_00]: Less theater, fewer female friendships, more weed smoking with seniors after school. [SPEAKER_00]: And worse, I was building my entire identity around which boys I thought were worthy. [SPEAKER_00]: The emotional roller coaster of my teenage years revolved around whether I got invited to the big party, picked for beer pong or guest.
[SPEAKER_00]: chosen as a date for the homecoming dance. [SPEAKER_00]: According to my high school social poll, there was no greater indicator that you were a fuggly loser than going to a dance along. [SPEAKER_00]: My friends were just as obsessed. [SPEAKER_00]: We'd pass pages of gel-pened notes in class about which boys were hot and which ones liked us back. [SPEAKER_00]: When I read these now, I cringe so hard I get full body shame-shivers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like we were doing CIA level analysis on dudes with patchy beards and clapped out Honda's. [SPEAKER_00]: These boys had this sex skills of a dying fish and the emotional intelligence of a parking cone and yet we worshiped them. [SPEAKER_00]: And when one of us was rejected, it was at least a three week existential crisis. [SPEAKER_00]: Myself confidence was also a touchy subject growing up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was always the hot girls best friend, which means I got the friend of the guy she was dating. [SPEAKER_00]: I gave up my first to Rando's, whose names I don't remember, not because I wanted to, but because I didn't want to get left behind. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is where the QB enters the jet. [SPEAKER_00]: By junior year, I finally got the attention I thought I deserved. [SPEAKER_00]: The quarterback started flirting with me, a legend in our high school.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had the body, the charm, and the kind of lips that a housewife would envy, pill-y arched dreams. [SPEAKER_00]: He was supposed to be the first from our high school football team to go play college ball. [SPEAKER_00]: Teachers passed him despite his bad grades. [SPEAKER_00]: He was magnetic, and he liked me. [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't the typical hot girl type. [SPEAKER_00]: I was pale, lengthy, flat-chested, but I was funny. [SPEAKER_00]: And apparently, funny was fuckable.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't take long for us to start hanging out of parties, pairing up for beer pong or whispering drunkenly when we sat on a log together at weekend bonfires. [SPEAKER_00]: After a few months of talking, he asked me to be his girlfriend. [SPEAKER_00]: I was over the fucking moon. [SPEAKER_00]: This was my first real boyfriend. [SPEAKER_00]: He had a soft heart and I loved that he picked me. [SPEAKER_00]: We decided to spend the summer before he left for college together.
[SPEAKER_00]: One weekend at the beach, we wandered away from our group. [SPEAKER_00]: I wore his hat backwards, so bisectual of me. [SPEAKER_00]: A big shirt to avoid a sunburn and sift on a nanny light. [SPEAKER_00]: We watched the sunset from the rocks and he said, I love you for the first time. [SPEAKER_00]: I swear to God, my heart grew wings and flew into the goddamn sun. [SPEAKER_00]: I said it back, I knew I knew he was my first love and how lucky I was.
[SPEAKER_00]: I turned seventeen that week and he went back off to college as I started my senior year of high school. [SPEAKER_00]: I had the best year of my teenage life. [SPEAKER_00]: I walked around campus with a quite superiority complex because I was dating a college guy. [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't be bothered with high school drama. [SPEAKER_00]: I was in love, okay? [SPEAKER_00]: And it felt so adult. [SPEAKER_00]: My grades improved because I wasn't focusing on boys.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had back to the hotty and had no worries. [SPEAKER_00]: I got the lead in the senior spring musical and for the first time I felt like myself. [SPEAKER_00]: not the hot girl's best friend. [SPEAKER_00]: First love supported my bisexuality too. [SPEAKER_00]: My high school had only one out gay male and no one really knew how bisexuality worked, especially in a town with zero gay bars and this was pre-youtube queer representation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he didn't care that I had different crushes. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we even agreed that I could explore things with women. [SPEAKER_00]: Looking back now, I realized how progressive that was for us back then. [SPEAKER_00]: At the time, I didn't tell many people, definitely not my family, but he was the first person I felt safe exploring sex and Kingswood. [SPEAKER_00]: He was the first guy I felt comfortable enough to have an orgasm with.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was the person I had my first real fights with. [SPEAKER_00]: He was the one I started to define my feelings through the one I began to understand love and loss with. [SPEAKER_00]: The adolescent years are when we are hardwiring so many patterns that follow us into adulthood. [SPEAKER_00]: So when I went off to college at a fancy out-of-state university, I was excited, but deeply lonely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had my own apartment, a new friend group, a brand new life, but I kept [SPEAKER_00]: driving the seven hours back home on weekends to see first love. [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't going to frat parties or football games. [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't joining clubs or exploring my independence. [SPEAKER_00]: I was playing house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was validated by my choices when I'd go on Facebook and see my girlfriend from home doing a full blown adult shit, getting engaged, married, even pregnant all before twenty years old. [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, the deep south is known for that, but it doesn't feel real until it starts happening to girls you grew up passing notes with. [SPEAKER_00]: Some of them always wanted that life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, but others had been the same girls I used to daydream with about big careers and living far, far away from our hometown. [SPEAKER_00]: And suddenly, they were settling down. [SPEAKER_00]: And at the time, I didn't understand it as patriarchy. [SPEAKER_00]: I thought, I'm either weird one and I behind. [SPEAKER_00]: I started to feel insecure about not knowing what I wanted, but hey, I [SPEAKER_00]: still in love, and that felt like enough of a grown-up thing to latch on to.
[SPEAKER_00]: So during my first college summer break, I moved back to Tampa and into first love's apartment. [SPEAKER_00]: Looking back, I wish I had gone abroad or done literally anything else. [SPEAKER_00]: I should have been backpacking in Europe or filming Artis Student Projects instead. [SPEAKER_00]: I was back at the local bar drinking with the same people I grew up with. [SPEAKER_00]: I still love him deeply, but something inside me itched. [SPEAKER_00]: It felt wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was going backward. [SPEAKER_00]: And after just one summer, I knew I couldn't keep doing it. [SPEAKER_00]: That summer validated the low-level restlessness I'd been trying to ignore. [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't live a life I had already lived. [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't keep shrinking myself for comfort and familiarity. [SPEAKER_00]: So I made a huge decision. [SPEAKER_00]: That summer I decided not to return to the same college.
[SPEAKER_00]: I transferred to an art school in New York City, a dream to I'd had since I was a little kid. [SPEAKER_00]: filming movies on the family camcorder I wasn't supposed to touch. [SPEAKER_00]: I was really lucky. [SPEAKER_00]: My family not only supported the move, but they encouraged it. [SPEAKER_00]: They knew that if I was really going to make a run at becoming an actor or writer or just figure out who the hell I was, I needed to be in the city that never sleeps.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not in a town that wasn't very awake. [SPEAKER_00]: My first few months in New York were nothing short of a personal awakening. [SPEAKER_00]: I was finally in a city where people were weird and wonderful and wildly ambitious. [SPEAKER_00]: I was [SPEAKER_00]: soaking in culture, food, art, fashion, queerness, chaos. [SPEAKER_00]: I was going out. [SPEAKER_00]: I was living. [SPEAKER_00]: I was finally in a place that fit. [SPEAKER_00]: But my relationship, yeah, was not thriving.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after just a few months, I realized the city was going to be the nail in our coffin for our relationship. [SPEAKER_00]: Every airport goodbye between first love and me was getting harder than the last, the Skype calls. [SPEAKER_00]: This was pre-face time, my new. [SPEAKER_00]: Got shorter, less frequent. [SPEAKER_00]: The visits stopped feeling exciting and started feeling like obligations. [SPEAKER_00]: We were living completely different lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was on fire growing, stretching, evolving. [SPEAKER_00]: First love hated New York. [SPEAKER_00]: He hated the noise, the subway, the sensory overload, he'd complain every time he visited. [SPEAKER_00]: And I felt this huge wave of guilt for not hating the same things, but the truth was I loved it there. [SPEAKER_00]: New York was my sold city and I started to understand that he was not going to be coming on this journey with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still, I held on longer than I should have. [SPEAKER_00]: I tried to make it work because I was scared, scared of losing my first love, scared that letting go meant I was a bad partner that I was selfish, that I was proving the patriarchy, right, that women leave when they get a taste of independence or worse, that I didn't feel complete without him. [SPEAKER_00]: They here's what I've sensed learned.
[SPEAKER_00]: When a relationship shifts from being loved based to fear-based, it's already over. [SPEAKER_00]: I was staying because I was afraid, not because I wanted to build a future together. [SPEAKER_00]: The Patriarchy told me that this relationship was gold. [SPEAKER_00]: I had the quarterback, the sweet, emotionally supportive guy, the one who let me explore my sexuality, the one who knew my family. [SPEAKER_00]: That should have been enough, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But love, real, sustainable love is not just about having something good. [SPEAKER_00]: It's about growing in the same direction. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was going in a completely different direction. [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want that version of love anymore. [SPEAKER_00]: a note on first love breakups. [SPEAKER_00]: The first love breakup cuts the way a Japanese, Hatori Hanzo Katama sword cuts Eddie henchman and kill bill starring Uma Thurman.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sharp, it's dramatic, it's memorable. [SPEAKER_00]: A first love has the power to leave scars that can impact relationships for the rest of your life. [SPEAKER_00]: So approach this detachment with caution. [SPEAKER_00]: Or if you are many relationships past the first love breakup, take this chance to dissect how yours went.
[SPEAKER_00]: The story we tell ourselves about this breakup might submit a survival style within our subconscious that could make or break patterns for the next ones. [SPEAKER_00]: The first level will teach you how great it feels to be loved. [SPEAKER_00]: I loved being loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we're not careful, [SPEAKER_00]: To take inventory about if we truly could become the fullest version of ourselves that we are made to be, we can get stuck in a relationship with someone that isn't meant to be our forever person. [SPEAKER_00]: First level feel really good and get super comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially if your first love happens at a young age when your imagination has nothing else to worry about, like, paying bills or deciding what you are going to do with the rest of your life. [SPEAKER_00]: You are rich in time and fueled by hormones. [SPEAKER_00]: Detaching from first level, be hard to understand. [SPEAKER_00]: It's where we've drawn our first template for love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we don't manage a healthy relationship, we can spend our formative years trying to fit into that unhealthy mold of what we believe love is supposed to feel like. [SPEAKER_00]: Especially, especially if we've found love at an age where we've discovered so much of what it means to be an adult together. [SPEAKER_00]: It will be like falling into ice cold water to discover that adulthood alone is not as easy as having that partnership to lean on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because we'll be having those feelings of the first time, they will feel really foreign and scary. [SPEAKER_00]: It might sound hard to believe because breakups are never easy, but getting back to being comfortable being alone will get easier the more you experience being alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each time you'll learn to detach being in love from who you are at your core identity, something that doesn't come obvious in first love when we've learned to entangle ourselves with someone else for the first time. [SPEAKER_00]: I loved being in love with first love and the ending had shown itself in subtle ways that I chose to ignore for quite some time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know that feeling of being in a workout class and you catch yourself looking up at the clock hoping it's over soon. [SPEAKER_00]: Many relationships endings gave me that same feeling and yet I stayed in position because it felt good at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: If I could go back and rewire the first love breakup, I teach myself that that feeling is a sign that my subconscious knows something is off. [SPEAKER_00]: I should have trusted my gut the way at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know exactly what this gut feeling meant since I'd never been in love before. [SPEAKER_00]: I encourage you to look back at your first love breakup and see what habits carry over into your other romantic relationships. [SPEAKER_00]: And we'll be great, big, to finish this chapter. [SPEAKER_00]: Because of my fears around abandonment, I stayed with First Love, even though I knew it wasn't healthy love anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day, while I was in class in New York City, I saw pictures on Facebook of a girl from a neighboring town hanging around First Love and his friend. [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't focus on a single thing the professor was saying. [SPEAKER_00]: I was laser focused on figuring out why this sudden carry underword look like was always in pictures next to my man. [SPEAKER_00]: She was pretty and blonde and had a beautiful smile and a fun personality.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the things I felt first love had loved about me when we first met, but there was one glaring difference. [SPEAKER_00]: She was a hometown girl. [SPEAKER_00]: She wanted all the things I didn't. [SPEAKER_00]: She liked living in the town. [SPEAKER_00]: She grew up in. [SPEAKER_00]: She wanted to have a family and build a life there. [SPEAKER_00]: Patriarchal programming taught me to compare myself to her, to focus on everything I had lacked and everything they had in common.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I had been wiser, I would have realized that they were actually probably go for each other and deserve the chance to explore that. [SPEAKER_00]: But a teen year old me couldn't see that. [SPEAKER_00]: I would have rather grabbed a cast iron skill with my bare hands than admit it. [SPEAKER_00]: I only saw her as a threat. [SPEAKER_00]: I became obsessed with watching her every move online. [SPEAKER_00]: Was that my boyfriend Darwin the background of her Instagram story?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or the country lyrics? [SPEAKER_00]: She just posted on Facebook from a song yet, Jonah? [SPEAKER_00]: Did she actually like that football team or was she just into it because it was his favorite team? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I did. [SPEAKER_00]: I moved that I pulled early on. [SPEAKER_00]: I honestly can't think of a time in my life where I felt more jealous than when I saw a photo of them together. [SPEAKER_00]: It drove me crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once the accusation started, first love and I both should have called it. [SPEAKER_00]: But instead, we fought like hell to hold it together. [SPEAKER_00]: Even though it didn't feel good anymore, hell, it didn't even feel easy. [SPEAKER_00]: We kept trying. [SPEAKER_00]: The fights were constant and I didn't even enjoy seeing his name pop up on my phone. [SPEAKER_00]: We tried going on breaks, which is so stupid, especially along distant relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what is a break even mean when you already are living completely separate lives? [SPEAKER_00]: Just not texting each other all day while still doing the exact same shit we were already doing? [SPEAKER_00]: It was silly, and I still kept putting up with anything. [SPEAKER_00]: Really, anything, as long as it meant I didn't lose him. [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't even about love anymore. [SPEAKER_00]: I had become about possession.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, I flew home during the holidays to see him. [SPEAKER_00]: and my family and what do you know? [SPEAKER_00]: Guess who showed up at our buddies annual holiday party. [SPEAKER_00]: carry underwood look alike. [SPEAKER_00]: And in my gut, I knew he was hooking up with her. [SPEAKER_00]: I could see it in the way they looked at each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when they thought no one was watching, the way they laughed together, the way he cleaned her beer bottle during cheers, the way they played flip-cup like they'd done it a thousand times before. [SPEAKER_00]: Again, I should have ended it. [SPEAKER_00]: The alarm bells couldn't have been louder if I tried, but I'd trained myself death. [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, I decided to make things worse. [SPEAKER_00]: much, much worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I'm in my little sneak peek there. [SPEAKER_00]: What do you guys think? [SPEAKER_00]: How is it reading? [SPEAKER_00]: Are you learning anything? [SPEAKER_00]: This is also just from the section that is like the essay portion. [SPEAKER_00]: So the book really is like a workbook, but I do even these chapters that are like personal stories because if you like you need that to understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: me and when I'm talking about it and like what I'm hoping you get out of the section oh my gosh okay I felt like a lot and it goes on it like that's just the that's just the climax y'all I don't even think that's the climax actually that's like the second act well the end of the first act no the middle of the second [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, it's late. [SPEAKER_00]: It's New York City.
[SPEAKER_00]: The city never sleeps in apparently neither do I. Last week, I stayed up over twenty four hours. [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a wake for forty eight hours, officially finishing the book. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I went through again and edited a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: And then yeah, I came to the city and I've just been like all out of whack. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's give my language if I put my tongue a little bit while we were talking. [SPEAKER_00]: But that's it!
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'm gonna be back in LA this next week, so everything will go back to normal, hunky-doly. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me know what you thought. [SPEAKER_00]: Leave a comment below. [SPEAKER_00]: Don't forget to DM me if you wanna hear the two titles and help me side potentially with the new title is going to be, cause I think it's good, but I am curious to hear your opinions. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, confidence. [SPEAKER_00]: That's all I got for you this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love ya, chissis, happy summer. [SPEAKER_00]: Bye.