[part one – here]

“Is this a surprise to you, it shouldn’t be, I’ve told you before I’m much better with a pen when it comes to expressing myself in spite of my ability to be straightforward nowadays. I never imagined this. I thought I could keep telling myself what I didn’t want and it would somehow prove victorious against the things I do want. When I came back to you that night a little over a month ago I didn’t come to you to be a lay, I allowed myself to lay with you because I was attracted and I never let myself be that person who goes with her gut in every aspect. I wanted to shut my brain off for once and let my body and my heart lead the way. I didn’t want to play by rules or boundaries or constructs made to make us feel safe and secure. I just wanted to be. Maybe that was my mistake, I think I allowed us to interpret my unwillingness to be confined to be equated with my unwillingness to build and those two things were not necessarily the same. I wanted simple, but all that did was complicate things as ‘I like you’ and ‘You like me’ were too simple and what I believed gave reason to build inspired you to not build. I think the problem is that we think we know what we want but our actions tell us we’re pretending to know because the reality is, is that we don’t. Your actions say it, my actions say it. We don’t know what we want, even if we know what we don’t want.”

“Truthfully, when I re-encountered you, I got out of something that was quite the blow to my ego and drained me a lot emotionally. I gave myself the rest of the year off despite the attempts there was to make me go out or push me into the direction of dating. When I met you, I didn’t feel that pressure. I saw this beautiful boy with dreads who could me laugh like it was breathing and who I felt free with, like wind, like water. I felt like myself. So maybe I liked you more than I initially bargained for. I remind myself of your flaws, the things I absolutely cannot do, but as I stop the inner monologue that I force to replay in my head every time I kiss you, I realize that if I have to remind myself constantly to not like you, am I truly being free? I have to question what it is I’m doing here. And it’s not wasting time or waiting around for something you ultimately cannot give me, it’s me no longer truly being myself in the wake of trying not to make you go. I’m shrinking myself. I’m lying to myself. I’m not myself so that maybe you don’t see the things and feelings that I’m hiding from myself. I think it took a date that I cancelled and a DIY Christmas present to make me see the things I was willingly acting blind to. I like you and I shouldn’t have to hide that. I wear my heart on my sleeve, I like to stare, I like to kiss, I like hugs, I like trying new things with the guy I’m allowing to enter my body because that’s where our soul meets. If you can be receptive to what I’m spitting, then great. If not, I may have to reconsider what I’m doing here. I signed up for go with the flow and somewhere near the beginning, you halted that flow.”

“I can either flow by myself or we can flow together… The only expectation I’ve ever had was for us to just be. If that’s an impossible journey, I guess you’re not a branch, but just a leaf… It’s not necessarily that I want a relationship, I just am open to the possibility with you. And I can’t pussyfoot around it anymore. I’m into you. And I’m too selfless right now to say otherwise.”

….After reading this to him, the guy I had been seeing for months, who I opened my legs to and unintentionally my heart, I was met with nothing but silence. And then awkward laughter, before encountering a bitter truth I wasn’t prepared to swallow: “I’m not attracted to you in that way.”

What a blow to my muthafucking ego. I’m no longer interested in leaving pieces of myself with men who prove undeserving. That’s a lesson to me.

Sheriden