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Her Birthday

When your mom dies, it changes you. Grief feels different after that. It doesn’t come in waves that eventually fade away—it settles. It finds a place somewhere in your mind, somewhere in your chest, and it stays. You don’t learn how to get rid of it. You learn how to live with it. Even when you don’t fully know how. You start to organize the important days. You take them and quietly file them away, giving each one its own meaning. You decide ahead of time what they’ll be—days to grieve, days to celebrate, days to sit somewhere in between. You try to create some sense of control in something that feels completely uncontrollable. I always knew which days would be the hardest for me: her birthday, and the day she passed. Those were my days. Not Mother’s Day. Not the holidays. Just those two. They felt sacred in a way I didn’t need to explain. I knew I would either spend them with family—the people who would be there forever—or I would spend them alone. There was no in-between. I didn...
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The shift

The end of February brought our first major rupture. I don’t remember every detail of what triggered it, but I remember how I felt. I was struggling. I felt insecure, like I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t feel valued or fully seen in the relationship, and instead of recognizing that something in the dynamic itself was contributing to those feelings, I expected my partner to fix them for me. I wanted him to make me feel like I mattered, like I belonged, like I was important to him. In hindsight, that wasn’t his responsibility—but it was a signal that something wasn’t right. Rather than having the hard conversations we needed to have, he shut down. Without warning, without discussion, without explanation, he ended the relationship. It blindsided me. I am deeply loyal by nature. I don’t give up easily, and I had believed he felt the same way. So I fought for him. I tried to ask questions. I tried to talk through what had happened. Looking back now, I know I should have let the relationship...
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Location: Paso Robles, CA 93446, USA
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I get carried away

      February was filled with dinners out and evenings at his house. The FFA project auction, where we bought several pieces for the home. Planting the garden and flowers together. We walked Nora, Grace and Penne daily. Dancing in the kitchen, outside, anywhere a song moved us. George Strait’s “I Get Carried Away” became our song—no matter where we were, if it came on, we danced. Those moments meant so much to me. I believed he valued me, that he valued the things I cherished. I believed in him. He broke down all the walls I had built up.  We spent long nights sitting by the fire, talking. We went camping at Lopez Lake and talked about the life we wanted—how we wanted to live, where we wanted to end up, how we would always dance with each other, always figure it out and always love each other. We took a trip to Three Rivers and spent days hiking, cooking at the cabin, sharing a quiet dinner in a small restaurant, just the two of us. We were close in every way possi...
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Location: Paso Robles, CA 93446, USA
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Love, dogs and the future

     Valentine’s Day—roughly two weeks in—he told me he loved me. That he was in love with me. I said I felt the same, though in hindsight, I wasn’t there yet. I was falling, not landed. I was caught in the intensity of it all—the attention, the promises, the certainty with which he spoke about us . I was in lust, mesmerized by who he said he was, by everything he said he wanted to do for me, for us. Any time I expressed concern, stress, or asked how we would handle a real issue, he had the same answer: “We’ll figure it out together. That’s part of the deal.” Nothing was ever a big problem to him—at least not when it came to the relationship. He had a way of making me feel like I was overreacting, like my instincts were unnecessary because everything would always be fine. He constantly professed his love—how much he loved me, loved what we were building, how we could work through anything. Our days were filled with flirty text messages, lunchtime phone calls, and evenin...
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Location: Paso Robles, CA 93446, USA
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Our first conversation

  Our first conversation I don’t remember the exact details of how we connected, only that it was through a dating site. What I do remember clearly is how quickly it moved once we exchanged phone numbers. There was very little texting—just one phone call that lasted four or five hours. I remember feeling an instant pull toward him, a sense of familiarity that felt rare and disarming. He told me he felt it too. We talked about everything and nothing, bouncing between deep, intimate disclosures and light, meaningless chatter, as if we had known each other far longer than we had. He presented himself as kind, gentle, and emotionally aware. He spoke softly, thoughtfully. He told me he had been married for nearly twenty years and that his wife was a former police officer from Pismo Beach. He described a marriage that had slowly eroded under constant criticism. He said she was often cruel to him, especially in public, and that she humiliated him privately by telling him he was inadequat...
Location: Paso Robles, CA 93446, USA
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Broken

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"Sometimes silence feels safer, but the truth deserves to be told. This is a part of my story — about control, invisibility, and reclaiming my voice."

I didn’t set out to tell this story to punish anyone.  I’m telling it because silence became heavier than the truth. For a long time, I questioned whether what happened to me even “counted.” There were no bruises people could point to. No single explosive moment that made everything obvious. What there was instead was a slow erosion — of confidence, safety, clarity, and eventually my sense of self. I was involved with someone who held emotional power over me. On the surface, everything looked ideal. He was polished, composed, generous — a gentleman by every outward measure . To the outside world, he appeared thoughtful and attentive, the kind of person others admired. His image was carefully maintained. Over time, I began to feel invisible. Conversations became destabilizing. My reactions were scrutinized and dissected, while his behavior went largely unquestioned. I found myself apologizing frequently — sometimes without fully understanding what I was apologizing for. I did no...
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