2 Years

I care. God, do I care. I care so much it scorches the inside of my newly done chest like a cheap neon motel sign flickering through the night off a highway.

I care about words, about timing, about the raw nerve you expose when you dare to believe someone might actually listen. I care about the taste of promise on a lover’s tongue, about the way a nice bouquet of flowers wilts in the front seat after an hour on some dusty highway in Arizona. I care about art that splits you open, and I care about the kid behind the counter who looks like he hasn’t slept in three nights. I swear to every star to sparkle bright: caring is my first language.

Just happens to be more about, “how” I care.

Listen. Ignore the things around you for a minute and open the heart you have inside yourself and continue to read.

But.

Here’s the delicious, blistering but: when the night grows quiet and all the music stops, I don’t give a single flaming damn because no one out there can save me from myself. Caring is essentially useless currency in a world hell-bent on taking and forgetting. If I’m thirsty, I pour my own drink. If I’m lonely, I change my own sheets. If I’m bleeding, I rub some dirt on it and call it a day. There can be ones with gauze and apologies. Are they the pillow you lay your head on alone at night though? they have your soul? No. realize the only person to truly save yourself, is yourself. Most nights, that knowledge tastes bitter. On the best nights, it tastes like freedom.

You want the truth? Lean closer, but don’t touch. I’m allergic to the cling, but you’re the one left with any type of sting. I’ve learned that we toss our hearts like a bright red dart, aiming for that validation, only to watch it bounce off the plastic wall and land on the floor every damn time. That’s why this version of writer I am that you’re reading now is…. Well, I’ll let others decide what kind of writer they think I am—ink and siren eyes, here only because I feel like haunting you for a few or more minutes while you read.

I’m seen when I want to be seen, hidden when I need the dark. There’s power in that disappearing act. Wish it felt like power with me. I disappear because the weight of other energies over power my own center stability.

Maybe you’re squinting, wondering how someone can proclaim wild empathy in one breath and spit in the social punch bowl the next when she says herself, “I don’t like people.” Let me break it down with the delicacy of a sledgehammer: human beings are walking contradictions, baby. I’m a soft-hearted bitch with barbed-wire morals. I’ll cradle your secrets like a mother with a newborn, but I’ll also cut ties at the first whiff of manipulation. Don’t test that theory. Ask the ghosts who live in my voicemail or the ones who try to make themselves seem like THE ONE when really, they are only THE ONE eating peanut butter out the plastic container, while being in the shower. Another story, for another time.

They used to assume my patience or gullible behavior was an all-night diner: always open, always serving, eggs over easy, side of forgiveness. Now they drive past at dawn and see nothing. That diner burnt down.

Let’s pause for a public-service announcement to any armchair empath clutching pearls because I said, “I don’t like people.” Sweetheart, it’s not personal. I respect you. I acknowledge your humanity. I think you’re a miracle of blood and stardust, sincerely. I’ll dip into the world for a moment that drew me in, or I must have attracted in some sort of way, learn whatever wisdom strangers are offering, then I ghost the after-party without a second thought. I’d rather drive at midnight with nothing but “Young and Beautiful” on loop while thinking about actions from five years ago because five years later, in some sort of weird way, it is relevant.

People are teachers, but isolation is graduate school.

I was raised on the myth that polite silence earns you gold stars. Be nice, be small, don’t rock the boat, don’t scare the boys. Hell, even don’t like the girls… All I do is chuckle at that because look at how that turned out. Niceness never paid a single bill, and silence never saved a single soul. Growing older feels like slamming a fist through that one glass display case, reaching in, and grabbing the jagged edge of my own voice. Some days it cuts, most days it glimmers. Either way, it’s mine. Just as it is yours.

I crave select souls, curated like vibrations. People who understand that conversation is a book to be told and laughter is a baptism. Folks who don’t flinch when I say I’d happily spend a week in the desert with nothing but a notebook, a Polaroid, and coconut oil.

We’ve created a culture that confuses oversharing with openness. They are not the same. Oversharing is dumping your purse in the middle of the grocery aisle hoping someone will pile up your things. Openness is choosing one perfect sentence and carving it into stone with intention and meaning.

So, here’s my one perfect sentence for tonight: I care so deeply I could drown in it, but I trust only myself to pull me to shore. Write that on the back of your hand next time you’re tempted to outsource your worth to any social media you decide to turn into your diary. If everything collapsed tomorrow—every friend, every follower, every safety net—would you recognize yourself in the mirror? Could you sit in a silent room and still hear the beat of your own heart? Not the thought of someone else’s feelings or if their heart beats for you….

I’m not advocating for hermit life. I’m advocating for sovereignty. The ability to walk into any room—boardroom, bedroom, chatroom—and remember you owe no one an explanation for how brightly you burn or how quickly you retreat into darkness. Anything offered—your time, your body, your lips, your words—is a gift, not a given. Keep that awareness like a pocketknife, sugar.

Here’s the kicker, for all my talk of aloofness, I do believe people can surprise you. I believe in the alchemy that happens when a stranger stops treating your pain like spectacle and starts treating it like scripture. I believe in late-night phone calls that end with “I get it, you’re safe here,” and mean it. Those moments glow like embers under every cynical monologue I write. But I refuse to expect them.

If any of this reads like a contradiction—caring yet detached, respectful yet repelled—congratulations, you’re catching on. Humans aren’t equations; we’re weather systems. One day I’m a heat wave of compassion, the next I’m hail on your windshield. And that unpredictability? That’s what makes a life worth living and then writing about.

So, gentle or aggressive reader, are you ready to feel the cold floorboards under your bare feet, hear the ugly truth echo against high ceilings, and decide whether to dance or run?

The door just wide enough for you to taste the cigarette smoke and spilled perfume inside. It’s not cozy; it’s not safe; but God, it’s honest.