“the only thing that matters right now is my marriage and my children” sure didn’t matter when you were sticking your dick in your employee huh

TMA/The Good Place AU

I've seen other versions of this before and I have so many thoughts (Contains spoilers for all seasons of both shows)

Gertrude is the Architect, who thinks she's working for the good of the universe by punishing bad people but gradually learns compassion, friendship, and the ways in which the system is broken

Gerry is the neighborhood guide like Janet

He's a lot more incorporeal though

Instead of "not a robot, not a girl" he's got "not a boy, not a ghost"

Good Gerrys have poor dye jobs

Bad Gerrys have perfect dye jobs

Neutral Gerrys do not dye their hair

Yes this means disco Gerry exists

Magnus is the Head of the Bad Place who pretends to be the Judge

(The actual Judge is Dekker)

OG Elias is the pothead student who had a bad trip and predicted the whole afterlife system with almost perfect accuracy

Jon, Martin, Tim, and Sasha are the four humans in the first neighborhood

Jon and Tim think they belong in the Good Place

Martin and Sasha know they do not

Jon is told his research into the supernatural saved thousands of lives

Tim was an environmental activist

Sasha was a hacker but Gertrude welcomes her as a tech innovator who changed the world

Martin was just working a minimum wage job trying to get by and Gertrude welcomes him as a professional in the parapsychology field, he's given the same "your research saved lives" spiel as Jon

Jon and Martin are told they're soulmates

Tim and Sasha are told the same

Jon and Martin have the Chidi/Eleanor multi-season-long star-crossed fall-in-love-in-every-reboot plot arc

Tim and Sasha have the we-hooked-up-in-one-reboot-but-we're-better-as-friends Tahani/Jason dynamic

However, Sasha gets Eleanor's "there's someone with my name who's supposed to be here instead of me" plot

This is Not!Sasha

Peter Lukas is the Bad Place representative who brings Not!Sasha to the "Good Place"

Martin gets Jason's "the person with your name was in a near-death coma"

Sasha tells Tim she doesn't belong right out of the gate

Martin overhears them and the three end up working together

Martin does not tell Jon he doesn't belong, leading to Jon becoming paranoid about what he, Tim, and Sasha are always conspiring about together

It comes out in a "why are you lying" argument just like the CV thing in canon and Jon is heartbroken that he doesn't actually have a soulmate

He shuts Martin out for a while but eventually realizes he's fallen in love with him, soulmate or not

The four of them end up working together (somewhat)

When they go to the Medium Place they meet Mikaele Salesa

He was a cut-throat antiques and curiosities dealer who donated his fortune to aid the orphaned children of sailors on his deathbed

Eventually the whole "this is the Bad Place" reveal happens

Not sure who figures it out

They get rebooted

And rebooted again

And again

Gertrude does not know how they keep figuring it out but she's definitely losing control

The other demons in the neighborhood are talking about rebelling

(Jude Perry is that one fire demon who keeps walking around without their skinsuit)

(I'm thinking Jared "canonically hot" Hopworth is the one who keeps going to the gym)

She makes a deal with the four humans to help them get to the real Good Place if they play along with the torture, and finally concedes to letting Annabelle Cane run the next reboot

(Yes, to line up with the original show it would be the Not!Them but I think Annabelle is far more likely to want to pull everyone's strings)

Instead of the Jason/Janet romance there's a Tim&Gerry friendship

Since there's no romance there's no need for a rebound boyfriend, however Gerry ends up feeling really alone in Annabelle's reboot and builds himself a new best friend to cope

It does not go well

Michael/Helen is a glitchy, non-functional almost-human who nearly blows everyone's cover with the chaos they cause

They have two faces, two personalities, two identities that they flip between seemingly at random

They get more stable the more times they're rebooted

They go chill with Salesa in the Medium Place while the main crew makes their bid for the Good Place, fails, begs the Judge (Dekker) for mercy, and ends up back on earth

Instead of a near-death psychological study they're all brought together again with an un-death paranormal study

Run by Jon and his new girlfriend Georgie

Yes, Peter is the demon Magnus sends to interfere

Yes, Gertrude drop-kicks him back off the planet

They form the Soul Squad and go off into the world to save people

Not really sure who

But they end up visiting OG Elias and realizing how deep the problems with the system go

They pass through accounting, which is run by Oliver Banks, and meet the neutral Gerry

I'm thinking Leitner is that one demon who's forced to assign point values to weird sex acts

Not sure who makes up the Good Place council

But they make their way back to the Judge and get the whole "test neighborhood" thing to happen

The new humans are Daisy, Basira, Melanie, and Georgie

I know it would make sense for Jon to end up in charge of the neighborhood as Gertrudes's replacement, but nope, he gets his memory wiped because he's awful at lying and he can't pretend he doesn't know Georgie

Martin ends up in charge after Gertrude freaks out

Jon does not actually end up as a participant in the study, since none of the new humans are demons in disguise, so he's just kind of wandering around like a loose end

Georgie definitely pulls the "this is a near-death hallucination" thing

Martin breaks his own heart telling Jon that Georgie's his soulmate, hoping Jon will be able to convince her it's all real

It backfires

Jon's miserable

He eventually confides in Tim (he and Sasha are pretending to be normal humans) that he thinks there's been a mistake, unless... do you think platonic soulmates are a thing?

He doesn't want to date Georgie

He's in love with Martin

Tim tells Martin and Martin has to handcuff himself to his desk so he doesn't run off and kiss Jon senseless

Yes, they establish that platonic soulmates are a thing

Georgie starts dating Melanie

Jon and Martin pine from a distance

I'm thinking Basira is the problem resident who is not making any progress towards improvement

She's very reluctant to see the complicated morals of a situation and takes a long time to break out of her "us vs them" mindset

When they're approaching the one-year anniversary of the new neighborhood and the end of the experiment Melanie and Georgie gather together Tim, Sasha, Daisy, Basira, and Jon

They pull out a huge red-string theory board and say there's something wrong with the neighborhood

Tim and Sasha exchange nervous glances

Georgie says she thinks it's all orchestrated by Martin

They make a plan to meet up at the party that evening

Tim and Sasha go straight to Martin, Gertrude, and Gerry and tell them what's going down

They decide to run out the clock and hope nothing goes too wrong

When Martin stops by his office Jon is waiting for him

Jon spills Georgie and Melanie's whole theory

"They think you're plotting against us, but I know you wouldn't"

"Whatever this is, you're as much a pawn as we are, I think"

"This is supposed to be the Good Place, right? So no one should be unhappy"

"But I am unhappy, Martin. You are too! I've seen the look you get, when you think no one's looking"

"Martin, I've seen the way you look at me. You must know how I feel about you. What kind of Good Place would not allow us to be together?"

Martin is imploding

He really really really wants to kiss Jon

But instead he takes him by the shoulders and tells him "I know what's going on. You're right, there's something more here than you've been told, but trust me when I tell you it's nothing bad. I won't let anything bad happen to you, Jon. I've got you"

"Please just play along with whatever happens tonight, I promise I'll explain everything soon"

And Jon does. Even when the sinkhole happens, even when Martin laughs in his face and tells him he's in the Bad Place

"I really got you, Jon," he says. "I got you good"

"I've got you," Jon remembers, and trusts him

Anyway there's a lot of drama but the neighborhood was a success

Jon gets his memories back and there's a tearful reunion

They start implementing test neighborhoods for everyone so everyone has a chance of reaching the Good Place

And Jon, Martin, Tim, Sasha, Gertrude, and Gerry finally get to go as well

Of course they still need to fix the Good Place itself but that goes fine

And then everyone gets a happy ending, with as much time as they want to spend with the people they love

Better to?

Is it better to be alive and constantly miserable? Or dead and know peace?

If I fail a class this semester, there is an extremely high likelihood that i will be pulled out of college for financial reasons. If that happens I've been told I will have no choices, my life will be ultimately destroyed. The only job I'd be able to get is a minimum wage, soul crushing mindless existence. I'd never be able to afford a second chance at college. I'd never be able to survive on minimum wage, I'd have to get two jobs and even then I'd barely make ends meet.

And that's if I was able to get a second job. I'd never know love because I'd be too busy trying just to survive and after that too tired to function. 2 full time jobs is not exactly free to have feelings like love. And with who I am, finding someone would be a damn miracle and god has already proven he shall have no mercy on me.

And the gods know I'd never have a lucky break with writing or art, if I even had the time or energy to put into either of them.

Every check just going to not being dead for another week, stuck in a job or if I'm lucky, 2, that I hate, barely making ends meet, all because when I was 19 I got cocky and ended up failing Precal or was forgetful and failed English because if it.

To be able to say, "I was young, dumb, sure of myself, and because of it I've amounted to nothing, never known love, was never able to have a family, and lived a fate comparable to hell on earth."

I've been religiously told this for the last 6 months by my parents. And 6 months is lowballing it.

My biggest fear is dying alone. My second biggest fear to be forgotten. If I fail both are going to happen. I'm going to die alone in a house that is barely holding together without a soul to remember me.

I'll be forgotten within a week of my death, if not, a month at most. Nothing I've ever done will have mattered, ultimately I was just a waste of the universes time, even if I did make a couple peoples days just a little bit brighter.

Is it better to live and be miserable with no hope, or to die and be done with it?

At this point it's basically pass or die. A 70 on my math final to pass and have to retake because of how it is with my major, an 85 on it to never take that class again, and with English I've done what I can and at this point all I can do is hope.

And don't any of you dare call me selfish for this. To call suicidal people selfish is selfish itself. You're only concerned about the impact that persons death would have on you or their family, worry about the person who wants to kill themselves because they are in pain or see no other option.

And never call me selfish. I've made every choice for somebody else. Choice in college was because if years of "if you go to clemson you'll make your grandfather proud." And he's the actual kindest person I've ever met of course I dont want to let him down, I couldn't get there on my highschool GPA or ACTs so I found some backass method to get there. CSU has an applied math program that does 4 years there, 2 years at Clemson and you get two degrees for the 6 year period.

My father was all for that for the reason of being able to rub it in my aunts and uncles faces.

This is the same man that punched a brick wall hard enough to let out a blood curdling scream, make the house shake from the punch, and instill the fear of death in a child because a 12 year old didnt do his English homework. Why that 12 year old didnt do their homework? Just didnt want to, so over time did less and less of it.

Which is a legitimately normal thing by the way, 6th graders dont always want to do their homework and of course they are going to lie about it, dont act like his responce was in any way justifiable.

The man to this day still threatens to pin me to a wall and beat the shit out of me if I lie to him again, which wouldnt be as much of an issue if he didn't terrify me to the point of never telling him anything ever again out of fear for my life.

My choice of major was because of him. I wanted to be a doctor for a while but then my mom spent a collective 5 years dying in the hospital, so that dream died. No fault to her she couldn't control it. I then wanted to be a psychiatrist, therapist, that deal. Made the mistake of mentioning it around dad and got told promptly "it's not a real job." 10 year old me gave up on that real quick.

Then it went lawyer for a while because I figured a good paying job will be acceptable, hes always on about money anyways. After months upon like a year or something of "oh it's a lot of school and it's really hard and are you sure about it?" That dream too, was killed.

So the next thing I said was computers. Nothing more, nothing less, and it was finally acceptable. It was the most predicatable answer out of me and the first one to really be approved of. So for years i was content not having my dreams put down, then came college and I put my dreams down for computer engineering, on the track to clemson.

I then changed my major to computer science and over time put some thought into my actual interests.

Astronomy, the language of the stars. Physics, the language of the universe. Linguistics, the study of language. Writing, where you can be a god of your own little world. Geology, because rocks are just cool yo. Intetior Design, every time dad drags me to work with him I sit around and mentally start designing each room. And at the bottom of the list, Computer Science.

And the final mistake made in this whole college thing, I applied to only 1 college and to 0 scholarships. The scholarships I got are state ones, and I was told to keep a 3.0 GPA, which if you've ever seen one of my report cards you know how bad of an idea relying on that is. You have to have no idea what any of my report cards have ever looked like to think for a minute that trusting I will keep a B average for 6 years with no problems at all is even slightly a good idea.

So when my grades came in first semester, the night of December 13 I was legitimately shaking in fear for my life. December 23 when my parents found my grades out they gave me a 2~3 hour scream and then since then all my tech, aside from my phone and laptop, has been sitting in a tote box in my closet.

April they see my grades again and since then I havent been allowed to even have my door closed, and was strongly told that if I'm caught reading anything that isnt for school they'd burn it.

I could have probably avoided half of this if I was just a little more selfish, but I made every choice for someone else. If I was just a little more selfish I would be in a college half the price of CSU in a major that wouldnt be my last choice. Were I just a little more self centered, I wouldn't fear my father killing me over my grades.

Maybe I'm so destructively selfless because every moment that was supposed to have been about me quickly became about someone else. High school graduation after the fact during the pictures I got pushed to the side so my cousins could have a picture of just them, when there literally were three other walls and outside that they could have done that. Have you ever taken a picture outside at night? It's got a beautiful magic about it, and the lights were on dont even try to say "oh it's too dark", also cameras tend to have a flash so that's no excuse to push ME out of the way on MY graduation day. Kinda a big deal to me because when you look at my extended family I am among the few that have graduated high school, like half of them haven't even done that.

My graduation party the next day, I was given my gifts and then ignored most of the rest of the time. I was there for about 6~7 hours, and relevant for about 15 minutes. My college acceptance letter was opened and read by my parents before I even woke up. In fact, they woke me up by yelling at me from the kitchen to get in there. I walk in there, they're at the table smiling like idiots that just won the Nobel prize, and they hand me an open letter and tell me to read.

And my birthdays result in me being relevant for ten minutes of the hour at the pizza hut, and most of that is being asked about school and grades. The rest of the time is my parents and grandparents bitching about my drug addict unfit parent cousins. Like, my birthday is supposed to be about me, not them. And I am more than just school and grades, you would not believe how long it took me to realize that.

I have one bit of advice for anyone that might need it. Live your life for yourself for your reasons and never let somebody else live through you.

A little background... I am 27 years old. I have a 9 year old. I have been with his father since I was 12 years old, I have never “dated” anyone else. I have seen others, but never been in a relationship with anyone else. in January 2019 my little brother (we were 4 years apart and very lose) was left for dead by police after he got in a car wreck and had a head injury. He had a pulse for 30 minutes yet was never taken to the hospital, that was 10 minutes away. A week later some rich yuppie blew their entire head off with a shotgun, 80 miles away from the hospital, had no pulse, but was air lifted to the hospital. I strongly feel my brother was left for dead due to the fact he had unpaid fines. Mostly due to no car insurance or “driving while suspended” over no car insurance. But I know only blacks matter in this country, not some mutt who is half native american half white. That has been made ABUNDUNTLY CLEAR. 

If you are one of those stupid cunts with the “driving is a privilege” bullshit mindset, (driving to work should not be a privilege should be a basic human right and “ride the bus” only big cities have busses and many people have to commute to larger cities in Oregon) when basic liability insurance is about $300 a month for people who are never on mommy and daddys insurance, please kindly fuck off. Housing in Oregon is insane, already, most people have half or more of their money going to rent if they can manage to get somewhere to rent to them at all, they should not have to have another 1/4th or more of their income going to basic liability insurance when they have never even had a ticket. I went through the same shit. Eventually police would just wait in the parking lot for me to leave work and just ticket me over and over, I was denied a hardship permit that is also such a scam. Pay a bunch of money for something you aren’t even guaranteed to get. I drove 1000 miles a week just to get to work, because I could not find work in the rural area I live in not could I afford the $1500 a month rent in the city that has jobs (that’s basically how much I made a month) it is what is is. I had no choice. 

Paying for car insurance crippled me financially. I was actually split up with his father at that time but had to come crawling back begging for money due to my $300 basic liability insurance. The tickets are not even on my record anymore, for driving with no insurance and driving while suspended but its still $260 a month. Absolutely sickening. I don’t have a fucking dime left over after i pay bills, and my boyfriend works and we STILL have no fucking money. Ever. We don’t get to go on vacations, we live in the shittiest neighborhood in the entire county, in a shit trailer, drive shitty cars, I assure you we have nothing nice. Nicest thing he had is probably his work boots which were paid for by his boss, working your ass off in Oregon does not pay off. “Get a better job” no shit sherlock, did it ever occur to you its difficult to not get fired from your job you are currently working, and still go to interviews? Employers be like “I know you have a job currently but can you drop everything and come in an hour?” Oh yeah, totally. And if you try and schedule it for a time maybe you won’t get fired its usually “Nevermind.” And the interview process is a begging a groveling process like you’re a god damn peasant. Why do I want this job? MONEY! Why else! Why does anyone want any job? I worked at a staffing agency for 4 years and I can not tell you how many people did well at those stupid cookie cutter questions but were shit workers. I wish places would just let you work a day or two and see. 

Then I got laid off as soon as stupid corona hit in March, they already fired my office manager and a sales person “over discounted bill rates”. Kinda like how the Dollar Tree stays in business because its cheap but more volume is sold (worked there before too that was horrible) so they have just as much profit if not more, as say Walgreens or something. With corporate clowns coming down and saying to clients basically pay the full rate or we are taking you to court, to 3/4 of the clients, sales tanked. They tried to blame corona but the sales were complete shit before that as soon as they fired the two people who had most of the sales, with discounted bill rates. I am still friends with someone who managed to not get fired. They said in a conference call this week they announced they would be lowering bill rates. *Face palm* now that you fired hundreds of people, you are lowering bill rates. How many lives did you ruin before coming to your senses? Companies here are just so fucking awful!

A few years ago I decided I wanted to move out of the country. However if you have a child, both parents have to sign a passport form unless you don’t have the father listed on the birth certificate. Norway in particular I like, its beautiful, free healthcare, minimum wage twice that of Oregon with cheaper rent and free healthcare, they also help with childcare. They claim they do in Oregon but your “copay” is usually so high you might as well just pay out of pocket and not deal with all the states controlling bullshit you have to deal with when you get state assistance. People like to say “Norway has higher taxes” please shut up and go look at Oregon’s income tax rate. One of the highest in the country. Expensive gas, INSANE housing, its just not possible to have a decent life here in Oregon. I love the ocean also. Norway is beautiful and comes in the top countries for quality of life every year, meanwhile USA is at the very bottom. 

Everyone called me paranoid all those years, I just had a bad feeling that something bad was going to happen also and I needed to get out while I still could. Next remark “how can you afford to get there if you are so broke?” Simple don’t pay my outrageous rent and insurance for 1 month problem solved. My child’s father finally agreed to sign the passport form now that its too late and Americans are banned from basically every country in the world, once the racism and virus bullshit started. Super awesome. He will never hear the end of that from me. Its been months and I still do not even have the passport. Even if I did I AM TRAPPED HERE!!!!!!!!!! I can not even go to fucking Canada!

I decided ok, I will try and move to Montana/Idaho/North Dakota or something. Give up my ocean in attempts to get the hell away from all this mask and the non existent “racism” bullshit. Go somewhere with a lower cost of living, more jobs with higher wages. I absolutely can not stand wearing the face masks. There is no evidence they work, just go look at Sweden. Or the states I just named which have no mask laws. Also a lot of rural areas in Oregon do not wear them seems like the entire populations would have been sick or dead. I am not looking to argue with scared little sheep over this. Before you say “I hope your grandparents die” because I don’t wear them, something that I have seen many people say to myself and anyone else without a mask, my grandparents have said many times they would rather be dead than be completely isolated over some bullshit virus with a higher survival rate than the flu. Plus the media has lied so much, how can you believe a word they say? Seriously? They are all left winged biased. I am not even a conservative and I can see it. But people just eat the shit up. That 26 year old who they claimed died in Oregon from coronavirus, turns out did not even have the virus the CDC medical examiner said. So you choose for yourself what to believe. 

I did get a job in Montana very easily. In six fucking months in Oregon I had maybe 5 phone calls for a job, all minimum wage no benefit shit jobs. I did 2 years of business and law classes, 4 years of heavy payroll and accounting for work so its not like I have absolutely no experience in anything worth a fuck. Plus 8 years total of customer service or more I have been working since I was 18 with gaps here and there between jobs. But with my boyfriend and son back in Oregon, 900 miles away, it was really difficult. I had never been alone like that or even stayed a night away from my child. Never in 9 years. First of all staying in some shitty hotel... I hate hotels in general I like my little nest, as shitty as my house may be, even at a nice hotel I would rather sleep in my own shitty bed. I lasted 2 weeks, only having $100  week leftover for food and other bills spending $400 a week at the cheapest motel I could find, before I gave up. I could not save money for a deposit or loan and my boyfriend has absolutely no credit so he could not get approved for a loan or rental either. He also had absolutely no one to watch our child back in Oregon with everything being closed so he could not work during that time and almost lost the job he had. Done landscaping for 11 years and still only makes $2 above minimum wage because companies treat employees like such shit in Oregon. I was so close, had a decent pay (way more than I ever made in Oregon even though Montana has a lower minimum wage) with benefits, but it was impossible to move into a rental. My credit is good enough for a loan, but I could not save money for a down payment staying in a hotel. Plus I was so lonely and miserable. Now winter is coming and we will not be able to go back and forth in that snow in little cars anyways.

If we would have succeeded, I would have gotten us into a rental and then quit as soon as he got a job because we never have anyone to watch our child and the cost of living is so much lower we would not HAVE to both work like we do here in Oregon. Especially now. Seriously, what the fuck do they expect people with kids to do? Schools are closed and even if they weren’t there is no way in hell I would send my kid wearing a mask all day. SO bad for you! They have to wear them all day “except at lunch” ok so might as well just take the damn things off the entire day. These rules don’t even make sense how do people not see that? Or in a restaurant you have to wear them if you walk to the bathroom but not at the table what logic is that? How do people not see through this bullshit? And children are gross they touch everything masks are going to do shit at schools. Notice the schools that did open, masks or no masks still had a shitload of cases. Single parents are especially screwed in particular. I guess if you could somehow both find employers willing to work with your schedule (good luck with that) you could constantly work opposite shifts as your partner/spouse and never seen them and work. 

Anyways, jobs for him paid more up there too, rent is fucking half of what it is in Oregon. Their average rent is the price of “low income housing” in Oregon. But we just could not do it. I tried. I tried so hard. I even learned Norwegian jeg snakker norsk und ich spreche auch Deutsch because Austria was another country I was interested in. You can try and try and try here, but unless you get lucky, or your parents help you, I do not know how people do it. All the old people I know here don’t have enough money to live off either after working 50 years. Its so sad.

I am no perfect person either. I am pretty bitchy, I have horrible anxiety I quit public school at age 12 and finished online, yes I have a high school diploma. I actually did all my high school schooling in 2 years after skipping 3 years of school with no problem. I never even really went to middle school and still managed. I am not stupid. I just have a hard time doing things I am absolutely miserable doing.

I will go into more detail, year by year on what a shitshow it is to live in the USA but in particular Oregon. The entire west Coast really. I hate it here and I just want out but I have tried everything. 

Day 10- Part II- Dig Deeper- 5:00 P.M.

Dear Me, 

I think to myself as I reread all of his posts and my own what could have happened differently if this words flowed out of me at a different point in time. These are all the same words that I have always had for him since the first time we separated. That was back in junior year in college. These are the same words 8 years later that I am still pouring out of my heart. Why is it taking so long to learn a lesson? Why couldn’t a lesson be learned prior to the test or during the test? Why after each and every single one. 

After a lot of thought, and when I say a lot I mean after years of reflecting and also in the last several hours, I think I have the same problem as him. We both felt like we had a love so great that it shaped the way we perceived others and shaped what we demanded of others when in reality we both just wanted each other, but for some reason could not each time. He modeled every interest after what we had. He pushed on criteria from the memories we created. I did the same. For each person that I met I always looked to see if they could top how gentlemanly, how sweet, how dedicated, how crafty, how humorous, how fun, how physically intune, how internally intune to me; unfortunately, when you’re looking for traits in others to mirror someone else chances are that they will always fail. You cannot recreate someone no matter how badly you want to. You can never find the same person. You can find all the traits and characteristics you might hope for but you will never find that same exact person and you can’t expect them to be the same exact person either. 

R came so close to topping him. He had the gift of older age which meant more life experiences. I may not have had beautiful letters written but he had forgiveness and kindness unlike Baby. He had money and resources which meant we could do more and go farther. He was bold and a risk taker and so I fell hard. He was as close to being Baby without actually being Baby. I asked him one time how he would feel if either of us were friends with an ex. I wanted with Baby what he had with me, the friendship I never wanted to lose. R said he would break up with me. I didn’t want to risk losing him for the thought of Baby who from what I knew was no different than he was when he broke up with me. So I never responded to Baby’s message or package. I noticed someone sitting outside but it didn’t even cross my mind that it would be him. I don’t know when he left that bench, but I was in my car that night crying for what felt like ages. As I read everything I wanted to hear but heard too late, at the wrong time. I saw things that he put in there because he was thinking of me but I wasted his efforts by throwing it all out. Letter, package, snacks and all. I did not want to turn around to a past that almost killed me. I had no more energy for him because I was just starting fresh and I wanted a clean slate. R only got me flowers when we argued. I ended up disliking flowers so much. I wished that he would have gotten me something simple, something a little more creative. Maybe that’s where the comparisons started. I did like R for taking me on adventures. We went on many at the beginning. It was crazy, it was fun and it was plentiful. Baby and I were poor college students barely scraping more than minimum wage. Everything was difficult and it was hard to do anything. Every little thing counted. I should have been taking this as a lesson of life that it didn’t have to always be like this. But I didn’t see it that way at the time. I saw it as Baby and I being people that could not provide for each other so I needed to find a better future. I was greedy. R bought me anything and everything I wanted, if I asked, and oftentimes I did not so he would get it for me anyway. He was reckless with money, decision making, and his life in general. Maybe that was also why I liked him so much. He was just so different. It was great at first, but when harder decisions needed to be made, so he flopped. R was too busy building his life, again from switching jobs to getting more money and building a future that I wondered who he was building this future for. He always said it was for us, but if it was for us, why were we always the ones being sacrificed? Why was I always the last priority? Why was I becoming more and more forgotten? I wasn’t worth spending for? Everything I did was criticized. Nothing I did was good enough anymore. Maybe it was because at the time I hit a wall. I was told I would not be returning to my position and I would need to look elsewhere. I lost hope and was struggling. I had to start over again and cried through every interview and application that I put in but was never even looked at. I was tired. I was scared. I was dying. So I ran from him and I ran back to Baby because he always knew what to do. 

So I ran to Baby and he helped me and I used him. I didn’t think it was at the time, but afterwards and now in present day I do believe that I did in fact use him. I didn’t mean to. It just ended up happening. He was always my support system. He was the first new best friend I had ever made since grade school. He knew everything. He was so kind and patient with me. And I think back and I was so selfish. I may have loved him at a point in time. I may have loved him again. But at this moment in time, I was selfish. I was terrible and I regret that. We were different. We had a different kind of experience of love now that we were older, now that we had more wisdom, now that we had more finances, sort of. I barely had a job and was often looking for a new one every 3 months. I was in between with my weekend school, tutoring jobs, babysitting, and just about anything I could find. I was overwhelmed by looking for work, going to grad school, working as a maternity leave position and just running around endlessly. It was a difficult time. I put myself in a difficult position. I should not have clung to Baby. I should not have depended on him so much. Did I appreciate him for it? Yes. Did I feel so incredibly grateful? Yes. Was I entirely selfish? Yes. I did not motivate him. I was not a partner to him. I did not support him. I was selfish and made everything about me. I ranted about my ex to him. I complained about everything and yet he just took it. I didn’t take the time to appreciate how he had grown and how he matured. I was just a selfish, wicked person. I am so sorry Baby. You were never supposed to feel this type of pain from me or because of me. I never wanted it to happen, but it did. I wish I could have done things differently for you. I wish I could have given you a better world because you deserved it. I knew of your  pain. I knew of the regret you had from the things you did. I knew it and though I felt bad for you, I enjoyed knowing it made you closer to me. It made me evil. I was evil. I’m sorry. I just wanted you for myself. And you were. We experienced more things. You became more open to trying different things. Doing things in a different type of style. You let me plan things for a change! You were becoming open to my suggestions. You were still very stubborn and arrogant, but that was also something that was just part of you. And I loved you for you. Things were going so well, but I forgot that I was very different. I could become the girl you once knew just like how you could not go back and be the boy you once knew. We started taking advantage of each other and did not appreciate each other for the new people we became. I wish I could deny it, but I am at fault and I feel miserable about it. I still do. I should not have hurt the one person who meant the most to me at many points in my life. Who still means a lot in my life. But I did. And just like how I hoped R would have read these posts or hope that someone will cry for my story, now I hope that Baby will read them and see what I am going through. But I don’t deserve to cry and be empathized with. You cannot pull the same mistake twice and expect to come out unscathed. We were both desperate people and because of who we were at the time we met up again, we were doomed before we even began. 

Then there was D, the person I guess like many others I had left hanging with an excuse because I was starting to see R at the time. I may have been interested or bored enough to speak to him. It was fun for a period of time, but he caught me off guard. He messaged me out of the blue and made the connection of who I was and how we were introduced. I started to become interested in him because he was silly. Silly like in an awkward way. He would reach out to me more and more frequently and I knew from past experience that could be signs of interest. He was strange but it was different. It was unique. Sometimes it was a little more awkward and unbearable but most of the time it was a great distraction from my distraught of looking for work constantly. We had no similarities aside from drawing. He had this cool board game that he made called lagomorpha. I was so honored when he brought it over to show it to me. It was so exciting! I kept thinking to myself that maybe, just maybe he really liked me, so I pushed further and used my physical charms to try to woo him. I should have known not to do this. It never works to have too much physical contact before emotional contact is established. It was rushed, it didn’t give me all that much pleasure, but enough to be a distraction. It got harder when he moved away to Louisiana. Although we still spoke to each other daily, it became less and less. There wasn’t an emotional attachment so I don’t know what I expected from this. I wanted more but he didn’t want to offer more, couldn’t offer more. I wrote a letter to Baby at this time to give him back his things, but then I cut off D shortly after because I couldn’t deal with it anymore.  

I started spending time with different friends which was a pleasant distraction. That’s when I met T. He was one of their friends. He was fun and childish. Goofy and playful. He worked with steel and loved outdoor activities. Skateboarding being his favorite. Still very different but had his own ways of showing affection. He told me he was interested. I was too. But we didn’t have a long enough period of affection. It just happened too soon and too fast. What should have been panned out in over a span of at least weeks if not months was sped into a week. I should not have fooled myself to think that it could have been anything more than just physical because of what I wanted. I wanted something that would last but I never gave it the time to grow and then I did what I always did. I started to lose interest in my own passions because I would consume theirs. I became too clingy and sooner than later he ghosted me. I was angry, I gave out more than I received afterwards but there was nothing more I could do. It was hopeless and once more I was torn down again and again. I didn’t look for D or T. They just happened to show up. They were my meet-cute moments. I had started to become bitter of meet-cute. 

I stopped for a few months but as the new year rolled in, I tried again. There were two people I was in between. E was so fun to talk to and S was bland but I wanted to meet them. S was amazing in person and really tugged at my heartstrings. E was not so much, came off too childish and we never spoke again. S was my attempt at trying something different. I would be more independent this time. I would be the one to take charge and initiate. So that’s what I did. We hit it off and before we knew it we were dating and going out. We dated for nearly 2 years. We were getting pretty close to it. It was the longest relationship I had been in since Baby which barely lasted for 6 months. I don’t think I could have called the others relationships but more like courtships. We enjoyed hiking together and spending time outdoors. He was stubborn and arrogant and angry at times. (Remind you of anyone?) He was sensitive but kind to me. He wasn’t the best at manners or at being the most thoughtful or the best communicator, but he was mine. I got to learn about his family. I got to know of his past. He always had a knack for taking pictures, which was great! That was very new to me. R took a lot of pictures as well, but S took so many. It was to the point that I stopped taking pictures. Which, though it didn’t seem like a problem and still isn’t, was something that I gave up on. I think back and and know that I shouldn’t have, but I did. He brought me to his favorite historical places and baseball games. I had fun. I was becoming more comfortable. We had our differences, but we worked through them. There were times when I had to be a bigger shoulder and often times that was the role I took. I kept taking it. It was tiring at times but I pulled through. You were new to many things. You didn’t know a lot. It was your first relationship as an adult. You had to learn the ropes from the bottom up. It exhausted you because of how much you didn’t know and how much I had to compensate for it, but it was nice to see some progress. It was why I stayed for as long as I did. I enjoyed your hobbies. I loved the new things we would do. There were many things that did not satisfy me and what did not, I found elsewhere to make me happy. I relied on myself, which I think is important to still be independent while in a relationship. Far too many times do you hear of people afraid to do something or refuse to do something because their partner didn’t want to and they feared being alone. I am glad that I was not that person. S however, I could not always say the same. He didn’t stop doing his own thing, he just didn’t really have much of his own thing aside from baseball and video games. Which was fine. Then he moved away which was hard at first, but I supported it so long as it was to chase his dream. I didn’t put too much thought into it at the time of how our future might look if he stayed up there. He loved it. I was nervous because I wanted my life here, in a place I didn’t want to live in. I hardly got to see him aside from maybe twice a month or sometimes less. We would video chat daily but that made things worse. We would hardly be paying attention to each other. Honestly, it probably would have been more beneficial if we just spoke every now and again and had more meaningful conversations. I remember telling him this but we didn’t do anything about it. IT was fun to visit when I did to explore the towns. I loved the chicken wing spot. I loved a lot of things. I loved him. Unfortunately good things don’t always last just because we want them to. He was trying to get a teaching position but would also find only maternity leave positions. I know how hard it is. I was in his shoes tossing and turning and fearing when I would see my next paycheck. If anyone would see the effort I was putting in and trust in my attempts. So I knew I had to be patient and I was. I don’t think I ever saw fault in him for not getting a tenure track position. I felt for him. I felt bad. I consoled him and encouraged him. And he of his own accord pushed and propelled himself forward. But we always had our issues. He was so inexperienced. Which isn’t a problem for me unless it affects the way he treats me and my family, which it did. He was not as gentle with his words. He was not very thoughtful and though he never meant anything out of harm, he wouldn’t think and so as a result his intentions would be misinterpreted or conveyed as recklessness. He never got it. No matter how many times I would bring it up. S just didn’t understand. As I’ve been writing, my heart has been hurting, but that was the point of this entry. To dig deeper. I don’t think I could ever admit this to him but as much as I felt happy with myself for being confident and determined, I wasn’t all that attracted to him. I was interested in the fact that he listed he was both a teacher and a hiker, little did I know that he was hardly of either. He certainly had the dedication needed as a teacher, but would channel all of his energy towards the wrong things and as a result waste his time. I had a lot of hope in him and wished that he could find more success. I often wondered while we were together if he never found the success he was looking for because he never properly channeled his strengths. He often wasted time and did not proactively work on various parts that would have made him a better educator and a stronger individual. He had to realize it on his own what it should look like and how it should be like. In the end I was caught and suffocated. I spent an extra year trying to see if there would be more or a way that I could overlook certain things and I could not. I kept playing my old tricks of thinking of previous exs and trying to compare and he just kept falling short. At least with Baby he had that internal connection. With R we also had a different connection. With S, I felt like I had to make due each time and I just became more and more tired and resentful until one day I just couldn’t do it anymore. I wanted no more and I felt so guilty when I felt relieved afterwards. That stuck with me. I don’t know if he’s doing well or not. He hasn’t unfriended me. He still posts once in a while. I wished that he would reach out to me, but now it would be pointless. At least with S we shared my new outdoor hobbies. So even though he struggled with them, he persisted to an extent. I would love to bring Baby on some of these adventures. I think he would love to see the views. I would just have to pick the right type of activity. 

And now here I am again, thinking about myself and what I’ve done and how my love life was all still short lived over the span of 11 years. Dating is exhausting. Mentally, physically, and financially. I don’t think I would ever take back any of my experiences. If anything I would have liked to change some of my actions. Maybe not invest too much too soon or not to be afraid or to stand taller. But I think I needed them to get to where I am now. 

I had become very adventurous since Baby and I separated. I had gone on 2 vacations by myself. Both to California in memory of us. The first was from LA to San Diego. The second was to Palm Desert. Both times were amazing and eye opening. Never had I ever thought I would have gone on my own trips. Sad for me to say now that it had already been 2 years ago. Two years have passed since the last time I went somewhere on my own. That same year I also went on my first solo backpacking trip. It was crazy, it was out of this world. I loved them all! I needed them to know I would survive out in the world on my own. The only thing though, I was lonely. Often times I would check instagram or facebook often to see who followed my stories. I would constantly post and be online rather than fully being in the moment for the moment. I spent so much time trying to prove I was having a good time. I have no doubt that I did enjoy the trip, but maybe I would have enjoyed it more with the right company. On both of those trips   I met others that I shared contact information with. Unfortunately we are no longer in communication, but I hope to see them again one day. Or at least continue breathing and remembering the stories and times I shared with them and all people I’ve met along the way. 

But here we are now years later and I am once more in my room, sitting on my bed, writing about how my heart aches. I wonder if a little adventure would solve it. Maybe that’s all I need to cure my heart ache. If that were the case, it should be relatively manageable. I have a trip to Florida coming up in April and a potential trip to Canada coming up in June/July. I had a fleeting thought to visit Beebee in Australia this summer, but am not sure if that’s really something I want or can afford this year. I hope to squeeze in some camping/ backpacking trips in the meantime. I would love to drive up to Buffalo at some point this year to enjoy what I wasn’t able to with S. I would love to take the next leap and move out. I want to try new hobbies. I want to be fit and look my best. I want to secure my future. I want to find love. I want to find inner peace and calmness. Above all, I want to lift these shackles that have been weighing me down for years to breathe the fresh air. If Baby is what I want, then I will need to work hard to find him, if we are still on the same timeline at that point in time. In the meantime, I also need to let him go so that he can grow and I too can grow. If I hold on as tightly as I am, I would be falling backwards and never learning from any of my past mistakes. That doesn’t mean I can’t be with him, though I’m sure that’s how many people I care about want me to feel, but I cannot cling on to what we once were. Baby did that when we got together and it destroyed him. We must learn from all mistakes so that we do not repeat them. We must learn from others so that more can be spared. If I want to love Baby fully and without any harm or malice, I must loosen my grip, I must back away, I must at least leave the door ajar so that it is not wide open. Only then, in a few months from now, if I still feel this burning desire. If I still and with thought can make compromises and sacrifices for him, then I can consider what a life could be like if two people who once loved each other, meet again as two brand new individuals.