Posting will be light because of travel/Holidays so don’t expect much in the coming weeks. Welp.


I don’t want to give anyone the wrong illusions. I don’t think I do. I think transparency and honesty is what makes people feel less unhappy with themselves, and with their lives. As anyone who has read my blog knows I am the opposite of pretense. I love ugly truths, I love unfailing honesty. I like to showcase the ugly side because I don’t want anyone to be disillusioned. Realist to the day I die. 


So many women compare themselves to the Emilys that it breaks my heart to read so many women, day after day, who are unhappy. And so many people that live here are unhappy. Being in Paris doesn’t make it all go away. Paris isn’t magic.


My continued progress to healing, to being mentally and emotionally better, is an everyday battle. At least I am better than I was in May of 2020. Small victories. I am happy with what I have achieved. The life I had in Paris pre Covid and post Covid is a feat. It’s not luck; it’s drive, determination, and stubbornness. I am the laziest person on the planet, but I am skilled at doing everything to get what I want. Don’t ask me where that drive comes from. It pops up when it wants to. 

While I have a career, and I have money, which leads to freedom and lack of stress, and I am genuinely happy, and happy with what I have accomplished in such short amount of time, there are plenty of moments where I hate that I can’t connect. I feel like my heart is dead, and as someone who wants to feel and feel deeply, this fills me with dread. There is very much a piece of me that is broken and will never heal (despite all of the fucking therapy and psychology that says we can). I’ve come to terms with that. What else can I do but accept it? There are men who help me to recognize the evils that were committed against me. I can meet others, and detachment can be an valuable asset, but there are moments where I miss my ex boyfriend terribly, and it makes me sad that I cannot find anyone who makes me feel as in love, as grounded, and as much passion as I felt with him. He was my center when I spun away. It’s only natural to miss it. Grief never really leaves us. 


8 year old me listening to this on repeat on my Walkman being indoctrinated into “love is pain”, dreaming of the day I felt a love like this. Be careful what you wish for. 
I hate to say that aloud because it makes me sad and angry to see women mistreated by men. To see the negging, to see powerful women put up with men who do not deserve them, to see them crushed by men who are not worth their time, yet I admit to missing someone who destroyed me? I cannot pretend not to have that same failing in my own life. I miss a man who no doubt sleeps soundly, perfectly content in his happy life, knowing what he did (and calling himself the victim with a straight face). He negged me, treated me like I was worthless, he broke me, and I am not as strong (nor as superior) as I wish I was. It’s always easy to look at someone else’s situation and say how you would do it differently. There are days when I get very down, and I feel hopeless. I miss the man who hurt me and betrayed me, how can I lecture anyone? 

Remember the next time you are feeling down, and being hard on yourself, admonishing yourself for all the ways you feel you are lacking compared to others who seem to have it all, know that we are all going through things. We all struggle in some form or another. 

What helps me? I am pathologically incurious of others and extraordinarily self involved.

Stay strong 🫶