I wore your shirt to work today.

It's not too loose, not too tight. It's perfect, just like you were, before the lies. 

It smells of you, your kisses, your caresses, your affectionate way of moving the strands of hair out of my eyes and tucking it behind my ears, your grabbing my fingers with yours when we walked. 

When I need to be enveloped by you, I wear your tee. I needed it today, because I'm willing to admit that despite everything that happened this past weekend, I still love you Bubba. 

What does that make me?

Reviewing the past.

I was looking through my book reviews on In Good Books and I realised, God I could be quite a bitch! A handful of books that I have trashed, I have done so spectacularly that the reviews are making me cringe for the author's sake. And a new feeling accompanies that cringing - humility and a realisation of the effort it must have taken for those authors to get published. Well, at least a big chunk of them. Having been through a trying time in the last couple of years, I realise now how opinions can destroy ambitions and souls. How they can deprive someone of every ounce of confidence they have. 

So, for all you authors I have trashed in the past, my apologies. Please know that I don't mock or demean your efforts. You have the ambition and the honour of being a published author, now please just work on your words so that any opinion that comes your way does not have the power to rob you of your sense of self and self-worth.

True, that.

Image via Jar of Quotes.

He said, she said.

"I know you hate me", he said.

No, I don't hate you. It's hard to hate someone you've spent the better part of your adult life loving with your mind, body and soul. I'm just extremely disappointed, with a sprinkling of eternal pain and a mugful of hurt feelings. I can't hate you, even if I wanted to, because you are as much a part of me as I am. And I am done hating myself.

That's what her heart said. Her mouth went, "Yeah, I do."

Dear 2015, you need to stop being so effing effed up.

I decided to start our relationship on a positive note. I was mentally prepared to like you and do wonderful things with you. Start writing again. Be in the present more often. Be fair to me. Get things moving in the right direction. Give myself a chance to love again. To live again. To feel alive.

Clearly, it had slipped my mind that this is supposed to be two-sided. Clearly, 2015, my dear, you were not ready for this. And so you did what I did in my last relationship - you flailed your legs and flapped your arms and shook your head from side to side and refused to accept it or let it happen.

You could have given me a sign, you know. Some inkling of what was to come, so I could be better prepared. It's been hardly three months and already I'm regretting living to see you. Day after day is an excruciating exercise in functioning like an absolutely normal human being, trying to stay whole even as pieces of me are claimed - demanded - by all that's around me and inside my head. I don't know how I'm keeping at this, but I am. I don't know how long I'm going to keep this up, though. And when breaking point comes, I don't want it to be at the cost of losing people, principles and schools of thought dear to me, that hold a high place in my life.

So, I beg you, 2015, my precious, to consider this - you and I are stuck with each other for 284 more days. For better or for worse. Why not make that time we have together, better? Stop being angry that I made all those wonderful plans with you. Maybe I should have given you an inkling of what I had in store for you, would have saved this tantrum. Sorry, did I say tantrum? I didn't mean that. Now, how about we kiss and make up and promise each other that if we can't make things better, at least we won't make them worse?

Hanging on to the last straw,

Me

I'm one hour away from growing a year older, and the only thought running through my head...

... is this: when did my life become a choice between frustration and regret?