From the moment you were born, I knew I wanted to give you a journal someday.

I received my first one around your age, probably older, as a Christmas gift from Auntie Bullit and it has been my best friend ever since. I included a picture of me with my first one and with my latest one (no. 11). I write in it when Iâ€m happy, when Iâ€m sad, when Iâ€m angry or frustrated. I write in it even when I donâ€t know what to say sometimes, and yet somehow it manages to make me feel better.

The thing about this journal is itâ€s magic, as is any journal that may come after it. Itâ€s for you and only you. Any wish or dream you have has the potential to come true if you write in here. Any problem can be solved if you write it on these pages. It will bring you clarity when you feel like the world is spinning too fast, and it will never judge you for being completely honest with it.

Write in it, cherish it, and take care of it. It will take care of you.

Love always,
Auntie Kristine

The post Posterity appeared first on katharses.org.

“Really good. We just moved into a new office back in October.”

“Oh yeah? Where did you guys move?”

“We’re still in the same building, we just moved up to the 4th floor.”

We were relaxing on the leather couch in his dimly lit office. It was after hours and we had just finished making love on his desk. It had been rough, urgent and passionate as it always had been with him. The skin on my back still tingled from where he grasped me, and my lips were sore from his kisses. But now we were dressed, his hand resting in my lap, my hand resting on his. I resisted the urge to hold it. Instead I lightly traced patterns on his skin as we talked. It was an act that was so gentle and intimate, I honestly wasn’t used to that kind of intimacy with him.It’s probably been over a year since we last saw each other, but we were still in sync like it was yesterday. He knew exactly how and where to kiss me, and I could make him tremble with excitement with just an effortless touch of my hand.

I sighed deeply and looked around. His business was a place I had only seen in my imagination. He had a large wooden, L-shaped desk, the top of which was littered with paperwork, a couple bamboo plants, a half eaten package of Oreo cookies, and his computer monitors, of which he had 6. The full sized refrigerator on one side only held Mountain Dew and a couple bottles of salad dressing. It was the Batcave.

“Who would’ve thought that you and I would still be up to our same ol’ shenanigans?” I asked rhetorically.

“Oh I could’ve told you that,” he said. “I was never gonna let you go. You were the one that kept cutting me off and leaving.”

Was it possible that it was me all along?

I was never gonna let you go. It was the one thing I’ve always wanted to hear… coming from a man I never expected to hear it from. He was everything I always and never wanted wrapped up into a 6 foot 2 package. He was demanding, controlling, impatient, and frustrating at times. But he was drawn to me just as much as I was to him, it was evident in past encounters. Had this been a scene from a movie, this is how the rest of the conversation would’ve gone… I would’ve leaned into him and planted a gentle kiss on his lips. “Darling, you and I are each other’s elusive unicorns. We only see each other when the moon is in the right phase and the stars are aligned just perfectly. When that happens… It’s magical and beautiful. It’s as if everything is the way it should be.”

And the truth is… I’m afraid a relationship like that with a man like him would break me. Because in my world, there was no such thing as a happy ending.

The post The Elusive Unicorn appeared first on katharses.org.

A friend of mine shared with me her story about a relationship she had in where she had been undervalued and mistreated. She said once she found the strength to end it, she realized she needed to truly value her worth and be confident in herself, which then basically led to her finding the love of her life. She’s now with a man who truly loves her, supports her and believes in her, all because she began loving herself.

I feel like that’s the phase I’m in right now.

I’m not really angry anymore, but I’m learning to live in a more honest place. I’m slowly beginning to gain control over my eating as well. With a lot of help from a great therapist and support from friends and family, I am growing more and more confident in myself every day.

I have a morning and evening routine now. And a wrist watch! Yes, I’m pretty excited about my new wrist watch. It helps me stay on track during the day so I don’t procrastinate. I even made it to work earlier both Tuesday and Wednesday, something I’ve been struggling to do for the longest time. Yet Tuesday and Wednesday, it seemed so easy, as if I’d been a natural at it.

And dating. Yes I’ve decided to get back out there again. There’s no sense in dedicating any more time and emotion to a relationship that passed its prime a long time ago.  I’ve received a lot of messages, but I only reply to a select few. I’m trying to be more discerning of who I decide to let in the door.

So I have one date tonight and I’m slightly nervous and yet excited about it.

I can’t lie though. I have moments where I do stop and think about Brian. Thanksgiving yesterday was filled with memories of him… him sliding his arm into my coat and around my waist as we waited in my mom’s kitchen while he read a medical journal. Him whispering and laughing in my ear as we were surrounded by my family. Him smiling and chuckling and leaning down to kiss me as we managed to catch a moment alone after loading my car with leftovers.

But maybe yesterday would be the worst of it. Maybe it’ll just be easy coasting from this point on. I hope so.

The post Perfectly Imperfect appeared first on katharses.org.

But there’s a risk with that.

Like jumping out of a plane, sometimes your parachute doesn’t open.

That’s what I’ve been feeling like the last few days. I took that leap, my parachute didn’t open, and now that I’ve landed, I’ve been left broken. Broken body, broken soul, and a broken heart.

I’m not going to pretend like everything is good. I’ve ended a toxic relationship, yes, but that doesn’t make me happy. My friends say, “Well it’s great that you’re doing this now, rather than years later.”

If it’s so great, why doesn’t it feel that way?

Why can’t I let go of this anger? Why can’t I release these tears that have been building up? Why can’t I do anything else besides think of him and hope that he’s just as miserable and broken hearted as I am?

Is it so bad to want to feel like you meant something to someone? That your presence in their life was so significant that they’ll always compare everyone else to you? That when they’re lying in bed at night, trying to go to sleep, that they’ll think of you and wonder how you are?

The post No Apologies appeared first on katharses.org.

“I don’t really know. I’m not feeling too good today. I had too much of Charlie’s homemade plum wine last night.”

“I’ve been back and forth on the idea. We both deal with stress in unhealthy ways. But when we’re both happy, we’re good,” I said. “At least that’s what I think. I don’t know what you think.”

“Do what you think is good for you. I told you I’m not feeling good. If I want to talk about it, it’ll be tomorrow. Thanks.”

I hit a brick wall with him again. I’ve been hitting a lot of brick walls with him. I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to get anywhere. He was a 46 year old man with the emotional age of a 5 year old boy.

“Actually that kinda sounds like an answer to me,” I said. “Take care.”

Those were my last words to him. He had turned cold and unresponsive within a span of days. I realized I had put myself out on an emotional ledge, only to find that I was standing there all by myself.

I proceeded to delete him. I removed him from my address book. I deleted our chat history. I wanted no trace of him left. I didn’t want to leave any room for any second thoughts about what I was choosing to do.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I was so frustrated, so angry with myself. How could I have fallen in love so quickly and so deeply with someone who was a completely immature, selfish, narcissistic psychopath? How could I have let this man into my life? I will never know or understand.

The post Delete and Restart appeared first on katharses.org.

But this time, it was really hard for me to come up with a list of things that were going right in my life because all I could think of was what was going wrong.

Should I start with the fact that Brian’s drinking has increased from a couple times a week to almost every day?

What about the fact that we were fighting more often and we were just making each other feel more and more awful with each fight?

Or maybe I was so stressed out and unhappy that I was shoveling food into my mouth compulsively, almost making myself sick at times?

“I’ve been really thinking about the last time we met, you know, about honesty,” I said. “Basically my boyfriend and I have been fighting more often the past month. He’s pretty much started drinking every day and it’s been taking a toll on me emotionally. He’s an alcoholic and it’s been having a negative affect on me emotionally.”

It was a vicious cycle with me and Brian. When I would get stressed out, my home life would get out of hand, and then affect him and cause him to drink more. Or when he would get stressed, he would drink more which then would make me depressed and cause me to eat more. We would both say mean things to each other intended to hurt, and then we would make up and things would be good again.

Until they weren’t.

And then it would start all over again.

The more I really thought about honesty and what it meant in a relationship, I realized I was living a life of anything BUT honesty. The truth is I only talked about Brian’s good qualities, I never mentioned his bad ones. However, if you were to ever ask him, he never had any.

I’ve been on the brink of breaking up with him before. No matter how many times he would wash my car, clean my house, just generally be good to me, it didn’t make up for the emptiness I was feeling on the inside. It didn’t make up for his inability to be emotionally honest with me.

I knew that if I brought this up in my therapy, that would mean one thing: I was admitting that our relationship was affecting me negatively and I had to put an end to it.

“With him being an alcoholic, it really made me think about my own problems… like, is food my addiction?” There it was. I was admitting it. Food is my addiction.

She nodded enthusiastically as if I was finally realizing something she knew all along.  “It is possible for 2 people with addictions to have a healthy relationship,” she said. “But only if both people work on their recovery and communicate with each other. It won’t be successful if only one person seeks counseling.”

She was right. I was the only one making an effort to become a better person. The answer was clear. We had to break up.

The post The Line in the Sand appeared first on katharses.org.

After completing the worksheet, I felt a kind of excitement that I haven’t felt in a long time. When you graduate from college, you have no more homework assignments, no more professors to be accountable to, no more end goal to reach.

In life, you’re kinda on your own. You’re suddenly accountable for your own successes and failures. There’s no real next phase in life except for death, and yet we spend every waking moment avoiding it. Suddenly everything becomes very overwhelming and depressing.

When I came back for my next session, I told her that I really enjoyed the assignment.  It reminded me of the days in school when I went home with homework assignment and returned it to my teacher to show my progress. “I don’t think I’ve really looked forward to anything like this in a while,” I said. It was promising.

The following days, I slowly began to find my motivation. I created a worksheet for my planner for both my self-nurturing journey and my weekly meal plan. I wrote things down: thoughts, goals, daily to dos, and then I set out to accomplish them.

At first I started documenting everything after the fact, like as I went along. But I realized I wasn’t making it a priority that way. Some days I wouldn’t accomplish anything. Then I began to plan the following day’s activities, just like I would my meals. I began to make more progress that way.

I began reading spiritually uplifting books, one of which Brian’s mother shared with us.  I never thought of myself as religious,  and I know my “spiritual” category needed some attention, but lately I’ve been appreciating uplifting readings.

On Friday, I had another appointment with my therapist and I told her how much better everything has been. I said Brian had even pointed out how he could already see a change in me.

The journey has been eye opening. I know I have many more miles to cover and this is only the beginning, but I’ve learned that it’s important for me to know where I’ve been in order to know where I’m going.

So I’m going to continue to document my life, my daily struggles, and perhaps start posting them here again. Because ultimately that’s what this blog is supposed to be about: my story.

The post The Proverbial Candle in the Dark Room appeared first on katharses.org.

Brian and I are together again. It wasn’t until after my first session with my therapist that I decided I needed to work on our relationship. I was equipped with new tools for dealing with my emotions and working on my communication skills. There were things about us that I couldn’t let go of, like how perfectly imperfect we were together.

I let him in on some of the things I talk about in my therapy sessions, like how I’m trying to learn to address things as they come up rather than letting them sit unaddressed.

And in return, he’s learning to be understanding. We even successfully navigated our first potential fight. Last week I pulled a muscle in my shoulder and I was beginning to feel neglected by him. I brought it up in a non-confrontational way. He reassured me that I was overthinking it and that he would take care of me if he was here with me. I know he couldn’t drop everything and come running. But when we saw each other next, he did rub my shoulder, even though I told him it was already starting to feel better. He did it anyway.

My friend and hairdresser said some encouraging words to me the last time I saw him a few weeks ago. He said, “You’re expecting he’ll be like all the other guys and he’ll leave you or betray your trust. So rather than accepting the love he’s offering you, you’re sabotaging it because it’s better if you do it first.”

He was right. I’ve been so conditioned by disappointment that I anticipated it and when it didn’t come, I would create it myself.

But maybe Brian was different. Perhaps if I just stopped anticipating and actually start observing the signs, then I would truly know I had nothing to fear.

Things like… how he not only hugs me close when he comes over, but he also hugs Izzie and cuddles her and talks to her like a baby.

How he does things like sets the table for dinner or places a napkin on my lap while I’m putting food on his plate.

When we sleep, he clutches my hand to his heart.

And in the morning when he gets out of bed before me to make coffee, he places his pillows by my side to fill the spot he vacates and says, “I’ll see you soon,” and lets me sleep a few extra minutes.

See… because when you slow down and really look at things for what they are, you realize your life is exactly the way you wanted it to be.

The post What a Difference a Day Makes appeared first on katharses.org.

I really have been exploring a more spiritual path these last couple days. I have never been religious by any means despite being raised strictly Catholic. I cringe at the idea of having to go to church. But I’ve always thought I needed some other kind of spiritual path.

Several years ago I began learning meditation. That lasted for about a couple months and then my iPod broke and I haven’t bothered since. I think the results were too minimal for me to find any value in it anyway.

And then when I wanted to lose weight, I started to learn pilates. Now that I was able to get into. Plus I saw a definite improvement in my core strength and flexibility.

Now I’m looking into practicing yoga, which in a way is almost like pilates and meditation combined.

The sad thing is that as I’m exploring all of these things I’m looking into, I want to share it with him, my excitement, my wonder, my fear, and my curiosity. Because when you’re embarking on something new and exciting, you want to tell your best friend and, well, he’s been mine for the last 6 months.

I guess that’s the thing about this separation. It made me happy to share my life with him because it validated it. But no one else can validate my life but myself. No one but myself can make me happy. And now I just have to figure out how. On my own.

The post No One Can Make Me Happy But Me appeared first on katharses.org.

There’s a line in it that reads: Whenever you eliminate something, you create a vacuum. Always, always create something new and better to fill the vacuum you have created.

I am doing just that.

I have decided to remove Brian from my life right now. Things were just getting too… confusing and too toxic for me to even think straight when we were together. And even though in my last communication to him, I asked him what he wanted to do about us, secretly hoping he would say something like, “Ok, I’m here for you.” That was 2 days ago and so far I’ve received no response.

And even though my instinct is to immediately ask him why he hasn’t responded, I’m refraining from any contact right now.

I need to focus on one thing and one thing only: me.

I’ve been through breakups before. I know the drill. Fill as much downtime as you can with other things to keep you from picking up that phone and dialing that number. I’m working out again: 15 minutes of intense cardio, followed by 15 minutes of strength training, and then 15 more minutes of moderate cardio. I’m reading and running errands and texting my friends more often. I’m researching energy healing, Vipassana meditation retreats, and yoga.

But despite all of my efforts to fill that vacuum (and it is a large vacuum) thoughts of him constantly flood my mind. It doesn’t help that I am bombarded with reminders of him. Like his stupid shows appearing in my Netflix list. The Seinlanguage book still sitting on my night stand. His stupid French vanilla creamer that he had to have in his coffee every freaking morning. I play imaginary scenes in my head where I show up at his door to desperately plead for him to talk to me so we could end it officially. And then there are the scenes where we meet and he admits his failures and he pulls me into his arms, where my own personal happily ever after lies in the warmth of his embrace.

I miss him so much.

But 2 days apart is an eternity when you feel like you’ve known someone for a hundred years.

The post Filling the Void appeared first on katharses.org.

I was here again. Although we had said no more sleep overs for a while, I had given in to him the night before and showed up on his doorstep.

“Hi there!” he said cheerfully as he opened the front door for me.

“Hi,” I said, stepping inside with my overnight bag and a plastic CVS bag. “I had to stop and get some bottled water because my throat was killing me.” I set both down on the kitchen table and I turned to him.

He had his arms open “I missed you,” he said. And I smiled, stepping into his embrace. His towering frame hunched over my petite one, resting heavily on my shoulders. He pulled away just enough to plant a soft kiss on my lips. That kiss…

Back in his bed, he turned toward me, “Hey, what are you doing here?” he said sleepily. “Who let you in?”

I giggled softly. “Whatever, you were the one on the phone last night saying, ‘I misssss youuuu…'”

He laughed. He had a sexy, throaty laugh first thing in the morning. “Yes, I did,” he admitted, planting a kiss on my lips.

Pure bliss, I thought as I turned around and he pressed up against me, curling his body around mine. He buried his face in the back of my hair, mumbling and murmuring incoherently. Within seconds, he was snoring again.

We had spent the night in his bed talking and kissing and cuddling. It felt like ages since we were that close. “How long have we been together?” he asked.

“Ugh… it feels like a hundred years,” I said, laughing.

“A hundred years, she says!” He smiled and he kissed my forehead. “It does feel like it, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, nuzzling against his neck.

After a few moments of silence, he asks, “What happened to us? Why aren’t we together anymore?”

“You don’t make love to me anymore,” I said.

He was quiet. “You’re right. I know. I’m sorry,” he said. “I just need a job. I need to feel whole again.”

“I know,” I said. “And that’s what we’re supposed to be doing right now. You focusing on getting your life back together, and me working on… well, me.”

No sooner had the words passed my lips that I wondered if I had made a mistake spending the night.

“Do you even care about me?” he asked.

I sat up and I gazed at him intently, and then I grasped his face between my hands and said, “Of course I do,” I said. “I mean even after all this time, you still think I don’t care about you?”

He looked away. That was it. He was feeling insecure about us, about me. How could this man, this beautiful, incredibly smart, funny and passionate man be insecure with me?

I kissed him tenderly. “No, honey, I love you,” I whispered. “I love you so much.” I kissed him again. “My baby.”

I basked in the replay of the previous night. And although we had talked long into the night until we both fell asleep, I felt we had repaired some bridges.

But I know there would be more repairs ahead if we wanted to stay happy together.

The post Familiar Territory appeared first on katharses.org.

Brian and I were on the verge of a break up on a night when he would be meeting my friends for the first time. How ironic, right? Did they know it? No. I didn’t want to ruin the occasion.

So essentially we were going to dinner pretending everything was perfect. And then afterwards, I would return things that were his, or things that pained me to keep, but as I looked around my apartment, how could I fit my home into a shopping bag?

The couch we spent countless nights on, watching TV, laughing, kissing, cuddling. The dining table he always wanted to keep clean even though we never served a meal on it. Ever. And the kitchen where he would make his coffee and heat up the water for my tea.

In just a few short months, he had turned my apartment into 850 square feet of memories.

Well, I thought to myself, it’s do or die.

I carried the bag downstairs to my car, placing it in the backseat. There was a nervous churning in my stomach (or perhaps that was just hunger pangs). I wasn’t quite sure what kind of mood he would be in when I picked him up. I’ve learned that he could be unpredictable, that we both could be unpredictable.

I’m not sure what I wanted to happen. For the last few days we had barely talked and I could already feel the void left in his absence getting bigger and bigger, ready to swallow everything else I had built.

When I was a block away, I texted him to let him know I was close. And when I pulled in front of his building, he was already out his front door, locking up and walking downstairs.

“What up,” he said casually. It was a greeting one gives an acquaintance or someone you meet for the first time, not someone you’ve shared so many sacred moments with. Memories flashed in my mind: being held in his arms in the warmth of my bed, a bed that we made ours, our faces close together, so close we were breathing each others breath.

On my way there, I had devised a plan. I had a mentor once who said to always envision the outcome before you try to find a solution to a problem. I knew we had to be able to talk calmly and rationally and right now neither of us were in a position to do that. So I avoided bringing up anything that would sour the mood even more. Like I said to him earlier, I could put aside our bullshit for one evening.

When we arrived at the restaurant, we were the first ones there out of my friends. So we sat down at the table and waited in silence, occasionally looking up to glance at the menu on the wall or check the entrance.

Finally, Steve and his fiancee Stephanie arrive. I think we were both relieved. I made introductions and Brian shook hands and said hello. We were so ready to eat.

Then Briana and Jose arrived last. Brian and I had already placed our order so we went back to our table and waited for the others.

“Well, it looks like you chose a really good place for our last supper together,” he said quietly, arranging his place setting like he usually did. “I guess we’ll be going out with a bang.”

I looked at him. “That’s not what this is,” I said gently. “I mean none of them know what we’ve been going through this past week. I kept that between us. I just want us to have good food and a pleasant evening with hopefully good company.”

It was true. We never really had a chance to actually go out together with friends. We were stuck in this rut where we were doing the same thing over and over and it was driving us mad and making us unhappy.

The evening was perfect. I would periodically look over at Brian to see how he was doing and he was enjoying himself, talking with Stephen about his motorcycle and some of the upgrades he’d made to it over the last couple months. We talked about the boxing match on Friday and about how Steve had proposed to Stephanie. By then, Brian and I were relaxed and happier.

As the evening got later, we all started craving something sweet. Brian wanted to stop by our favorite pizza place and share some cannolis. On our way out the door, we started exchanging goodbyes and hugs and handshakes. I could already tell that the mood between me and Brian had lifted. “I want to drive,” he said, so I handed him the keys and we started walking to the car.

“That was really good,” he said, “Everything was great.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I said. “I kinda purposely made sure we didn’t talk much beforehand so we weren’t in a bad mood when we got there. That seemed to have worked.”

After a few moments of driving, I decided to take the leap. “You know, I just felt blindsided. Just out of the blue you were changing our routine and you weren’t communicating with me. You were completely avoiding me and that hurt the most.”

“I barely even knew what I was trying to say,” he said. “And you said some really awful and ugly things too you know.”

“Yes, I know, I did,” I admitted. “I did say those things out of anger and I’m sorry. It’s like ever since we got back together, it was all about you fixing me to fit your mold. Like you had put me in this corner and you had this life with me and my friends and family, but I was never able to be a part of your life. We always stayed at my place, always met with my family. You’ve never introduced me to your family and it started to feel one-sided.

“It’s just I didn’t feel like I was being treated fairly. I’ve been feeling like your second mom lately. When you have a falling out with her, you run to me. And when you have a falling out with me, you run to her.”

We continued driving into the night. The pizza place was closed so we ended up at a 24 hour Braum’s by his house where we shared a sundae, half with peanut cluster fudge (my choice) and the other half with mint chocolate chip (his).

It was a critical time in his life. Everything was coming together for him, he just had to focus and be ready for it. I knew he really needed this deal to happen.

“This was really good,” he said. He could’ve easily been talking about the sundae, or about the entire evening, but chances are he was talking about the sundae.

After finishing our dessert, we walked around the Fresh Market, looking at the produce and the dairy and stuff. Out of the blue, Brian pulled me into his arms, saying, “Thank you Kris,” he said. “Thank you for all of this.” He squeezed me once more and I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against his chest.

All of the fighting the last few days had led us to this moment, in the middle of the dairy and the ice cream section in Braum’s Fresh Market. I was emotionally weary and exhausted, I felt my insides turning into a puddle at my feet from the warmth of his embrace. I wanted to cry. It would’ve been a final release at the end of a long ordeal. “And you’re not my second mom, silly,” he said. I smiled.

In the car on the way home, we were a block away from his house when he said, “I know I said earlier this evening that this was our last supper, but I’m glad it wasn’t. I don’t want us to have a last supper.”

“Me neither,” I said, smiling.

We parked and he got out of the car. Although he did take his bag of stuff with him, he left the Seinfeld game because he said I was more deserving of it. Plus he wants to be able to play it with me again.

“Oh,” he said, leaning into the car and smiling, “Tell Izzie I said ‘Hey.'”

I smiled back. “I will.”

When I walked through the door of my place, my phone alerted me with a text. “That was so awesome Kris. Thanks so much I really needed that. I think you did too. Good job.”

Yeah, I did do a pretty good job.

The post Taylor Swift Writes Songs About My Life appeared first on katharses.org.

The post Sometimes A Song Says It All appeared first on katharses.org.

The post Fell In Love With a Boy appeared first on katharses.org.

“Oh I see, you guys put the minorities all the way in the back corner,” followed by laughter. It was a voice I’d become familiar with over the past 3 months. He had that unmistakable deep, booming voice with the west Texas drawl. There he appeared from around one of the columns. He was smiling that handsome smile of his, dressed in jeans, his leather riding jacket, and a blue bandana wrapped around his head.

“Baby,” I said. It came out of my mouth almost instictively, completely forgetting that my coworkers were nearby. “What are you doing here?”

“Well,” he said, giving me a big hug. “I heard there was some holiday that everyone was making a big deal about. Valentine’s day or something?”

And with that, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a pink envelope and a brown teddy bear with a heart attached to its chest. “Awww, honey…” I said, totally and completely surprised.

My coworkers, who had stopped what they were doing to watch, chimed in and started doing their ironic clapping. “Oh stop it!” Brian said, waving them away. I couldn’t stop giggling. Had I been able to show any level of blushing, I probably would have been bright red. In all my life, I’ve never been surprised the way he surprised me that day. That afternoon I became that woman in the office who’s boyfriend paid a surprise visit to her at work bearing Valentine’s gifts. Before meeting him, I didn’t have any notable romantic stories to share with my girl friends. No tales of butterflies, of arguments, laughter, passionate makeup kisses, and surprises like this one. But here I was, and I’ve lived through all of it in the past 3 months.

The teddy bear smelled like him, he said. He had sprayed some of his favorite cologne on it so I brought it up to my nose and I sniffed it. Yes, it smelled exactly like him–cool and masculine. I smiled up at him, “Thank you,” I said, kissing him, totally not caring that my coworkers were still there. “I love it.”

I did. I loved it. I love him. And he loves me.

The post That Girl appeared first on katharses.org.