Update

So, it's been a minute since I've blogged. I'm blogging to myself anyways soooo I guess it doesn't matter? Lmfao so updates on my life:
I am not moving to Germany, unfortunately without a wealthy family it is next to impossible. I am, however, moving to Colorado in May with my boyfriend and our three animals! We are going to be moving to Fort Collins, CO! We recently went on vacation where we drove from Iowa to Arizona and we got a chance to check out Fort Collins. It's so beautiful with the Rockies spread out behind the city!
A little bit about my vacation, Cameron and I drove to Trinidad, CO and spent the night at a suuuper creepy (possibly made creepier by the hours of Creepypastas we listened to) AirBnb. We woke up really early and drove to Surprize, AZ where my mom's side of the family lives. The next morning we woke up and drove to Huntington Beach, CA. We went to Disneyland and spent a day at the beach in California.
Disneyland was probably the biggest flop of my life. I have pretty bad anxiety and it gets worse when I'm around a ton of people. As you can imagine, there was a fuck ton of people at Disneyland. We went on only one ride but did manage to see the whole park. I was so incredibly grateful for Cameron that day. He was so understanding and anticipated what I needed before I even realized it. I felt awful and that I ruined his trip to Disneyland but he's assured me a million times that I didn't. After we got through that whole shit-show he even officially asked me out!!
When we got back from Cali, Cameron and I went hiking up a mountain in Phoenix, AZ. I got heat stroke that day because we decided to hike in 95 degree weather! But, again, Cameron saved the day and realized what was happening before I did. The day after that we drove to Sedona, AZ and then Cameron and I went to the Grand Canyon! He had never seen the Grand Canyon before so it was amazing to witness that. It is truly a breathtaking place! After that, we hiked in Sedona and checked out Jerome, AZ. Jerome is a super interesting old mining town that you should absolutely look into when you can.
That was our trip in a nutshell, with way too much money spent but amazing memories made. I am now dating and living with that friend with benefits that I've talked about so much. He is such an amazing man. He is so incredibly patient and understanding when it comes to my anxiety. I'm never "too much" or "too crazy." We are also almost the same person. Sometimes he says or does something that is so similar to something I would do or say and it freaks me out! I think he's definitely going to be my person for a while.
I kind of stopped the EMDR therapy that I was doing, just kind of got really busy. But I'm doing okay, the trauma from what happened hasn't bothered me and I have avoided any possible chance at seeing that awful man again.
Right now in my life, I'm just working as much as I possibly can to try to save money for the big move. I'm so beyond excited for the Colorado chapter of our lives!

HUGE Changes Coming

I've been scheming. And by scheming I mean, planning huge, giant things! I am thinking about moving abroad for a couple years! I've just hit this wall where I feel like I'm just existing. I'm watching all my friends and siblings getting married and have babies. I'm no where near that point in my life right now, hell I'm barely even dating. And, if I'm being honest, it's getting hard to watch so many people live such happy lives. I'm so happy that they're getting their happy ending, however, it's bittersweet for me because I don't know if/when I'll get my happy ending.
So, I've decided that instead of sitting around, waiting for me to get my happy ending and watching everyone get theirs, I'm gonna go live a bomb ass life! And you know what, I think it just might be doable! I can cash out my 401K which has about $20,000 in it right now and I can sell my car for a decent chunk of change. I can use some of the money to pay off my credit cards completely and pay off my car. That means that the only debt I should be taking with me is $130/mo for student loans. So, the question is where? The whole purpose of this would be so I can keep traveling around Europe while I live there so it needs to be connected to the mainland. And of course, I would prefer it's a primarily English speaking country! I would like to make sure the chances of me failing are less than they would be in America, so I want to make sure the cost of living ranks lower than the US. So far, I'm leaning towards the Netherlands but we'll see!
My dude-but-not-dude is absolutely determined that he is going to go with me. I almost feel like it's crazier to do that then go by myself but we shall see how it pans out! It'll be nice to have someone to support me while we're figuring out how to do this in another country.
Tentative plan for the crazy adventure I'm about to embark on:

• Look at job market
• Learn either Dutch or German
• Look at rental market 
• Buy tickets!
• Fucking gooooooooo!

Update

So, I've been working through the stuff I talked about in my last post. I've seen my therapist a couple times now. We're doing EMDR Therapy. This stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a technique that is used for treatment of trauma. Basically, I'm being brainwashed to not feel anything about the rape, instead of feeling scared, angry and sad about it. I'm really happy to see if it works and helps calm me down about it because every time I think or talk about it, I get really panicky.
Not going to lie though, EMDR is actually fucking hell to go through, right now at least. She is making me talk about the rape and fully embrace my emotions while I go through them. When things start getting too heavy or too negative, she has me breathe and refocus on "my happy place." Then we start back in with what happened and how I feel about it. I'm sure enough of these sessions will desensitize me so I don't feel anything. I can't wait.
I'm trying really hard to focus all my energy into positive thoughts or things that will make me happy instead of focusing everything on what's going wrong and what is worrying me. Just by switching from thinking negatively about all situations, I can help improve my overall mood. I've noticed that I deal with so much negative people throughout the day that it has like permanently put me in a bad mood. So, now I have to fix it!
I'm really excited because I officially got a second job (who gets excited about working more?!). I really want to buy a home in May 2020 so I've got to push hard to pay off my credit cards as much as possible before I do this. My main job has cut back on the OT offered so I've kind of been forced to pick up a second job. You're looking at the new barista at Starbucks =P. And I will now become a coffee addict!! But I'm seriously so happy about this! I'm leaving one day off from both jobs so that'll give me some R&R before I start up the next week!
It's so easy to get caught up in life and focus on all the negative. You find yourself in a hole of negativity and it just destroys you and makes you angry. I've kinda fallen back into that hole, and now I need to climb my way back out!

Sucking Out the Poison

On January 5, 2018 I was sodomized by my boyfriend at the time. It was during one of our parties. He came into the room during the middle of the party, raped me and then he left the room. He came back in after he realized that everyone left and started yelling at me, telling me everything that was wrong with me. He broke up with me after that.
I think this was a hard fact for me to admit, even to myself. I kept denying in my head that he raped me because surely you can't get raped by someone you're in a relationship with, right? But that was so wrong. I should have done something about it when I had the chance but I played on denial. The hard truth is: I asked him to stop repeatedly, I told him no repeatedly, I tried crawling away from him and he just kept going. I was raped, no matter how I try to deny it, no matter how I try to downplay it.
Why is it coming out right now? He's recently starting dating the man that he cheated on me with and I was incredibly angry about this. My sister pointed out that I can't keep holding on to all this anger that I have, that I need to let it go. I think the reason I have so much anger and hatred towards him is because he doesn't deserve to be happy, not after what he did to me. He's a fucking rapist for crying out loud. It's almost become an obsession with me, hoping to see that he's doing awful because I want him to have such a shitty life. And I'm so incredibly worried that he will do it again to someone else.
So, I'm going to go see a therapist and see if I can get some tips on getting through the trauma. I am also going to block him from Facebook so I no longer have the temptation to creep on him. I told my friends that I don't want to hear anything about him. From this point on, he is dead to me.
Unfortunately, I don't really think that going to the cops at this point would do anything, other than create hella problems for me. At this point, I have no proof that this happened and I'm assuming that means he would need to confess. I promise he's not going to do that. So, all I can imagine is that if I go to the police, he will find out and come in and take everything that he left at the house for my roommate and I to use. Yes, that stuff is easily replaceable, however I am no where near able to spend that kind of money on new stuff. But I really, really don't want him to do this to anyone else. So, I'm going to write him a letter telling him exactly what he did to me and letting him know how it fucked me up. Maybe if he sees what he did to me and how it affected me, he will stop himself from doing it again.

Readers Gather

"Date a girl who reads. You'll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She's the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That's the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn....
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 am clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She'll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are...
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you're better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads." -Rosemarie Urquico (NOT Robert Pattinson)
Those are only small parts of this long quote from Rosemarie about why you should date a girl who reads. And it is 100% accurate! We are a small group that few appreciate. I thought, in this entry, I would talk about why I love reading and what it means to me.
When I was really little, like second grade I think, I actually hated reading. I wasn't good at understanding what I read and it frustrated me. Then I had to take a class that was designed to help kids learn reading comprehension. We used to have to read so many books a year and report back to the teacher. I will always be grateful to Mrs. Menage for teaching me to love reading. In one year I went from avoiding books and hating reading to leaving the library with stacks of books. As a matter of fact, I used to have piles of books and the minute I finished one book, I would shove my nose into a new book. Growing up, reading became an outlet to escape my problems. Don't get me wrong, I didn't really have that bad of a life but with parents that weren't together and a very strict set of parents, my angsty self thought that I had it BAD. I turned to reading when I was bored and as a distraction. I remember I used to love to bring a book out and read on my tummy in my grandmas yard during the summer.
Since then, I've changed from gooey romance novels to dark mystery novels. I'm not entirely sure how many books I've read in my life but I know it is quite a bit. I have quite a collection of my "babies" and you know I truly like you if I let you borrow one of them. I'm incredibly protective of my books and will read the riot act to whomever does get to borrow them.
Growing up, there were only a couple adults in my life that read and encouraged me to keep reading. My grandma read, I do know that. But she mostly read dirty romance novels. I also remember my mom definitely encouraging me to keep reading, she always thought it was cute that I was her reader. My older sister and I were the only ones growing up that were avid readers. Every reader knows that there are the actual readers and there are people that want to be readers. The actual readers are the people that always have a stack or a list of books on deck to read. The others claim they love to read but maybe pick up one book a year.
When I met my ex's mom, I discovered another person that soaks up books like water. Every time I saw her, we would small talk for just a minute and then immediately tell each other about the current book that we were on. It's very rare to find a person that can share that passion with you. That was one of the biggest reason I fell in love with her! Unfortunately when she passed, I realized that I lost that and I might never have that again. However, I recently met my dude's grandparents and found out that his grandpa is also an avid reader. As a matter of fact, he sent me home with three of his books to read!

Real Talk: Shitty Self-Esteem Issues

Ever since I was little, I have always struggled with self-esteem issues. I hide it very well but it's always there, whispering in my ear and reminding me of why I'm not good enough. My grandma noticed it at an early age and tried to correct it, or give me the tools to correct it. She bought me this little stuffed monkey that when you squeezed it it whistled at you. I remember, when she gave it to me, she told me to squeeze it every morning to remind myself that I'm beautiful. At the time, I just laughed it off as my grandma being silly. I wonder if that would have fixed it...
I don't really have self-esteem issues about my personality. After Matt, I definitely did but before he came into my life and fucked that up, I never had doubts about who I was as a person. I'm slowly getting myself back to that stage. I've pretty much gotten to the point personality wise where I'm just like, you either like who I am as a person (because I'm a fucking awesome person) or you fuck off.
My problem with my self-esteem that I struggle with DAILY is physically. Growing up as a chubby kid, I never really thought highly of how I looked. To this day, you can call me pretty or gorgeous and I will immediately shut it the fuck down. I know that I'm not horrible looking, I acknowledge that but to call me pretty or anything? That's just not true. I feel awful about how shitty my self esteem is because it absolutely fucks up relationships. It's hard to want to be with someone that needs to be told that you're still attracted to them.
When I look in the mirror. I do not see beautiful. I do not see gorgeous or pretty. I don't even see slightly cute. I see a double chin. I see dark ass circles under my eyes. I see rolls where people like to see flat. No matter how hard I try, I cannot convince myself that I am beautiful. I hate how that person in the mirror looks, and I've just accepted that I'm butt ass ugly. I have tried to change that for so long and I'm not even sure where to begin to make myself feel better about myself?
I looked up ways to improve self-esteem and I might seriously try again. The biggest way to improve is to just be nice to yourself. Ha!! I am the hardest person I know on myself. I'm so nice and understanding with everyone else but I'm so incredibly fucking hard on myself. Maybe just every time I want to think something negative about my appearance, I have to think of something positive about my appearance? Maybe that'll help.
Honestly, everything I'm reading about how to improve your self-esteem is based on not being so damn hard on yourself. I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO REWIRE MY PERFECTIONIST BRAIN!!!! If you have any tips, please help lmao.

Baking is BOMB

So, I'm trying to be more regular with my blogs (because sooooo many people read them, HA!). But really it's more for me. Things have been going pretty great with me so not a whole lot to report on. The dude is absolutely amazing. He is sooo much different than my ex. He fucking dotes over me, what is that!?! Job still sucks (of course) but I make bank there though so I can't complain too much.
So, baking. Why is that my title for this post? Because I'm so fuuuucking passionate about it! That is definitely a huge hobby of mine, only made greater by my recent Christmas present. I got this BEAUTIFUL KitchenAid mixer. It's dark blue and it makes everything so much easier to make! Baking has always been a passion of mine. I love how everything about baking comes down to an exact science. If you don't have an ingredient at the right temperature, it could completely change the outcome of your baked good. For example, if you use melted butter for cookies, your cookies will be flatter and misshapen but if you use cool, room temperature butter, your cookies will be uniform and fluffy. 
I prefer baking over cooking because cooking can take you hours to cook something that will take you 15 minutes to eat but baking can take you hours to bake something that will take you a week to eat. Not to mention, it is the ultimate comfort food. Who doesn't like some OG chocolate chip cookies? Monsters, that's who! Of course, baked goods aren't exactly healthy for you so it's important to find some skinny "victims" in which you can push your baked goods on. I have a handful of people that get a portion of my baked goods when I've baked a project. It's a win win for both of us. They get free, delicious baked goods and I get to get rid of the temptation!
Since I got my KitchenAid, I've been working on trying out different recipes and fine-tuning my skills. My goal is to be able to bake as a second job on the side. I haven't gone public or anything yet because I want to perfect my skills before I try to push my products on people. I've never done much for decorating before so I've been working on trying to perfect that, along with figuring out the right temperature for the right amount of time. I've also switched to using my Instagram primarily for just baking, look it up: NikkiG126!
Another great benefit of baking is baking bread! There is nothing more satisfying than beating up some dough. Towards the end of my relationship, I was always tense and angry (never stay in a relationship that makes you feel that way). Whenever it got especially bad, I made bread. I would knead and knead the bread until I had worked through my frustrations. Not to mention, all that labor actually leaves you feeling really good about yourself later on.
So, in conclusion. Fuck cooking, it sucks and is a waste of time. Bake if you want to make something actually worthwhile. =P

Emotional Intensity Disorder: Here's to the Crazy Ones

In my past blogs, I've talked about how I think I might have emotional intensity disorder (not diagnosed, probably should get on that). Lately, my emotions have been all over the fucking place and I decided to finally do a little bit more research on it. And holy mother of god, do I ever have it. I was reading this article regarding the disorder: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/emotional-intensity.
So, according to this website, there are five things that make up an emotional intensity disorder. The first is that you feel emotions incredibly deep and complex. This is sometimes both a good and a bad thing. Good because when you're happy you're REALLY happy, we're talking cloud 11 you're so damn happy. But when you're sad, it's like this completely soul crushing sadness. You just seem to feel every single emotion to your core.
The second is that you have a deep empathy and sensitivity. This means that you feed off other's emotions and reflect them on your own. It's easy to become the emotional dumping ground for people because you catch it all from them. You feed off them. I've found that this isn't exactly the best thing because toxic people can drag empathetic people down into their hole and, because we feel everything so deeply, you can have a hard time breaking free from their emotional suffocation. I.e. the entire two years I was with my ex.
Thirdly, someone with this disorder is very sensitive to how people are beyond their words/actions. It means you pick up on their emotions by their facial expressions (or at least this is my take on it). It means that peoples actions can bother you to the point of almost obsession. I honestly don't think I have this issue so much? Idk. I am stupid sensitive about how people react to what I've said/done but I guess honestly, I always thought that was because of my anxiety. Maybe, it's because of this damn disorder instead?
Fourth, you have a hunger for learning new things and challenging yourself. You can let yourself be completely absorbed by the current book or song. This all sounds great but right along with that comes the perfectionist or the self-critics. With myself, I go completely nuts on new idea or new projects that I've thought up and I obsess about it. Baking has been one of the longest lasting passions that I've had. I absolutely love baking and all that it takes. But I am definitely way too much of a perfectionist. And, if I cannot perfect a skill, I get incredibly frustrated and down on myself. I actually had a teacher notice this in me years ago in math, one of my least favorite subjects. She pulled me out of the room and told me that if I don't understand something right away, I seem to shut down completely and lose all patience. I've had to learn to work with that. I've learned that the most I can do is just keep trying until I get it down. Crocheting has been the bane of my existence thus far because of this as well. I can't seem to master it and no matter how much I try, I'm not getting it down perfect. But I know that I just need to take some time to meet with an experienced person and let them show me what to do different.
Lastly, a person with this disorder tends to focus on the big stuff in life. You feel like you never have enough time to get done what you need to do and it crushes you because you feel like you aren't measuring up to your full potential. I felt this one to my goddamn core!!! In recent years, I've learned that I'm becoming a lot more like my father than I care to admit. I can't just sit anymore, not if I know there is stuff that I would be better at spending my time on. It's super productive that's for sure. But it also can be really exhausting and maddening.
So, all those things together tell me that I'm crazy af, right? I guess it just means that I'm a stupid intense person and I need to figure out an outlet to channel all this. My dude actually explained a little to me last night about this. He said that I start off my day with this cup. As I go throughout my day, I'm putting a little bit of everyone's emotions into that cup, along with what I've been through myself throughout the day. This made even more so by working at a job that handles peoples' money, people call when they can't use their cards and you can only imagine how they are feeling. By the end of the day, my "cup of emotions" is full to the brim and I need to figure out where to dump it.
So, I feel like the only way to keep this thing in check is to find a dumping ground or outlet for all these emotions. Maybe meditation is the key to this? Pushing all the emotions from the day right out my brain and focusing on the good of the day? Maybe I can work on that while I'm driving home from work at the end of the day? Letting all of my frustrations go out the window so when I get home, I'm ready to relax and enjoy my time away from work? Another possibility is moving my workouts to the night so I can pump out my frustrations/angst into my body. Working out was my safe haven when my ex and I broke up. It brought me from tense to relaxed. It's not ideal with how late I get off work but it is definitely doable. I could go work out for an hour and go home and eat and chill the rest of the night. I've also found that writing or blogging helps me organize all this SHIT in my brain.
I'm not sure exactly what to do with this. But I think without a doubt I do have this disorder. I'll update on what outlet I've found that works best for me.

Back in My Groove

I'm back on that working out again bullshit and it feels so damn amazing. I paused after I got back from Ireland and decided to give myself the winter off (who really wants to get up in the cold ass weather and go to the gym, be honest). I was having a really hard time getting the motivation to go back but I was finally able to, and this time it'll be the right way. I bought a waist trainer and I wear that under my hoodie. Talk about SWEAT! I'm sticking to my working out 3 days a week and walking at least 2 days a week!
There is something to be said about how amazing you feel after you've worked out. You can feel weak as shit and go work out and suddenly you feel like you can take on the world. When you push your body to the edge, to the point where you are shaking trying to do one last rep, you feel so empowered. You realize just how strong your body actually is and how much more you can do with it. It also pumps you up for the rest of the day.
I struggle a little with cutting calories and eating healthy though. I've always had a stupid high sweet tooth (thanks dad!). So, I watch what I eat for breakfast and lunch and I feel like that usually gives me decent wiggle room for dinner. But I just need to cut out all the snacking in between. I'm thinking I'll just get some really good nuts or something so if I must snack, at least I'm snacking on shit that is good for me.
I think the biggest reason that I want to continue to work out is because I never want to see my body get to where it was before. I was pushing 375 lbs (how gross is that)! I let myself go so much that small activities were hard for me to do. I never want to see my body get that weak again. I want to not worry about breathing too loud after doing the smallest activity. I'm also really liking this guy that I'm seeing and I want to be able to give him the very best part of me. I don't want my weight to restrict us ever. I want him to be hella proud of the woman he is dating and I fully intend to make him that way.

Lady Bits Suuuuuck

Okay, so I'm gonna touch on some of my current problems. WARNING: Too much information definitely included.
A couple months ago, I bought this Diva cup to help me try to save some money/save the environment where I can. If you haven't heard of it, it's this little silicone cup that you fold and insert like you would a tampon. It then spreads out and it supposed to catch all the blood. For a while, it worked out pretty great. I don't bleed a whole lot so I could go all day with it in with no problems. I stopped using tampons completely. Did you know that a tampon lasts on this Earth for 7 freaking years?!
Last month, I started having problems using it. For whatever reason, I couldn't get it to stay in place and I kept leaking all over the place. I was so frustrated because all of my cute-ass undies were getting stained. Because of the leaking, it made taking out the Diva cup incredibly difficult. One night, I went to grab the teeny, tiny nub to pull out the cup and my finger slipped and I FUCKING STABBED MYSELF IN IN MY VAGINA. It was so fucking awful. I soon forgot about it and moved on.
Suddenly, I started having some pretty gnarly discomfort whenever the dude and I would start messing around. It was only right when he put it in, but it was so bad it made me want to kick him away. I finally bucked up and went to the doc for an exam. That was when I found out that I had an actual fucking flap of skin from when I cut myself down there. They said to hold off sex for a couple weeks and gave me medication for BV, bacterial vaginosis. This is basically a chemical imbalance that is the opposite of a yeast infection.
Fast forward to now. We had sex a couple times but the pain is still there. Sooooo I had to tell him that we're going to have to hold off for another couple of weeks. Now, both of us struggle a lot with this because there is a lot of attraction between the two of us. Luckily he is patient as shit and is completely fine with waiting.
Along with the pain though, my lady bits have been suuuper dry and itchy as shit for the last week or so. It's completely maddening and I'm so frustrated with it. I have NEVER had problems with my downstairs being dry, fucking never! Side note: my mom has told me that the ladies in our family have a Lysine diffincy. Lysine is the amino acid that helps prevent cold sores and helps with any type of sores healing. I realized all last week I completely spaced taking any of my morning vitamins. As a matter of fact, I sucked at all my vitamins and stuff last week! So I'm thinking the cut + not taking my lysine is probably why I'm having these problems. But holy. fucking. shit. I am so miserable!
All I can think about now is when TF did my vagina get so goddamn sensitive?! Any irritation used to take like a day to recover. Now I have to wait 7-10 business days before my vagina will decide to do it's job again. It takes so long to fall asleep because I'm constantly itchy. Aaaand I don't get to sleep very long because I wake up from the damn itching, which normally prevents me from falling asleep again.
I feel broken. I feel tired. I feel frustrated. I feel like now that I'm over 25 years old, I have to pay attention to vagi-rules. No washing the lady bits with normal body wash. Gotta let that bitch just rinse and repeat itself. No lotion down there (soooo when your bits are a little dry, suck it tf up). Even fuuucking sex can throw all your shit off. And I'm thinking, do men realize how lucky they actually are?

An Open Letter to the Man that Fixed Me and then Broke Me Again

You know who you are. The man that promised me romance and love but gave me the complete opposite. Before you came along, I had pretty severe trust issues from the cheating ex before you. You taught me that I could trust again. I remember how happy I was when I first realized that I actually trusted a man again. The man before you left me pretty broken. But you came in and, at the beginning, you completely swept me off my feet. You were so romantic with your soft touches and patience. There were some things about you that I wasn't completely sure about but none of that mattered because, I found someone that loved me for all of me. But that wasn't actually the case was it? It was actually kind of just a front.
A few months later, you started telling me that different parts of me were "almost deal-breakers." I worried too much and you couldn't deal with that. I talked too much and sometimes I just needed to shut the fuck up. Slowly but surely you took down everything I was once confident about. Before you, my self-esteem issues only dealt with my body image. After you, I had self-esteem issues with my personality and that is so much more fucked up. I found myself apologizing to everyone about everything I said and did. I was scared that other people would look at me the way you looked at me, like I was the dumbest/most annoying person you had ever met. You were so nice to everyone else around you but you treated me like absolute shit. I had no choice but to think that it was all me, that I was the problem. As a matter of fact, whenever things went wrong at parties, you would personally seek me out just to treat me like shit and tell me all that was wrong/fucked up about me. I think you finally started realizing what exactly you were doing to me because you finally released me.
Even after you left me, I still thought it was all on me. I was scared to date anyone else and have them point out everything that was wrong with me. But guess what? I found this guy and he actually loves the things about me that were "almost deal-breakers." He loves that I talk so much because he loves just listening to me talk, and he talks almost as much as I do. He loves that I worry because he loves that I care so much about everyone. I apologize for saying/doing something and he looks at me like I'm crazy and tells me to relax. To him, I'm more than enough. He asks me to text him and let me know when I'm home safe. He wants me to show him how my baked goods are being displayed at parties because he cares that fucking much about me. I won't even get into how much better in bed he is. I think he was my prize after dealing with you.
I want you to know that I will never forget what you did to me, I'm working on the forgiving part. You were a very important lesson. You were the type of relationship that I now know to actively avoid. I don't regret some of our memories together. You did benefit me just a little bit. You taught me to not give a shit about what people thought about me (ironic isn't it). You also taught me to expand my horizons when it came to food and experiences. I want to thank you for letting me go, because you knew that I wouldn't leave you. Thank you for giving me the chance to find someone who appreciated me for me. Now, kindly go fuck yourself.