“Hard”

“I get a stomach ache…it’s just hard…cause you’re broken inside into many little pieces that it’s so hard to wake up, it’s so hard to work…”

-Marisabel Bazan

Dear Rylie,

The truth is I said I love you because I was hoping you would say you loved me back.

I have had three suicide attempts, I’m diagnosed bipolar, and I find true intimacy and love hard. My childhood memories are almost nonexistent. I don’t remember my childhood other some negative memories, but it was so normalized that I didn’t think much of it. I’ve been through this rodeo before and you remind me of a man I had almost married some years back.

The very fact that I immediately wanted you was a red flag that for both of us. I usually fall for the guys who are not healthy for me.

The crazy chemistry is the crazy addiction to alcoholics and abuse, and twin flames would mean two fires causing a bigger fire, fueled by our collective bitterness, self-loathing, and anger. And perhaps that’s why you are smart enough to keep away as well because we both know how explosive, fiery, and crazy we can both be together.

Expressing my deep emotions for you after the second date is crazy, I agree. But then, so is entering another person’s body on the first night of meeting them, which you would have been fine with, and which we both have done as if it’s another game.

Though our sex would have been amazing, it would also be used as an addiction, because I already found myself addicted to you and, we both have addictive personalities, and both of us have gone through our manic-depressive episodes; We both would have ridden on that crazy train straight to hell. I’ve been down there, and I don’t want to go back.

My aim is spiritual growth.

I’m have left Los Angeles because the culture of LA is toxic, you will soon learn. You crave authenticity, Rylie, because you are an authentic person. Your beauty shines behind those ocean eyes. You will be confronted with lots of flattering words, political correctness, and pretentious falsities, and you’ll hate it. Just be discerning not to turn a willful blind eye, or get discouraged by throwing away who you truly are for the namesake of status and power. The devil wants your real gold (your soul), which you can ask Jesus to break any daemonic soul contract you have with evil (just remember that on your journey).

Developing feelings of kindness, generosity, and goodwill towards you is not crazy, though I can understand sending food to your work after just getting to know each other is romantic, I mean crazy romantic…;)

Hopefully, by then, our paths will cross again. 

You dismissed my feelings because, like me, you are also afraid of intimacy and love. True love is not a familiar emotion to both of us, which is also why I knew I loved you on the second kiss. I hooked up with three guys in Michigan and not once did I say I loved them. No matter how many times we messed around. It was a fling, a casual thing, but not love. Images of having sex with you started when I was at Dance University, but when I actually met you, all I kept wanting to do was taking it slow with you.

After the second kiss, images of us traveling, making love, growing our business, and raising a nomadic family kept replaying, along with the play by play of our second kiss by the twilight terrace overlooking Los Angeles.

I knew I was in trouble.

I would have wanted you to elope me with and travel across the United States and then to Europe, and then to South America, and then wherever. My goal is to travel the entire world before I die. And I knew I would have wanted everything from you. Everything. And asking you to drop everything and elope with me would have been unfair to you, so it was easier to push your buttons and push you away. It was natural.

You shirk from love as much as I do. We are two wounded twin flames. I guess we both need help.

I take responsibility for making things awkward. I had spoken straight from my heart, unfiltered, and I won’t apologize for it but I will own it.

And I sabotaged the relationship because, in my heart, I knew that I can never change you, I can not fix your bitter heart, and the more close I get to you, the fear is that you’ll want to keep me from obtaining God’s mission for me, because when you are ungrounded, unfocused, and in the state of misery, you’ll want me to feel the same as you do, as you had exhibited when I had made a romantic gesture and you made it mean that I’m some dangerous psychotic woman. And then, this sick pathology would be played out among the two of us–each one-upping the other in making the other person feel like shit. That’s not healthy.

That’s what alcoholics do.

You and I are both super intelligent and creative, but stubborn and proud, and we’d make a fiery couple–and right now you and I are both looking for peace, enlightenment, and spiritual growth. I would have wanted you to drop what you’re doing and travel the world with me. I wouldn’t have taken anything less because for me it’s 0 or 100mph. It’s the addict in me.

It’s the addict in both of us.

And that’s why I can understand why you also choose to close that door between us because it’ll be a crazy ride for us, should we choose that adventure together.

12 Rules for Life will change your life, only when you are ready, and not a second earlier.

Love and Blessings,

Angelie

I fell in love with you from the moment you pulled me close up at the city terrace overlooking the Los Angeles lights and kissed me.

I love the way you say “twit-tar” and “woe-man” when you say “my woe-man?” I love the way your hands melt into mine. I love the way your smooth hand soothes my rough hands, and when I made the comment that your hands are soft, I love your impeccable timing, “but my feet are rough.” You know how to get me to laugh.

I love the way you took the rice out of my hair at the Korean Tofu restaurant, the way you brushed aside my hair strands and took it behind my ears. I knew you were trying your best to listen to me but your multisensory perception had you observing the entire environment as if protecting us while I got lost in making my point about something.

I loved our first Date. The way the pink, purple and orange sky glazed over us while we sat next to each other on the edge to potential death and dismemberment if one of us wanted to push the other off the ledge ( you know both you and I were thinking it). I love the crazy stories of the drunken episodes you’ve had and nostalgia for your Haitian friend in New York, whom you miss dearly, while we passed by the night lights of Old town Pasadena.

I had imagined what it would be like to make love to you ever since I finished Skyping and when I felt your “package” on our second kiss, it was even harder to focus on work when thoughts of our Lovemaking became fever pitch. Thoughts of us making love has inspired me to eat better and to exercise more

(You: “Do you workout?”

Me:“ I do Yoga”…

You:“ so do you workout?”)

I love your taste in jazz music and soul funk and how this music got you through one of your toughest times.

I love that you just uprooted to Berlin without knowing anybody just to discover who you really are. I love that you keep things simple because I tend to make things overly complex. I love how you were the one giving me directions while I got lost driving around Los Angeles despite the fact I have been here for 30 years.

I love the way you are gentle and firm with my body. I love embracing you from behind. I can spoon you all day. I love the way we talk like familiar friends, since the day we met each other back in November.

I have been wanting to make love to you since that day I was walking to the parking lot from Dance University and you kept showing up in my mind as I was driving back to LA, but I love you so I wanted to take it slow with you. I wanted to express my emotions so that the physical intimacy can be heightened even more. After Michigan, I was going to go to San Francisco…I didn’t want to come back to LA, but my heart told me that we needed to meet so I went to see Dr. Peterson in LA instead of San Francisco.

You said women are complicated and crazy. It’s wired into us. Remember when I had asked you what the opposite of Love was and you said “hate” at first. I said that hate is the impatience for the other to manifest love. Then you said that the absence of Love is the absence of Love.

When you had asked me a simple question, “why are you doing this ?” I gave you all sorts of reasons. I was thinking out loud, that’s how I rationalize and use critical thinking skills…and I was frankly just as confused as you were…I said maybe it was a spell, maybe it’s biology, maybe …maybe… everything but the obvious….you said that men are not complicated and I’ve been communicating to you in woe-man-speak.

You said that you are not complicated so if I had to give you a straight answer, it is this:

I love you because I love you.

You can now print this out and file it to the police. It won’t help much since I will not be in LA for a long time, but if it makes you feel better…

Hey, sorry I’ve been a bad and sick person to you. And sorry that this love game is unfair. I did not calculate my love for you so that it can lead you astray from your path in LA. Love just hit me.

I can love you from afar and if you need space, then I can love you with silence and solitude, but no amount of court-ordered lawsuit or words designed to hurt me will stop me from acknowledging the truth that Love is present.

I love you, Rylie.

Angelie reaches out to Green Eyes after Rylie chooses to run from their potential relationship after reading the emails stated above. This prompts her to reach out to her ex-fiance about her character. She requests to talk and he replies by requesting she puts it in writing. She writes a series of questions via email for him to answer, as a point for her introspection on character, knowing that her ex-fiance may still be in love with her. After weeks of no response, she realizes that she must first step up to the plate and own her own inauthenticity. She has been reading bits of Dr. Luskin’s “Forgive for Love,” so after a few weeks of no response from Green Eyes, Angelie writes back to answer her own questions.

I believe I owe you an answer first:

1. What was the impact of your loving me?

The impact of Green Eyes loving me is showing me how to love wholeheartedly, with humor, with boldness, courage, and an all-in attitude the way you have shown me. I realize now that it took so much for you to uproot everything where you settled to move in with me at Gateway, and when I didn’t like it, you moved around. When I wanted to travel, you obliged; when I wanted to take pictures, you helped. When I needed help with the debate tournaments you helped. When I was sad, you did the little things to cheer me up. The impact of your loving me brought me to AA, where I was inspired to save my own life. There was nobody who could have fixed me during that time Green Eyes. I was on a downward spiral–and the only way anybody could save me was God Himself.

The impact of your loving me is showing me the freedom of full self-expression. By introducing me to Milestone, I was able to distinguish what was holding me back. The impact of your loving me was showing me patience and kindness, even while you were battling your own addictions and daemons. The impact of your loving me was showing me consideration and how that showed up to this day–though I’m still not as thoughtful as you, I am at least self-aware that I can be that way.

The impact of your loving me was the ability for me to see myself in you. The rage, the inner torment of childhood abuse, that we have inherited and the consequences of choosing a temporary solution to a long-term journey and how that damages the family the way my alcoholism had damaged my previous marriage. You were my mirror and it gave me the opportunity to see myself in my greatness, my weakness, and my terrible. At the end of the day, when I remember our relationship, it brings me great joy to know that we had an amazing adventure together. This inspires me to move forward to find someone like you (cue in Adele).

2. What are some bad memories you have of us?

I am embarrassed to admit that I was projecting a lot of my wounds on you, trying to control everything, worried about your health and then blaming it on you, and then towards the end, I did not have the courage to break up with you so I demeaned you so that I could push you away. You were doing your best to get cleaned up and our life together again, but I was impatient. I didn’t wait for you nor could I forgive you–something that my ex-husband constantly did for me. I thought you had cheated on me when we were together. I thought your drinking would have you black out cheating on me, and that was something I could not accept, nor the abuse–the emotional, verbal, and potentially physical abuse–it reminded me of my Noni, and I was not going to repeat my early childhood again.

3. What are some good memories you have of us?

Traveling to China, your feeding me/making me organic foods, and helping me get better while you were in the process of getting better yourself. Inviting me to AA, inviting me to Milestone, doing your best to help me while the entire time I thought I was helping you. Going out of your way to serve me, to have me laughing. Turns out, I am also a bipolar alcoholic, and my crazy brain thought I could protect my own secret while somehow if I fixed you I can fix me. Totally delusional thinking from the stinking drinking thinking.

4. How have you been since we have parted ways?

I’ve been growing my own non-profit. Recently, I fell in love with a man that reminded me of you, and I had subconsciously sabotaged it through verbal diarrhea. I have had four psychosis where I had encountered messages from God to build The Love Story. Since then, I’m been on this continual journey. I have produced the first transmedia journal to address heartbreak as an extension of my own pain to passion therapy and journey. The last part is that I have finally discovered why I had been self-sabotaging love opportunities like the one we have had—Fear of 13.

Fear of Love.

Now that I know the truth, I know the truth will set me free.

Thank you for being you, Green Eyes. You have inspired me to know myself. It took me almost two years to move past us. I hope you go back to AA. There is this app called Pink Cloud that’s like Uber for AA. I’ve been using it finally since I had relapsed recently. But I’m almost 2 weeks now without alcohol. One day at a time. It works if you work it 😉

5. If you had to confide the truth about me to God, how would you describe my character?

I would describe you as a sheep in wolve’s clothing. You call yourself “danger” but the only danger I had experienced with you is experiencing real love. I loved you deeply and I loved you to a point, like Meatloaf’s song, I will do anything for love, but I won’t do that. You inspired me to set my boundaries clearly, to have standards in life, to live and let live. Letting you go was one of the hardest things I had to do–it had almost cost me my life in 2013. I wound up in a 51/50 and my down the rabbit hole journey was initiated. God sent you to activate me, and to see my higher self. Guess you were the rabbit and I was Alice discovering what wonderland truly is. I’m grateful for radical honesty, our deep conversations, and now I’m looking forward to starting my own family with this gentlemen. I have you to thank for this imprint.

In short, I would describe you as warm, loving, genuine, authentic, whole-hearted, a true artist, kind and considerate, battling the same daemons that we all must battle. 

I hope you and your family are doing well. Please take care of your boy. Never let him go and always show up for the miracle.

Love and Blessings,

Angelie

Journal-Artist