Chapters
TLSJ Vol.1

“Letting You Go”

Fiction. Based on a True Letting Go. 17 minute read

Julia Price [Full Interview]

Julia Price-Inspired Journal Entry

I was just open…going through those breakups actually can completely open your heart and show vulnerability that I have never experienced… All of a sudden, there was nothing to lose…”

-Julia Price

This journal entry is inspired by true events. Some of the characters, names, businesses, incidents, and certain locations and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional. 

Post-Pathetic Part I

I don’t know why you run away from me as if I was just joking or toying with you when I said I love you.

I wasn’t joking.
It’s not a game.
It’s life.
I am sensitive and I feel deep, and now I’m hurting.. a lot. I mean it’s not your fault. You have no idea who I am other than the two dates and our past 4-month conversations on Skype and FB, but couldn’t you just say that you don’t love me back? Or that you don’t feel the same at least? Were you afraid of hurting me by not expressing how you feel about me or did you just think I was playing with your emotions?
I didn’t mean to play with your emotions if I did. I really mean it when I say I love you.
I may act like I can just move around with anybody, but the truth is when I fall in love, I am loyal, committed, and I give my best to that person. When I met the man I was with for 7 years, I knew I loved him after the second date, the way I know about you.
It really hurt when you claimed I was a sick and bad person for saying that I Love You and sending you food to your work with an apology letter for dismissing you. And about the men I’ve dated in the past… it was the cultural norm in LA to treat sex like it’s a sport, but I know that that comes off wrong and disgusting to someone who may have interest in me. Is it crazy to withhold myself from dating and hooking up with others in hopes that I still may have a chance with you?
I’m sorry, I didn’t see it that I was violating your privacy when I sent the food (it was a simple Google search)…I saw it as a romantic gesture to express that I care about you…I’m a journal-artist/writer…I’m good at paying attention to details when I want to….what you said about me in the last few emails, I was crying my heart out somewhere at a restaurant in Oregon when I had opened the email.
All I could think about that moment in the parking lot, when I had wrapped my arms around you. I spooned you and it was like coming home. I felt like I came home, and as long as I can do that with you anywhere–under the Berlin bridge, the Eiffel Tower, the top of the Grand Canyon, the underbelly of Cullen Forrest, I would still be home. And it just so happened that I was spooning you in a random garage building in Koreatown, then again in Pershing square. I couldn’t get enough of your touch. Your soft hands and your rough feet (apparently).
Is that bad?
Is it bad that I want to commit myself to you and look into cultivating a real relationship with you?
Were our two dates bad? Because I got the sense that they were amazing.
Were our times on Skype, co-working together bad? Because I got the sense that we had chemistry from the first time we Skyped.
Am I pathetic or have low self-respect if I expressed what is deep in my heart to express? That I had imprinted on you when I saw this painting at the Norton Museum and thought about a pastoral kind of life with you? World traveling, nature seeking, and creatively supporting one another?
I don’t get it, Rylie. I don’t get why you are so scared of me.
About 30 minutes ago, it hit me hard. I was curled up in a ball, in physical pain from the withdrawal of losing you, crying. I don’t get how my loving you is so bad. But I’ll let go if that’s what you want. Just wanted to express my heart to you.
I don’t expect you to save me Rylie. I just want to be your friend and freely express my love and affection to you. I don’t expect you to fix me either. If you ever read any of my poems, you’d know that I did not have that in mind when I started falling in love with you.
I just wanted to get to know you, make love to you, and find ways we can support each other physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Angelie

Post-Pathetic Part II

Hey, your instincts were right, Rylie.

Calling me a sick and bad person is the truth.

You broke a spell for me. 

It knocked my winds out like a bad soccer game. And the shock somehow short-circuited the script that was programmed into me. 

It was the shock of truth. 

I was acting like Samantha from Sex and the City, a friend told me I reminded him of Cookie Lyon from Empire or some pathetically weak version of Sleeping Beauty in Anne Rice’s The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

Thank you for having the courage to tell me the truth of who I had become. 

I’m my own worst enemy. I’m an alcoholic. A self-loathing, judgemental, bitter, alcoholic. When you wanted to run away, I knew it was for self-protection. Even when I read your email and made you wrong for it, somewhere deep inside, I knew that what you said about me is true. 

That one line:

“You are a bad and sick person. I know who you are. Stay away.”

I had turned into a femme fatale.

And you had sniffed it out and called it out.

I was the emperor with no clothing and you were the boy who called it out.

It was like a prick in a bloated blimp that was my ego, my persona, my life-life (as Dr. Jordan Peterson would describe it). I hurt men. Like a siren. Enough is not good enough when they gave me their hearts. The things that may sometimes come out of my mouth are evil–self-righteous, self-centered, self-serving ego. 

You just took that sharp tongue of yours and pierced through my delusional thinking. I was brought back to my senses once again. I had blacked out in Oregon. Another drink, another delusional attempt to fit my life into normalcy when I had just walked away from you. I had told you that I was leaving LA for good, traveling the world, saya -nara

I was really escaping you. It would just be easier to scare you away because I knew all the right things to say to scare a man off. It’s my tactic. It’s called Crazy Speak. I knew it like an actor would know it’s lined when playing the serial killer. I knew exactly what to say, how to say it, and push you away. It was the easy thing to do.

The hard thing to do would be to tell you the truth. The truth is I am the wizard on the Oz land of Love Story. That I can build a business, an online persona, and a life-lie of this amazing super woman who has multiple skills of craft, who have survived some hard stuff, and started a philanthropy designed to inspire hope and love, and the shadow side to this truth is also that I am an addict, a love avoidant, a workaholic that is terrified of commitment and intimacy, and a manic depressive who copes with her highs and lows behind a camera, a computer screen clicking away at the keyboard, a cute dress, and with liquid numb numb to chase the next hair of the dog. And when it came to getting intimate with you, I had used the project itself to project my wounds onto you so that I can push you away.

It was just easier to push you than to receive you. I am a true feminine acting like a masculine so I don’t have to see myself so weak, submissive, and obsessed with you. I found myself doing things just so I can please you. What happened to my Nomadic Matt world travel plans?

They say what profits a man to gain the world and lose his soul? 

I say what profits a woman if she gains power and loses love?

I headed back to LA because I realized that I was running away from love. Fear of #13. I was leaving the scene of the two of us working together, laughing together, and making something of our lives. That day my best friend and you were all sitting together in that Korean cafe, it was one of the most blissful moments in my thirties. 

I told you I was leaving LA for good. I told you I needed to see the world before I die. You told me I didn’t play fair. You were just getting your feet grounded here. I’ve been here for 30 years and you’ve been here for less than one. And I acted like I couldn’t wait for you. Well, I can, and I shall. 

When you said stay away, your instincts were right. I was becoming if not already a femme fatale, and I was behaving in ways that acted like one. I had already written the ending of our script before it had even begun. And that was not fair. 

I’m sorry, Rylie. 

I hope one day you can forgive me. I know you felt deeply about me, more than you had cared to admit. 

Thank you for speaking truth and simplifying my life. 

Thank you for treating me like a lady, for taking your sweet time with me, for being thoughtful and careful. 

I love the way you strum on the guitar. You are sensitive, deep, and poetic. 

If I can’t get grounded and get my life together than I would rather leave you alone so that your artistry and sense of self is grounded and will bloom rather than if I were ungrounded and run the risk of ever hurting you. I love you enough to let you go.

This is my way of apologizing and now letting you go (for reals, for reals this time), but I’m keeping my door open should you choose to forgive me and start as friends again. This time, I promise I’ll let you lead and be the man, and I will learn humility, tame my own shrew, and support you in any way I can.

Post-Pathetic Part III

I’m also getting help now.

Around 30 days ago, I was going through delirium tremors, withdrawing from alcohol. I was heading back from Oregon to LA so I can go cold turkey from Alcohol once and for all. I was fasting and praying so I could get the poison out of my system. On the 7th day, I still wasn’t sleeping, and was in maximum delirium and became hospitalized for 9 days in intensive care treatment.  I’m 30 days sober now and on the 12-Step program of an Anonymous Support Group, and back to my home group that had saved my life back in 2013.

Truth is, Rylie, I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been in and out of recovery since 2013. This time around I actually experienced delirium tremors, and it was bad. I don’t ever want to go back to that feeling of nervous withdrawals, and my body shutting down. So you are right. I am a sick person, and you advised that I seek help, and I am doing just that.
Thanks,
Angelie
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