I say he’s me with a penis. I quietly think he’s better than me but that’s a whole other post. Our similarities are real though, even in our heartbreaks.

We don’t often consider men get broken hearts, we should.

We don’t often consider how men manage that pain. We should.

Men should have the same space to process in a healthy manner the transition from involved to single the way we do it with women.

While you won’t ever get all of the details of how Kahlil shredded my heart, you know that he did. Other heartaches have happened since I first met him, but his cut the deepest even if Andrea’s did the most damage.

When I found out that he was getting married, I killed a part of me which wanted the idea of what we could have had together. I was not going to endure that again. Then life happened and I realized I wanted the dream I had when I thought that other person was the one who held the key to it. I wanted all of the promise and joy and experiences and I took a leap of faith I could have it.

A funny thing happened, Daddy appeared in my DMs and before I knew it, I allowed myself to believe again. While our connection thus far has been good and with minimal stress, it might not always be that way. I do feel we will always fall back to how this began, and respect one another to not allow things to fester, but I do not hold the delusion we are perfect. We’ve still got a LOT of shit to figure out and the growing pains with that aren’t gong to always be simple. If we remain who we are at our cores it will be manageable.

We talk about everything, always. There isn’t a topic off limits. Not even Becky anymore. That is a spot where I tread carefully. One of our earlier interactions there resulted in anger from us both, and that moment I don’t need to re-live. The fact she is on the table again at all is a testament to our commitment and I am thankful for that.

Along the way though it required me to get out of my feelings and into his. We never expected ‘us’, and life right now is complicated as fuck. We have a lot to mange and pan for and the pandemic is affecting everything.

We got to talking yesterday though and this was one of our messages. We didn’t have a phone conversation, we used a medium which required us to think, invest time and energy in before responding. To use our words more carefully because the nuance of body language and facial expressions and tones don’t exist there. We could have gotten on Zoom but we chose this on purpose.

While we unpacked that particular issue, I was reminded of a plan a decade ago to pack up and leave my life here and begin a new life in California. I recalled the terror when I knew I wanted this man, because so many of the things present in the former were present now and my brain said run bitch run. My heart [and my vagina] said stay.

This message stood out because I chuckled. I am supposed to be the one who reacts based on history and here this man was showing me to be his I would have to earn that place in ways others didn’t have to before me. That he’d given himself totally and completely to find that what he offered was abused and neglected. His story is not all that different than my own and it reminded me why we work.

Those lessons were painful and we learned from them. It shapes how we move today. Our struggle to love and be vulnerable is a shared one. So far we haven’t let each other down.