Letter to a future lover

I know what I want, but I may have forgotten how to compromise along the way. Do you know what you want? Do you know if I am what you want?

Lifestyle is important, and I don't mean just music. Although it would be ideal if we listen to similar genres, rhythms, tunes, it's equally as challenging to find someone who has an opinion on music. Saying that you listen to "a bit of everything" is not an opinion. Only listening to Top 40, or what is the trend of the year, is not "an opinion". I'm not saying you need to know all the greatest bands that ever lived, but it would be nice if you knew who Nirvana was beyond "Smells like Teen Spirit".

When I say "lifestyle" I really meant "values". I'm not talking about good old family values, the white picket fence, the dog, the Betty Crocker, the 9 to 5. Maybe it's getting easier for women to find men who are not ashamed to identify as feminists without it turning into a "but men are oppressed too" argument; because we are not saying that your lives don't matter, you assholes, we are just saying that ours do too, and we are talking about ours right now because we are the ones disproportionately being date raped, sexually assaulted, trafficked, abused, murdered. I am also talking about mental health and addictions awareness, being trauma-informed, being culturally sensitive and aware, being respective, being a LGBTQ ally, recognizing that it is a privilege to live on unceded First Nations land. You don't even have to be passionate about or as knowledgeable these things as I am. Basically I just want you not to be an asshole, and I want you to educate yourself if you realize you are ignorant.

Social justice is important to me. It is not just my work, it has always been my life. You don't live through being called a "chink" in elementary school without being forcibly reminded that you are different, that you somehow don't belong. You don't grow up with a brother who has autism without learning a bit about people who are not "neurotypical", who may not understand the same social cues and norms that we do.

More than anything, I need someone who can understand me without wanting to change me. Someone who can sit with me in the dark rather than thinking they need to bring a light. Someone who I can be vulnerable with, and someone who can be vulnerable with me.

Letter to a former lover

I didn't think that it would hurt me that we are no longer talking. You asked me if I had felt anything, and I didn't, and yet I feel as though I have lost a friend, and that makes it somehow worse.

We had a lot in common. We had nothing in common.

You are optimistic, naive. Someone once told me that we all have this thing, called the "saving people" complex, but in my line of work it has been hammered into me that we are not here to "save" people, that the people we work with do not need to be "saved". Because who are we to say that we have all the answers? What is it about us that means we have our lives so together, that we can salvage the remnants of someone else's? There is no us, no them. We are all the same. We are all different.

And you wanted to save me.

It didn't make me hate you, that part of you that implied I needed saving, and that you, in all your pretentious white knight glory, you, think that you can bring all the light I need into the darkness that is my. life.

It didn't make me hate you, but over time I would have resented you.

Because who the hell do you think you are?

There is that moment, when being yourself becomes the mask, when being cloaked in yourself meant that you were powerful, invincible, because you are shouting to the world that you know who you are, that these parts of yourself that other people keep hidden, that other people are afraid of because they refuse to acknowledge that they can be just as selfish, as petty, as ugly as the next person.

I am not depressed because I am me. I am depressed because you are you. You know how they say "it's not you, it's me"?

It's not me, it's you.