I am being relentlessly pursued by this old man with idealistic dreams. And for once I am grateful that sentence is not about love. It is about partnership, I’m not really sure how the idea fell together. Old mate is a mathematician (physicist) on the brink of retirement, he wishes to teach high school students’ math’s outside. Dumb shit like a real scaled version of the solar system. ‘If the sun is zero then Pluto is 1.3 km away on our replica model’. Yep, fuck off. I polite read your PowerPoint. I’m not one to discourage another person’s dreams but the proposition went something like ‘I want you to write, figure out if my ideas are doable and make me disciplined’. Which I read as: you want to come up with all the fun ideas (of which you have three) and you want me to effectively make it happen. Whoa old m8. This experience is teaching me how truly clueless and selfish people can be up until the day they die. Yet simultaneously live in fear to run a project independently and still be reliant on other people’s validation. Curious-er and curious-er. You learn a lot when you have nothing on your mind but keen observation of human habit. Just to clarify, I have said no tactfully; in so many ways I can’t even explain. I should really write rejection letters. Thank you for your application, the dream you have submitted does not align to any fucks I give.

My north node is in Aries. This is a horoscope/astrology thing. If you are interested, Google. If you are confused, may I also direct you to Google. All you need to take from that sentence is in this lifetime I must learn independence through assertiveness. Aries is the warrior. I do like to put up a fight.

Interesting- I actually didn’t think that I wasn’t independent or at least I didn’t see the ways in which I wasn’t. The indecent proposal highlighted one thing. I don’t want to be in business partnership and I don’t want to be someone’s lackey. I haven’t even opened my mouth about my former work situation. It’s nuclear volatile. Fuck making someone else’s dreams happen or fuck being part of someone’s agenda.

I like to think that I’m relatively independent when it comes to love but that one also doesn’t sound too true. One of my dear friends once pointed out that for a girl that was so independent and free I sure spent a lot of time in committed long-term relationships. Definitely, I always got something on the go.

In Colombia I met a doorman who told me about how he knocked up his mistress and his wife was barren and he was so sad that she had to see him have a family precisely because she couldn’t give him one but he still lived with his wife and loved his wife and he tells me how his wife is the best woman he knows on this earth. When he asks me what I’m doing in Colombia by myself because a woman travelling without a boyfriend is so strange, I give him the usual line that I am escaping my broken heart. He gives me no bullshit back and says that ‘men will always find beautiful women’ but he says it to me like it’s an apology that I lived out my life at the hands of these terrible men that break me to pieces.

I am used to the attention of men, I am not calling myself beautiful. I’m calling myself fun. My grandmother says that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ ergo I think you’re beautiful but not everyone will. I made you this humble pie. Here have 2 slices. Humility is a virtue little heroine. What I wanted to say was I put myself in isolation to think. So there would be no attention from men, so I wouldn’t be distracted and that is harder than I care to admit. It’s stretching the limits of what miss independent thought of her little independent self.

What I’m starting to see regarding my newfound idea of independence is that I don’t want to answer to anybody. I’ve already figured that one out in my professional life. Thanks old m8 you drove that home. What made me good at my former job was making shit happen. Here’s what I want, you make it happen. Done. Now how scary is that if I supported my own goals. How scary is that if I were on my own fucking team. The wind is changing because I may be developing a fear of love. Not that it hinders my independence in the traditional sense most people fear. What am I if non-traditional?

I don’t make decisions based on love. If there were an opportunity to move overseas or to do this or do that, I would never choose love first. I don’t base my decisions on other people. It is too great a burden of expectation for that love to bear, love can’t be responsible for your fulfillment or your happiness mainly because you can’t control the person you love nor should you want to. Love is not a prison or a cage. Maybe the trick is that you have to love selfishly and independently because that is when it is the most free. Here is my love trap. Being in love makes me happy. Happy people are satisfied. Satisfied people don’t work on them selves. Fuck that is a double-edged sword if I ever cut my own throat then my wrists with one. Shit. It’s so frustrating to not know what you want and it’s so easy to focus on supporting other people to avoid looking at yourself (love trap.). I’m not suggesting that you can’t love and support someone else while you chase your dreams. Easy now.

My grandmother walked up to me with her psychic emotional healing shit again the other day and she said ‘love yourself’ then left the room. I thought she was making a comment on my poor self-esteem, which I didn’t get at the time because clearly I am the prettiest one in the family (for a darkie). Joking. I think this is actually what she’s trying to teach me: that you have to love yourself, independent of anyone else and in order to be able to love anyone else. Did everyone else know that but me? Is this why my year was about constant loss? Fuck, it’s not about not needing anyone it’s about how focusing on yourself doesn’t diminish your ability to love. Fuck. And now I also understand why the universe kept handing me death. Tricky cunt.

You little heroine must fight your own battles because you are done being a damsel in distress. Send Beyoncé I need independence. Or to understand love in a way that won’t destroy me. Phew, I sure am glad I got all this time to myself to think about it. How fortunate. I am so independent.