Dear Roland, I met you while I was bartending - coming right off a breakup, I didn't realize how much of a mess I was at the time. I thought I had it all together; a busy work schedule, daily writing sessions, weeknight plans with friends, a seemingly contended demeanor. I guess I thought if I acted as though everything was okay, I would believe that I was okay. You came along at precisely the best and worst time. I had needed a distraction - a reason to regularly check my ph

Dear Mason, When I look back at our history, I sometimes feel like I'm watching a foreign film without subtitles. You're as transient to me now as a stranger would be, but the truth is, I felt glimpses of that when we were together, too. You were always so caught up in the idea of you, of who you were trying to be, that you never really let yourself be. You never gave yourself a chance at figuring out who you really are. I didn't want to wait around until you rose to the ver

I've written a lot about the topic of trust in the past and how trusting people was often really hard for me to do. I've shared with you personal stories of having faith in past romantic relationships to eventually find out that the person I believed in didn't have my best interest at heart. The last time I wrote about those experiences was two years ago, around the time I had taken a hiatus from writing for Struck Inside Out. I've had two full years of reflection, stretching

One of my all time favorite quotes is by Ernest Hemingway when he speaks about trust. He says, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” I find this to be one of the most difficult and beautiful things to do in life. To let your guard down and invite someone in, allowing them to take up space in your heart when you’ve always reserved that space for yourself can be scary. Especially when you’ve had people come and take advantage of that territory a