Author: Anonymous

Letter to my First Love

There are some things that I have to express and they’re confusing. The girl I used to love (and still might just a little), how do I even begin to describe her? I met her when I was 11 or maybe even 12, an age where I was so bitter and angry that when she approached, heart on her sleeve, hands reaching out with friendship all I could do was recoil and spit venom at her. With most people, they would have seen the violence in my eyes and given me up as a lost cause but somehow you must have seen something else because you never stopped approaching me with nothing but compassion in your eyes. Sometimes I wish you would have stayed away, maybe I wouldn’t have hurt you then.

At a speed I could not have anticipated you became my best friend, not that I would have ever admitted it to myself, and I would go to you with girl problems and I never noticed that even then I was hurting you.

And then we fell in love, and that was the beginning of the end for me, everything revolved around you, I swear that it was like gravity shifted and I was caught in your orbit. I don’t know if you ever felt like I loved you less than you did me, but it’s not true.

I loved you with everything in me, in spite of everything in me. I swear it was like I was drowning, the way I loved you felt like I was always on the cusp of imploding. It was violent and my heart tore at my chest to offer itself unto you.

When we kissed my skin felt like bursting into flames and lightning charred the inside of my veins and I was lost, lost, lost in you.

I loved you so, which is why I couldn’t keep going, I burnt out, I couldn’t keep up. I made you unattainable when I already had you. But I was losing myself and I couldn’t afford to.

But the worst part, is that it wasn’t always passion and burning.

The moments I miss more are the ones where you would become unbearably human. Memories of sitting on your feet because you thought your toes would fall off. Memories of shampoo in my eyes that you would tenderly wipe away. Of gel and hairbrushes and your capable hands taming these wild curls. Of snow days spent watching movies. of handholding that would light up my soul. Of drawings that you would make of the two of us. (I wonder if you make them for him) Of gentle singing when you were focused. Of earth-shattering worship that would bring down the Kingdom. Of tight sock buns and even tighter hugs. Of front lawn conversations in the dark. Of slow dancing, of learning how to dance because I wanted you to have a partner in me. We fit, you made me feel needed in a way I craved, I was ready to give up everything for you.

Suffice to say, I miss you. Today more than others. And I’ll probably never stop loving you in some capacity, you were my first love, but I hope you aren’t my last.

I miss You W.A

I was thinking of you the other day.. Especially on the day of your birth 17th July ,a day I will never forget even tho I think that you think that I did lol .Some of my passwords are still your birth date I just never bothered to change it after all this time. 1707

I am sure you had a very happy and blessed birthday with those that you love and who loves you. You have 1 of the kindest souls I have come across in my life. A Strong woman that can overcome anything life throws at her. I really miss you sometimes, not for what but just the talks we use to have and the laughs or stupid arguments.

You are unforgettable! ❤ 1 Of The Greatest Love’s I have ever known. You will always hold a special place in my heart.

I hope you keeping safe with all that’s going on with the coronavirus and your family is doing good and well..

I will and have always Loved You. ❤
N.Carter

Dad

8/10/2020

It’s been four years now since you suddenly passed, and today feels just the same as that night when I got the call from the county coroner’s office. There is a pressure in my core that perpetually swells, filling me with anxiety and emptiness.

Things could have been better growing up. They always could have, and I harbored an unwarranted resentment towards you. But I was a kid and I didn’t fully understand everything. Even as a young adult, things took their time making sense. Once I was married and gifted you your first grandchild, things changed and the threads of healing were finally being sewn.

Then you fucking left. Heart attack they say, and you were gone before the paramedics even arrived. It may be cliche, but there was so much more that I needed from you, Dad. Namely, how to handle this crippling depression I inherited from you. Because leaving like that, yeah, it fucked me up more than normal. Despite being surrounded by my own family under my charge, I have never felt so alone. This is the fourth year in a row my wife forgot about today, and the fourth year I have to pretend like I’m okay because it’s not okay to not be okay.

I’m spiraling and can’t stop it. I love you and I miss you so damn much. I needed more time and it was stolen from me. I’ve tried releasing this anger and resentment, but I just can’t. So I bury it and forget it for a while until it decides to rise to the surface. I don’t even know who or what it is directed at. Only that it is eating ferociously at my sanity. I am overwhelmed with the feeling that I need to be where you are at all costs, wherever you may be. And some day, I’ll likely make the journey. Not just because I miss you, but because wherever you are is a hell of a lot better than this nightmarish cesspool we call Earth.

Call center 2

Another kind of weird thing I witnessed at the call center was the interpersonal relationships that would form in the short time that you could. I watched a married woman with two kids in my class bond with one of the few single men present and then slowly dismantle her home marriage in hopes he would take the bait, and he did. Our class started as a pretty friendly bunch but as they got mucked up in each other they started getting weird with the rest of us, which for the record definitely affects the group vibe.

Another older man, started out friendly enough with me but as his own long term partnership came apart started being a little bit too sweet on me, it started with wanting to read a script that he wrote and lent me an art book. it would have been fine at that had he not gotten so flirty with his verbiage and gestures and That made me really uncomfortable being very forthright about my homelife.
Other teammates I enjoyed ultimately decided the position wasn’t right for them after a bad day of verbal abuse from callers , there was a very high turnover rate for a reason and that reason is the shit was too deep to wade your way through to the rewards.

Call Center

For a few months I was working at a bank call center. Initially it seemed like a great idea, 401k and paid time off would have been a dramatic change of the treatment I was used to in service industry work. We bought a new car for the occasion, that my husband used while I took the van.
The training days it was all technical, learning how to navigate their software and appropriate conversation points to expedite communication, building up social relations because once you’re on the phones there’s no time to get to know your co workers.
We didn’t touch the phones for a few weeks while the company used all of its “educational” tools to indoctrinate you into thinking everything was swell, that the corporation supported equal rights, ethics, and individual advancement… but the getting there is the challenge.

The Enlightenment,
Even though we’d get an occasional moral boost with takeout lunch, past the training point you were expected to be a well oiled matched. Get logged in and clocked as soon as possible to pump out as many card service calls as possible before a 15 minute break from callers, after that lunch is an hour whenever your scheduled, and another 15 minutes before the end of your shift.
Sure some of the callers are just paying off debt and don’t care to talk to me more than necessary, but others are yelling at me, calling me bitch.. I can hear the echo of my voice in the headphones trying to keep up composure. Others were lonely elderly who were so lonely and disadvantaged in their home lives that If I let them, they could talk to me for hours about their loneliness for a space of comfort. The number of fraud claimed and attempted account takeovers I processed would really shock you.
Internally it just felt alienating though, they try to make your sole point of focus them. They’d make it competitive to make it feel like you’re playing a game ,but really it’s just the demand to get the worker to process as much as possible, so you can see how man calls your group members are taking and how they’ve been revived, but no matter how positive the reviews when you get sat down for review there’s always the input of…well can you take more calls. Though they’d try to set up little games here and there ultimately the callers themselves were what set the tone.

I think part of what made it so grueling for me was the rush hour to get my kid from daycare before closing in rush our. A 20 minute drive turned into 2 hours and more than once I had close encounters with catastrophe.
The first week I was attempting to leave and another car tapped bumpers with me in a blind spot, the woman was initially going to drive off but turned around when she saw me get out of the car. This black lady in a different department just starts screaming at me that her cars a rental and wailing about how could I do this, before even looking to see that neither of us had damage.

About a week before I was taken out by a malfunctioning van that turned off every time I turned left, we start having some really strange glitches in the system that would leave us unable to do our job, just totally unresponsive but I find it a relief because now I’m having trouble with my left ear..like tinnitus I imagine.

Then I get a cold, but I haven’t earned my vacation/sick time yet and the van is at my dads shop ( not getting repaired ever because he really proved he doesn’t care to be helpful) So I’m borrowing the new car for the day and it ends in disaster as I’m driving home on the interstate in bumper to bumper traffic and the elderly man in front of me breaks suddenly, it would have been fine but my heel slips off the brake and I total our new car. Thankfully the man in front of me is unharmed and there doesn’t appear to be damage but I’m just..done. our resources have been stretched unsustainable thin and I have to make the choice if this is the kind of stress I can deal with and I decide that no it’s not for me.. would have liked to reached that conclusion before the accident but here we are. The new car was able to be repaired and was completely insured and I’m still alive but had the luxury to embrace a new focus on trying to create a body of art man to attempt to sell and homeschooling our kid now that I could use more than half of my paycheck on preschool.
It looks like that’s not going to change in my immediate future, but maybe my ability to be my own boss and help bring in monies will improve, thankfully I have some great figures to look to for advice and guidance there. So long as we maintain our health.

overwhelming

i’m feeling overwhelmed asf.
too much to clean, too much to pay, too much to think about.
i’m tired.
i’m sick.
i’m fucking over trying to keep my full time job happy, myself happy, him happy, all at once during a pandemic while society is anything but falling a part.
worldly issues have me depressed on top of being depressed.
i’m not sure how to pause the cycle, nonetheless fucking stop it.
i miss my dad.
i miss my friends.
i miss my life.
i miss being a child, not worrying about where i’m going to find my next $20 to make ends meet.
i miss being a teenager, getting high with my favorite people surrounded by nothing but love and laughter.
i miss January of 2020, only 8 months ago but it feels like a lifetime.

Game

It’s such a shame. There is most certainly a tragedy here. I said what I said for peace, not because you are deserving of It. You weren’t. But how long would I let you think you had the upper hand? Even though you did. Even though sadly , I let you have it. The worst part is that never should have happened. You are just not who I thought you were. You are not who you led me to believe you are.

Oh and I lied. I said I am ok with it all now and I sounded fairly good, didn’t I ? It is only because I have no choice. I choose me. I should have chosen me all along. I see what you do. What you are still doing. Seeking an endless supply of attention. How many women can make you feel like you’ve still got it, throw you a bone. How many can you get into bed? How many can you con like you did me? The possibilities are endless , because there isn’t an iota of thought in you for who is on the receiving end and what your shit does to them. Only how you feel, how you benefit , how you get your needs met.

I could never be like you and I am so beyond happy for that. I truly care how I treat others. It’s important to me. For you, they are only casualties of your war. The war inside your head that you deny to others exists. You divulge nothing, making it seem like everything is ok. You imply that if life weren’t so tough on you with responsibility, you’d be great. You make it everyone else’s fault, then fill the emptiness with attention, the women, the lies. Instant gratifications that are fleeting , or faking real substance only to tear into the soul of someone who truly wants to be there. Once you’ve killed and captured the prey, game over.

Yes, there is a tragedy. It was for me anyway. That this is how you are comfortable living and I let you catch me. I thought I would be loved. Instead it’s as if you cut off my head and mounted it on the wall with the rest of the forgotten trophies. It really was game. I was game.