I did that thing again. The one I said I wasn’t going to do anymore. Because I’m “supposed to be” the happier, healthier, better off without the past. A “so-much-stronger version” of me. I am not those things, and I’m tired of being a measure of healing, so I did it again and I can’t deny it.
I’ve been avoiding you and I got really quiet. But more so, I’ve been avoiding me. I try so desperately to believe that everything happens for a reason. That’s what they all say, right? So when does that ethereal and magical acceptance and release start?
Navigating divorce, the dreams and goals I loved being set one fire, all while trying to navigate the complex emotions and transitions that come with it has not been a kind process to me. I have quite literally clawed my way back from the brink of destruction at the ending my the life I fought so fucking hard for, only to feel more lost and confused than ever.
I don’t use that analogy lightly, because many others might not have survived what I was forced to endure, overcome, and go through quietly to not draw too much attention or rock the boat. Let alone come out the other side, and to thrive in (some) ways afterwards like I am now? Am I a phoenix, or am I a cockroach?
I guess it depends on who you ask these days.
What I do know is that I’m good today, not great quite yet, but most importantly I’m not horrible every day anymore. A win is a win. I keep trying to convince myself to believe that everything happens a reason and one day I will look back and realize it had to all end like that.
In complete and vulnerable transparency, it also still very much feels like I am still holding on to something, and very tightly. I know the person on the other end of this promise I can’t seem to put down cut the chord a long time ago. That doesn’t mean me holding on still isn’t valid or a “correct ” reaction.
I am so tired of anyone judging either of us as we go through the necessary, but evidently very different experiences we both needed to survive all of this. I take accountability in sharing this today, and everything I have until this point, and I know I am going to ruffle some feathers. In fact, it’s going to probably hurt the feelings of the person I never wanted to leave me, but who has left, and isn’t coming back no matter how much I love him still. Let alone who I have tried to love harder because I thought he would remember he loved me once. Amid those big feelings I am still trying to be as respectful as possible, and yes in some ways I still defend him while he has taken to not necessarily the same.
From what I have heard, since I’m blocked, it’s quite mean spirited. Dad, who while alive was his biggest fan (yes even more than me) used to say “it takes all kinds.”
I’m gonna focus on my experience and what I can control. It’s probably for the best that I’m blocked because seeing that first hand would have cut through me like a knife. And I’ve got enough scars from all this.
That’s not a dig, it’s a statement of facts, and a reminder that we cannot expect ourselves from others. It is ENTIRELY unfair to them for getting angry when we do that, and especially when they simply can’t understand our side of the story, and refuse to even try.
If the world choses to have a certain feeling towards my ex husband for those things that I do share, that is not my responsibility, especially if he gets angry. Because babes, that is the literal definition of gaslighting and emotional manipulation. Those psychological control tactics and learned behaviours don’t work on me anymore. I hope that I am possibly in a place sometime soon, where if this post is the last I ever write about him and us, that I know I sent it into the universe with love and well wishes, alongside some hard truths. That in the end when he went low, I could have matched that energy and literally destroyed his entire life as retribution for destroying mine. Has it crossed my mind? Of course it has. But that’s not how I want the last moments in the ending of us for me, on top of all this excruciating pain.
No one will ever steal from me the truth that we were so much more than a really messy and difficult ending. So I guess now it’s time we slowly revert back to strangers again day by day. I’ll know I kept my head high, even as I made mistakes, and wore my broken heart on my sleeve.
If you’re curious what I’m unable to let go of, it’s an almost a non-existent last shred of hope. That what I fought so hard for through incessant and consistent landmines laid by the one person who promised they wouldn’t hurt me, would actually care at all in the slightest about what I went through and am going through still. That they would be the one person who sees me really struggling to start over, again and again, all the while getting (too) publicly emotional, and even just once offer any form of compassion or kindness instead of mocking and using those moments against me.
So allow me to say this, not for the both of us, because I don’t know, understand or recognize this version of him at all. While this layered and emotionally complex blog post tries to encapsulate everything I am, and more so am allowed to feel and express in the way I know how, I can’t and won’t ever speak for him again.
The hard truth is that he is free of me and working towards the life in his future he wants. While I still feel my soul connection to him quite intensely at times, he has revoked my importance and any access to him and his life. Obviously it hurts me deeply, however it is important to recognize that if it is what he feels is best for him, that I only hope it offers what he needs from the pain in hurting me most of all.
I have to respect the fact the right now he’s “ahead of me” in some ways. He’s fallen out of love and has made that very clear. He’s drawn boundaries I have to respect, even if I don’t understand them. The other dirty details and ugly bits that I admit still haunt and hurt me a lot? it would be cruel for me to put them into the world (again), so I’ll keep those between us. The old unhealed me? He would have done that in this moment in very nasty, cruel and unkind way to shame and hurt him out of response to my own pain and hurt. I’m not that version of me anymore, and I’m certainly not the monster I have been painted to justify how I’ve been treated and talked about. Instead I’ll say I’m happy for him that’s he already there and doing those things free from the life with me he didn’t want anymore.
I still worry about him all the time and I don’t enjoy the things people are telling me and showing me he is doing, so this past week I made the decision that as much as it helps me feel a fragmented connection to him, I just don’t want to know anymore. Out of respect and recognition of how our lives were once beautiful intertwined when we were together, please know the undoing of “us” has been extremely hard on us in ways we don’t share and have tried our best to keep just between us. But that version of us, and those people we once were, are gone now.
This process has simultaneously been loud, and quiet, and sometimes only shared to a close group of friends and family who tell us what we want to hear to feel better. Differently, to audiences built for over a decade who are technically strangers, but who say what they have been through whether we want to hear it or not. Because deep down, that will one day set us free completely. It’s a complete fucking mess, and that’s okay.
It’s the final braid of us to be undone that holds equal importance as when it was woven carefully with love. The end is never as enjoyable as the beginning but it is just as beautiful in some ways.
Both of our experiences are real. Both are true. Both are human. There is no one bad guy and one good guy in this ending. This is fucking messy and difficult and complicated and affects us very differently, but just as intensely I’m sure.
No road painfully travelled in the name of helping yourself to heal and get stronger out of the hurt is wrong. Even if some of us reluctantly take the scenic route to ensure we ACTUALLY learn the lessons we need finally. Both of our versions of our complexities, shortcomings, mistakes made, the marriage, our love, the life we built, its ending and undoing, our divorce, and trying to move on from it are equally valid.
His freedom of love for me already is not wrong, nor is my ability to admit that even after all of this, I am still in love with him and wish this wasn’t happening. I would try all over today with him I realize as I cry writing these words. I also have accepted no gesture of love or loving him harder is going to change this outcome.
Again, both are valid and neither deserves to be judged or shamed. Just acknowledged and accepted. At the end of the day while there was something iconic and incredible about the union of FASHIONIGHTS and Do The Daniel, but there was something spiritually spectacular in the love of Julio and Daniel.
Please do us both a favour, for me if you’re reading my words and not his, and try to understand that of course I know my ex loved me, and in his way cared in the finality of our marriage. Just now, much less, and much less still to come until one day it is all gone.
I’m just not there yet.
I wish he felt anything positive towards me, or that he still wanted me like I do him, but I am finally accepting it all. The back and forth of my emotions and the in between suck, but I know it’s all necessary.
He most likely wishes I would keep this all this to myself and shut the fuck up. And he’s allowed to feel and wish that. For me, the release of these feelings is simultaneously a testament to my love story, while also a way to focus on the good as I loosen my grip and one day let it all go knowing I did my best in situations I had no experience with, until I did.
Thankfully we’ve done this dance once before during our separation in 2018, and I can usually guess his next move before he makes it now. I’m still in love with my ex, even though I’m aware that he can very vindictive and mean when he’s hurt. But then again, so can I.
We don’t get to tell each other what to do anymore, nor do we get to judge the other for trying our best to heal and navigate a loss that we are experiencing differently. Now we look back with different versions and wounds. Neither of us have the right to tell the other what to do with this painful experience, especially now that we can’t help one another through it.
The ending of a BIG love is one of the worst pains a person will endure and have to heal from. I say this again in his defense because he knows deep down I know him more than anyone. Even for a man who did what he did throughout the marriage over and over, and again in the end, I will do my best to put myself in his shoes each and every time. To try to understand that this is what he has said over and over he believes he needs to be happier and better for himself now. I hope it helps him be better for the next time love finds him.
We all need to realize that healing and grief are incredibly layered and complex, and at times messy as fuck, but two very different perspectives can both exist and be true. There is no conventional rules of right and wrong.
The difference from my point of view as the one still in love, is that I honour, respect, and still defend his perspective while my feelings and emotions have been publicly ridiculed and mocked. I can say with certainty that I have never, nor will I ever used his anger or sadness towards me to mock or ridicule him. Never.
I don’t use that word, but in this instance, I mean it.
I’m LITERALLY defending the man who abandoned me and divorced me. So it bears repeating for anyone who chooses to judge me for this post that I could have been a very different iteration of me, but hurt people hurt people. I don’t want to hurt him anymore. I want to find ways for this to not hurt me so much and to not be so fucking sad one day.
I don’t judge anyone anymore after what I’ve gone through. I accept even this version of him that it helping his healing. That is all I have ever wanted, and still want. For him to be happy. I could never have known it would cost this much, but so be it if that is what it takes for him to finally become actually self-aware, to grow, and to stop hurting men repeatedly in the ways I am no longer putting a spot light on. Enough with the justifying of every shitty decision and especially the ones repeated multiple times, in the name of generational trauma, only to not make space the pain it causes in the person you hurt. Enough.
This truth I’m about to point out is going to hurt him and I hate that, but this all now feels like a realistic and bruised love letter to what we had. Sadly, it simultaneously feels like a final goodbye for me. And maybe this tough lesson is the tough love that will hurt for a long time but one day help us both.
My ex husband’s biological father, after finding out his mother was pregnant with him, abandoned her (and him) when the situation felt impossible to him, and things got really hard. This resulting in her being forced to become one of the strongest, most powerful, and loving women I have ever met. She had no choice, and he never looked back or apologized for it.
To this day I still look up to her for overcoming such a betrayal and working twice as hard to create the life she knew she deserved for her and her children. The irony, and his subsequent inability to recognize it, is that he did exactly what his father did in this way. That does not elude me.
I am not speaking on behalf the very layered portions of a culture my divorce ejected me from. I am pointing out these two when faced with a situation they felt was impossible, abandoned the one person who believed would never thought they would do that to them. The ripples of pain that echoed out from thar moment left scars on many people’s hearts and souls. His mom deserved better then, and I deserved a lot better now.
Generational trauma is complicated and is often built out of colonialism, systems of oppression, sexism, racism, and basically every ism you can use against another human being to make them feel less worthy than you. That you are somehow in control. Often times woven in with addiction, emotional trauma, mental health, and all things that make life even more painful. It is extremely hard to identify, isolate, and every more difficult to break. Let alone finding ways to avoid repeating it yourself as a trauma response from experiencing it.
So here’s the hard truth. My ex husband without knowing it passed on the exact trauma inflicted from his biological father onto his mother, in almost every way.
I tried my best to navigate the complexities of it when I was his partner and spouse. Now he will have to carry that truth, find a way to cope with it, and I pray one day accept it. I never wished for this to be the life we now live, and hopefully in his new one he finds a way to forgive himself and heal. I was ready to fight for this and him up until the very bitter end. Fuck I still am, as sad as that is to some of you to read. But that’s not how it is going to play out this time around.
So instead, I’ll be as far away from him as he pushed me, and hopefully one day it won’t hurt us so much.
I am extremely aware that unfortunately me stating this truth so clearly may hurt his feelings a lot. Maybe my words can help him understand different opinions, pain, and perspectives on the same really hard moment can all be true at the same time. That accepting other people and their version of things is a strength, not a weakness.
So asides from never reaching out again, let my final act of love be speaking my truth and the very evident similarities between the two situations that he probably hasn’t given much thought to. Let it be the catalyst for him to hurt and hate me more if that’s what it takes. One day my wish is that he properly heals, but also changes for the better. I wish him the ability to accept his part in it all as equally important as mine in the ending of our marriage and his love for me.
I hope he stops blaming everyone but himself for his bad decisions and inability to accept love. I hope he stops hurting men who fall in love with him in the ways he has in every single relationship he had before ours, and the frequency and intensity of those things throughout many years our marriage. He couldn’t break the generational trauma his father inflicted. Hopefully this opportunity forces him to break his own.
Lastly, and loudly, my ex… I really need you to know that some of your friends are shitty people who do shitty things, and we both know deep down you’re neither of those.
You keep them around because they tell you what you want to hear to feel better about life and hard things like the ending of us. Some of them you even warned me about during our separation because, YOUR words, they are snakes and leaches.
You have longer lasting and better friendships all around you that should open up to more. Trust me I begged them to be there for you, but no one can force you to do something when you aren’t ready. That much I know for sure. It’s okay to open to good people. Just because we ended doesn’t mean others will hurt you like you & I did to each other.
For someone that I admire so much for seemingly being so self-assured, and always told me he never cared what anyone thinks, you have surrounded yourself with the wrong people. Because a real friend is a safe place to open up about everything to and will say the hard truths to your face. Who you’ll feel safe with one day to tell them you’ve fallen in love again and if you have complex feelings about that, who will listen. I want you to fall in love again.
Where on a random Tuesday if ever you get overwhelmed with a feeling of missing me, that you feel safe is saying that to them and you know you won’t be met with shame, guilt or feeling like you are disappointing them by being human. I was your safe space once, though I could have been a much one, and a better listener and supporter for sure, but I’m gone now.
You need a new one, and they ain’t it. Period.
On that note, our families now no longer intertwined have LITERALLY no right to have such big opinions on who were, what we had, and how we heal.
My mother had no right to have said to you after what happened on Feb 17 2024 and our break up that you to just “divorce me already and and get it over and done with” based off mistakes made in the past because she felt you didn’t love me properly. That was very unfair for her to reduce our love to something trivial, as if a divorce was inevitable. I made to sure express that clearly to her and she knows that was not the right to you to say in the moment.
Similarly a cousin who stayed in love with an ex of hers for too long after he didn’t treat her properly, and who continued stay “connected’ with secretly for way longer because she was still in love doesn’t get to judge my emotions and love for you, nor the full range of your emotions.
I am saying this directly to her and once she realizes it’s not an attack, I hope she hears what I am actually saying from a place of love. Your family has done the best to navigate big things and hard emotions. You now have to make room for everyone to feel safe to express steps back just as much as you celebrate steps forward. It’s doesn’t have to be “better off” vibes only along the way, though that can a part of it eventually if that helps him. The family should have done that for you all as you when you four were growing up, but the emotions and mental health playbook of glorifying good emotions, and simply not talking about the hard ones, is a bit limited now. And you know this. We’ve had those conversations.
I’m the villain in this story now, and I’m fine with that. I wish for you four, and this new generation, that you one day rewrite your family rules so that no one else passes on any more inherited generational trauma. My ex wasn’t equipped to stop doing that to me properly at all, let alone talk about the feelings that he is yet to feel now that I’ve shared this.
Please know he needs a safe space, and will moving forward and when he finds love again.
I’m sending all of you all my love and best wishes for the future, just in case you can’t see that yet. Take care of each other you four, and lead with better examples then the ones you were given when you all have incredible children of your own. I’m really sorry I won’t be there for those moments and any more moving forward. But I did fight as hard as I could to earn my spot back. And no one can take that away from me, and to be honest he probably hasn’t share half the ways I did. But that’s between him and I and me begging you to see it wouldn’t change anything anyways.
There, I said all the quiet parts out loud and even some goodbyes because I don’t know if I’ll get another chance.
This probably will reaffirm everything he has told himself was right for leaving, and again that’s ok. But I hope it that is the case, that he takes this opportunity for uncomfortable and necessary personal growth seriously enough to see that I wasn’t the only one who had some serious demons to acknowledge and finally face in the ashes of us.
“liiiiiiiife’s a biiiiiitch” he used to sing to me in his gorgeous slightly nasal tone like he regularly sang his favourite jingles around the home we built together ad nauseum. Or when he would sing to Canela lovingly off key, but with incredible delusion that he was a pop star. I loved witnessing how much he loved her. Because I knew in those simple moments deep in my soul he would be a really good Dad to our kids one day.
I know he’s going to be a really good Dad one day still, but it’ll be with someone else. Those are the things I look back fondly on, and cherish that I had at all. I don’t laser focus on the bad anymore. Trying to erase any and all good we had to make this part of the healing process easier wouldn’t make it less painful. I try to not stay in this place of hurt and anger, but now it’s time I made equal space and importance for them as well.
You need safe spaces Julio. You need real friends. Ones that will tell you it’s okay to feel all the feelings, but who also will tell you what you did wrong. That’s the only path through this. Be mad at me for healing in my own way and sharing what happened to me more openly than you would like.
I can handle it.
At this point you can hate me full throttle if you don’t already. You and I know I’ll hold back more than I’m sharing because my love for you extended her residency and hasn’t left the building like yours.
I don’t want to keep hurting or hurt you. I’ve accepted your choice. I am devastated that your love for me is dead and done. But if you don’t learn properly from this moment and ending, I fear you will just keep hurting yourself and people you meet who eventually fall in love with you. I forgive you.
And I’m proud of you and the strength that must have taken leave. That couldn’t have been easy. I’m glad you’ve shared that your feelings for me are gone, but you do not have the right to judge that mine aren’t.
I have been living an ominent life since it happened, it is entirely my fault that I am because I continued to live that way. Both knowingly and unknowingly I have been punishing myself.
It’s time I FINALLY take accountability of the consequences of my actions and choices so I can change. I certainly made a lot of mistakes, but now it’s time to grow from it all, and become even stronger for accepting my parts in the good and the bad equally.
Just so we’re clear, life since the divorce, not the divorce itself. My stance on that subject remains the same. It takes two people to carefully feed or slowly starve a marriage, but only one to murder it and throw it away.
Since February when it was all legally finalized and my marriage ended, I have to be honest that I am not the “I’m so much better off”, “so much happier” ex. I dont like being told any of those nonsense statements that in one way or another try to erase large parts of my marriage to justify the actions of someone and the end result.
My ex husband and I were far from perfect people respectively when we were together, and as partners we absolutely made mistakes along the way (big and small), but I LOVED being married. I LOVED loving that man intimately and working through the really fucking hard stuff together, even when it felt impossible and no one else understood why we kept trying. Because, when the dust settled, we always had each other and that made the chaos go away. He was my biggest supporter and always saw my potential to present myself to the world in a better ways. My marriage had so much joy and beauty and growth and love, and I will not ever regret it, wish I never had it, or diminish those things I love most about it to come to terms with it’s painful ending.
I will also never say disparaging things about my ex husband publicly ever again like I’ve mistakenly done in the past because we now live separate lives from one another, and what good would that do? There is no act or pushing or fighting this that will change his mind. When he sets his mind to something, he will always stand his ground and that takes strength. Even if no one if the world understands him, I do right now and that’s why with a broken heart, I’m still his biggest fan.
Although that determination is now used against me, I’ll fondly think on the moments when he stayed until he couldn’t anymore. There is no blame to place entirely on one of us that will take away the pain. I bet he’s even better with kids now, and those kids probably love him so much for it.
We have our separate homes, lives, careers, and now amputated families. We are both healing in the ways we know how, and trying our best to navigate without each other there to support one another like we did for over a decade.
I can’t fault him for his actions, words, social media, and the things he is doing to help himself through this. In fact, I’ve seen this movie before and I know the characters and their tactics really intimately. So I say the following from a place of deep emotions and FINALLY forgiveness, I promise if you’re not proverbially understanding his side of the experiences lived in our story, give it a little time. He’s the misunderstood one in the end, who yes makes a LOT of mistakes and hurts a LOT of people along throughout the plot, but that will grow to be an important pillar, and he is my favourite character in our story now closed. Always.
Just because we carry the baggage well, does not mean it’s not heavy.
I don’t LOVE his decision to leave me and divorce me, and I certainly don’t like the persona he has put back on while trying to protect himself, but I do LOVE him enough to know if this is what he wanted, I wasn’t going to make it any harder.
In fact, the best and strongest version of me in that marriage and it’s through its demise was the one who had to build himself back up after he left, while I simultaneously wanting to support him whenever and however I could emotionally, mentally, physically and financially. All the while, fighting for him, trying to keep his love for me alive as he watched it takes its last few breaths. It is no easy task to juggle feeling happy, anxious, hopeful, angry, excited, empathy, love and resentment all at the same time.
The thing is babes…. you can’t win every fight. Some of them you are going to have to lose. And it’s gonna have to really hurt to make real change in you so you don’t hurt others in the same way you were hurt.
Moreso, and heartbreaking to admit, love isn’t enough if both people don’t want it anymore. Were / are there better marriages than the one we had? Absolutely without a doubt. But on that same note, there are also ones that were / are horrifically much worse. Perspective is everything, but only if you are open to accepting that yours isn’t the only one that can and has to exist for the world and life to make sense.
The problem in all this rehashing is that I have come to admit to myself that I am still in love. While I cope with that, I am also am being asked quite firmly told to walk down a path I never wanted to walk on my own. I don’t enjoy any of this process. Not in the slightest. This wasn’t supposed to go this way and while I maintain the bubbly effervescence of Do The Daniel online via social media, behind the scenes I am still quite devastated and trying to just understand. Eventually one day you will be the villain in someone’s story, and no amount of trying to love them harder so they remember they loved you can change that.
Having recently had a run in of sorts at an event – the details aren’t important – energetically it felt to me like we were still at war. Like we had to dominate the space and event over the other. Like I had to give off the arrogant energy I was met it being better off and happier. That pretending and subsequently having to make the person you wanted to spend your life with into a stranger you won’t even look in the eyes anymore didn’t hurt.
It did hurt me, quite deeply that day actually.
I had led myself to believe that all of that energy and combative nonsense would stop when he got his divorce. And since we’re laying my real and hard emotions out on the line here finally, how dare that man be angry at me when he left ME, and HE divorced ME. Make it make sense.
All of this is a result of his choices I promised I wouldn’t fight, and the consequences of them for him. All while I am instead having a comeback and not fading quietly into obscurity had that experience not only shattered my trust in other along with my heart, but had it also broken my spirit as well.
While the energy of all that was difficult to navigate and not feel the need to lash out in response, I still very much miss sharing VIP experiences and events with him (the real him, not the mean girl he’s playing this season) as my fellow invitee or my plus one. Of course doing it with friends is fabulous and I love it and them, but it’s not the same and nothing compares to that feeling that I have been robbed of.
I have no doubt in my mind that it made him feel some kind of way as well. In fact, I’m quite certain of it, because despite our difficult ending or how much he hates the following fact, no one (yet) on this earth knows that man as well as I do. No one has faced off with his demons, looked them in the face, and told them they I love them as equally as his gifts and incredible personality traits. No one truly knows the intimate details of how beautiful and chaotic our marriage was behind closed doors. Not even close actually.
We walked through marriage ending fires many times and came out the other side forged stronger, so I can see through a lot of his actions lately and choose not to acknowledge them because I know where it is all actually coming from.
His friend who was there that night though? I’m gonna say this once, and once only …
Be on your best behaviour moving forward. PERIODT.
One last thing that deserves to be said clearly to my readers and followers about my ex husband.
Don’t let that gorgeous exterior with a quick wit and very sharp tongue fool you right now. He has lived a LOT of life, and still has a really beautiful heart under all of that hurt and performative vibrato he is showing. Some people need to put on a mask, wear it, and share a specific version of themselves to feel safe after something as difficult as we just went through.
I’m just happy to know he has worked very hard on himself since the divorce to slowly start to heal in his own way, and on his own timeline. I no longer get to comment or judge his life and his healing process, especially because I don’t see the whole picture and don’t have all the facts. He has made it very clear he does not feel or see me in that way anymore, and I cannot invalidate that boundary simply because I am not ready to draw it’s reciprocate on my side yet.
That being said, my therapist Ingrid tells me that my desire to protect him, even at the expense of myself, is a trauma response from childhood and moments in our marriage that we really have to focus on – that’s to unpack at a later day, cause we are trauma bonding enough for one day with everything I am sharing and admiring to myself. 🤣
As much as it goes against everything I know, I have to stop thinking of him first or worrying what his reaction will be to something. She said it quite clearly – he made his bed, now he has to lay in it.
That concept feels quite cruel to me because of the aforementioned feelings, but this is life, and at times it is fucking messy. All we can do is try our best to control our reactions to it or try to not make it messier along the way for anyone else.
Let’s get back to this chaotically beautiful explanation on where I am today mentally and emotionally, because at the end of the day this blog post is also an honest look in the mirror for me to take stock of it all and try to let go a little more.
I didn’t chose this path. I didn’t want a divorce. But I have to respect him enough to not make his life and his decision more difficult than it might have been for him. Or maybe it wasn’t hard at all. To be honest, I have no idea the full scope of what is he going through because we didn’t get the chance to have that talk. Or any real talk on the matter of any kind actually.
Story time on the subject to show you how much I’m still ACTIVELY going through it, but to say that sometimes you have to laugh at the stupid mistakes your make along the way.
Buckle up, this was not my best moment 🤣
I am so delusional that there is some way to find our way back to one another event though I swore I wouldn’t if he filed for divorce (because that’s what we did for so long, against all odds) that LAST NIGHT I sent him a message on Grindr at 2:16am seeing if he wanted to COME OVER TO HAVE A DRINK. 🤔
I took a screenshot showing that both tapped each other as well because something told me he would deny it if asked about it, and use it as a chance to double down on his narrative of me which is based on his lived experiences and the version of me he needs right now. We all are doing our best, including him I like to believe. To falsely paint me in a bad light based solely on the fact that his feelings are gone and mine aren’t really fucking sucks, but it is what it is.
More importantly though, and back to the story, I had a sneaking suspicion sober minds in the morning would prevail. Which, my always extremely intelligent and logical ex did the moment when he woke up, realized what I did, and blocked me IMMEDIATELY. I don’t blame him, most people would do the same. 🤣
BUT, did I secretly deep down wish I saw him last night after a surprise DM might have caught him of guard and he let his walls down for just a fleeting moment? OBVIOUSLY. I would have given anything for just some peace with him, to put down the pain, and to be beside him IRL. Wishful thinking to some, but I would have been perfectly fine with a long hug or to hold him tightly and no words spoken, and to feel like he didn’t actually hate me this much. And there is nothing wrong with admitting that to you all with my whole chest. Heartbreak and healing. What a fucking rollercoaster. ❤️🩹
Blocking him should have been my first thought and reaction when I saw his profile and gorgeous face on my screen, but this only goes to prove how very different we have been and will always be. Oh Daniel…. even as I am rereading this to myself, I know that it came from a sweet true love corner in your heart where you keep the memories of you both, but GURL…. that’s LITERALLY bananas.
Let’s learn from that lapse of judgement in face of the reality, and reign it in a bit.
All of my ROM COM logic aside, I like that I still believe in the power of taking a chance and the power of love. Because if you don’t try you’ll never know. In some naive hopeless romantic way, I saw it that randomly in some way I was presented with a channel to be able to communicate with him directly again, even if briefly and somewhat misguided
Some people will get it and some won’t, but it was what I felt I needed to do after being (quasi) no contact for so long and being blocked on all platforms, including my phone number. At least I know I tried. And back to no contact we have gone, and probably forever.
Amid all the endings and the energies and the events, I can’t explain it. I miss Julio all day long and more often than not he makes a cameo my dreams. That BEAUTIFUL, complicated, self-assured and flawed man crosses my mind every single day like clock work, and probably will for a very long time, if not the rest of my life. And that’s okay.
So moving forward I will see this ALLLLLL of this as a learning opportunity. I do what I can when I get sad to redirect my feelings when they feel like a hurricane or thunderstorms. I try to create something beautiful from the pain so I will do something kind for a stranger or someone in my life. Especially when his now dead love for me or those around him who weren’t in the thick of our marriage foster or encourage unkind things. Maybe one day he will look back on all of it and hopefully learn to never do to his next love. I ask the universe to keep him safe, happy and to help him heal in healthier ways.
I may not LIKE the man he is pretending to be as part of his healing journey, or the things that are said about me when no one thinks I have eyes and ears everywhere, but I LOVE him enough to finally accept it. My emotions are like thunderstorms that roll in quickly and get very loud sometimes. But storms always pass eventually.
Ingrid (honestly, thank the Gods and Goddesses’ for my therapist and mental health / health practitioners this year) reminds me that storms can be a beautiful and powerful force of nature, and they are very important moments of cleansing as well. Yes they can wash things away that don’t have the strength to stay anymore, but they also make roots stronger and feed the flowers that bloom after being in the dark soil for so long.
So I guess this is my way of showing you the storms I’ve been hiding from you and pretending they aren’t affecting me profoundly to my core. That being said, maybe they have been sent to wash away a few things I don’t need anymore. Time will tell and we will never have a play book for moments like this.
In a very full circle (not the good kind) way I’m sitting quietly in a bedroom, eerily in very parallel situations to last year.
The above was just one of the things I’m about to tell you which all came crashing down together to have me making the very quick and sweeping decision to skip the majority of Pride weekend because of my mental health. I didn’t have it in me for anymore energetic and emotional show downs or the anxiety of living in fear of them at every turn this weekend. And I knew that I wouldn’t be able to actually enjoy myself or pretend anymore.
If it’s any consolation, I didnt skip the whole thing like last year because the wound was too fresh. I actually very much enjoyed Friday, but as is the case with many things in my life at the moment, it always manages to start happy, until I remember the first person I wanna share my happy with is gone.
That’s what I truly miss – the sharing that joy and emotion with my partner. I miss getting excited about event outfits he styled or an upcoming trip to a destination he’d never been to. I miss hanging out together with our friends, and quiet nights in without me talking (a luxury for him because he loves the quiet – and those who know me know I LOVE to talk! 🤣)
I miss making each other laugh, and having the stability and consistency of my person in my life. I miss the days when I believed when he promised to always be there. That was the closest to feeling safe I have ever felt in my life. But that is gone now and I have to move forward.
The larger theme for me as of late is that of late is that I’ve been stuck oscillating in between two gears. One, running and staying BUSY because that makes me feel happy. And the other, finding ways to avoid and numb the pain when I’m not busy and it hurts. Not in WILD and extremely destructive ways of the past, but little changes have been creeping back in to this life I worked really hard for.
For example I’m having a drink every day to “wind down” and have been for a while now, and I don’t like how it affects my sleep, mental state, or body. Or how I cannot seem to get over the mental hurdle of getting back to regular workouts because I haven’t in so long and I will struggle in comparison to the physical strength I had when I did. And just like rust, these little things just crept up on me… And now I feel them in my bones. So before long and wide sweeping damage is done to the dreams I’m making a reality, I am acknowledging the negative patterns and what I am not making enough time and space for. I will edit and mend this week in a positive direction accordingly.
But WHY did I cancel? I think it was the perfect storm of energetic confrontation at that event that I wasn’t emotionally prepared for, the burnout from taking on too much work, realizing that this is the first of my Prides since my divorce and spiraling in while thinking I’m unlovable and just supposed to be alone, stress about my body and finances because I am never 💯 happy with the time it takes for the progress I want in either and both deserve a lot more love and less criticism, and so much more.
I repeat.
Just because we carry the baggage well, doesn’t mean it’s not heavy,
Okay the next thing I’m about to share is really embarassing and vulnerable, but I have to believe that for anyone who has gone through the ending of a long term loving relationship and / or marriage, experienced the whirlwind of emotions I am currently living, that they might find some solace in knowing that one thing they couldn’t stop themselves from doing to cope didn’t mean they were crazy.
Asides from slowly reintroducing casual sexual partners into my newly single life, oh god I can’t believe I’m putting this in writing but here we go…. When I masturbate I cannot climax unless I think of my ex. Some contexts before I end up in a psychiatric ward again because you all think I’ve lost my mind.
I love casual sex with a new partner. It’s fun and it’s exciting. However when I have had a deep emotional connection with a partner (sexual or romantic) – and I’m talking on a soul and energetic level – throughout my life, it makes the sex literally incredible.
While you might assume I’m referring to making love – an entirely different experience for me personally – I’m talking the after an argument hate fuck that blows your mind, or the wake up in the morning and bend him over kind of spontaneity that starts the day of right. Too much information? It’s Pride month, let me have this one. I just shared something really vulnerable and I’m trying to handle the intensity of it all by diffusing with comedy as a trauma response, okay!? 😂😂😂
If I’m being honest, Julio is absolutely top three best lovers I’ve ever had. So when I try to provide my body with relief from stress using masturbation as a tool – look it up, it’s actually a very healthy practice and encouraged! – I try to watch porn (not usually my thing) but often thinking of him and us and…. well it does the trick.
To a much less intense degree, because grief is and will always be cyclical and in varying intensities, I selfishly kept one of his sweaters and when I get really sad, I put it on. Because something that small sometimes soothes the storm back into a state of serenity.
I already know there are going to be wild reactions to sharing so much of my truth and all of this, but it’s not for the reactionists.
I worry a lot about that actually. So if you’re a first time reader and don’t know what I have overcome and eventually been able to encapsulate into blog posts because my magic is words, welcome. Nice to see you here thank you for taking the time to read this extremely difficult post for me to share.
But if you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll have lived really hard moments like my Dad suddenly passing in 2016. Similarly my 25 year long friendship with Catherine ending over something I made into WAY too big of a deal (which in hindsight was hypocritical of me to put that in between us when she was asked to forgive my partner for continuous AND consistently hurting me in the exact same way). Now I can add divorce and watching my person because a lesson while progressively hating me more every day to my trauma bingo card.
It’s for every single one of you who out there in this big world who are living through or trying you best to survive the end of a meaningful love relationship, especially those of you doing it silently who feel lost and alone. It’s for those who don’t know it yet but will one day live that challenge and won’t see it coming, causing the complete destruction of everything you thought were going to have and accomplish. But most of all for those who have already lived through it, and didn’t run or distract yourself from the really hard work healing takes, and STILL chose to not change your hope, your heart, or intentionally hurt those who hurt you because you know deep down that wouldn’t change today and it can’t change yesterday.
I promise, somehow – cause I definitely don’t know the how part yet since I’m in the eye of this shitstorm – that one day we will understand. Everything always makes sense eventually. The puzzle pieces come back down from being thrown into the air by their words and actions, and the picture finally becomes clear again, just with different things than you thought would be there in it.
So let’s turn that into a beautiful analogy I was thinking about today that made me feel a little bit better.
Trauma can be compared to the idea of a personalized domino set, and every time you go through something life altering and very difficult, the universe rewards you with another domino to add to your collection. Here’s the catch, every time it gives you a new one, all the others fall down again. Your job in this life is to make sure you go back and pick them up, proudly placing them in the place you earned them, in chronological order. But you have to do it without purposefully knocking over anyone else’s dominos because you’re frustrated with this repeating process.
In the beginning it will seem too easy and not a big deal if a domino falls down, because it takes nothing to do the job you’ve been assigned by life and the universe when there are only a handful of dominos in your set. Sounds like a piece of cake, right? How hard can that REALLY be? Some people will live a full life with a only a few dominos. That does not make their collection better than yours, simply different.
But for someone has gone through a lot domino earning experiences, they start to dread the addition to their collection. That is a very real fear and they start to expect their HUGE collection to never stop falling down. It can take ten times longer to put everything back where it belongs, and that wears on a person’s heart and mind.
When they hear that sound of dominos falling and knocking each other down, their default emotion may even be to vividly relive the pain that came before the wisdom and strength of each piece. It is not anyone’s right to tell them that this is the wrong response, especially if in their life some of the pieces they earned by overcoming things you actively put them through. If they still love you unconditionally, consider yourself lucky for them while you have them, even if that love isn’t perfect.
Here’s where the magic truly is in life, even through that dread of the next domino can be intense, it won’t always be. Each time you pick back up your dominos and that gorgeous collection you carry, I want you to do your best to remember the strength you didn’t think you had, and the power you had all along inside of you.
Look at all of you with dozens, if not hundreds of dominos. As much as in the thick of it you didn’t realize it, you didn’t break when you were convinced you were broken and couldn’t possibly take another domino.
I hope you know that I may not know you, but I am so proud of you. The universe sees how hard you had to fight to get back up every time. If you don’t wanna talk about, I won’t force you. But find a little bit of solace in the things I shared today that I didn’t just share for me, I shared it for us all so we know that we aren’t as lost or alone as we might feel.
Many people do not overcome the trauma they go through. It either hardens their hearts, makes them bitter, shuts out of the idea of allowing love in ever again out of fear of being hurt again, or even leads to a life lost in extreme circumstances when people feel alone and like no one hears them, sees them, or understands them.
I don’t LOVE my new additions to my domino collection quite yet. Every time the universe has asked me to go back and pick up the whole set one at a time, the early ones hurt just a little bit less. In fact some lessons I completely forgot I overcame at all. These handful of new dominos probably might take a lot longer to not hurt as much as they do today.
But maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe a single domino is actually much heavier to carry as one, but every time you are rewarded with a new piece for going through everything you did, the collection gets a little lighter. Easier to carry and appreciate for the lessons you didn’t always deserve to learn but are better for knowing now.
These words were truthfully written from multiple and simultaneous big heavy places, so they might be a bit hard to connect with. Those painful places in the past have been so hard, that some days I couldn’t get out of bed or when I started to cry, it would quickly turn into an anxiety attack and I would hyperventilate. I’m here to tell you that I’m still learning to live in hurt while healing, and of course I still cry, but it’s a little less than before.
Again, reactionists who are going to read into words I tried to be as kind as I can with , this was never about you and what you will try to do with something that took me a lot of courage to share. It’s about those of you out, even those not in my life anymore, to say I empathize with what you are experiencing and one day it will all make sense.
You’re a stronger than you know.
Am I sad I couldn’t handle the emotional and mental weight of it all and had to pull out of all things Pride Toronto AGAIN? Absolutely. Will my ex see that and this emotional “crash out” blog post as another victory in some none existent energetic battle still raging for him after winning the war against me?
I can’t know that. I also have to stop worrying about the reaction to sharing my life, my emotions and things that were done to me will have on those who did them. I just don’t have it in me to pretend I’m okay this weekend, go to the parade and events, and possibly run into him again an do this all over again over and over.
So today is going to be a quiet day. A kind day for myself and with myself. So that together we can be a little stronger tomorrow.
And I say this from the heart, I do hope if you’re reading this one day Julio that me sharing isn’t meant to intentional hurt your feelings or upset you. It’s simply a part of MY healing journey so that hopefully one day I don’t hurt this much anymore.
PS. You were absolutely right to block me on Grindr and I very publicly apologize for that extremely inappropriate way I reached out when you have asked me not to do that anymore. But I don’t apologize for where it was born from, because you still have really beautiful real estate in my heart where I keep all the good safe from those who would try to tarnish it.
Wishing you all a fabulous Pride Sunday, and hopefully 2026 is the year I can do it all with a stronger mind, heart, and soul.
Love,
Daniel xo
P.S. I want to acknowledge that the past year of therapy has helped me name and identify the way I would manipulate and control my world around me, out of fear of being abandoned, and in many ways quite selfishly. I am extremely aware that for some (the DMs have been coming in HOT today ) a blog post such as intense as this one where I am saying and feeling so much out loud maybe shouldn’t have been shared at all. They are entitled to their opinion, but I have to be honest with myself in this way so I’m not running from the hard parts.
Past versions of me would shared every ugly and vicious details as ammunition. This is actually the fifth edit that took me hours, and countless rewrites. I cut out a lot more hurt and anger, so if it’s a lot, imagine what didn’t get shared. If you can’t hear the love I still feel for that man and that despite my therapist says, this is actually me still protecting him from the things that transpired, please know that you came into this with preconceptions of your own about me, about him, and about our now ended marriage.
I am not here to provide receipts, dates, tactile proof, or timelines to prove my experiences and trauma are valid TO ANYONE. This post is so much bigger than me and him, and it is my way of trying to accept, speak into existence, forgive, and hopefully one day move on with my life.
If I chose to be the vindictive monster many have painted me, it would have been a lot quicker and A LOT messier. Me sharing the big thoughts and feelings and longings for something I am mourning doesn’t change the past, and it can’t re-spark dead love in someone’s heart if it has gone out. I wouldn’t want that kind of love for me anymore even if it did. I don’t ever want to be made to feel like I am begging for love, or forcing love to be in a certain form. But do not EVER question my loyalty and love for that man. Because you didn’t live our marriage, you didn’t earn our comebacks, you don’t feel the soul connection I know I still have to him, and you certainly can never understand the complex and gorgeous love we felt together.
This is me trying to let go, and it’s okay if it doesn’t make sense to you. It makes sense to me and I know it will make sense to even just one person reading it who sees a mirror in my mess.
For those of you who had a hard time keeping up with ALL of the big thoughts and feelings swirling together, that’s kind of what it’s been like in my heart and head lately. My ex once loved how big my heart and how much I felt, and I will remember that always. So instead I offer you the following.
I am a PERFECTLY imperfect person who is healing and sharing both for me and for those of you out there doing it quietly. I have every write to tell any story I lived. That being said, the universe is always listening, and your energy flows when your attention goes.
And I’m not going backwards anymore.
I know better than to weaponize anything against him, because they are memories now and I would never try to intentionally hurt him and ruin them in doing so.
I put a LOT of emotional weight into things, like songs and sometimes into very insignificant things like a napkin that he sketched me on one night and wrote I love you. I treat those things like treasure and proof that I was lucky enough to have something so beautiful. They are a reminder of what a big feeler I am, and despite what some people believe, that’s one of my best qualities.
It’s messy at times, as we can see today, but I’m glad I haven’t lost that. Once something is imbued with my big emotions, it’s there forever for me. Some of these songs hold that magic for me – and to you they might seem completely mismatched. Again, take from them what you want but don’t force it if it’s not a fit.
I am an emotional mega mix of them all at the same time while I edit this PS to such an intense post and cathartic release for me. Each is from a different time in that relationship, an important moment for me personally, a major shift, a difficult challenge we overcame, or holds an emotional scar. I am grateful for them all, because each is a part of me now and always. This beautiful story I was so lucky to live and be a part of’s soundtrack of sorts before it ended.
Today I am this version of me who is a little less lost and broken from yesterday’s version, but a little more than the version coming tomorrow. Don’t ever run from or distract yourself from the hard parts of healing for too long, because I promise that they always come back into your life later on, but in much uglier forms and moments to force you to learn from them what you ignored the first time around.
The hard part for me right now? The patience it has taken and waiting for it to not hurt so fucking much. But one day it suddenly won’t and the waiting instead of running and distracting from all of it will have made me stronger.
The soil and rain are just as important to a flower’s birth, life, strength, and beauty as the sun is. We often forget that and just focus on the blooms.
Goodbye Julio.