inspiredodyssey daily prompt, Inspiration

Childhood Crush Becomes Real Life Love

Star Trek: The Next Generation has got to be one of the shows I’ve obsessed over since childhood and well into adulthood. Commander William Riker had my heart for most of my adolescent years, totally unbeknownst to me that years later I would fall in love with my own “Mexican Riker,” and that it would become an ongoing joke between us. Mr. California loves it when I call him Mexican Riker. Just this past Saturday, we spent hours browsing different Riker-themed TNG shirts based on famous episodes. He picked The Royale because it was one of his favorites, and the shirt looked really, really cool. I even found myself watching that old classic episode again this week, mostly because I was thinking about my hunky Mexican Riker, but also because it has always been one of my favorites too. It’s one of the best things me and Mr. California share, this bond through nostalgia that we aging romantics absolutely love.

I have to say, though, all this happiness and fun comes with a price. I have been living in silence for months in this relationship because of the aftermath of my bipolar episode in 2024. Imagine Riker in the episode Frame of Mind. He goes through one of the most terrifying experiences imaginable, trapped in a mental institution and unable to tell reality from delusion. That is exactly where I was two years ago, and it absolutely terrified Mr. California. I still don’t know how our relationship survived that, especially since I was gone for three months in different hospitals, and he had no idea what had happened to the love that had changed his life forever. Since then, there has been a huge wall between us, a boundary he put in place, one I keep bleeding into with reassuring, loving voicemails and emails. But it is costing me. My resolve is breaking down. I can no longer sustain reaching out into the void for him, loving him out loud the way he used to love me, without getting much in return. It is costing me my dignity, my self-respect, and honestly, it humiliates me on a daily basis.

But there is one thing I learned, especially through Star Trek: The Next Generation. For all its themes of love and romance, everyone had a purpose. A goal. A job. Something they believed in and were proud of. That was the utopia of it all. No war, no greed, no scrambling for meaning, just peace, exploration, and becoming. I remember watching that as a child and dreaming of a future like that, a life where I was working toward something bigger instead of destroying myself over whether or not a man calls me. That is the lesson here. The wonder. The growth. The bigger picture. Mr. California does love me. He absolutely does. But he is confined by a life that demands everything from him, and our dreams changed course because of what my manic episode did to both of us. He is no longer the man who loved me out loud the way he once did. Maybe I hold on so tightly because I still hope I will get that version of him again someday, even when he tries to shut that door. He loves from fear now. I don’t. And that is one of the hardest things I have ever had to swallow.

But I remain hopeful. I still look at the stars. I still watch Riker on my screen with those dreamy eyes, and I still spend my nights with my Mexican Riker and his dreamy voice. At this point in my life, I have no husband, no children, and yet I live the most independent life I have ever had. Nothing can buy the freedom and joy I have today. Me and Mr. California always knew it would be years before we could build a life together, so this is my time to shine. My friends. My mom and dad. My beautiful work in my church. The voice acting career I am just beginning. My new position at a radio station, on air, helping put together radio programs for the blind.

This is my destiny. This is my purpose. Between jail, institutions, and homelessness, I truly have gone where no one has gone before.

And somehow, the future has never looked brighter.

 

Stay tuned.

 

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

The Purple Silk Robe That Breathes His Name

In all my years of dating, loving and wildly crashing through relationships like the chaotic, romantic tornado that I am… no man has ever given me something personal. Not truly. Not something chosen with intention, or tenderness, or the soft knowing of who I really am.

And then……..

Enter Mr. California.

A man who is shy and reserved and holy in that quiet altar-boy way, but also deeply romantic when he thinks no one is watching. A man who once loved me so boldly, so loudly, so unapologetically that the echo of it still rings through his present silences. A man who hides now, yes, but who once opened himself to me with all the vulnerability of a man who had waited his whole life to love like that.

And from him came the best, most personal gift I’ve ever received.

It’s impossible not to love him.

When we were together, before everything broke open, I was absolutely undone by him. Completely in awe. Floored that someone could love me with that much softness and hunger at once. It felt like God handed me a miracle and said, “Here. Try not to drop it.”

And then the bipolar episode came.
The mania.
The calls.
The texts.
The crushing loss of reality that cracked something inside both of us.

A year later, we’re still living with the aftershocks.
His distance.
His fear.
My shame.
My spirals.
The ghost of who we were, standing beside who we’re trying to be now.

But at Christmas… something changed.

He sent me a gift so intimate, so shockingly thoughtful, that the old him—my wildly romantic boyfriend—peeked through again like sunlight pushing past storm clouds.

A purple silk robe.

My favorite color in the world.
Soft and slippery against my skin.
And somehow, to my joyous surprise, in my exact size.

Do you know what that meant to me?

This man who has seen me cry over my weight, who has heard every self-loathing insult I hurl at my own body, who knows that I hide from mirrors like they’re armed and dangerous…he wrapped that very body in silk.

A bigger woman.
A woman ashamed of her curves.
A woman who calls herself fat and ugly on her worst days.

He said, without saying, “I see you. I know you. I want you beautiful in this.”

I wear that robe almost every day now. Not just because it feels decadent as hell, but because it’s proof; living, breathing proof, that the man I love is still in there. Behind all the guilt and fear and silence… he is still choosing me in small, sacred ways.

And here we are now, having more sex, more closeness, more tenderness than we expected to reclaim. No official label. No neat definition. Just two people finding their way back to something that once blew the doors off both our lives.

He’s afraid, yes. But he keeps coming back. And every night we spend together, every whispered confession, every shy “probably” when I tease him, every sleepy sigh when I call him my Sleepy Bear…I love him a little more.

For the first time in my life, I’m experiencing a love worth waiting for.

A love that survived madness, silence, thousands of miles, and the wreckage of who we used to be.

One day, I hope he loves me out loud again, the way that purple silk robe already does.

Stay tuned. 💜

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

From Wreckage to Grace, What Time Has Taught Me

They say time heals all wounds, but I’ve learned time doesn’t erase anything. It doesn’t make the wreckage less ugly, or sand down the sharp edges. It teaches you how to live with the brokenness, and maybe even find the grace in it.

I’ve lived through chaos and come out cleaner, clearer, and louder in love than I ever imagined.

Five years ago, I put down the bottle. Five years sober. And if you know addiction, real addiction, you know it’s not just about the drink. It’s about what you’re trying to drown. The ache. The silence. The shame. The feeling that your heart is a loaded weapon, and you’ve never been safe holding it.

I spent years spiraling in jail cells both literal and emotional, convinced I was unlovable, too much, too broken. And I clung to people who mirrored that belief back to me. My ex-husband was one of them. He was beautiful chaos, seductive, unpredictable, and dangerous in the exact way my addicted soul recognized as “home.”

But loving him nearly destroyed me. His madness danced too close to mine. And I finally had to ask myself a question I’d never asked before: What if surviving meant walking away from the drama I mistook for destiny?

I did. I left. And the leaving hurt more than staying ever did.

But I walked straight into something deeper: the slow-burn miracle of healing.

And then there’s Mr. California. God, Mr. California.
The great love I wasn’t ready for when it first found me.
And maybe, in many ways, neither was he.
He met me at the crossroads of my undoing.
He touched everything in me that matters.

Our story is one of phone calls, emails, spiritual intimacy, and a hunger so holy it changed the shape of my desire.
But it’s not a fairytale. It’s a pilgrimage. A messy, sacred one.

Because I have bipolar disorder.
And there are years of my life where the highs took me too far, and the lows almost took me out.
Mr. California has seen it, the mania, the spirals, the devastating ache of silence.
There were times I begged, raged, collapsed.
And times he retreated, overwhelmed by the storm of me.

But still, somehow, we are here.
Still circling each other in a rhythm older than fear.

And somewhere along the road of that love, he led me to my faith.
He spoke softly about the Eucharist, about the prayers his mother once whispered.
He reminded me that reverence was not weakness, it was a form of desire.
And I followed the scent of that holiness all the way to the Church.

I was baptized in tears and starlight, late one April evening.
Carrying Mr. California in my heart like a relic.
Because before I ever knelt at the altar,
I worshiped in the sanctuary of his voice.
He became my cathedral, the place where God first whispered,
“This love is not an accident. It’s an invitation.”

And when I was finally strong enough to serve,
I found the purpose I had always been aching for.

Now, I work with the homebound and the elderly.
I pray with them. Listen to their stories.
Hold their hands through loneliness, sickness, and dying.
And in those quiet rooms filled with age and grace,
I feel more alive than I ever did chasing chaos.

This is the calling I was born for.
To love the forgotten. To carry the sacred.
To show up for others the way I once begged someone to show up for me.

So what has time taught me?

It’s taught me that nothing is linear.
Healing doesn’t walk a straight line, it dances, stumbles, and loops back around.
Love isn’t always loud or labeled, sometimes it’s a man showing up quietly, just when you think you’ve lost him for good.
Sobriety isn’t a finish line, it’s a daily choice, a private triumph no one claps for but God.

And my heavily stigmatized bipolar?
It’s not my failure.
It’s my fire.
It’s made me tender and brave and so exquisitely alive.

I don’t see time as a thief anymore. I see it as an alchemist.
It turned my shame into story.
My heartbreak into holy hunger.
And my survival into something I can finally be proud of.

I am not who I was in the jail cell.
I am not the girl who let my ex-husband gaslight her into forgetting her own worth.
I am not the desperate voice mail left at 3am.

I am a woman becoming.
Becoming whole.
Becoming wise.
Becoming the kind of love I once begged to receive.

And every year that passes, I get to look back and whisper:
“Thank God I stayed. Thank God I kept becoming.”

Stay Tuned.

Daily writing prompt
How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?
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inspiredodyssey daily prompt

My Biggest Complaint: Soul-Crushing Silence

If I’m brave enough to tell the real truth, ungraceful, unapologetic and messy, I have to admit this: what I complain about the most is silence.

Not the peaceful, sacred quiet kind that feels like rest.
I mean the hollow kind.
The echoing kind.
The kind that makes your chest feel like an abandoned room.
The kind that feels like being forgotten.
Like being quietly set aside.
Like a sentence handed down for loving too much.

I complain about waiting.
About hoping.
About checking my phone too often.
About staring at empty spaces where reassurance should live.
About the space between messages, between promises, between moments of closeness that never quite settle into certainty.

I complain about loving with a heart that refuses to be quiet.

I complain about the not-knowing, so much emotional limbo of almost, maybe, soon, someday.
About caring more than feels dignified.
About longing so loudly it sometimes disguises itself as frustration, impatience, or anger.

But if I strip it down to the bone, here’s the confession underneath the complaining:

I don’t complain because I’m shallow.
I complain because I’m so damn fragile.
I don’t complain because I’m ungrateful.
I complain because I’m wounded.

Sometimes it feels like I’m being punished for the size of my own heart.
As if loving deeply is a crime.
As if longing is something I should apologize for.
As if the depth of my devotion is a flaw that needs to be corrected by distance, silence, and restraint.

It can feel like I’m being taught, over and over, that wanting is dangerous and no good.
That hope should be smaller.
That love should be quieter.
That the price of depth is learning how to suffer politely.

I complain because I feel like I’m always the one reaching.
Always the one waiting.
Always the one trying to make peace with uncertainty while my chest quietly caves in.

My complaints are grief in disguise.
They’re devotion with nowhere to land.
They’re love pacing the floor, restless and unsheltered, aching to be answered.

I complain because I feel too much, way too damn much,
because my heart doesn’t know how to do anything halfway,
because when I attach, I attach with my soul,
because silence can feel like abandonment even when it isn’t meant to be.

And beneath all the venting, spiraling, and overthinking, there’s a softer truth I don’t always say out loud:

I’m not angry.
I’m aching.
I’m not bitter.
I’m grieving.
I’m not dramatic.
I’m hurting,
and trying to understand why love sometimes feels like a punishment instead of a gift.

Maybe what I complain about the most
isn’t other people,
or circumstances,
or fate.

Maybe I complain about
how much I love,
and how much it hurts to keep loving anyway.

And maybe that isn’t a flaw.

Maybe it’s a confession.
Maybe it’s evidence.
Maybe it’s proof
that my heart is still fiercely, painfully alive.

Daily writing prompt
What do you complain about the most?
View all responses

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

What Love Really Looks Like (Positive Examples)

There are many forms of love, but never in my life have I felt it as fully as I do today. Not in big, fancy ways or dramatic declarations, but in something quieter, steadier. I feel it in my independence. In my freedom. In the people who surround me now. And maybe most importantly, I feel it in the way I am finally learning to love myself.

That’s the evolution, I think. The love I’m giving myself is starting to show itself back to me through others. My giving nature hasn’t disappeared, I still love deeply, openly, but now, for the first time, I’m giving that love to people who meet me with care, respect, and reciprocity. That changes everything.

My friends are the backbone of this love. Truly. From my best friend I met on Bumble for Friends (because yes, adult friendship is a dating app now), to my two cornerstone, survival-level friends back in New York who know every version of me, to my soul-sister friends at church; the women I serve alongside, pray with, laugh with, and do holy work with. And all the beautiful souls in between.

When I spiral, when depression tightens its grip, when bipolar chaos tries to hijack my thoughts, when I start to disappear into myself, these people breathe life back into me. They ground me. They remind me who I am when I forget. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without them, and that alone feels like a miracle.

And then there are my parents, my mom and dad, who hold the highest honor in my heart. When I walked into the darkest chapter of my life, the one that led straight into jail and homelessness, they didn’t hesitate. They gave up their entire life in New York. Everything familiar. Everyone they loved. And they came to North Carolina, to a place they didn’t know, just to save me. Just to take care of me. Just to make sure I lived.

If that isn’t a positive example of being loved, I don’t know what is.

And then there is Mr. California. My sleepy bear. The man who introduced me to his world and gently taught me a different way to love, without anger, without possession, without codependency. A love that feels holy and chaste and wildly alive all at once. He makes me feel like a teenager again, (in the best way), full of wanting, butterflies, hormones, and hope. It’s bliss, honestly. I laugh at myself sometimes because it all feels so innocent and X-rated all at once, lol.

There are hard moments, of course. His silence hurts. Distance is not kind. But even that is teaching me something important; how to love outside of him, not collapse into him, not disappear when he’s not there. That lesson is painful, but it’s also sacred.

Through all of this, the most important love I am learning to give is the one I give myself. Living alone can be incredibly hard. My bed misses the man I love. My heart does too. And when I spiral, I forget how deeply loved I already am. That’s something I still struggle with; I fall hard, I forget the bigger picture, I suffer more than I need to.

Maybe that’s where a gratitude journal comes in. If I can just find the discipline to keep one, it might help anchor me on the days my mind tries to convince me that I am all alone in the world.

But the truest, most positive example of being loved?

I woke up today. I got another day. Another breath. Another chance to try again.

That kind of love, the kind that keeps showing up no matter how many times I’ve fallen, can only come from God.

And that, more than anything, is what carries me forward.

Stay Tuned.

Daily writing prompt
Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?
View all responses

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

Clearing the Clutter from My Home and My Head

Decluttering has been on the New Year’s list for a while, not just the kind where you throw out expired mascara and ask yourself why that same DVD has three different damn cases, lol, but the kind that clears out the mental clutter, too.

I’m not saying I’m a hoarder, but… let’s just say my cozy apartment has been leaning a little too far into the “cozy” lately. Piles of things I don’t use, mystery objects I swear I’ll get to someday, gifted items I don’t even like (but feel weird throwing out), it’s all starting to close in on me. And that’s just the physical clutter.

Don’t even get me started on the mental mess.

My brain? Oh, she’s on her own schedule. Jumping from grocery lists to emotional spirals and crying fits, to story ideas I never write down, to “did I ever respond to that email from three weeks ago?” to the soundtrack of that movie I once knew so well, but now seems corny as hell. It’s like living inside 47 open browser tabs with music playing from somewhere, but you can’t find the source. “I know there is music playing where are youuouuuuu???!!!!” Lol.

So this year, I’m on a mission. A clean-sweep-everything-down-to-the-soul mission.

🧠 The Mental Declutter

When was the last time you actually just sat with yourself? Like no phone, no Netflix humming in the background, no doomscrolling until your eyes pops out of your head?

When was the last time you imagined something for fun?
Told yourself a story in your head?
Danced around your living room like Tom Cruise did in tidy whities?

It’s wild how distracted we’ve all become.

I live alone. I could be doing this every day. But between shows to binge, apps to check, and brain fog to battle, I somehow forget I even like myself when the screens are off.

That changes now.

I want my mind to have room again. Room to wonder, to dream, to remember who I am when I’m not overstimulated and under-inspired. I want to lie on my couch, open a book, and stay there for a whole hour without reaching for my phone. I want to breathe slower, daydream more, maybe even get a little bored – did you know it’s not a bad thing to be bored? Why is it so bad to have nothing at all to do – I mean NOTHING, just do nothing, why is it we always have to do SOMETHING?

🧺 The Home Declutter

As for my apartment? We’re going in.
Stuff I haven’t worn in years? Gone.
Weird, gifted knick-knacks that haunt my shelves? Thank you, next.
Anything that doesn’t spark joy or at least serve a purpose besides being mildly cute and collecting dust? Bye-bye.

I want my home to feel like a hug again—not a storage unit run by someone who’s emotionally attached to old tote bags.

💌 And Yes… The Clutter of HIM, Too

Now… we do have to talk about a certain man I call Mr. California.
Because as much as I’m decluttering, his name still takes up premium real estate in my brain.

Yesterday was all quiet on the Western front but today brought a warm little message. I know he’s under a lot of stress; he’s having to reapply for some of the benefits he needs for his daughter, and the system, as usual, is an unholy mess. It hurts to see someone I care about deal with so much unnecessary pressure. And I know he’ll need support. The kind I’m very good at giving, ALL kinds of things. I think that will include turning him into a pile of unkept, spent, breathing, post-coitus mess too, lol.

But I’m learning something new this year: I can love him and still make space for myself.

My love doesn’t have to come at the expense of my peace.
And his silence doesn’t get to stop my momentum anymore.

So yes, out with the old, in with the soft, the joyful, the meaningful, the uncluttered. In with mornings where I don’t wake up instantly anxious. In with shelves that actually breathe. In with dance breaks and books and wild imaginings.

Because this new year?
It’s not about perfection.
It’s about lightness.

Stay tuned.

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

Needing to Love with Without My Heart Bleeding

This is a major shift that I need to make in my life. It is part of my truth, the stress in my relationship, the hurt that keeps coming back over and over again. I’ve been loving without boundaries. Wholly. Fully. Without hesitation. And it’s left my heart gushing—sometimes metaphorically, sometimes I swear it feels literal—like a faucet that won’t turn off. The hurt keeps circling back like it’s on a goddamn boomerang. You think it’s gone, and there it is again, socking you in the gut like it forgot its keys.

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to anchor too many things at once, like I’m some kind of emotional octopus:
🌀 Lose a massive amount of weight.
🌀 Fix my career while dragging around a criminal record that feels like a scarlet letter made of concrete.
🌀 Forgive myself for a marriage that nearly destroyed me and still echoes in the worst possible ways.
🌀 And—oh, right—try to love a man who simply can’t meet me halfway no matter how wide I throw open the door.

It’s like spinning plates during a hurricane. And I’m the plate. And the hurricane. And the one yelling at the weather.

So, what could I do differently?

Let’s start here:
I have to stop beating myself bloody in the space where love isn’t showing up.

Because the truth? My timeline and this man’s capacity are not synced. I’m trying to build a bonfire and he’s handing me a damp match. Not because he’s cruel or doesn’t care—but because he just can’t right now. He’s tied up in his own storm. And while I’m standing in the doorway waiting, I’m slowly setting fire to myself.

That silence? That delay? That not-knowing-if-he’ll-call?
It’s been paralyzing me.

I stop dancing.
I stop writing.
I stop applying to jobs.
I stop trying.
I sit frozen in a pile of unmet needs and unspoken prayers. Waiting for breadcrumbs.

But this year? That version of me—the one who waits, who withers, who wilts at the sound of no sound—is not coming with me.

Today, I took the first real step. I met with a new therapist.

And no offense to Mr. California, but I swore to myself I wouldn’t let him hijack the whole hour.

Today wasn’t about him. It was about me.

My weight.
My self-worth.
My desire to make money again even with this giant felon stamp across my chest.

Do you know how maddening it is to be punished forever for something that happened in the middle of a manic episode—when I was so drugged and drunk and utterly gone, I barely remember my own name? And yet the system remembers. It remembers every charge, every fingerprint. It doesn’t care that I’ve been sober five years. Doesn’t care that I now spend my time serving in church. Doesn’t care that I’ve given my heart to helping others.

But God knows.
God knows the whole story—the one no one else ever really sees.
God knows what happened when I was arrested.
God knows what was in my blood, in my brain, and in my breaking point.
And God knows who I am now.

That’s who I’m answering to this year. Not the courts. Not the shame. Not the silence of a man who can’t always show up. God. And me.

Because last year?
Last year was about pain.
It was about scrolling, rereading emails, waiting by the phone like some tragic black-and-white movie heroine in fuzzy slippers and unresolved trauma.

But this year?

This year is about movement.

About me on the living room floor, sweating and swearing through dance workouts I actually like.

About opening that Word doc I’ve been scared to finish.

About emailing one new place a day even if it leads to nowhere, because I’m still trying.

About holding my heart in my hands instead of laying it out like a doormat.

I’m not going to pretend I’ve figured it all out. Hell no. I’m a mess with glitter on. But I’m a mess in motion. I’m moving. I’m healing. I’m showing up.

No more waiting.

More living.

Daily writing prompt
What could you do differently?
View all responses

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

Forever Night Owl – Most Happy at Night

“Because the night belongs to lovers, because the night belongs to us.”

Those infamous words have followed me through so many seasons of my life, and lately, they feel spoken just for me.

I’ve always loved the night.

It’s where the noise fades, where the world exhales, where the sharp edges of the day soften into something forgiving. Night has never demanded anything from me — it simply opens its arms and says, come as you are. In the quiet hours, inhibitions loosen, laughter feels freer, and the most honest versions of ourselves slip out from hiding.

As a teenager, the night was rebellion and adrenaline — sneaking out with a fake ID, neon lights flickering across sweaty dance floors in New York City, music vibrating through my bones as if it could rearrange my future. Later, the night became contemplative — long hours spent stargazing while the rest of the world slept, lying still beneath constellations that reminded me I was small, but never insignificant.

Through all the ebbs and flows of my life — the chaos, the heartbreak, the rebuilding — one thing never wavered.
My love of the night stayed faithful to me, even when nothing else did.

Now, nightfall brings something entirely different.

Something gentler.
Something sweeter.

These days, when the sky darkens and the house grows quiet, I find myself wrapped in the soft intimacy of Mr. California’s presence. Hours slip by on the phone, carried by shameless flirting, tender laughter, and that delicious teenage-crush energy people spend decades trying to rediscover. There is comfort in knowing the night will end with his voice — low, warm, and familiar — weaving its way into my thoughts.

The night tastes like Mexican hot chocolate, rich and slow, and sounds like the softest, sexiest voice in my ear, talking me into calm, into closeness, into that suspended space where nothing else exists. There’s desire, yes — but there’s also devotion, playfulness, and the kind of emotional intimacy that feels rare and sacred.

Things aren’t perfect.
The distance aches sometimes.
The longing stretches thin on certain nights.

But what I’ve never had before — not like this — is independence. My days belong to me now. They’re full and busy and bright: friendships, purpose, movement, freedom. I live my life fully out in the world, loving the woman I’ve become. And then, when night comes and I retreat into my own space, I realize something quietly astonishing.

I have everything.

I have my freedom.
I have my peace.
And I have a man who is absolutely, undeniably crazy about me — who meets me in the dark hours not to consume me, but to share the night with me.

So yes.
The night belongs to lovers.
It belongs to whispered conversations and stolen smiles across time zones.
It belongs to longing that feels hopeful instead of desperate.
It belongs to us.

And honestly?
I wouldn’t trade these nights for anything.

Stay tuned.

Daily writing prompt
When are you most happy?
View all responses

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

Sobriety, My Own Place, My Own Life

I hung on to my ex-husband longer than I should have. We were both wrong for each other from the beginning. Leaving him was the best thing to ever happen to me, and something I am the proudest of.

I had been living a nightmare of my own making for most of my life. I had been drinking heavily, in and out of mental institutions, living in a room in my parents’ house with no hope of ever moving out or making anything of my life. I spent nearly a decade online, before OnlyFans was a thing, giving myself freely to men online, not having any kind of respect for myself. Did I really think I could find a husband this way? Did I really think a man could save me from all of this pain?

Then I met my husband. We went through NYC like Bonnie and Clyde, him introducing me to crack by giving me the pipe in my mouth, (I would never touch it), and me drowning more and more in alcohol. Even though we shared a special moment in my favorite church, where God told him to ask me to marry him, it was the last bit of romance that would ever go on in our toxic relationship. From emotional abuse, physical fights over money for drugs, me leaving him a bunch of times and him threatening me with suicide so I took him back, and us committing many crimes in NYC, we fled to North Carolina to start a new life.

But it didn’t end there, it just got worse. He found a new group of people to get drugs from, my alcoholism got worse, and I was so deep in sin, that only thing left for God to do was send us both to jail to stop all the madness. I spent 10 months on the floor of a jail cell, still dreaming of him and sending messages to the officers to give to him for me. I still hung on, even after I got out and became homeless, having to find shelter in a rehab. I was always building for our future, visiting him in the psych ward after jail, trying to make a life with a man that wanted nothing more than look for crack the moment he got out. He tormented me every single day in our new apartment, after I tried to do things the right way and live sober. It all crumbled. He refused medication. His addiction raged. And somehow, by grace alone, I didn’t relapse. The old crack spots were boarded up. The temptation wasn’t there. That was God.

He became incoherent. I watched him dissolve like I once had. My parents, now in North Carolina, put him on a bus back to New York. They saved my life. I owe them everything.

The last time I saw him, my parents drove us to the bus depot. I was quiet the whole ride, watching the North Carolina roads blur into memory. He looked exhausted — thin, worn, not quite tethered to this world anymore — but there was still something in his eyes, those big brown eyes I had fallen in love with in the ward. We stood outside the Greyhound station, under a gray sky that couldn’t make up its mind. He reached for me, and I melted into him, holding on like it could somehow undo the damage. And then came the final kiss — slow, trembling, soaked in goodbye. I closed my eyes and tried to memorize everything: the shape of his mouth, the scent of his skin, the sadness in his breath.

His last words to me were, “We can try and make this work, right?”

And part of me — the part still haunted by our first kiss and that candlelit church — wanted to say yes.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

Even after he left, I kept in touch. I loved his mother — she made sure I had support even in jail, wrote me letters, and sent cards. She loved how much I loved her son. But it wasn’t enough.

He kept disappearing in New York, lost in the same cycles, same streets. And one day, I changed my number.

I grieved him like a death. Because I had buried so many parts of myself just to stay with him — my sobriety, my sanity, my dreams. And still, I would have stayed. That’s what heartbreak does to you. It confuses sacrifice with salvation. 

Because for all the chaos, for all the darkness — he loved me in a way no one else ever had. He made me feel beautiful when I had been discarded by so many. He gave me an adventure. He made me feel chosen.

All I ever wanted was to save him. But love is not salvation.

And sometimes, the kindest thing grace can do — is say goodbye.

I think of him still, when the nights are lonely — only because there were nights that he used to hold me when the mania or depression was just too much. He would stroke my forehead and lull me back to sleep. Mostly, it was the mornings when he kissed my forehead while I was still asleep.

If only he could have been what I hoped him to be. But you can’t change someone, you can’t even try. All you can do is pray for them, and hope God takes care of them. I pray for him to this day.

I moved on of course, and fell in love again, but it honestly hurts more than what I went through with my ex-husband. This time, this love showed me what it could be like to be loved completely and without addiction and toxicity – although I still got heartbroken in the end.

So what am I most proud of? Through all of that I’ve been through, I managed to keep my apartment, my sobriety, and most of all my piece of mind. I live my life alone and in peace, embracing my freedom and independence everytime.

To me that’s priceless.

Stay tuned.

Daily writing prompt
What are you most proud of in your life?
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inspiredodyssey love

Loving a Man in Chains

Tonight I see it clearly — I am the free one.
I’ve walked through my own prisons: my ex-husband’s control, my addiction, the years of craving love that hurt more than it healed. I earned this freedom drop by drop, tear by tear.

And yet my heart still reaches for a man who lives behind invisible bars. His daughter, his guilt, his fear — all real, all heavy. I can feel how small the world must feel to him, how rare the air of laughter must be when he calls me.

But I will not trade my wings for his chains.
I can love him without locking myself away.
I can ache for his peace and still choose my own.

That is what love in the light looks like — compassion without captivity.