just alyssa

I see you. You’re standing there at the grocery store fumbling with items in your cart, trying to figure out which ones you’ll actually eat this week. I see you at the mall trying to fix emotions with shoes and handbags. I see you at the gym pounding the treadmill like it gives you oxygen. I recognize you by that vacant look in your eye, the pool of heartache that keeps the tears barely at bay. I see you. Every day you’re walking around with an emptiness that can’t be fixed with morning coffee, exercise, or even the best pasta at Fazolis. And you’re trying. You’re trying to remember what got you here and forget the one who broke you. But even during the months where you forget to pay the water bill, you still remember to check their horoscope.  You still have mornings expecting to roll over to them in your bed. You have days where you regret having fallen in love at all, realizing now why they call it “falling”. Somewhere along the way you lost you...

Going through a breakup can be extremely difficult. It’s as if you lost a limb. You have to constantly change your routine, giving up the constant communication of texting, calling, snapchatting, or instant messaging your significant other. And every day you feel different, like you’re slowly losing yourself more and more. You constantly think back on happier times and the memories that will now haunt you, and you physically hurt. You feel the pain deep in your bones. And you can’t face that loss alone. You need someone to be there while you cry and drink and cry some more, and although it can be super irritating to listen to someone go on and on about the same thing for months, your best friend is there to see you through it. What I’ve learned through my own break ups and losses of all those potential loves and almosts, is that only you truly know what’s best for you. Your friends can give you advice and pick you up when you’ve fallen too hard, but the only one who know...

We all have those friends or peers who look at us and smack us with their bafflement of our relationship status. Always the, “But you’re so pretty.”   “So smart.”   “So…. great ”. Somehow we’ve created this notion that because we’re pretty, or smart, or have a good job, a good life, are funny, have a good personality, that we MUST have a significant other. Because CLEARLY our happiness and success and overall life fulfillment is only accomplished through having a partner who loves us. And I get it. I do. I have a full time job, a college degree, I live on my own, have my own car, and my life is going pretty good. I have all the necessary requirements of “adulthood”, leaving the next natural step to be finding a man to parade on my arm and marry. But the thing is, I’m not single because I’m not pretty, or I’m not smart, or I’m not funny, or I have a dull personality, or I don’t have a good job, or I’m not successful. I’m not single because I’m incap...