What Long-Term Love Can Feel Like
Scenes from survival, loss, and becoming.
My friends!
2026 is here, can you believe it? I find this time of year to be quietly exciting with every list, wish, tarot pull, and conversation. And yet, how can our hearts not break by the weight of this country? How can our minds not rage over the information coming through our screens?
A simple question that I am softly observing lately: how does the heart know when it is time to let go? The message I received: let the body be the one to tell you.
For this letter, I am offering grace to a collection of pain from 2024/2025. This was a time I spent in deep loss, where gauzy memories float in and out of a heightened state of survival. These personal scenes of heartbreak, loss, and love are bravely asking me to let go. I catch glimpses of who I am becoming in the alteration of life after marriage/partnership/long-term love comes to an end. There are many stories I wish to share beyond the ache of my past. I look forward to this gentle unfurling.
If you’re sensitive to emotional trauma, grief inner dialogue, relationship dynamics, etc. may I kindly offer you this departure point in the letter. No matter when, where, or how we meet again, please take good care of yourself. For those friends who wish to read ahead, the wounded animal in me is honored to hold your gaze.
November 2025
Fuck, I forgot what it felt like to have a trauma response. I forgot how to read the signs of an impending episode. It takes me days to figure out what is wrong with me. This once familiar dance I knew by heart while my marriage was mending/pausing/falling apart has temporarily become unknown. My heart forgets so easily in this new life. But my body remembers what my heart has decided to move away from.
October 2024
All the songs suddenly make sense. Lyrics click into place, lost meaning now found. So much pain and airing out happens in art and suddenly I am here seeing all the colors. Safe zones, gates blown wide open. New meanings and definitions apply. I am but a student learning all the hues of your eyes, and the subtleties of your body, as you trade and deceive and we start and stop.
February 2025
I think my spirit is dying. I think our hearts have started to take on water. I might be drowning. But something tucked away inside is begging me to swim. Or maybe it’s my husband, who suddenly looks afraid. I want more than anything for him to be the one to reach for me. Grab my arms, pull me close.
I look for the emotional lifeline.
All I need to hear is one true thing.
November 2024
I would describe myself as fearless, because I am absolutely willing to take the risk for what I want, those I love, and what I believe in. I am not afraid of getting burned or scuffed or fucked up when it comes to matters of the heart.
And yet here you are, making me question. You are daring me to look. And I just don’t understand how you can’t know that while this thing between us may scare me, I am certainly not afraid of it. I am not afraid of you, I am not afraid of us. I am still here, standing up, in the shadow of a future we’re still figuring out.
So I’m daring you back. I want to know if you’re tough. Can you witness me and hear me and hold me through what we call our love? Your actions speak to a willingness to risk but I guess I’m here looking at you, figuring out if that’s what you meant or to call your bluff.
For Cash
I feel dead outside.
Inside is vibrant and exploding with rage and anguish.
On the surface, I don’t know how to feel
out loud,
openly,
together.Somehow the words are on the tip of my tongue and in the back of my throat and on the brush of your hand.
But it’s easier to let words die.
I say nothing,
hear something,
see everything.
March 2025
You are listening to Dylan and I’m listening to Miles and that just paints the picture doesn’t it?
I turn back to writing because it’s the one thing that keeps me going.
Will my brain crack open like a fucking egg? How much more of this can I really take? How is it possible to notice all the beauty while holding all the ways of being betrayed?
I read somewhere I can create any outcome I wish.
I wish to write this book.
I wish to put it in the hands of people I know.
I wish to make it out of this deep loss, together.
I wish for you to get better.
I wish to be stronger from head to toe.
Cracks and breakthroughs and relapse and fatigue.
Keep going, it is worth it,
Keep going, it is worth it,
Keep going, it is worth it,
Keep going, it is worth it.
Miles Davis, I too am kind of blue.
October 2025, again in December
Help me understand, where are we right now?
I have questions that shouldn’t be asked unless there is a gentle kindness attached but as we know, I am not afraid to look.
It can’t be true, and it can’t be kind to say, but all this time was my life waiting for me to make this departure? And when I didn’t answer that call, did the guides, my ancestors, magic, bits + bobs that you and I may or may not believe in —did they make the decision?
Am I really all the kind things people continue to say? I want it to be true, so I cling to their words. I want to hear them, I want it repeated, I want to write everything down so I can find myself again. I want to feel drunk on thoughts from those around me, to reassure my place in this world. I’m here, I’m standing, I’m sitting, I’m walking.
I’m here, right?
What if I freak out and ruin this whole thing? I still don’t know if I’m referring to the moment, the night, or the entire timeline of us.
I feel exhausted at the inability to fully arrive. For the first time in a few months I feel the familiar choking feeling. I have all these words I’m willing to spill, to stumble over, to pass to someone new, but I’m caught between memories and ghosts. Different eyes look back at me in the dark and I am laid bare. I want to be seen. When I finally find my way back to the present, which is here and now and our bodies wrapped as one, I can breathe.
I promise I’ll keep trying. I promise I’ll share. I promise I will tell someone new when I find the words. I promise I would have told you everything if I knew how.
April 2025
I hate to say he is right. I hate hearing this one true thing, that perhaps I should consider what it would be like to not be together.
I hate this so much because of how hard I love.
Of course I am scared, of course I am lonely but I am here, in calmness and in pain, in strength and in commitment, trying—desperately, softly, tenderly—to understand. Love is what I have. Love is what I believe in.
I will not abandon, I will not turn away, I will not quit looking. I refuse. Is my love saving or drowning me? Am I thinking of me or us? I throw my body through these questions all these months because I don’t know what else to do.
And slowly, I have become tired. Of course I have.
But I don’t care.
Heart, do you hear me?
I said I don’t care.
Where dreams go when your heart is dying,
February 2024
A long time ago, before this, before you and me, I decided to facilitate breaking my own heart. In youthful naïveté I ended a relationship before someone could potentially hurt me. I achingly dreamt of this someone’s face every night that first year.
And so you see, it’s 2024 and this dream felt like coming home after not seeing someone for such a long time. I take someone in for who they really are in the moment. Questions hang between breaths. Hunger reads between eyes. I mistake my emotional desires for want of the real thing. Hands in hair and teeth splitting lips into smiles. There’s a momentary out of body / out of dream realization that there’s no friction, no sense of touch, not even a hint of the physical, but it’s simply not enough to stop us from trying. There’s the rising steam of the shower and the ease in which I wrap my legs around someone’s waist. There’s water on our skin, following phantom trails of our past. When kissing someone’s lips I feel a story untold, an agreement to get there eventually, but not tonight. Tumbling into bed, tangle of sheets. How time apart suits someone well. The ease in which we open to each other. Lips map out new curves and dips.
I confess, it feels as if my dreams purposefully keeps us apart. It’s like noticing a stranger, their face concealed by something on the street, and no matter how quickly I move, our timing and pace keeps our identities hidden. Cruel really, to never see this stranger’s face no matter how hard I try.
July 2024 responds to July 2023
One foot in front of the other. That’s been the rhythm of our life lately. Or maybe it has always been this way. Maybe this will be forever. One foot in front of the other and for the first time, I find myself looking over my shoulder to catch if you’re still with me. Are we still in step? What is on the path ahead? When did I start asking so many questions? I am looking for you everywhere. In the moment, in the past, in the shadow of a future we’re still figuring out. One foot in front of the other and I think we are now on different sides of the aisle, around the corner at the store. One foot in front of the other because if I stand still, the shadow of suspicion will pull me into the whirlpool of things we left unsaid.
January 2026
It’s January and all that was seven, eight, nine, ten months ago. A year, or two, or less — It depends on which season you’re visiting me from.
It’s January and I’m looking at my reflection in the front room window. It’s me against the jet black night. It’s January and I remember. We/you/I did that. We/you/I made it through that time. We/you/I navigated this with love.
I now know how low the flickering flame of my spirit can get and how little I can sustain myself on. And while I don’t ever want to find myself back in that place, I must tell you my friends, I am grateful for every scene that brought me to today.
A spell I am offering myself from a place of trust and courage:
I have changed.
I know what I need and crave.
I am afraid, a bit, sometimes, often, but I know how to move along.
I walk with my grief.
I choose to notice, not fix.
I choose to listen, not assume.
I choose to look forward.
I already have what I need.
I know how to take care of myself.
I am learning how to trust myself, again and again, and again.Each year I pull 12 tarot cards to correspond with the months ahead — a practice inspired by the moon studio — and for me, January looks like DEATH.
Wise interpretations and words from Beth Maiden on Little Red Tarot:
Life’s cycles of change.
Where to begin with this most ominous of cards?
As an archetype, Death is the great transformer. Death is the Wheel turning. Death is the march of time. Death is inevitable.
But this isn’t about literal death. It represents part of a cycle that we move through over and over in our lives. Our lives are made up of eras, identities, chapters, each one a cycle with a start and a finish. Death is about the finishing, the ending of a cycle…and the start of something new. Death carries rebirth inherent within it, its necessary conclusion.
Death is a necessary letting go, so that we can move forwards and grow into the next era of our lives. We must allow our ego, our identities, to ‘die’, we must accept that life changes, that we change, so as to grow into what comes next. A snake shedding its skin does not try to hold on to the old skin, pretending to still be yesterdays version of itself. It lets it all go, wearing its new skin, being its new self.
This card represents the inevitability of transformation and growth. You will not, can not, be the person you were yesterday, last month, last year, last decade. The transition from one era, one version of self into another can be welcome, or it can be painful. You don’t have a choice, it is a natural process. But you can choose whether to embrace death, to move with it, or to resist and fight it. - read more from Beth Maiden here
2026 IN: leftovers, borrowing & sharing, boredom, permission to be wrong! 2026 OUT: outdated systems.
I do not know and maybe you too do not know, so really, we are here together taking solace in each other’s unknown. But one clear thing that feels true to me is that if you find relief in a direction, then let that be the arrow to guide you.
Thank you for witnessing my heart, my rage, my questioning self, my desire, and my hunger. Stay soft, stay in love, stay close to those around you. Be so loud in voice, spirit, body, and soul. Keep looking, keep asking questions.
With love & possibility,
Jordan
the one true thing 😭