Stop Asking Women Why They're Angry

 

There’s a special kind of heartbreak that happens when you realize somebody has plenty of energy for everything except the life they built with you.

That’s where I’m at today.

Standing in a house with no fucking hot water.

The water heater is broken.

The grass needs mowed.

The house needs things.

Life needs things.

I need things.

And somehow there’s always enough time to leave.

That’s the part that’s fucking killing me.

Because I’ve spent so much of my life believing that if I loved harder, stayed longer, explained myself better, cried differently, got quieter, got louder, became easier, became smaller, became less witchy, less emotional, less complicated, less fucking me, eventually I’d become somebody worth staying home for.

Jesus fucking Christ.

What a scam.

Today a car pulled into the driveway.

And because my nervous system is currently held together with sage smoke, caffeine, heartbreak, and whatever tiny shred of dignity I haven’t thrown into the compost pile yet, I ran outside.

I was crying.

I was furious.

I wanted to know why the fuck somebody was pulling into the driveway in the middle of all of this.

The car backed out.

Gone.

I don’t know who was driving.

And I’m not going to make shit up just because my heart is broken.

I don’t need to.

Because what happened afterward hurt enough.

He left too.

That’s it.

No explanation.

No real conversation.

Just fucking left.

And suddenly I’m standing there realizing something so simple that I almost laughed.

Almost.

Because apparently there’s time to go.

There’s always fucking time to go.

Time to ride.

Time to have fun.

Time to disappear.

Time to do literally anything that exists beyond these walls.

But the water heater?

Later.

The grass?

Later.

The house?

Later.

The relationship?

Later.

Me?

Apparently I’ve been living in “later” for a long fucking time.

And holy shit, that realization hurts.

Because I’m a gardener.

I know what “later” does to living things.

Later is a drooping leaf you swear you’ll water tomorrow.

Later is the pest you notice but don’t treat.

Later is the root rot you pretend isn’t spreading because dealing with it would require pulling the whole fucking plant out of the pot.

Later is how things die while everybody insists there’s still plenty of time.

And I’m fucking done being somebody’s later.

I’ve survived too much shit to spend the rest of my life begging someone to notice I’m wilting.

I almost died once.

Actually almost fucking died.

And maybe that’s why this cuts so deeply.

Because once you’ve fought that hard to stay alive, there’s something particularly humiliating about spending your second chance trying to convince somebody that your heart deserves basic fucking care.

I don’t want flowers after I’m destroyed.

I don’t want coffee after I’ve begged to be heard.

I don’t want tiny acts of kindness sprinkled over months of feeling invisible and then handed to me like evidence that I should shut the fuck up and be grateful.

I want presence.

I want honesty.

I want somebody who sees something broken in the home we share and thinks,

we should fix that.

Not because I nagged.

Not because I cried.

Not because I finally fucking snapped.

Because this is our home.

Because I matter here.

Because building a life with somebody is supposed to mean you actually participate in the goddamn life.

And maybe that’s asking too much from the wrong person.

That sentence hurts to write.

Fuck.

It hurts.

Because anger is so much easier than grief.

I can scream “I fucking hate you” all day.

I can rage.

I can slam cabinet doors.

I can scrub countertops like they personally betrayed me.

I can walk through the house spraying sage like an emotionally unstable village witch performing an exorcism on every shitty memory attached to the drywall.

That part I can do.

But underneath all of that?

There’s a woman who is fucking heartbroken.

That’s the part nobody sees when they call an angry woman crazy.

They see the fire.

They don’t ask who kept handing her matches.

They see the screaming.

They don’t ask how many times she whispered first.

They see the moment she finally says, “Fuck you.”

They don’t see the thousand times before that when she said,

“Please.”

“Can we talk?”

“Can you help me?”

“Can you hear me?”

“Can you choose me?”

“Can I matter too?”

Eventually “please” becomes “fuck you.”

That’s not pretty.

It’s not inspirational.

It won’t fit on one of those beige Instagram graphics with a fucking eucalyptus branch in the corner.

But it’s real.

And today I don’t want pretty healing.

I want feral healing.

I want the kind where I sage the first floor and cry so hard my face hurts.

I want the kind where I stop fixing things that aren’t mine to fix.

I want the kind where the grass gets long because I’m finally learning that not every neglected thing is automatically my responsibility.

I want the kind where somebody else’s unfinished shit stays unfinished.

I want the kind where I stop sprinting behind people screaming, “WAIT, YOU FORGOT TO LOVE ME.”

No.

You fucking forgot.

I didn’t.

I loved.

Holy shit, did I love.

I loved loudly.

I loved stupidly.

I loved hopefully.

I loved through disappointment.

I loved through resentment.

I loved when I was exhausted.

I loved when I should’ve been protecting myself.

I kept watering.

I kept pruning.

I kept turning the fucking soil.

I kept believing one more season might change everything.

But here’s the thing nobody tells gardeners.

Sometimes the bravest thing you can grow is the courage to stop tending something that only survives because you keep sacrificing yourself to it.

So I saged the house today.

Burning sage.

Spray sage.

Fuck it.

Apparently we’re spiritually pressure washing this bitch.

And somewhere between the smoke and the tears and the absolute absurdity of standing in a beautiful home without fucking hot water, something in me got very quiet.

Not healed.

Absolutely fucking not.

I’m not putting a Pinterest quote on this and pretending I’ve transcended anything.

I’m devastated.

I’m furious.

I’m grieving.

I’m probably going to cry again in ten fucking minutes.

But underneath all of that, there’s something else.

Me.

Still fucking here.

The same woman who's survived things that should’ve buried her.

The same woman who built a recovery community out of nothing but an idea and stubbornness.

The same woman who turned sobriety into a garden because counting days was never enough.

The same woman who keeps planting things because some ridiculous part of her still believes life wants to grow.

Maybe that’s what I need to remember tonight.

The water heater is still broken.

The grass is still growing.

My relationship may be fucking shattered.

My heart feels like somebody put it through a wood chipper and handed it back to me in a Ziploc bag.

And the house smells aggressively like sage.

But I’m still here.

And maybe I don’t need to figure out my whole fucking life today.

Maybe today I just stop chasing.

Maybe today I let somebody leave without running behind them demanding an explanation for why I wasn’t enough to make them stay.

Maybe today I stop asking that question entirely.

Because I was never supposed to audition for basic fucking love.

I won’t shrink.

I won’t beg.

I won’t become quieter.

I won’t erase the witch.

I won’t erase the recovering woman.

I won’t erase the loud mouth.

I won’t erase the garden.

I won’t erase myself just so somebody else can feel more comfortable standing beside me.

And I sure as fuck won’t spend another lifetime trying to convince somebody that things need tending while I’m standing there holding the watering can.

If you want the garden,

fucking water it.

If you want the home,

fucking tend it.

If you want the woman,

fucking show up for her.

Otherwise, don’t act surprised when one day you come looking for the version of her who would’ve done anything to keep you

and discover she finally did something for herself instead.

She stopped chasing you.

She went inside.

She saged the fucking house.

And she started saving herself.