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I am retiring from the job of writing about love.
I will not share my dating life or the wildness of falling head over heels. I won’t tell you about the opening of my heart and how it has to fight tooth and nail to let love in again. I won’t fill my feed with the next person I date or how they change me for better or worse. I will leave it out of my job.
I am retiring from the job of writing about dating.
I will keep my cards close as the swell takes over. I will keep the hotness to myself, transmuting the heat of passion towards my art practice and my life. I will leave it out of my job.
How can I not write about love? How can love escape this small corner?
I imagine, like the greatest number 23 Michael Jordan, that in the Lord’s year 2023 I will come out of retirement just as he did. Perhaps for a new sport, for a few more seasons, for whatever it is that pulls me towards a new play by play.
It isn’t to say I don’t want to think about love or pursue love, that I have something to hide in my destiny of falling. But as I round the corner on the one year anniversary of everything falling apart, I know that whatever is next and whoever fills my cup I want to take great care that they have nothing to do with my income, my public image, or a factor in how I choose what to share or not share.
My queerness, my worth, my gender, and my complete sense of self became tied to the projection of my partnership towards thousands of people. It created a vortex where I couldn’t see the top from the bottom or the in from the out. I was so busy painting the picture of what I wanted my life to feel like that I backed myself into a corner where I could see no way out.
I refuse to entertain death as an exit, so today I retire from writing about love.
I’ve been gifted the crystal vision of myself, tied to nothing but the Earth. I have fortified myself little by little, sure of nothing, trusting everything. The dice say god on every side so whichever way you roll them that’s how they land. There is no way to not write about love if I am awake so take what I say with one dice roll and a grain of salt. It is the obscurity of love that stays.
I retire from writing about this tether of newness, in the sense that whatever is next you shall not know. I promise to fall with great might and with great trust, because my steadiness holds me in a way that can’t be swept away. May privacy prevail in that it shields us from telling the story of love, instead crafting the space to feel it deeply.
May this retirement serve my attention in new ways
May this retirement serve as a blessing to all future love
May this retirement bring me closer to God
Don’t miss these sales from Lake and Woods Apothecary if you’re in the Leelanau Peninsula this month : 3 Sundays in row from 10-5
1/8 : 50% off Everything in store
1/15 : Bulk herb & Packaging Sale
1/22 : Apothecary Garage Sale
I love Anna’s writing so much and this Q and A on dating
3. Everything Annika writes in Annika is Dreaming
Pre-Order Old Enough by Haley Jakobson
Always learning so much from Dr. Jess Bailey
Finally getting into the new Tove Lo and loving it
This was a beautiful listen
TO BE PRAYED FOR - another amazing list from Bowen and Matt
My 2023 INS AND OUTS
Residency Alert
⌇⋰ Website
⌇⋰ Email : info@marleegrace.space
or respond to this email, I love to hear your thoughts
⌇⋰ PO Box 252 Cedar, MI 49621
Photo of me in a red turtleneck by Anna Friss
A reminder my INS and OUTS are MY ins and outs - may your list look entirely different
