"My ex unfollowed me on LinkedIn"

& other selected secrets/sparkles

Hey y’all, welcome to the very first secrets/sparkles deep dive! I know it’s Thursday night instead of Friday morning, but I got excited.

In this context:

• secrets are the shadowy things that we want to share but might be tempted to hide because of shame/fear/social obligations.

• sparkles are the things that make you feel most alive - little moments of joy/satisfaction/contentment that you wish you could bottle up.

loosely defined themes of the week: loneliness, doubt, wonder

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secrets

play this while reading:

we support crying catharsis here <3

short & sweet/salty:

My ex unfollowed me on LinkedIn and the pettiness of that bothers me so much.

I am very lonely. There are much worse things than being lonely, and I’ve experienced some of them, but that doesn’t change that I’m lonely.

I’m separated from my husband. Even tho it’s the right thing, I keep romanticizing it and wishing we could be together. My young girls are crushed.

I worked hard to complete my post master’s certification and passed my boards to become a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I have been working since September 2022 and although I like my patients, I do not like the job.

I’m 37 and single and I’m scared that I’ll never get married and have a family

I’m still desperately in love with an ex, despite the fact that we’re both married to other people. We talk on the phone for hours at a time. I wish we’d had enough time for a chance for it to work.

long-form:

I moved to my city 6+ years ago, and made the mistake of letting my career be my entire identity. The only friends I have in this city are friends I met through work. 7 months ago I made the decision to leave my career to focus on my mental health, and ever since then, I feel as though all of my friends have completely abandoned me. I reach out all the time, and I either just get excuse after excuse or just completely ghosted. It hurts and I feel so lonely. Now I feel as though I’m in this city which is not entirely new to me, but I have no one. And I have no idea how to get myself out there to meet new people. Making friends in your 30s is fucking hard!

I want people to like me, so I give gifts to earn the trust and compassion of others. I don't want people to not like me.

I impulsively gift things to people because I desperately want people to see me as someone worth being compassionate towards. I want people to like me without having to socialize or interact with them and I think it's because I'm afraid of saying something that makes me come off as stupid and incompetent.

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sparkles

play this while reading

truly the dream