journal entries

something has to change

dear girlfriend,

we’ve been together almost four years and it isn’t working.

um, i’m not sure what else to say except that.

i’m not sure what you’ll say. you knew when you left for africa for the summer that it was a gamble, you were afriad I would fall for someone else or leave you or both and look, voila, here we are. I have confronted you, told you what I needed, asked for your help to fix us, at various times in the past and things have never changed. even if you said just what I wanted you to say – that you love me, you’re committed to work on this, that you want to, that you’ll fight for me – I’m not sure that’s enough anymore.

no. it isn’t enough anymore. and even if those things change, I don’t think it will be enough. we’re too different, we want different things, our life paths are going different places.

funny, sometimes i think this stuff up to tell you and I see your reaction as completely calm. not only you were expecting it, but you agree, and have some relief to be free of me.

it is not a relief to be leaving you, to be without you. it’s terrifying. I know what it feels like to break up with someone, both with desperate wanting that nothing will stop and with some hesitation but with knowledge that it’s the best thing. this is neither of those, this is only terror and anxiety.

but somewhere underneath I still know it has to happen. something has to change. and since it hasn’t been you, I think it has to be me.

Published by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sinclair Sexsmith (they/them) is "the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers" (AfterEllen), who "is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places" (Autostraddle). ​Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. They identify as a white non-binary butch dominant, a survivor, and an introvert, and they live outside Seattle as an uninvited settler on traditional, ancestral, & unceded Snoqualmie land.

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