Words from Jeff lit up my screen before sunrise, a message sent at 11:20 p.m. while I was already asleep: “Fun. Authentic. Honest. Supportive. Safe. Comforting. What a fun night. Thank you. Sleep tight. I just prayed for you and your family.” I’d been unaware that somewhere across town he was still awake, thinking of me.
Now here it is, glowing on my phone before I even make it to the bathroom. The flutter in my chest is involuntary, just like last night, only this time it’s not just hope but a warning.
I read his words again. Fun and honest, yes. Supportive and authentic, absolutely. Yet comforting and safe? Those require trust. The kind you build over years, not a few evenings of conversation.
Is it possible to want too much, too soon?
One of us is moving too fast, but I can’t tell if it’s him or me. Part of me isn’t ready to move at all. After years of being invisible, any kindness feels like water after a long thirst, and I drink it in too fast. I want to believe this is real, that this time it can be simple.
The impulse to reply is almost immediate, yet I wait a while before I text him back a pink heart and “Thank you for everything. I had fun with you too,” then, before my inner editor can scold me, “I already miss talking with you.”
Send.
It’s out there, irreversible, and my body immediately feels a drop, a shift into something heavier. I could have said less. I could have left it at fun, at thank you, at a safe distance. But I didn’t.
Was that honesty? Desperation? I try to tell myself I’m being real, that this is what last night was about—saying what we mean, not what we think we should mean. I get up to brush my teeth, trying to scrape the taste of risk from my tongue.
By the time I check my phone again, there’s a reply. “The uncomfortable honesty. If I texted you every time I thought about you, I’d drive you nuts!”
I close my eyes, letting the words settle in. There’s sweetness to it, but also an edge. I can’t tell if I’m supposed to be flattered or alarmed, and maybe it’s both. I take a breath and type, “So sweet. You can text me anytime. It’s fun chatting with you.”
Then I set down my phone and open my laptop to distract myself with something more concrete: real estate listings. I scroll through house after house, each one more dismal than the last, my brain buzzing with anxiety over rent and the logistics of dividing a life in half. Still, I keep searching, as if certainty is out there in one of these ZIP codes, waiting for me to stumble into it.
By noon, I have a headache and a growing sense of apprehension about the evening ahead. It’s my cousin’s daughter’s birthday party, an event that will be all noise and judging eyes and forced small talk. I change my clothes, and my phone lights up with another text from Jeff, this one a picture of a plant in a ceramic pot, soil dark and wet, leaves drooping dramatically. “This is the plant dying of root rot. A term I had not heard before. Spent time talking to it and replanting it. Now it’s ready to thrive, or maybe it’ll die.”
This was the same plant he’d proudly bought from Lowe’s weeks ago. It had been thriving. Now, he’d over-watered it to the point of drowning. I feel a sudden kinship with the plant, a sense of dread and possibility tangled together. “Just water enough to keep the soil moist, not drenched. Make sure there’s proper drainage. Good job replanting it.”
He fires back immediately. “Are you saying half a gallon of water is too much????”
The extra punctuation marks again, making me laugh. “You’re too much. LOL.”
But under the joke is a knowing. I think about the plant, and the root rot, and how too much of a good thing can kill just as thoroughly as neglect. Plants don’t come back from it, not really. I want to tell him this, to warn him, yet I don’t. I let the conversation float on the surface, like we all do.
By late afternoon, I’m ready to leave. Lizzie announces that she’s not coming. “Got a test to study for,” she says, as if that’s the only reason. I don’t press her and I don’t ask if she’s worried about seeing her grandparents or if she fears the judgment of our family. I just nod and leave her be.
My son drives us into New Jersey, his neo-soul playlist filling the car. I watch his profile as he navigates the turnpike, his expression serious. To escape the memories the music stirs, I put in my AirPods and let “Tightrope” play, the lyrics a welcome distraction. Halfway through the song, I text Jeff. “I forgot how much I love musicals.”
He responds before the song ends. “Dude. Hamilton, Les Miserables, The Greatest Showman – amazing! Phantom of the Opera.”
My cheeks flush, lips parted in a private smile as my fingers fly over the phone. “I’ve watched those so many times,” adding, “Miss Saigon, Wicked, Chicago, Rent. Mama Mia (ABBA).” This is almost too good. A man who loves musicals as much as I do? Most men in my world only tolerate them, rolling their eyes or feigning interest. But Jeff is different, and I like that about him, even though I know I shouldn’t.
“My knowledge of musicals is limited to the current and popular ones. I want to expand my appreciation for more,” he writes back. The admission is oddly endearing. At least he doesn’t pretend to have perfect taste.
“Maybe we can watch one together,” I type, then delete it, then type it again and send. The flutter in my chest is back, this time more measured, though unmistakable. Before I can overthink it, my pulse flickers when he replies, “I’d like that very much.”
That flutter in my chest becomes a thrum as I hum along to “Tightrope,” the car window a blur of treetops and sky, yet my mind is already elsewhere—imagining him beside me, singing along, laughing at the lines we both know by heart.
The party is everything it always is. There’s too much food, too much noise, too many strong opinions spoken over each other as the scent of lumpia and chicken adobo soaks into my hair. My son disappears with the other teens, leaving me to fend for myself among the aunties.
Although the noise tonight is more than I can take. I slip outside with my phone, the humid air a relief against my skin, and find a sliver of quiet. “Hey,” I message Jeff. “Are you packing for your business trip?”
He’s leaving for Spain tomorrow. I remember him saying he dreads the flight, how it messes with his sleep, how he hates the way he feels out of control when flying disrupts his routines. Yet I wonder if he’s nervous, or if he’s stockpiling connection before the loneliness of travel sets in.
“Hey you!” he writes back. “How’s the party? The next 3 weeks are heavy travel for me. It’s draining. I’m very intentional about recharging at home, leaving energized and not coming home empty, but the balance is hard to sustain on the road. I enjoy the forced offline time on flights, though. As long as I can sleep, I’ll be fine.”
His texts are always so formal, as if written for an audience larger than just me. Is it caution? Maybe he’s just disciplined, or maybe he’s terrified of what happens when he isn’t. He often jokes, “I’m used to disappointment,” as if the words absolve him from the sting. I wonder what disappointments linger behind those lines, and how many times he’s rehearsed his avoidance.
“You’re an intelligent, high-functioning, and goal-oriented person,” I reply, the words a callback to our earlier conversation. “I doubt coming home empty will be an issue. You already have the tools like a good playlist, grounding practices, and a few yoga stretches in the hotel room. You’ll find your balance.”
“Your compliment means a lot to me. Thank you.” His reply is instant, as if he’d been hoping for affirmation. “I told my mother today about our grounding and yoga. She was happy to hear it and loves that type of stuff. She’s been encouraging me to slow down and be more present. That’s something I need to work on, but I appreciate how I can learn it from you.”
When I read that his mother loves the practice of grounding, my heart warms. I imagine her, gentle-voiced and open, telling him to be present, to slow down and breathe. The contrast to my own mother is so sharp it’s cruel. I can’t recall a single time she spoke to me about self-care or rest. The only thing she ever slowed down for was to remind me I was falling behind.
Yet Jeff’s appreciation softens something in me, lowering my guard. Maybe he’s not so rigid. Maybe he isn’t as inflexible as I feared.
Then, without warning, his conversation pivots. “Have you ever gotten into lifting weights? Weights!?! Let’s add lifting to our list of fun things to do!”
I can almost hear the excitement in his voice, the way he gets when he’s fixated on a new project. I remember him bringing this up a few weeks ago, thinking he was joking, but now I’m not so sure.
“Weights would crush me. I can hardly do 30 girly pushups. So, no thank you, lol.” I add the last part so it doesn’t sound like rejection.
He sends a meme: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”
I roll my eyes, yet my smile is genuine. A man who jokes about not accepting my no. A part of me, the part conditioned by years of being unheard, almost admires the persistence. It’s a dangerous feeling, mistaking insistence for devotion, so I send back a laughing emoji and slide my phone away.
The festivities continue with music, laughter, and the smell of pancit, though I feel none of it. I’m a ghost at this celebration, a performer in a mask I can no longer keep straight.
My phone is heavy in my pocket. The noise presses in. I want to text Jeff goodnight, but I decide against it. Then my phone buzzes, and I pull it out, expecting nothing and everything at the same time.
“Have a fun night!” Jeff tells me. “I said a prayer for you and your son to get home safe.”
I read the words once. Twice. The thoughtfulness sits there, and I feel it, that small pulse of pleasure, followed by the recoil. I want to believe that his kindness is pure, but I know better. I know what it feels like to get hooked on someone’s attention, to mistake it for something lasting.
Yet I send a heart emoji and slip the phone back into my pocket while the party roars on around me. I smile when I’m supposed to, laugh when I’m supposed to, and all the while I am thinking about root rot, about too much water, about how easy it is to drown in something I thought was saving me.
This post is part of a fictionalized memoir. The emotional experiences and themes are drawn from my life, but all names, identities, timelines, and circumstances have been altered, obscured, or combined to protect privacy — including my own. These writings are not meant to diagnose, label, or describe any real person. Instead, they illuminate relational patterns that can occur in emotionally imbalanced or narcissistic dynamics. Any resemblance to actual individuals is coincidental or intentionally obscured. The intention is healing and awareness, not identification. These posts are for storytelling purposes only and do not constitute professional advice.
The images woven through My Journey and The Lessons are my own photographs — moments I captured on trails, in forests, beside rivers, and under open sky. They are pieces of my story and are not to be copied or used without permission.
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