its reduction season.

it’s father’s day. it’s the third one without my dad. and the people I thought would check in, didn’t.

let me start here, because everything else flows from this.

today is father’s day. my dad has been gone since june 2023. this is the third one i’ve spent without him. and not a single person who has been claiming to love me, who has been in my orbit lately, checked on me today.

i need to say this part out loud because i want my best friends, if they’re reading — i’m not talking about y’all. you know who you are. i love you. i don’t know what i would do without you. this is not about you.

this is about the local ones. the women in my recent love life. the people who pulled close enough to know my whole story, including the worst day of my life, and then went silent on the day that mattered most.

let me be specific, because i’m tired of being vague to protect people who weren’t protecting me.

the receipts

one of them only ever wanted me for sex. i used to think she was my best friend. now i can see it clearly — we don’t have the same struggles, we’re not relatable in the ways that matter, and the truth is she’s never cared about me the way i cared about her. she knew i was struggling with my grief. she’s had losses too, even recently and i called and showed up. and of course, we were sexual and barely have heard since. i felt odd and used again because that’s typically all I was good for even when dating. not for dates, not for anything else. she lost someone dear to her this month, i showed up. and have barely heard from her since. she knows what it feels like. she didn’t reach out once. not on a hard day. not on this day. not at all but when I checked socials she was planning a date. so i understood right then and there.

another one — somebody i dated briefly (not exes) who i let back into my life after we didn’t work out romantically, we were actually friends much longer than romantically and somewhere in our gap, when we were on bad terms because i chose that dating was not ideal for us, this person plotted an entire photo shoot with my ex-girlfriend. when i found out, the reasoning was that we “weren’t friends” during that time, so no loyalty was owed. cool. that’s how i learned exactly how the loyalty math works for them. so it works the same way back now.

and the last one — someone i dated who has been trying to work things back out with me, which i have not been interested in doing — has started seeing one of my clients. one of my clients. read that again. and somehow i’m supposed to keep pretending this is all normal.

so no, no one called today. no one texted. no one said “i know this day is hard.” but these three were busy. they’re always busy with the version of themselves they’re protecting.

and when shit gets rough, i know i am the one to cross their minds because i never had to wait for them to call me and tell me they need me, i just fucking knew.

not anymore, not ever again, never in this lifetime will i give grace to patterns that won’t be broken. grace is given to those who make mistakes not those who don’t give a shit until life’s in shambles for them.

the part that actually irritates me

note: i dont want these woman sexually, romantically or anything. i just value the connection and friendship I thought was there.

here’s what i had to sit with on a rainy houston father’s day with my dog and my own thoughts.

these people loudly preach that they love me. that they care. that they “got me.” and the math doesn’t math. because the people who say it the loudest are usually the ones who quietly resent you. who envy you. who don’t know what love actually feels like, so they confuse intensity for care, sex for closeness, proximity for loyalty.

they’re more loyal to people who’ve put them out than to people who’ve shown up for them. because being mistreated is what they’re used to. when someone actually shows up for them with 100% effort, they don’t recognize it as love. they recognize it as suspicious. they reciprocate at 10% and call it even.

i have spent years giving 100s to people running 10s. and i finally see what that does. it doesn’t make them love you more. it makes them comfortable taking from you. it teaches them you’ll keep showing up no matter what. and people who are comfortable taking from you will never, ever check on you on father’s day. why would they? you’ve made it clear you don’t need it. you’ve taught them that.

the grief part

here’s what i think the real wound is.

it’s not that these three women didn’t text me. it’s that i thought i had built a circle that would. and the test came on the worst possible weekend, and the circle failed.

father’s day is its own specific kind of hard. it’s a wound the calendar reopens once a year on schedule. and there is something deeply lonely about realizing you’ve poured yourself into people who don’t even know which dates of the year you have to brace for.

i checked on them. i’ve checked on them through their losses. i’ve shown up for them through their hard weeks. i’ve been the safe person. i’ve been the warm one. i’ve held space.

and then i woke up this morning, expecting maybe one of them — any of them — to remember that today is heavy for me. and they didn’t.

i’m not even mad at them, not really. i’m mad at me, for spending so much of my one life trying to be loved by people who don’t have it in them to love me back.

the lesson i’m done ignoring

i can’t make my happiness depend on how other people treat me anymore. i’ve done that for thirty years. i’m a sensitive woman. i’m pisces-coded all the way through. i have so much love to give that i’ve always assumed the love would come back to me at the same volume.

it doesn’t. and waiting for it to has been the most expensive habit of my life.

i think what i learned from these three people specifically is to be more selfish. to be a little more vain. to invest in me at the level i’ve been investing in everyone else. and i have to be careful with that lesson, because i don’t want to become hard. i don’t want to become someone who matches their coldness. i’d rather still be soft and just be soft somewhere else.

they didn’t do all of this out of spite. i don’t think any of them woke up trying to hurt me. they just aren’t happy, and unhappy people will always take from a full cup without thinking about whether the cup needs filling too.

that’s not malicious. but it is consistent. and i don’t have any more energy for “they didn’t mean it.” the impact is the same whether they meant it or not.

what i’m doing about it

i’m not explaining myself anymore. not to them. not to anyone.

i’m not sending the long text. i’m not having the closure conversation. i’m not asking why nobody checked in. i’m not telling them what i needed and didn’t get. i’ve spent years teaching people how to love me and the ones who couldn’t learn it the first ten times aren’t going to learn it on attempt eleven.

i write in this substack. i talk to my therapist. i talk to God. i talk to myself. that’s enough.

the people on this list — they might not even realize they’re cut off. that’s the wildest part to me. they’re so invested in their own lives, in their own validation, in the version of themselves they perform for everyone else, that they’re probably not going to notice my silence until life gets hard for them again. and then they’ll reach. and then they’ll wonder why they can’t get through.

i can’t wait for that day. i’m not going to be cruel about it. i’m just going to be gone. fully, peacefully, finally gone. they’ll learn what their behavior cost them in slow motion, the same way i learned what loving them cost me.

what i want to say to anyone reading who’s been here too

you are not crazy for noticing. you are not too much for needing reciprocity. you are not “asking for too much” because you wanted one text on a hard day.

people who actually love you remember the dates. they don’t have to be reminded. they don’t have to be guilted. they don’t have to be asked. the right people will show up before you’ve even told them what’s wrong.

if the people in your life keep failing the easy tests — birthdays, hard anniversaries, the day you posted that you weren’t doing okay — they will fail every test that comes after. there isn’t a magic future where they suddenly turn into someone different. they are who they have been showing you they are. believe them.

cut quietly. don’t explain. don’t justify. don’t perform the cut on social media — that’s just another way of asking them to engage with you. just stop. let the silence speak.

today taught me something i already knew but kept refusing to apply. i deserve people who don’t have to be reminded to love me. i don’t have to make a case for being someone worth checking on. people who get it, get it. people who don’t, never will.

i love you, dad. i miss you. i’m doing the work you’d want me to do, including this one — finally protecting the daughter you raised.

and to the three of you, if you’re reading this and you know it’s you — i hope you find peace. i hope you find love. i hope you find whatever you’re actually looking for, because it clearly wasn’t me.

just don’t look for me to be there when you do.

cheers…to silence as a full sentence. ❤️