jersey / austin / boulder / still me
theoriginstory.
naaah. start from the beginning.
okay. how the f✘ck did we get here.
i’m sam. jersey girl, mom to ryan, business owner, longtime yoga teacher, and law student. we’re in boulder with our german shepherd, sammi. i’m trying to raise my kid, finish my degree, and stop having to ask what the f✘ck now before i’ve even processed what the f✘ck previously. (heavy emphasis on student, btw. if you’re here for legal expertise, babe, so am i.)
i’ve worked since fifteen, served the jonas brothers at a bowling alley, lived in madonna’s apartment as a nanny, and built a little yoga empire with people i f✘cking adore. somehow i’m now a single mom in law school trying to explain what happened to my family while keeping that family fed. (naaah. you’re going to need considerably more context.) i wanted to be a mom. i got my beautiful daughter. i would like to discuss the absolutely f✘cking unreasonable amount of other sh✶t that came with it.
jersey / austin / an extended absence
big plans.
deeply questionable
footwear.
i’m a ’90s kid from jersey. my mom was a public-school teacher, money was tight, and the adults had some deeply fucked-up shit going on. my dad made home unsafe. looking around at the rest of the situation did not exactly have me going, oh, thank god, these people have it handled. (yo. who the f✘ck was supervising the supervision.)
my mom worked hard to keep us going. i wanted to feel safe and make my own choices. extravagant fucking dream. getting out would require money. (“i cannot fucking do this anymore” remains, tragically, a feeling. you cannot pay for things with it. i have a lot of it.)
i started working at fifteen. vans shoes for years, waitressing, retail, whatever paid. if you know me from the travel pictures, this is the part outside the frame: i worked my balls off to get there. (the girl in bali has also asked if you need that sneaker in another size. several thousand f✘cking times.)
i was an emo-punk jersey kid with free warped tour tickets every year from 2004 through 2009. obviously i f✘cking went. broke, employed, and extremely available for free live music. keep that girl in mind. in a few paragraphs she’s going to be teaching people how to calm down for a living. (i know. the hiring process was internal.)
austin had a few electives.
at UT austin, i studied government, minored in anthropology, and earned a great books certificate. who had power, whose history counted, how profoundly f✘cked arrangements became everybody’s idea of normal. my kind of questions. parts of anthropology also left me wondering how much colonial bullsh✶t becomes respectable once it arrives with a bibliography. (academic racism? hear me the f✘ck out.) finished the minor. remained unconvinced by several premises.
i helped start iCARE with other students and served as volunteer coordinator. i also tutored middle- and high-school students after school with breakthrough austin and tried to get our club involved. i liked teaching, cared about people getting a fair chance, and wanted somewhere to show up and be useful.
austin also introduced me to chopped-and-screwed music, two-stepping with frat boys, and dating at a school with a D1 football team. ayyeee. (the jersey emo kid had acquired extracurriculars. please don’t make me explain the full f✘cking syllabus.) i studied abroad in ireland for half a year and loved those people enough to seriously question the return flight. an office career was giving me existential dread. i wanted to see the world. my bank balance suggested i see considerably less of it. (respectfully, denied.)
so there i am, backpacking europe and teaching english online to japanese students to keep it going. in naples, i’m asking a hostel if there’s somewhere i can work early in the morning with a little privacy. (yes, babe, we’re in italy. we still have a fucking shift.) everybody else booked a bed. i’m trying to establish a classroom. beautiful country. fascinating history. does the fucking wi-fi reach or am i going home.
new zealand was a separate monthlong trip with a friend. WWOOFing means work exchange for lodging, so we worked on a farm in the central north island, traveled farther north, and kept going by hitchhiking and couchsurfing. we were not simply floating around on vibes; we were trying to provide for ourselves. (the plan was employment, lodging, and trusting strangers with our entire itinerary. technically resourceful. spiritually, what the actual f✘ck.) mad love to the people who fed us, hosted us, and helped.
after college, i tried to join the peace corps and completed the prerequisites. then i shifted abruptly and moved to new york city with my best friend at the time, partly to outrun dating a guy who played upright bass in a folk band. (fuck the 2010s optimism and hats. i panicked and relocated.)
the futon-to-madonna situation.
new york with that same friend meant sharing a futon with some irish b✶tches in a one-bedroom in hell’s kitchen. the best b✶tches. i worked at frames bowling lounge and served the jonas brothers there. yes, those jonas brothers. (they’re having a night out. i am financially dependent on the evening going well.) famous people are bowling. i’m trying to keep my half of the futon. new york, baby.
the next job has me living in madonna’s apartment across from central park as a live-in nanny. my boss was tiffany olson, associate director on the MDNA tour. baddie max pro. i looked after her two-and-a-half-year-old and f✘cking loved that job. tiffany, huge shoutout. bad b✶tch for real. (futon. madonna’s apartment. i have not left out the normal job in between. there wasn’t one.) we lived there before going on tour. still clocking in. deeply unreasonable address.
when the MDNA tour opened in israel, we took a private plane from israel toward abu dhabi and had to stop in turkey on the way because you couldn’t fly direct from israel. wild sh✶t. then came abu dhabi and rome, and i was still looking after tiffany’s little boy. that is how i ended up alone with a toddler in turkey before i had an iphone. (sam. babe. the bowling alley did not prepare you for this sh✶t.) in abu dhabi we ran out of diapers, and a victoria’s secret model yelled at me for being too unhurried with the toddler. excellent. i’ve received a performance review. the child remains out of f✘cking diapers.
afterward, my friend and i stayed at my granny’s in jersey while i did my first yoga teacher training. tiffany asked me back for paris and london, but i couldn’t make it work with the summer intensive. madonna was touring. i had attendance requirements. (can’t. have yoga school. possibly the most unhinged scheduling conflict i have ever handled like it was normal.)
the next trip was six months with that friend: fiji, hawaii’s north shore, and a few months living in glebe, sydney. a hottie broke my heart in hawaii, which is still a humiliating sentence to type. in glebe, i worked at a cafe the whole time for a dude who was always telling me i mopped the floors wrong. ironic, considering the cleaning business that later paid for my escape. the men in australia were dumb as f✘ck, respectfully. way too little money. way too much confidence in our ability to find somewhere to sleep. now i’m a mom reading the couch-hopping itinerary like, where the f✘ck were the adults. (us. allegedly. we did work. we were also hitchhiking and couchsurfing like two people who had mistaken optimism for a safety plan.) loved those months. so glad we didn’t die. growing up is realizing you were the person you would now ask to please share her f✘cking location.
also, actual vibram fivefingers. i was wearing the f✘cking toe shoes. before this starts sounding too glamorous, every individual toe had its own accommodation. incredible experiences. regrettably extensive photographic evidence.
bodhi / more than a decade of teaching
professionally calm.
personally, lol.
the yoga thing got serious. after my first training on the jersey shore, i went to the himalayas for another two hundred hours, studied at laughing lotus in new york, and got deep into ashtanga. years of primary series. mysore trips to study with saraswathi jois. breath, posture, drishti—where you focus your gaze—and bringing my attention back when it wandered the f✘ck off. history and philosophy, too. i wanted to teach responsibly. (the warped tour girl was voluntarily getting up for this. before breakfast.)
back in jackson, new jersey, tess mcdaniel and i opened bodhi movement in a tiny room at the back of a building. joell lanfrank was part of our first teacher training; tina bock and i built bodhi yoga academy. two-hundred- and three-hundred-hour trainings, intensives, retreats, summer programs, winter weekends. we built a little f✘cking yoga empire. from that room. with those people. (immediately uncomfortable accepting my own compliment. lmfao. moving on.)
before long, people were booking flights to attend our trainings. i’d gone from asking a hostel where i could teach online to helping run the fucking school people traveled for. ubud in bali, koh phangan in thailand, santa teresa in costa rica, nicaragua, morocco, the amalfi coast, santorini, berlin, iceland, washougal. jersey and boulder in between. new groups, returning students, shared houses, early practice. (“ask sam.” oh, fuck. i am sam. right.)
my friends were the fucking faculty.
my best friend irene pappas, @fitqueenirene, became my studio partner and a lead teacher at bodhi. victoria renfro, tess, tina, hannah haller on the bali team, and so many other absolute legends were part of that life.
irene took me to south africa on a yoga tour. my bestie. south fucking africa. we’ve taught and traveled all over together; a lot of the duos in this archive are us. (“we should do something together” got slightly the fuck out of hand. there were continents.) studio partners, teaching partners, friends through a whole era. irene, i love you. we have been fucking everywhere.
i moved to boulder in 2016; irene and i opened our donation-based studio in 2018. sliding-scale tuition, scholarships, making practice financially possible. later we formed boulder yoga society, supporting community access and organizations in india we knew through sunaina rangnekar. trainings helped keep the studio running. we wanted people to practice. the landlord wanted money. both parties maintained their positions.
these people gave us their time, money, and trust: two hundred hours in twenty-one days at ubud yoga centre; a monthlong advanced training in santa teresa with irene, tess, and me. six a.m. practice, philosophy, anatomy, sanskrit, meditation, pranayama, learning to teach. the jersey syllabi have quizzes, contraindications, practice teaching, homework due sunday. (yes, homework. babe, you booked teacher training. get the f✘ck up.) we worked hard, laughed our asses off, and left with more people to miss.
50k followers. still a fucking person.
i taught for over a decade, busiest around 2015–2020. retired micro-influencer, too. peaked around 50k on instagram while my besties were properly famous. loved sharing the practice, making sh✶t, and getting opportunities that still sound made up. did i piss people off? lmfao, yes. (universal appeal? babe, i’m from jersey. let’s set achievable fucking goals.)
i did it for the love of the game. the people and the work still matter to me. the app and i can see other people.
the influencer culture got to me, though. work, friendships, your body, your self-esteem, everybody’s opinion of you, all in the same f✘cking app. i’d start by sharing something i loved and end up checking whether enough strangers liked it for me to continue liking myself. (bro. i opened this app to post a f✘cking handstand. why is my self-worth involved.)
i wanted to love the practice without checking how it performed. (you can just do a handstand and not upload it. i have looked into this. apparently it still happened.)
wait. who the f✘ck are we following.
the 2018 #MeToo reckoning in ashtanga had also shaken me. the sexual-abuse accounts about pattabhi jois, the founder of the method i’d devoted myself to, made the reverence around him impossible for me to sit with. (am i in a cult? idk. would have been lovely to ask that before the repeated international airfare. jesus f✘cking christ.) i stepped away from that devotion and stopped going back to mysore. i kept teaching, with harder questions about authority and what we asked people to trust.
cultural appropriation, too. a white girl from jersey making a living teaching an indian practice, watching who gets famous and whose knowledge gets credited. (sam. babe. you are also the white girl in the picture. let’s not get f✘cking confused.) i was teaching history and power while benefiting from arrangements i questioned. i could not fix that discomfort with a more emotionally convincing namaste.
yes, the handstand came with homework.
my ashtanga workshops covered primary series, alignment, inversions, and strength behind transitions. i taught women’s history in asana and how our proportions affect practice. different bodies, bones, histories. maybe everybody’s pose isn’t going to look the f✘cking same. i loved students who asked why. (a tradition of doing something is, unfortunately, also how you get a tradition of doing something badly.)
i taught with carson clay calhoun for years through yoga with carson academy: trainee classes, feedback on cueing and sequencing, history. by 2021, my introduction to european colonization syllabus included walter rodney, eduardo galeano, and howard zinn. (yes, we need to discuss where to put your foot. we also need to discuss what the f✘ck happened to the places this practice came from.) huge respect to carson and the students for making room for that work.
i also contributed history teaching to authentic movements’ advanced training, in a module that includes dheepa sundaram’s work. getting to contribute to a program from erin kelly and stevi góngora meant a lot. mad respect for those people.
eventually i paused bodhi retreats and formal trainings. i needed to rethink the thing i’d built my income and identity around. (would love a less expensive conscience. this one has concerns.) proud of what we built, grateful for the people, still figuring out what i’d do differently. i owed the community that honesty.
boulder / rocky mountain clean & green
the relationship
was over.
the overhead
was not.
the yoga photos left out one major detail: i wanted to leave a long-term boyfriend, and wanting to leave was not paying for leaving. (emotionally available to leave. economically, please hold.) so in 2018 i started rocky mountain clean & green / bodhi cleaning co. people ask what inspired a business. sometimes you need to afford the decision you’ve already made. hope that helps, linkedin.
eco-friendly cleaning, an emphasis on paying people well, and a fairly direct philosophy: make the world a little less sh✶tty. do good work. pay people properly. don’t get weirdly superior to the person cleaning your bathroom. i’ve taught around the world and scrubbed somebody else’s toilet. both required me to show up and know what i was doing. pay your f✘cking people.
that work followed me into law school. at the beginning, i paid tuition out of what i earned working three jobs: bartending at the fillmore auditorium in denver, cleaning houses, and teaching yoga. three. plus the f✘cking degree. (at some point “i’ll pick up another shift” becomes your entire financial-aid package.)
the emo kid was still in the concert venue; now the shift helped pay for civil procedure. gangster status, humbly. by which i mean employed in three places and trying to understand a fourth.
the aura was mostly fatigue. still went hard.
i built the business so my choices could become things i could afford to do. (emotionally, i had left the building. financially, i was still cleaning it.) i did not know how soon i’d be doing that math again with a baby.
motherhood / the marriage i agreed to / getting out
i wanted a baby.
why is there
a court reporter.
after all that, the thing i wanted most was to be a mom. my daughter was planned and deeply wanted. a husband was never the dream. after i got pregnant, he kept asking me to marry him, and i agreed. i cared about him and wanted a safe, stable family. (apparently there would also be exhibits. i had been looking at baby sh✶t.) i got my beautiful daughter. grateful for her every f✘cking day. the rest? pull up a chair.
he was my family. i wanted him clean, alive, and able to have the family he said he wanted. i believed he was trying and hoped treatment would help. (hindsight is extremely well informed for somebody who contributed absolutely nothing at the time.) you don’t get to make the decision with the sh✶t you find out two years later.
i was seriously ill through my second and third trimesters, still teaching and cleaning houses, paying household expenses, and helping fund the career plans i believed were supposed to stabilize our family. i was also writing that the mortgage had not been paid and my savings were being depleted. (making a person. doing the floors. carrying the budget. could somebody else make literally anything.) i kept working because being sick and scared did not suspend the bills.
the record gets more specific. unfortunately. the signed New Jersey protection-order record says that on november 4, 2023, when i was approximately seven months pregnant, he manually strangled me with both hands, cut off my oxygen for a prolonged period to stop me from screaming, and suffocated me. then, about ten days before i gave birth, he knocked me down and punched me repeatedly in the head and face. i went to the hospital the next day with two black eyes, lacerations, a fat lip, and bruising and cuts to my head, scalp, and arm. (i was supposed to be planning a baby shower. instead i was collecting hospital paperwork. strong pivot.) these are my reports as recorded in the order; the later final order found an act of domestic violence. (not “we had communication issues.” my body would like the minutes entered.)
i told family, reported what happened, and sought protection. i wanted to be somebody’s mommy. i was afraid of becoming a murder statistic. (jesus mary and joseph. i wanted a baby shower.) i thought we were building a safe, stable family. instead i was trying to stay alive while checking what was on autopay. naaah. are we f✘cking for real.
three days before childbirth. excellent f✘cking timing.
three days before my daughter was born, he crashed and totaled the paid-off car i depended on. i was about to have a C-section. now i needed a car, replacement debt, and more expensive insurance. (jesus f✘cking christ.) i had paid it off. the whole point was to be done paying for the f✘cking car. abdominal surgery, newborn, find the money again. (is there a less convenient time. should we wait until they’re actively cutting me open.)
after she was born, i immediately went back to teaching yoga in new jersey and picked up house cleanings too, while trying to care for an infant and keep money coming in. i even tried teaching remote yoga courses back in boulder with ryan, but without an affordable sitter it became impossible. i lost the whole business i had built in colorado while subcontracting in new jersey that year; colorado was my main business. (“work from anywhere” is a beautiful concept until the baby needs you everywhere at once. bless the students who gave me grace. fuckkkk.) i was also looking for safety and family support. he started more intensive treatment, and i let him join us because i hoped it would help. i still wanted him to get well.
and because childbirth apparently did not qualify as a reset, the violence did not stop there. the amended order records my report that on august 13, 2024, when our daughter was an infant, he tossed her toward me, raised a fist over both of us, and threatened to punch me while i was holding her. (the baby was not a metaphor. neither was the fist. postpartum was going beautifully.) i was still trying to make a family work. i was also learning that “give him another chance” can become a full-time job with terrible benefits.
when he decided to leave for texas, i did what people do when a family member is exiting a household with an infant: i made a list. on october 2, i emailed about his forwarding address, ryan’s care and last name, financial contributions, communication, custody, the marriage, and what exactly was happening before friday. i wrote that i was working the next morning and friday night and carrying a ton of schoolwork. (apparently the exit interview needed an agenda. sexy.)
on october 8, i sent a three-page document because the practical situation had not magically resolved itself. i wrote that he had left me with work, law school, and raising ryan, and asked him to take responsibility. this was not a later memoir line. it was me trying to get a plan while everything was actively falling apart. then he went to texas, telling me the work paid better and still messaging about missing us and wanting to come home. eventually i went to court for protection. the new jersey judge found domestic violence and issued a final restraining order. i made it back to boulder with my daughter and sammi. (new location. same mortgage. impressively portable f✘cking consequences.) i wanted us safe. i would also have loved to sit the f✘ck down.
i believe the protection i received through the legal system helped keep me alive. i have enormous respect and gratitude for the courts and the people who took my safety seriously. i get to raise my daughter. that’s the whole f✘cking point. people heard me when i needed help staying safe. i do not take that lightly.
triangulation: ON GOD MODE.
back in boulder with our daughter, i was keeping the house and degree going. then charges were filed. he was arrested and booked in two jails before being released on bond. the next day, the harassment started. not eventually. not in some cinematic third act. the next day. unfamiliar accounts started appearing. posts about women lying about abuse, wanting attention, being the real narcissist. a DM compares me to my father, by name—the same comparison my husband had used to hurt me. (oh, cool. the childhood trauma has found the marriage trauma on instagram. love when my interests connect.) language i knew. a username i didn’t. who the f✘ck is this.
around his release on bond, somebody asks in my tiktok comments whether i’m in immediate danger. another person says i’m not, he’s heading back to texas, there are two sides to every story. (oh, thank f✘ck. a stranger in the comments has cleared me for survival.) i didn’t know her. she appeared to know where my husband was going. i’m there with a restraining order and a child. why am i the last person getting the husband updates.
then i see one of the accounts that’s been targeting me talking publicly with a woman i don’t know. she’s thanking it for material it’s been sending her. i follow that exchange to her public profile. there’s my husband. relationship photos. older posts. a whole life in texas i hadn’t been told about. the harassment is how i found out.
(can we get a headcount. i was under the impression i knew who was in my marriage.)
i’m still legally his wife, raising our daughter and trying to make the money stretch. he’s in somebody else’s family pictures. naaah. bro has pressed f✘cking redo and i’m still paying for the original.
i’m finding out about my family while still having to feed it. my daughter needs dinner. (okay. so we’re cutting up the food. with this information. nobody’s calling an intermission. sick.) YOOOO. WTF IS GOING ON HERE, PEOPLE. these accounts had been coming at me for months before i knew this woman existed.
baby girl, why are you in my message requests.
i posted an instagram story reacting to the relationship she showed publicly. covered the kids’ faces. didn’t ask anyone to contact her. then her messages arrive in my requests, telling me to leave her alone. i hadn’t accepted the requests or started a conversation. (i’m being told to leave a conversation i have not fucking entered. outstanding.) she denies burners or getting anyone to message me, says she received requests and messages after my post, and accuses me of doxxing. that’s her account. (we appear to be starting this movie at wildly different f✘cking timestamps.)
she tells me, “From single mom to single mom, I thought you would have more class than that.” (oh, we’re doing class. my restrained husband’s live-in girlfriend has arrived to assess my manners. tremendous.)
then it’s “Baby girl,” a claim that two police reports have been filed about me, and a warning to “tread very carefully” when i talk about stalking and harassment. she signs off hoping i find the support i deserve. with a kiss emoji. (a kiss emoji. girl, what the fuck are we doing.) i read it as a warning. saved the whole thing. kiss included.
oh, we’re calling my fucking school.
within roughly two days of me finding the relationship, her complaint lands at syracuse. her name is on it. she accuses me of harassment, doxxing, and making false statements, and questions the ethics of letting me be a law student. (i have barely processed the fucking family photos and we’re already contacting faculty.)
a separate anonymous report questions my judgment, emotional control, and fitness to become a lawyer. (i haven’t even graduated and somebody’s already reviewing my future clients’ experience. incredible turnaround.) the writer speculates about drug use while admitting they can’t verify it. can’t verify it. sends it to my fucking school anyway.
then come the fucking updates: my stories changed “as recently as 10 minutes ago.” they’ll keep watching daily. the report even explains mean girls to my law school. (a close reading of regina george. while i’m trying to do the actual f✘cking reading.) my blog and burn book apparently require this much attention. i would like to shower without scheduling it like a deposition.
from where i was sitting, the domestic-violence bullshit had followed me to school. his girlfriend’s complaint and messages carried her name; other people around him seemed to be joining in. every burner? the separate anonymous report? i don’t know all those names. (apparently everybody gets a screen name and i get the fucking consequences.) the contact, monitoring, and complaints are why i saw a campaign to discredit me. (i left the man. why does the aftermath have office hours.)
free speech. still a thing. apparently a deeply inconvenient fucking thing. i’m grateful to syracuse for taking personal expression seriously. all that effort to bother me, and now the messages and reports are exhibits in my divorce response. (bro. we were already in court. why the fuck would you put it in writing.) i already had classes, a toddler, and a deeply unreasonable amount of real life. i did not need my husband’s relationship situation submitting extra credit on my behalf.
same bullsh✶t. new username.
and the accounts kept coming. i made a private instagram. an account requested it. i declined. it came back under a different name and requested again. the old laughing reactions were still sitting in the same DM thread. (babe. you changed the handle and left the fucking conversation attached.) now the name presents itself as anonymous support. bro. i can scroll up.
later, another spam-looking account appears in my story views almost as soon as i post. content about abuse, victimhood, single moms keeps seeming to answer what i’ve just said. block, restrict, report, another account. a friend told the investigator she believed the newer account belonged to the girlfriend. her belief; i haven’t proved who was holding every phone. (instagram does not display “operated by this particular asshole” under the bio. would save some time.)
the girlfriend denied running burners. i could see recurring viewers, changing names, an account sending her material, and her thanking it. i told the investigator i couldn’t seem to post normal life without the account appearing and something apparently responsive going up. (i used to open this app to post a handstand. what the actual f✘ck happened to that arrangement.)
my emails from then hurt to read. sorry, another screenshot. sorry, it’s still happening. sorry to bother you with the thing i am actively fucking living through. (why am i apologizing like i personally scheduled the harassment. jesus christ, sam.) i wanted to raise my daughter, earn enough, and have one normal day without wondering who was watching. one day. not a yacht. scared, asking for help, still worried about being a pain in the ass.
back up. how long has this sh✶t been going on.
then the civil case turns up older messages involving the financial representative i’d trusted to help get our finances in order. my husband asks her to watch whether i post about him, stories included. she replies: “will do, there is nothing posted as of yet.” (my financial representative. my private instagram. bro, i thought we were discussing the fucking money.)
other messages discuss recruiting friends to report my instagram and get it permanently removed. one says seven friends had reported it. (you got seven people to do something? i cannot get a toddler to put on a fucking shoe.) this was before i found the texas relationship. it doesn’t identify every burner; it does show people discussing how to get my account taken down. triangulation ON GOD MODE. (there was a group project. i was the subject. nobody sent me the fucking syllabus.)
apparently my wallpaper knew more than i did.
late in 2025, a woman i’d never met recognizes my bathroom in a tiktok and reaches out. my bathroom. she later puts her account in a signed declaration: she’d seen that room in my husband’s content; he’d introduced himself as “brad,” said he was single, and never mentioned a wife or child.
the time she’s talking about overlaps my late pregnancy and the first months of my daughter’s life. (single? i was extremely f✘cking present for the marriage and the childbirth.) she hadn’t known about us. i hadn’t known about her. apparently the wallpaper was better informed than the people paying to live with it.
remember the paid-off car? she recalls him discussing a crash involving a white subaru, then asking the chat for cocaine money. she doesn’t know whether drugs had anything to do with the crash. neither do i. i know what replacing that car cost me. (i was figuring out how to get a newborn home. i would like everybody to return to that fucking detail for a second.) how many things were happening while i thought we were having a baby.
she also describes a later video: him with a woman who, to her, looked heavily intoxicated and confused, while he talked about making the witness jealous. she says she deleted the videos. her signed account doesn’t name the woman; i can’t verify who it was from a video i don’t have. alarming as f✘ck. (yo. i wanted to understand what happened in my marriage. how many more people am i going to end up worried about.)
there were also claims involving a friend i’d trusted for years, alongside concerns i already had. still no confirmed answers. (oh, we’re reviewing the friendships too. cool. is there anybody i can just fucking know.) we’d shared trips, homes, whole versions of our lives. even the question changes those memories. i’m not going to tell you i know when i don’t. (please stop adding people. i am so fucking tired.)
the screenshot starts halfway through.
now my later posts are being argued about in the divorce. we’re looking at screenshots of me furious, and i’m like, can we scroll the fuck up in my actual life. violence. money. raising our daughter. accounts showing up. discovering the other household. then me reacting. the rest of my life did not disappear because it wasn’t in the fucking screenshot. (i understand the screenshot is shorter. unfortunately, the experience was not.)
the story does not start at the part where i finally say what the f✘ck.
i still want him to get help. i said that in my deposition. he is my daughter’s dad. i want him alive, clean, and able to be a father. i need us safe. both. (would have appreciated a simpler emotional arrangement.) caring about him never made what happened okay. there was grief with the fear, and neither had the decency to arrive alone.
so, yeah. “just leave.” i left. still have a child to raise, a mortgage, money to replace, messages to save, and help to ask for.
(i have left. why is there still so much f✘cking leaving to do.)
i’m grateful for the protection, devastated by what getting here cost us, and trying to have a whole f✘cking life again. more time being my daughter’s mom. fewer evenings explaining why we needed to be safe.
syracuse / the actual learning curve
law school.
food stamps.
respectfully,
wtf.
while all this is happening, i still have class. the reading has not received the update. my daughter still needs her mom, groceries still cost money, and i’m a single mom on food stamps working toward a J.D. at syracuse. i’ve worked since fifteen. built businesses. taught around the world. still need help buying food. (the cashier does not need the lore. the cashier needs payment.)
i’m grateful help exists. we need it. sometimes i look at the years of work, the businesses, the plans, and just sit there like, naaah. how the actual fuck. then i put the groceries away. (the dairy cannot wait for me to emotionally reconcile the timeline.)
the inconvenient thing is, i fucking love law school. counterterrorism? loved that shit. who has power, what the law lets them do, who gets caught in the middle. the government major is still in here asking questions while the rest of me would like to be horizontal. (f✘ck’s sake. i actually care about the material.) exhausted and interested. annoying combination when the reading is this long.
i’m in the JDi program with residencies; last winter i brought ryan to syracuse. my babe came along while her mom did something she loves. she’s also made regular appearances in criminal law. (not enrolled. has not done the reading. extremely willing to contribute.) honestly, good for her. one of us should be able to ask a question without first apologizing for fucking existing.
shoutout to my professors and everyone at syracuse who helped me stay with it. if you’ve seen me cry, hi, FML, thank you for being kind. if my toddler contributed to class, thank you for accommodating the unsolicited perspective. you kept something possible for me and my daughter. mad respect. i love being your student. (if this becomes another crying appearance, please know i also intended to remain composed at the previous ones.)
two cases. still have fucking class.
meanwhile, i’m representing myself in the civil case and dealing with the divorce. the civil case concerns financial advice, promises, and decisions i say harmed us—the sh✶t i trusted people with while keeping my family afloat. (i thought the case studies would be about other f✘cking people. small misunderstanding on my part.)
i’m a law student. i’m not a lawyer, and i need one. until i can afford help, i read, check, ask questions, and work to get the procedure right. knowing what happened and getting it properly before a court are different jobs. i take both seriously. (would love for “please read this, it’s fucking alarming” to be the entire procedure. turns out there are forms.)
people helped me afford filing fees and printer ink. i was excited to buy ink. (printer ink. the luxury purchase. the baddie budget has suffered a catastrophic f✘cking revision.) i’m grateful to everyone who helped and to the judges, lawyers, and court staff whose work makes it possible to ask for protection and be heard. i can mean thank you with my whole heart and still whisper what the f✘ck at another PDF.
i want to be useful to people who are scared, priced out, and wondering what the f✘ck they’re supposed to do next. i know that feeling in detail i never requested. (the backstory is extensive. still have to pass the f✘cking classes.) working on it.
boulder, again / current conditions
still here.
can we
f✘cking chill.
so now it’s me, ryan, and sammi in boulder. parenting, working, studying, keeping our home together, mortgage included. (the mortgage has displayed absolutely no interest in the extenuating circumstances.) some days i can explain the situation. some days it’s just yo, wtf, and then i do what my kid needs. i love her more than anything. i’m tired as fuck. (both. please let a bitch have both.)
i still love music, being outside, making art, moving my body, and getting an unnecessarily specific shade of pink right. (good. something completely f✘cking irrelevant. i’ve missed that.) friends i adore. laughing hard enough to get a minute where i’m just laughing. i want more of those minutes, and time with my daughter that doesn’t have to fit around the next adult-generated f✘cking problem.
“unbothered”? b✶tch, i’m extensively bothered. our safety, my education, the mortgage. i have not transcended giving a sh✶t. i’m quieter about some of it because i’m f✘cking tired. i’m from jersey. doing my best. please stop breaking my balls long enough to let me.
please don’t mistake the battery situation for enlightenment.
motherhood was the dream. it still is. i’d also enjoy the bonus feature where we get to live without another adult creating a fucking situation. (uneventful is starting to sound hot. i’m talking full commitment. long-term potential.) a little peace. my daughter. our dog. time to be a person. that would be plenty.
anyway. what the actual fuck, y’all. i’m raising the little girl i wanted, finishing the degree, and trying to have a life in the middle of all this bullsh✶t. still here. still giving a f✘ck. would like future character development to occur through hobbies. respectfully.
writing / art / further commentary
still have
some sh✶t to say.
the writing, the art, the questions i’m still trying to answer. if you came from @samseesworld, hi. yeah. a lot has f✘cking happened. (if you remember a handstand account, i understand the f✘cking confusion.) still me. considerably more to say.
