Online Shadow Work
When I was in the 11th grade, I sort of had a girlfriend?
She would never admit to it.
She would send me letters from Cabo, with ceramic pipes.
A brown twisted tangle, and what looked like branches.
The bowl, had an eyeball.
I lost the pipe eventually.
A tweaker stole it.
Man, and I had it worked in just right.
It took years, three I think.
To get it to draw nice and smooth.
You see, the stem was crooked.
A defect of some sort.
Maybe the craftsman dropped it on accident.
Most likely on purpose.
Regardless, it was slightly broken.
So, it couldn’t pull.
It took time to clear it out.
I loved that pipe.
With all my heart.
But, far too late, I realized it was an illusion.
I didn’t like to smoke anyways.
Later…
I was adopted by her extended family.
They would invite me to Thanksgiving, every year.
Peeling potatoes.
Helping out.
Her sister, really took to me.
We became inseparable, for years.
But, I never could bring myself to telling her how I really felt.
Perhaps it was the shame?
Fear of what I felt, being vengeance.
Wuthering heights.
The tweaker and my mistaken love never came to these feasts.
Her sister tried to comfort me.
Telling me “…it will work out for you, it’s not the end of the world that she didn’t want you”
But, I loved my pain more than anything.
Stewing.
Flagellation.
Cat of nine-tails.
Misplaced.
I thought it proved my love.
But, in reality it moved to San Diego.
Still calling me once an a while…
Until one day nothing.
I drove it away.
For delusion.
For self-pity.
Vanity.
I still can almost hear her…
When November rolls around.
A deeply introspective piece that turns lost love into a scaring meditation on illusion, pain, and self-deception.
This piece feels like someone looking back at their younger self and finally admitting they didn’t just choose wrong they kept choosing wrong.
You can feel how he poured all his longing into the girl who never really wanted him, and into that pipe that became a stand‑in for a love that never existed.
Meanwhile, the real warmth the sister, the family, the quiet belonging was right there, and he couldn’t let himself step into it.
There’s something painfully honest in the way he admits he clung to suffering, almost nurturing it, because it made him feel loyal to a fantasy.
He wasn’t rejected so much as trapped inside his own idea of what love should feel like: dramatic, punishing, earned through pain.
And the tragedy is subtle: he pushed away the one person who actually cared because he didn’t know how to accept something gentle.
The calls faded, the years passed, and he only realized too late that he had driven away the real thing.
What lingers is that ghost of a voice in November not her, but the version of himself he never allowed to grow.
It’s a story about confusing suffering with devotion, and waking up years later to see the cost.
And the way he tells it, you can feel he’s still carrying that quiet ache, even now.