Crackhead Taylor, the Goddess

In my past, I had deep distrust toward romantic partners. Low self-worth I think is why I allowed some of them near me in the first place. As I learned more about myself, my standards changed. I stopped looking for proximity and started looking for depth: complementary traits, emotional presence, and real partnership.

And I found it.

Literally, my partner is everything I wrote in my manifestation notebook about what I wanted in a relationship. Now that I’ve found it, they’re not going anywhere. I tell Sanny all the time, “welcome to Death Row Records,” because it’s OVER for them. Lolol.

One thing I wrote down was wanting a partner who adores me. And by golly, I found that too. Sanny calls me their goddess, and they treat me like one.

“Goddess,” funnily enough, comes from Love After Lockup. Clint always called Crackhead Tracie his goddess. Tracie could do just about anything and Clint still loved her; she was still his goddess. She stole his car and wallet the morning after their wedding, disappeared, landed back in jail, and Clint still showed up to pick her up when she got out. He understood she was battling demons, aka ”motherfucking crack”, and Clint loved his goddess through it all.

I related to Crackhead Tracie. Not the crack part, but the demons. I was in my own healing process, working through my own mess, and Sanny stayed. They love their goddess through it all too.

I talked to my therapist about how disoriented I felt being in a relationship that didn’t look the way I thought it would. This is my first same-sex relationship, and my dad raised me with an inherent mistrust of white people. My therapist helped me see that my discomfort wasn’t about how the relationship looked, that was only a smokescreen. My discomfort was because this is actually a healthy relationship.

I had never been in one, and I definitely hadn’t seen one growing up.

Feeling loved, respected, and cared for forced change within me. I realized I had to stop doing anything that wasn’t conducive to this healthy relationship. I had to nurture it intentionally, by keeping the good behaviors and shedding the ones that no longer served me.

Shutting down in conflict, for example, which I knew was a survival tactic.

When I irritated my mother, we were equals. When she hurt me, she was the parent, I was the child, and my feelings didn’t matter. I was left to tend to my emotions alone.

Eventually, I stopped voicing negative feelings at all. I’d shut down, process internally, and return once I got over it. That hurt far less than having my emotions dismissed by the one person I felt should have cared about them.

That pattern was reinforced by how my mother handled conflict. When she was upset, she stonewalled me. I remember one specific moment: the computer was in my room, and she came in to use it. I greeted her instinctively, eager to people please to reestablish the peace. She replied, “good day” (she didn’t even talk like that), and worked on the computer without saying another word to me. She didn’t even look at me. I didn’t exist.

I wasn’t surprised then, but I still carry that with me. I still get triggered by “good day” in a heated moment.

Alongside the shutdown came logic; logicizing emotions became my coping mechanism. If I could understand an emotion, I could move through it efficiently, and ideally prevent it from happening again. Emotional processing turned into problem solving.

That tendency shows up in my relationship with Sanny, but in a good way. When something happens now, I don’t spiral, I contextualize. I measure the situation against what I know to be true: Sanny loves me real bad. Every issue gets tested against that baseline. None of them have ever disproved it.

This matters because my nervous system learned early that questions meant danger. My mother would interrogate me with questions she already knew the answers to. No response was safe. I was in trouble before I even spoke.

So when Sanny asks a succession of questions, my body initially reacted as if I’m being set up. Now logic intervenes. I can recognize the difference between interrogation and curiosity. They aren’t asking questions to trap me. They don’t already have the answers. There’s no punishment waiting at the end. Sometimes they’re trying to understand the situation better. Sometimes they’re trying to understand how to love me better.

My mother also created wounds I had to heal outright, like repeatedly calling me an “energy vampire.” Like, why would you say that??? Lolol.

If my own mother felt drained by me, why would anyone want to be around me? I convinced myself my friends secretly hated me, that I was only invited to events as a cruel joke.

That cycle didn’t break until I cried to my manager at the time, Denise, about how I felt that I didn’t have purpose. She told me plainly that I brought light into spaces and that people looked forward to seeing me. My absence is noticed, and I’m missed. I guess it finally broke me out of the chains placed on me because I had already decided on a path of healing and personal sovereignty.

Which I guess is also what allowed me to accept a partner that is present with words of affirmation and acts of service.
Sanny puts toothpaste on my toothbrush every morning and when we brush our teeth at night. They also line up supplements for me, including ones for my joints. They show care by making sure I take care of myself.

That consistency forced a reevaluation of my mother. She used to recommend supplements for my joints too. At the time, I was annoyed and unreceptive. Now I can see she was offering care in the only currency she had. I didn’t receive it, but she was trying.

Because I grew up lonely, an only child who learned to manage her own emotions, I once lived by a quote attributed to Henry David Thoreau: I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. Coupled with my refusal to ever feel like I was begging for companionship, I had accepted, and prepared for, a life on my own.

I wasn’t afraid to get out here and do things alone. I went to restaurants, concerts and even amusement parks. I took trips, both domestic and international, all by myself. Not because I had no one to go with, but because I don’t believe in postponing life while waiting for someone else’s availability. So I lived, fully and independently.

At times, I’d look at couples on my adventures and wish I had a partner to explore with. But I didn’t, and I never thought I would, and that was okay.

I caught myself whining for the hundredth time to my therapist about wanting my person to find me… wanting love to arrive without requiring me to be ready for it.  I realized I needed to shut the fuck up and do the work.

So I did.

I treated the time to myself as preparation. I focused on becoming someone who could sustain a healthy relationship and be a good partner in one. I stopped entertaining anything that wasn’t a direct result of self-respect. And I enjoyed what I knew were my final moments of being single, because I was certain that when my partner arrived, it would be all gas, no brakes.

That’s exactly what happened.

I loved myself fully. I let go of what didn’t align. And I found a partner who loves me real, real bad. They show me patience, care, and concern… even when my mental isn’t all the way there.

I’m an overthinker by nature. I question everything. But I never question whether Sanny loves me. I don’t analyze it or test it. I trust it in my soul because they show me every single day.

And maybe it’s because I genuinely enjoyed my solitude that I encountered something I hadn’t anticipated: a companion more fulfilling than being alone.

People often refer to their partner as their better half. Neither Sanny nor I see it that way. We are whole on our own. We don’t complete each other, we enhance each other.

We’re not halves. We’re the cherry on top.

The sundae already existed. We just make it sweeter.