Category: Dear Sara

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

In retrospect, it was probably to-be-expected, after my previous message to you.
That, of course, I would go on digging in the past, for men who reached my heart or more, after I had set up my new “system” to “handle” with men who were interested in me.
Neither system nor handle are exactly the right word, but it will have to do.

Either way access to me seems to be under control and I no longer need to be involved.
There is plenty of time to look back and reminisce.

Which could explain why someone I had not thought about – not like this! – came up again. He’s also the unnamed love interest from the final paragraphs of my previous message to you.
I didn’t remember until I just reread. Apparently he was already heavily on my mind, last time we talked.

The irony is that I have had many attempts to deliberately think about him, but I never succeeded.
I tried because I thought it would relieve the burden of feeling so much for my last lover. That I could transfer it to a borderline fictional crush from the past. Only to find out it didn’t quite work that way.
Then why now?

I’m grateful and it feels just as great as I imagined it would;
But why now?
Why was I able to recreate my affection towards him, in an entirely natural way, without any effort?

And then I found the answer!
Because the man I fell in love with last year, carries the exact same energy.

Now before I dive into this, a concept I will call Angel Love, describing the ethereal yet powerful presence both him and this new man have or had, I want to preface it by comparing it to another powerful, yet entirely different energy, which is from that past lover, Mr.Big.
The stark contrast between Angel Love and Mr.Big’s love, will bring my point across more vividly.

So first Mr.Big;
Why was I so extremely crazy about him, and why did I feel so safe and nurtured even though I was only his mistress? Nothing more was offered.
The answer lies in the inviting atmosphere Mr.Big created; 
Warm, nurturing, and completely low key.
He was completely at ease, and he kept his space clean, warm in winter and he wasn’t one of those grown ups who doesn’t have any sweets or candy around.
Although I have only had good lovers and wonderful men in my bed, he was beyond a shadow of a doubt the best lover I ever had.
I could turn my whole box of kinks upside down, and he’d still know what I was hiding.
It was magnificent.

So! 
Then why on earth do I find myself romanticizing someone – two men actually, if I include the one I met last year – Why do I romanticize them when what I had with them counts as “almost nothing” to “absolutely nothing”?
Nothing but “a moment”, where we both felt it.
But moments don’t count. Not compared to living out your whole box of kinks.

Is this some Victorian romantic idea of favoring men I have done “nothing” with, over the one I was well on my way of doing “everything” with?
But fortunately, I cracked the code, and that wasn’t it.
It had nothing to do with morals of any kind.

You see, here’s the thing;
With Mr.Big, the foundation of what he offered was very much in the 3D. The material world. His wealth and demanding nature had earned him the seclusion of a luxurious condo, all to himself.
Now he was the one who got that somehow accepted in his marriage, which is quite the feat, but there was no denying that I felt so safe and taken care of, because he was first and foremost taking really good care of himself.

Mr.Big was also a man I could trust with the vulnerability of my naked body, and of being there alone in his apartment. It’s not like anyone with real estate can get into my pants, far from.
But the truth of the matter is still, that Mr.Big’s appeal, and the appeal of what he offered me, was largely a financial matter.
Privacy is as expensive as it is hot.

So if that is our baseline here;
Then what is Angel Love?
And why does it explain why I’m suddenly thinking about that man from the past?

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

I remember marble tracks as being  a simple wooden toy, where you drop the marble on the top track, and watch it rolling down over de diagonal slide to the right, drop to the next tier, and so on.
Until it comes out at the bottom , over a melodious staircase that makes music from the marble running over it.

But I just Googled these marble tracks, and they have gone totally next level!

No longer a uniform toy, the tracks are now built similarly to Lego. And there are boxes with sets for tracks ranging from globe-like spheres to colorful tracks connecting multiple tower constructions.

So my vision of a marble track symbolizing my love life, but one with gates that lock or open between different layers, is actually less fictional now than it was based on the toy from my youth.
That’s what I’ve been up to!
I have translated lessons from my love life, into a system. And it is giving me wings in every other area as well. Because you could build a track for each and everyone of them.

The idea is that the tracks, not you, select potential suitors.
And to not get emotionally invested until a marble falls through, into your bed in this case.

In a way, I’ve always had a marble track in place, but it was broader than what I’m aiming for now.
But it did work.
For instance, I have never encountered bad lovers, EVER. Our arrangements have been flawed in more ways than I can count, and I have worked around tough character traits  (both theirs and mine!!) at a level I would never have managed if sex had not been the reward.
But I never had someone in my bed who was not a wonderful lover.

As sort of a mid-text PS: I do want to add that I need to be madly in love with a man, right? I mean, you could argue that the track is nothing more than me learning not to engage with people I am not madly in love with.
That I take myself through that track time and time again, knocking into gates that stay closed because I know damn well I m not in love.

But for this blogpost, I’m going to leave that part out, because it’s just not very interesting. And frankly, it’s also not what has given me this feeling of “Cool I hacked this!”
You don’t think “Cool! I hacked this!” when you decide not to engage unless deeply in love. That is not actionable enough.

But back to this marble track, which has always been there.
But now, in the 2.0 2.6 version, I no longer feel responsible for who wants to go into the maze, nor for what they encounter there.
In particular not what they encounter inside themselves. I no longer perform emotional labor and consider it part of a broader feminist package against patriarchy.

And next to me not smoothing out any hurdles, the tracks are also about things I need to have an amazing experience.
Things like: Effort, initiative, holding space for me, attunement, and focus. It is tempting to add “clear communication”, but I really should not because I like the mystery of things being done without words.

The marble track should run in a way that it blocks anyone who will not be able to meet my new standards. 
For both our safety, really. But mostly, for my mental peace and quiet. 

The marble track has been working like a charm. And yes, it is keeping everyone out, which does not sound like much of a result.
But it is preventing me from performing emotional labor. Something I admit still having been caught up in, as recently as last year.

Meanwhile, I’ve made several attempts estimating which men from my past would have been in my life, if my boundaries had always been this strong, my standards this high.
I’ve identified four!

Two lovers would have been in my life, in much the same way as they have been. One from when I was very young, and my last lover as well. So the first and the last, really. Unchanged. If I had to psychologize it I would say those connections were so destined, they would not have been changed by any circumstance. Much less by me applying the principles of a kid’s toy.

With the majority of the men who have been in my life, there is of course really no telling if we would have done better, if I had had better standards. For many men it would have offered a challenge they’d have loved to live up to.
I can look back and think they would not have passed, but the truth is I have no idea how they would have responded. Many of them may have upped their game and could still have been in my life. And bed.

But the most interesting reflections were the ones immediately offering an entirely different picture!
A better one.
And although I said I would leave that aspect out – Yes, these were in fact men I was deeply in love with.

One was someone who broke up with me, in an incredibly messy and fucked up way. And yet I can now see that if he had had to work for my attention, he would have fought for me like a lion.
In hindsight I think he was someone who operated on the IKEA principle: The more effort he would have to put in to get it all up and running, the more attached he would be.
Had I not been the one working my ass off, he would have, and our relationship would have been entirely different.

And the final man with whom I know things would have been so much better, was someone with whom I was very much in love, but I rejected him because I was already involved. And also because my feelings for him scared me. He did not offer any stability or safety for me to hold on to.
And yet?
His energy was so clear, the connection so real;
He offered me the purest relationship gold but from a planet I had never been to. I did not recognize it.

Maybe me being so enthusiastic about the marble track never had anything to do with keeping the men out that were not putting in the work.

Maybe the reason I am so incredibly happy with this find is that I know the track will let the right one through.
Immediately.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

In November I wrote you a post called Becoming Lauren, which was about centering the softer, former-lover part of me.
Lauren is the name I created for myself almost two decades ago, when I started my quest to develop my love life, and in tandem with that, became a writer.

I never set out to become a writer yet it became clear from the get go I would never be able to step on the journey, let alone complete it, without becoming a writer.
Every quest requires transformation, and self-reflection is by far the most thorough as well as most autonomous way to do that. Had I not become a writer, I would have top-heavy burdened my friendships.

But now that it’s all in the past, every element surrounding Lauren Harteveld requires a review.

Do I still need that amount of reflection, now that I no longer have a sex life?
And I know for an absolute fact I will never let things get that complicated again.
But how can I keep what the past two decades brought me?

November’s post was an attempt to outline all the good Lauren brought me, and how I would want to, and need to, start designing my life more consciously in order to honor “her”, and not be burdened by work.

Little by little, and definitely with a generous amount of trial and error, the past six weeks have been about acting accordingly.
About giving “Lauren”, the soft sensual writer side of me who as a rule wants nothing to do with the outside world unless it’s really really good and sweet;
About giving her more space.

But what it made clear is that contrary to what I thought, the person I need to be focusing on in order to reach this space and atmosphere where Lauren can thrive is not Lauren;
It is her bodyguard.

It’s like that quote you often give me on creating Art being about creating the space where Art become inevitable.
I “only” need to create the space where Lauren becomes inevitable.
The space/ the life, where “of course” my inner-Lauren would want to be!

I need to be her body guard, protector, guardian angel, beneficiary, Landlady, Housekeeping and accountant so that she can do the only thing she wants to do:
Enjoy life in all its softness and sweetness.

Since my final letter to you I have been coming to terms with that, and that therefor the focus is not on Lauren.
It’s on giving Bodyguard-me full authority to keep people out, to set boundaries, control access, check identities, run background checks and to never let anyone interfere with Lauren before full clearance.

Even past interactions are no guarantee you will immediately be granted access;
The situation we are in, will be vetted every single time.
Access All Areas-passes will expire immediately after the event.

Now that I know this, which is only a recent insight, life has become incredibly simple, because for starters, the bodyguard only works 40h/week.
Any interaction needs to be within that time, because without her bodyguard Lauren does not even pick up her phone.

The only productive or worldly thing Lauren does, is writing. First thing AM, in her bathing robe, and letting it lavishly flow into her day, taking as many hours as she needs.

And her bodyguard still fast asleep.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

The good news is that my work under my real name, is taking shape.
And I love it so much.
The past couple of months I have streamlined my content planning, my wardrobe, my personas, and life has been throwing me boons instead of curveballs.
The right people are crossing my path, I’ve been incredibly lucky.

And yet….
Yet something is seriously off.
And because everything professional is better than it has ever been, I know the problem is not there. It is within. 
I’m losing my real myself, Lauren the writer.

It has been a blessing that, because I have been a writer under this alter ego for such a long time, I found who I truly was many years ago.
It made my “real life” easier. Because underneath I knew who I was, even though most people didn’t see me that way, and didn’t know I was a diary writer.

And I expected that once my career in this real world was just as well-thought through and fitted me the same way writing as Lauren Harteveld fitted me –
My life would feel even better.
That now, everything was aligned and as it should be.
Except apparently, it isn’t.

It feels like a brick has come loose in the road. Or an iron lit covering a manhole has shifted.
That something that used to be fixed, even when the rest was falling to pieces, has come loose.
And it won’t go away by basking in my newfound happiness in the workfield.
This, is deeper.

And I think it’s “Lauren”, this writer persona that is also my truest self.
The person I chose to become two decades ago, when I was solid in my work, and was willing to pick up some personal projects such as being single.
Which I had never tried.

I thought I’d do some stupid things, regret most of it, and probably even regretting breaking free like that and be lonely when I know I could have stayed with my boyfriend.
I was so willing to be disappointed.
But I wasn’t.

I loved being single, and it also made me a writer.
And I became Lauren.

But now with the rest of my life firing on all cylinders, I feel she’s slipping away…

I need to make her a priority once again.
Because I’m nowhere without her.

I have become her.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

It seemed like such a good idea:
To center my whole life around my relationships.
Professional relationships, friends, family, lovers, all, relationships.

If I had learned anything, and I certainly hoped so because it was one of the few things that kept me afloat these recent years, then it was that relationships require at least the same amount of planning, resources, and strategy, than “all” other areas of life.

“All” between quotation marks because there’s actually not that many areas.
In Africa they talk about “The Big Five” referring to the biggest animals, but I think humans have got less areas they actually focus on.
I’d say three for some, two for most.
And relationships, outside of romance or the nuclear family, is not one of them.

I had realized that my happiness throughout my life had been heavily dependent on at least one main social structure, and usually more, being presented to me on a silver platter…..
School, university, work;
There was nothing I needed to do, I could just hop on the wagon and off I went.
I never had problems socializing.

Looking back however, I can see the High Risk episodes in my life.
Time periods to a maximum of 6, 9 months maybe, where one social structure had ended and another one had not quite begun, and loneliness started creeping in.
So yes, I could have picked up this lesson sooner, that I was dependent on these structures.
But I didn’t.
Not until it came all crashing down in what was a perfect storm, that has been going on to this day.
Yet, I feel it is clearing up slowly, it’s definitely less dense. And either way, it is time to extract its lessons!
And since I’m probably still not done paying the price, I intend to find each and every one of them and get my years-long investment back.
I want to uncover every lesson that’s in there.

For what was probably just hours but it seemed like a lifetime, I believed one conclusion of this Storm Era, was I would be centering my life around my relationships.
This even tied into what an astrologer had told me, that my relationships were my wealth.
In the unlikely case this storm would ever fully clear up, I did not want this long Fall Out to happen again. And it didn’t have to, because this time I knew what to focus on. And more importantly, what NOT to focus on;
Writing.

My writing has damaged relationships, not facilitated them. And this came on top of writing itself being an isolating activity. A joyful, feeling-on-purpose and in-flow activity;
But technically isolating, none the less.
Just like fasting: Many people believe fasting to be healthy, but we’re all aware it should be done in moderation or you die.
Writing works the same way.

In my experience, creativity as a whole is a demanding lover, where you’re constantly wondering if this is one of those unhealthy relationships;
Or if it’s The Love of The Century.

I’ve been writing since 2006, yet never without questioning its true character. To have it pop up again as something that had eroded my social life, was kind of like the final drop in a bucket that had been overflowing for years.
It was time to close the tap.

My social life would become my number one priority.

But within hours, I course corrected.
I made a diary entry and photo copied it 4 times and pasted it into all the other notebooks of relevance.

If my diaries are ever studied and my life reconstructed, the curator will call it the diary entry of October 14, 2025, where you can see the writer accepts who she is.
“See, she copied and pasted it into all her running diaries at the time. It was clearly an important decision for her.”
And it clearly was.

So what have I decided?
Now that I have obviously accepted my fate that, just like all the other people, I do not center my life around my relationships.
And I don’t have a partner nor a nuclear family to take care of, so my number of things to focus on is even one less than for everybody with children, or a partner, and far less than anybody going on safari hoping to catch a glimpse of wildlife.

Which is that I will focus exclusively on my professional life.
Or lives.

From Monday to Friday, I work under my other, “real” name, including on all the content I create there. 
And on Friday evening I switch to weekend mode, which is for this account, for Lauren Harteveld.

Social appointments during the week will cannibalize be deducted from my creative hours, aka content hours.
And social appointments in the weekend will be very welcome because that’s what weekends are for.
And on weekends I will also write one small blogpost for Lauren Harteveld (this blog).

Should I have more time I will publish my book(s), but I’ve fallen off the wagon there so dramatically, I don’t even remember how to get up.
And either way, that’s not the most important aspect of this split.

The most important thing is that the author has accepted her fate as a writer and has effectively resisted the temptation to center her life around her relationships.

And here the middle-aged generation gamma curator pushes her glasses up her nose, and stares intensely at the small group of people taking the guided tour of the Harteveld Estate.

“This letter, which she pasted in all her diaries, is why we believe the 14th of October 2025 was one of the most important dates of the author’s life,”
The tour guide will say.
“She finally understood who she was, and what she had to do.”

And that it was indeed;
The Love of the Century.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.Dear Sara,

I think I just had the worst week of the year, but I could be wrong.
Maybe wounds that have only just healed feel just more tender than the rest of the scars.

But omg what a result I have to share with you!
What an amazing and most-welcome breakthrough, that will last me for decades if not the rest of my life.
‘Cause I finally nailed it, this thing called Life.
Turns out I have some sensitivities I need to work around if I don’t want to end up in total meltdown.

If I don’t up my game plan, and keep being caught off-guard by betrayal, emotional hijacks and just the general rub-off of stress from other people onto me;
Well, then I’m not going to make it.
Simple as that.

Unless I hack this, I will not recover to my pre-pandemic self.

Plus I have an agenda. And what this agenda needs more than anything, is a fucking robust foundation that cannot just stand the storm;
It needs to be, the fucking storm.
But let me start at the beginning.

Like I said there was a meltdown.
A complete fallout of everything, after a week where according to extrovert/ normal people standards, nothing actually happened.

I often tell you how I feel I go through so many cool adventures, and when somebody asks me how I’ve been I want to start telling.
Until I realize it’s all internal.
From the outside, nothing noteworthy happened.

The same thing goes for bad weeks too.
I couldn’t tell you what happened, because it was absolutely nothing outside of the ordinary.
And yet?
It killed me…. it really did.

Ended up having to spend a whole day in bed, only waking up to get more painkillers and a bucket because I thought I was going to throw up.
At 8.30 PM I was healed, like always I could not believe it. Although I know these episodes, I’ve been having them since 2020.
I believe the accurate label would be migraine and thank god they’ve become very rare.
But not rare enough, obviously.

Anyway, I made myself a breakfast, that was actually my dinner but I didn’t dare having any of my regular past 10 AM foods yet. But all was well.
When I went to sleep again, just a few hours later, I had a full night’s sleep yet again. Still exhausted apparently, by what had happened.
So I’m good now.

Good, but clearly this past week needs to be dissected to the t, in order to find the ingredients that drive me into a meltdown. I simply cannot afford to have this happening again.
Where did I go wrong?

And after a day of puzzling (seems wonderfully symmetrical! A day in bed counterbalanced by a day of creative puzzling on my identities) I came up with a chart.

The three layers are:
outer layer (black): Artist/ Rock Star
second layer (pink): Mad chaotic person (The MCP!)
third layer and core: Lauren 2000 (light blue) and Lauren 1990 (eggshell)
Lauren (the deepest layers) is a friend (or a lover, hopefully one day again) living in the year 2000 or even 1990.
Lauren 2000/ 1990 lives offline and it is a timeline travel project, my experimental art form.

I will now tell more about each layer, and how this new setup will help me navigate, so I can avoid losing more days to meltdowns.

first layer: Artist/ Rock Star
This is where I create ALL my things.
I could even start using it for publishing my books, which is the hot potato in my schedule that never actually gets done because it does not feel important enough, and it’s also boring.
But Artist layer does not mind boring, because
-> they don’t have to interact with anybody <-
Like a true Rock Star, they’re completely inaccessible and they only show up if you pay them to do so. 
A lot, if you pay them a lot. And for a beforehand agreed upon time bracket, only.
However, the negotiations for this are not handled by the Rock Star themselves, but by the agent.
A.k.a. mad chaotic person, an entirely new layer built upon the smoldering ashes of the meltdown.

How the Artist/ Rock Star layer will help me navigate, so I can avoid losing more days to meltdowns:

The Artist/Rock Star-me creates within the safety of my own home. The production schedule follows a predictable pattern of what needs to be done and when.
And by taking all social responsibilities off their plate, they are given full creative freedom and are shielded from disruptions.

second layer: Mad Chaotic Person (The MCP!)

Responsible for (almost) all social interaction, including posting content the artist/ Rock Star has made.
The only exceptions are people who relate to the deepest core layer, of Lauren 2000 or Lauren 1990, who obviously communicate with her.
But even there….. falling back onto the Mad Chaotic Person, could be welcome every now and then!

So how did this MCP (Mad Chaotic Person) come into being?

It all started when I realized my view on what it means to be human had shifted.
You see, through a combination of factors among which (yes) privilege but also courage to make incredibly bold choices, I can look back at life and say I always took the right turn.

Sometimes things did not turn out the way I thought they would. But that was because I did not have the right knowledge, sometimes society at large didn’t even have the whole picture yet.
So although I will never stop being bummed out by what all that, cumulatively,  cost me *insert curse*, it simply is what it is.
When you know better you do better.

But at large, yes, I can look back and say I made some damn smart moves when it came to relationships, sex and even career and finances.
And I definitely managed to miraculously avoid the trap society has set up for us, where women end up attending to everybody’s needs but their own.  

However, from the green pastures of having escaped that trap I can tell you this:
If you’re not bound by shared resources, consider yourself an outcast.

Although it was no doubt a gradual realization, as one by one my relationships fell out or altered in a way that their conditionality and fragility had come drifting to the surface, this does feel uniquely like a 2025-breakthrough.
The realization that nothing binds us, but pain.
(the pain of shared “resources”)

In other words, by now I believe connection is “nothing more” but someone you share your pain with. Not pain, which you can then share (as in cut in half). No, I mean that the connection itself is established THROUGH the shared resources, which can be validation or other intangible payoffs, which then cause pain.
It is the pain itself, that makes it a relationship.

Now this may just be an individual experience, I fervently hope it is!
I really hope that to other people, relationships or even casual human interaction does not feel like someone scraping a blunt potato peeler over your skin.

If I look back at the past year – where I have actively been aligning my relationships to a higher form of communication and I’d say with some very impressive results! – I thought what I was doing was outcome focused, Sara.
So I thought (in my ignorance, obviously) I was redesigning my friendships, and really all relationships, so the outcome would be higher.
For almost 14 months, I have believed that.

Now I see that the quality of those relationships did not improve because I boosted the outcome, the results, no;
They improved, because I removed the pain!

The pain of bickering over resources, like if we were going to see each other, and so on.

It has only been possible to see me if you took full responsibility, were present, chose me, us, our time together.
I have demanded dates to come fully funded, and fully resourced in every way imaginable.

And these dates will still go on, in the core two layers of Lauren 2000 and Lauren 1990- but it is not having a Plan B for when these conditions are not met- that caused the meltdowns!

I lost a whole week because I was showing up for people like that pure Lauren 2000 or Lauren 1990 core, or in a half-assed dangerously accessible version of that Rock Star outer layer, in situations that neither met high-paid professionalism of the Rock Star, nor the New Dating Protocol of Lauren 1990 or 2000.

In other words, I gave my best self, in situations that were cut out for normal resources-based pain and chaos relationships!
I showed up as caviar when they craved a proper meal.

Proper meals, Sara! 
I need to BE a proper meal!
Someone people can relate to, be human around, feel SEEN and about a thousand more things that are still largely foreign to me.

What I realized after last week’s debacle was that I need my default to be messy chaos, because what I meet 99% of the time is messy chaos. 
So although I think the work I put into my friendships was really useful, they are not a prelude to what will help me through the rest of my life.
Instead of a default, or a standard or aspirational level, my friendships are in fact more like an oasis to the desert;
A rare exception.

And my meltdowns stem from taking on the desert like an oasis, with a thirsty delicate core, that is absolutely not built for hardship. Only for clear bodies of water, luscious vegetation and drinking milk straight from the coconut.

And it’s not even a service to my friends to only and automatically show up that vulnerable (in bikini!).
Maybe they first need to vent about the world being filled with cacti, or are otherwise in a bad mood or whatever.
I owe it to them that I can take that on, and to not show up attuned to the most ethereal layers of existence.
I’ve been cornering them, even they need me to show up more robust.

Mad Chaotic Person will be my new persona that handles all social media as well as real-life interactions, including first-contact with the ones meeting to Lauren 2000 and Lauren 1990.

And not only will Mad Chaotic Person be built not to give a flying fuck about how reckless, inauthentic and sloppy other people are in interacting with her;
She’ll also be equipped with all my unprocessed emotions, my grudges, my unfiltered aggression, and of course my madness and my chaos.
She will be the embodiment of the ultimate human experience.

Which, according to my mathematical calculations that equate relationships to pain, will make her incredible popular and adaptable in every and all relationships!
Wasn’t it in Alice in Wonderland, where someone (probably the Mad Hatter) says “We’re all mad down here.”? 

(In hindsight) I believe my recent years of trying to regulate my relationships, by trying to be honest and clean, have alienated me, and have taken away my ability for true human connection.
But this Mad Chaotic Person looks forward to embracing the blunt potato peeler and unprecedented levels of impurity.
And to be a proper meal (and not a dish of caviar), when meeting the hungry.

How the Mad Chaotic Person (MCP) layer will help me navigate, so I can avoid losing more days to meltdowns:

Simple!
By putting her in charge of all interaction, I have both a place to emotionally dump all my unprocessed shit (Oh, I’m sorry, did I say that out loud?) but also a tornado layer of forcefully moving energy that can pick up anything big and small, only to spit it out and be done with it two miles and five minutes later.
I will be incapable of holding on to anything, including any memory of what happened.
Mad Chaotic Person will help me show up like a force of nature, instead of like a delicate snowflake that melts at the first sign of heat.

third layer: Lauren 2000 and Lauren 1990

Oh Sweetie!
Oh Lovergirl, Babygirl, the hell we have been through.

At the risk of sounding even more over the top dramatic, but I really can’t believe I never got the memo that showing up authentically will not just make human interaction practically impossible;
It will also make it unnecessary painful.
And I mean more than just all of your expectations not being met and you first being energetically drained and then discarded;
I mean at the most existential level, being rejected as a human being.

The biggest change in who I am has been in recent years and it has resulted in not feeling connected to anyone anymore. Not in that automatic, unconditional, way. There is no belonging.
And this process has been symbiotic with living more from my truest self. So much so, that I can’t even say which caused what.
Did I start living my authentic self, and then stopped connecting?
Or were the connections severed and did this disconnection allow me to become my truest self? 

I cannot blame other people, because I’ve been trapped in a web of micro-deviations from being my real self, for decades…
So of course everybody around me was used to that. 
But still; it hurt.

It hurts finding your true authentic self, to then realize that only a handful of people like her. But that should never be a reason to not honor her, and to be happy you found her.
That person is Lauren 2000 or Lauren 1990.
So they’re versions of me, living in different timelines.
Lauren 1990 is new, but Lauren 2000 has been on this timeline since 1994 (our 2019).
She (Lauren 2000) is the one who decided to go back, and start her life again in 1990.
I don’t know yet how this will all go, artistically or otherwise, we’ll see.

Anyway, what is obvious is that all my friendships and future love relationships are under the identity of Lauren/ the 1990 and 2000 timeline. My authentic self came at a price for sure, but also with an incredible payoff!
I can now have relationships as my true self.
For the real inner-circle, I no longer hide.

How the Lauren 2000 and Lauren 1990 layer will help me navigate, so I can avoid losing more days to meltdowns:

This is where all the hard work is stored, of finding my way back to who I truly was, and now am again. Decades of being led astray, undone. This persona is home, it is not even a persona. It is who I am, even though I understand this time travel aspect is weird and unusual. But I like it.

The hours or even moments I can “be” her, are the icing on the cake, the cherry on top, the reason for everything else.

She is the reason I want to live.

Happily, ever after.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

Dear Sara,

It has been, like the song goes, “raining men” ever since our last call.
And I am so terribly grateful for all of these experiences, after the slow breakup of a relationship that lasted a decade yet that never truly happened.
Neither the relationship, nor the breakup.
They were both soft, indirect and played out like chess.

The past few weeks saved me, from that silent and lonely post-breakup period.
Eighteen months where I designed the blueprint to my new love life, in which I wanted three lovers. But also the time I wondered;
“Who am I kidding, I don’t even have one!”

That time, has ended.
The pieces are moving.

Someone I had a click with turned out to be far more available than I could know;
I also met someone new;
And the only two men I ever fell in love with through correspondence both wrote me for the first time since 2024.

Yet at the same time I find myself being drawn to only one man, another one.
I’m absolutely mesmerized by him and today I realize that (t)his story needs to unfold first, so that if I indeed ever have three lovers, it will be after understanding him. What it is about him, that is so captivating to me.

What is it, that I am lacking, denying myself or not owning, that it has created a hole the size of a grown man?
But there is more. (much more!)

Because I feel that the lesson he holds for me, is something so abstract that I can “harvest it”, without us ever being involved in any way.
So although of course I hope he’s falling head over heels in love with me too, and we start this beautiful gorgeous affair with all the bells and whistles;
That I, and in all probability he as well, no longer need that.

I feel he is emitting a frequency or a message, a teaching – and I know this sounds both ridiculous as well as invasive in all sorts of ways so please forgive me for that! – that anyone (not just me!) who is around him can pick it up.

And if that is true then the fact that I think, and feel, that I am madly in love with him, may actually be a very simplistic and limited label.
To try to make sense of something that I have never encountered before.

Before I move on to becoming a lover again, whether from him or any other man, I need to figure out what this is.
What it is about him, that has me spellbound.
It feels like a clue to a part of myself I don’t have access to.

Then, to complicate matters even further, I find myself fantasizing;
“Okay but what if this does turn into an affair and he breaks your heart, which we know he will, then what?!”
And another layer of mystery and spirituality unravels.
Because how cool would it be, to counter, oppose, heal, the damage of the violent heartbreak at 16 and at 36, if this time, I undergo it willingly.
Like a test if I learned anything, if I can find my ground, keep having faith in myself and if I can be with the overwhelming pain and loss, one more time?!
I mean wow…. that is some challenge.
To experience it again, but consciously this time.

And I have an ulterior motive to wish for such a heartbreak;
A desire to have my heart cracked open.

The past decade with my lover, the affair, and then all the other factors that caused layer after layer of hardening-
It needs to be undone.

As much as I enjoy being in complete control of my emotional life-
It needs to end.
I need to start feeling again, and for so many many reasons.

I feel his presence, his breakup or even his simple rejection, could do that trick. It might even explain my fascination for him, the spell;
He is the only who could still break my heart, despite its hardening.

I have so many thoughts about him, I can hardly keep up!
And about concepts that are entirely foreign to me. And from angles I have never used, it’s all so new!
It’s like a book opens to a whole new world, I did not know existed.

Or, or, or, it’s none of that.
Because I once told you I am a monogamist. But I never told you what that means. 
It means my default mode is always, and has always been, to have only one lover, one boyfriend, or one partner, so it was indiscriminately of my status in their lives.
Because the man I was in love with, always had the same status in mine.
He was The One.

This whole letter could be nothing more than me realizing I am monogamous.

And that my heart has already chosen.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living