about me:

hi everyone (aka my mom, me, and maybe a few of my loyal amazing wonderful friends). and if you’re not one of them, i’m tessa.

born & raised on the east coast, now pretending i am not constantly crying through LA traffic. i am a lawyer full time, but the version of me outside of the pantsuit life (gross) — the one at home, makeup smudged, pimple patches on, crying to music from 2014, wearing an ex’s old t-shirt, and sitting on the floor, filling pages of a floral-print notebook — likes to believes she’s a writer.

i am obsessed with all things love. the real kind: the big feelings, reckless hope, heart-wrenching goodbyes, the many invisible strings i’ve created, hot tears down flushed cheeks in airport terminals leaving boys i’ll likely never see again. also: crying when a guy i barely knew but decided was my soulmate stops texting.

i spent years pretending i was cold & unbothered (a cool-girl, if you will), i convinced myself that all the emotional nuances of life, relationships, attachment, heartbreak - were all just absolute bullshit. and honestly, i sold it. even to myself. but the carefully crafted facade could not last forever. turns out, i have feelings. a lot of them. in fact, i fall in love and get attached far too easily to temporary people who can barely remember my name.

i don’t cry in front of people (unless the situation is truly dire), so mostly, i write. sad poetry. short stories. chapters about boys who broke my heart in a book i’ll never publish. and many many letters i’ll never sense. and now… this.

this is where i tell the truth. the messy, embarrassing, sometimes pathetic, and even occasionally romantic truth. names (those sour, sticky names that still sit heavy in the back of my throat) and dates will be changed (you’re welcome to the subpar medium-ugly men who broke my heart). but the stories, however, those are all very much real. painfully so.

my goal? honestly, just to feel my feelings out loud and maybe convince you to do the same. or at least make you laugh a lil at my expense. either works. but yah, enjoy.

oh, and if you happen to recognize yourself in my words — don’t. mind your business. as much as you’d like to believe you were a main character, you weren’t. you never were. you were a blip. a half-thought. a passing scene. sure, you earned a poem or two, but let’s not kid ourselves, that’s only because i can’t help but romanticize even the smallest most insignificant things (that’s you). you weren’t the story. baby, you were barely a footnote. it really was never about you. but hey, thx for the inspiration.

-tessa