THE MATCH HE LIT AND LEFT BEHIND
He arrived like a cigarette I had no business craving.
Captured by Mitchell Royel in Moorpark, California. Now playing: “like a cigarette” by mxbeats, ken, dryftmode, suzi.
We followed the light first.
Not sunlight exactly—something dimmer, stranger, the kind of glow that slips between tree trunks and makes you believe the woods are trying to tell you a secret. We kept walking, shoes catching on roots, shoulders brushing pine and shadow, pretending we weren’t a little afraid of how far in we’d gone.
Every path started to look like a dare.
But there was something beautiful about being out there with no audience, no noise, no proof of anything except breath and instinct. Just the hush of the trees, the smell of earth, and that feeling that if you stayed still long enough, the forest might hand you back to yourself.
So we followed it deeper—the mystery, the music, each other.
And for a moment, it felt like the woods were following us too.
Not the first one. Not the reckless one stolen behind the school gym, all panic and perfume. More like the one you tell yourself you’ve outgrown. The one that appears in the hand of a beautiful stranger outside a dim restaurant, glowing at the tip, offering ceremony. A small flame. A reason to step away from the noise. A reason to inhale something dangerous and call it peace.
That was him.
A brief soothe. A burn dressed as blessing. A ritual I knew too well: the anticipation, the flick, the first pull, the lie that this was only for tonight. Only this once. Only because the moon was saying things and my body was listening.
When I saw him, something in me went quiet in the way a room goes quiet before glass breaks. Not peaceful. Charged. My nervous system put on lipstick. My intuition leaned forward. My common sense left her coat at the door and pretended she would be right back.
We talked like people who were standing at the edge of something and trying not to name it. There was warmth. There was voltage. There were little promises folded into casual sentences. The kind that don’t sound like vows, but land in the body as if they are. We’ll talk. I want to see you. We’ll connect again. That low, easy confidence men sometimes have when they are holding the match and you are already smoke.
So I texted him.
And then: nothing.
No response.
Just the blue-white silence of my phone. Just the tiny altar of the screen lighting up for everyone but him. Just me checking, then not checking, then checking with the false dignity of a woman pretending she has not organized her entire bloodstream around a notification.
His silence did not match the tone of our conversation. It did not match the softness in his eyes, or the way his attention had moved toward me like it had intention. It did not match the little door he opened and invited me to stand near. It did not match the promise implied by his voice.
And yes, I know. People get busy. Phones die. Lives are layered. Desire is not a contract. Chemistry is not a calendar invite. I am a grown woman with spiritual tools, self-respect, and a decent understanding of attachment theory.
Still.
The body keeps its own court.
My body said: objection.
My body said: we were told there would be warmth here.
My body said: why does this feel like withdrawal?
Because that is the thing about a cigarette. It is small, but it becomes an empire. It is momentary, but it installs a clock inside you. It gives you something to do with your hands when you don’t know where to put your longing. It makes absence feel like a craving and craving feel like proof.
Then he told me he was going out of town.
A simple sentence. Nothing cruel. No grand betrayal. No cinematic abandonment. Just logistics, apparently. He was leaving. He didn’t know exactly when we would see each other again. Or maybe he did and didn’t say. I didn’t know what he would be doing, who he would be with, what version of himself would exist in rooms I could not enter.
But he said we would connect again.
There it was. The ember.
Just enough.
Not a plan. Not a date. Not a hand on the heart. Just a future-shaped phrase. A little glowing tip in the dark. Enough to keep me reaching for the pack.
I wanted to be elegant about it. I wanted to be the woman who smiles with soft detachment and returns to her jasmine tea, her clean sheets, her sacred discipline. I wanted to say, Of course, love, travel well, and mean it from the crown chakra down.
Instead, I threw a tantrum in my bedroom.
Not the adorable kind. Not the cinematic kind with mascara and a silk robe and one perfect tear. A real tantrum. Private. Undignified. Primal. I paced. I flung myself onto the bed. I sat up again. I cursed into the air. I argued with no one and everyone. Him. God. My phone. My own stupid hope. My own beautiful, inconvenient heart.
I was furious at the gap between what was said and what was happening.
I was furious that I could be so affected by someone so new.
I was furious that desire had found the loose floorboard in me and was now prying it open with both hands.
I hyperfocused until the room became a tunnel. The walls softened and sharpened. My thoughts began circling the same small flame: What did he mean? Why didn’t he answer? When will he come back? Is he thinking of me? Did I invent it? Did I feel it alone? Was I too much? Was he not enough? Is this intuition or obsession wearing perfume?
Then I stood in front of the mirror.
There I was.
Wild-eyed. Tender. Annoyed with my own tenderness. Hair slightly tragic. Face flushed with the humiliation of wanting. I looked like a woman who had been visited by a god and then left on read by a man.
And I stared.
Not the quick glance we give ourselves before leaving the house. Not the evaluation scan. This was witnessing. This was the long, merciless, merciful look. The kind where the soul finally stops making noise and tells the truth.
I saw the longing first. Then the fear underneath it. Then the devotion underneath that.
And then the realization landed with a thud so clean it almost became holy:
I was hopelessly in love.
Not reasonably interested. Not lightly intrigued. Not enjoying the flirtation. Not “seeing where it goes,” that modern little anesthesia.
Hopelessly.
Meaning my hope had already run ahead of me barefoot. Meaning my heart had lit the candle before the church was built. Meaning some part of me had decided, without my consent, that this man was not just a man. He was a doorway. A weather system. A cigarette after years of clean lungs. A burn I had mistaken for warmth.
And because I love myself now, because I have earned some wisdom through gorgeous mistakes and expensive healing, I knew this was not a situation to romanticize without supervision.
This would need crisis management.
Not suppression. Not shame. Not pretending I was above it. Crisis management with candles and boundaries. With water. With prayer. With friends who tell the truth. With nervous system care. With not texting again just to prove I am casual when I am absolutely not casual. With remembering that intensity is not always intimacy. With asking myself what part of me is starving and why a small plume of attention feels like a feast.
I would need to manage the fantasy like fire.
I would need to keep my hands away from the lighter.
I would need to let the ache after the burn teach me something other than how to crave more.
Because the cigarette is not evil. It is honest in its way. It says: I will calm you for a minute and cost you later. It says: I will give your longing a shape, but I will not make you whole. It says: you can turn me into a ritual, but I will still leave smoke in your hair.
And maybe he will come back. Maybe we will connect again. Maybe he will walk into my life with his beautiful timing and his impossible mouth and his half-made plans, and I will feel that familiar strike of the match.
But now I know.
The glow is not the same as devotion.
The burn is not the same as warmth.
The craving is not the same as love, even when love is inside it.
So I am here, in my bedroom, in the aftermath of my own little storm, practicing the sacred art of not abandoning myself just because someone else has gone quiet. I am letting the wanting move through without letting it drive. I am holding the part of me that fell so fast, so fully, and I am not mocking her for it.
She is not weak.
She is alive.
She is just learning, again, that some flames are meant to be admired from a distance. Some are meant to be prayed over. Some are meant to be walked away from before the whole house smells like smoke.
-Ryder
WE'RE NOT DOING IT WRONG, WE'RE DOING IT HUMAN
Here’s what nobody tells you about the in-between: it’s where you actually find yourself.
Captured by Mitchell Royel in the fashion district. Vibes are immaculate. We're listening to Your Song by Rita Ora on repeat—that track still hits different every time. Pure energy.
We’ve been living in this liminal space—you know the one. Where we’re not quite together, not quite apart. Where “friends with benefits” becomes code for “we’re terrified to name what this is.” Where every makeup feels like a small resurrection and every breakup feels like we’re learning to breathe underwater.
And we’re done apologizing for it.
Frequency of Transition
There’s this thing that happens when we’re in the thick of transformation. The world gets loud. Everyone has an opinion about what we should do, who we should be, how we should heal. But lately, we’ve been learning to tune into a different frequency entirely.
We only want to hear the songs that make us feel alive.
Not the sad ones. Not the bitter ones. Not the “I told you so” anthems from well-meaning friends who think they know our story better than we do. We’re talking about the songs that remind us that even in the mess—especially in the mess—we’re still capable of feeling everything.
On Makeups+the Art of Returning
We’ve broken up three times. Maybe four, if you count that week in March where we “took space” but still texted at 2 AM.
Each time we come back together, people ask us why. Like we owe them an explanation. Like love is supposed to be linear. Like growth doesn’t sometimes look like circling back to see if we’ve both changed enough to try again.
Here’s our truth: Sometimes the person who breaks your heart is also the person who teaches you how big your heart actually is.
And sometimes? We’re not ready the first time. Or the second. Sometimes we need to leave and come back and leave again before we understand what we’re actually choosing.
Flow State of Feeling
We’ve been leaning hard into hyperfocus lately. When everything in our relationship status feels uncertain, there’s something sacred about finding the things that make us forget time exists.
For us, it’s been:
Writing at 3 AM when the words pour out like confession
Running until our thoughts quiet down to just breath and pavement
Creating things with our hands—pottery, paintings, playlists that tell the story we can’t speak out loud yet
This is where we’ve learned the difference between distraction and devotion. Distraction numbs you. Devotion wakes you up.
In flow state, we’re not running from the complexity of us. We’re running toward the fullest version of ourselves. The ones who can hold paradox. The ones who don’t need everything to be resolved to know we’re whole.
Friends with Benefits+
the Lies We Tell Ourselves
Let’s be honest about what “friends with benefits” really means:
It means we’re brave enough to stay close but too scared to go all in.
It means we’re practicing intimacy with training wheels on.
It means we’re both hoping the other person will be the first to admit they want more.
We’re not judging it. We’ve lived it. We’re in it. But we’re also not pretending it’s casual when our hearts do backflips every time we see each other’s names light up our phones.
The benefit isn’t the physical part. The benefit is getting to keep each other in our lives while we figure out if we’re strong enough to risk losing this by wanting everything.
This Transitional Season
Spring is doing that thing where it can’t decide if it’s still winter. That’s us right now.
And we’re learning to be okay with not knowing. With the fact that some seasons are just about transition—not destination. Some chapters are just about becoming—not arriving.
We used to think we needed to have it all figured out. The relationship status. The five-year plan. The clear narrative that makes sense to everyone watching from the outside.
But now? We only want to sing the songs that feel true right now. Even if they’re messy. Even if they’re complicated. Even if they change tomorrow.
What We Know for Sure
We’ve changed the frequency we operate on. Before this, we were all minor keys and melancholy. Now, even in the uncertainty, even in the back-and-forth, even in the “what are we doing?”—we feel alive.
That’s not nothing.
That’s not casual.
That’s not something we’re willing to diminish just because it doesn’t fit into neat categories.
So here’s our open letter to anyone else living in the in-between:
Your transitional season is not a failure. It’s a composition.
The breakups taught us what we won’t tolerate. The makeups taught us what we can’t live without. The friends-with-benefits phase taught us that intimacy is complicated and that’s okay. The hyperfocus taught us that we’re whole even when our relationship status isn’t.
And all of it—every messy, beautiful, confusing moment—is writing the song only we can sing.
We’re choosing to sing it loud.
Even if we don’t know how it ends yet.
With love and zero apologies,
Ryder
P.S. — If you’re waiting for permission to feel everything while you figure it out: this is it. Feel it all. You’re not doing it wrong. You’re doing it human.
From the struggle bus, faith mentors awakened the soul of Gospel Glamour
Captured by the talented Mitchell Royel in the vibrant fashion district, this moment is now accompanied by the soulful sounds of "For You" by Toly Braun, creating a perfect blend of style and artistry.
About six months ago, collegiate male leaders alongside faith mentors came together and crafted our comeback photoshoot themed to Toly Braun's "For You" after hearing the journey of our brand—the struggles, the setbacks, the absolute refusal to quit when everything and everyone said we should just let it go. They didn't just show up with cameras and good intentions.
They believed.
Like, truly believed. They saw something worth investing in, worth championing, worth breathing life back into when we were running on fumes and faith alone. And that kind of recognition? That kind of solidarity when you're at your lowest? Man, it changes everything. We're eternally grateful.
Thank you for seeing us when we desperately needed to be seen. Thank you for recognizing not just what we are in this moment, but what we're becoming—what we're fighting to build.
This wasn’t just a photoshoot. It's was statement. A declaration that we're still here, still building, still rising from the ashes of whatever tried to bury us. And we couldn't have done it without you. Real recognizes real, and you recognized us when it mattered most.
We won't forget that.
-Gospel Glamour Collective
Actually, I Was The Villain
Captured by Mitchell in stunning 1080x1080—raw, unfiltered, the kind of frame that stops you mid-scroll. Now playing: "it's not u it's me" by Bea Miller, because sometimes the soundtrack says what we can't. The light hits different when you're finally telling the truth. The composition feels intentional, intimate, like you're witnessing something you weren't meant to see. This is what honesty looks like when it's not performing. This is what accountability sounds like when it's set to the right song.
It’s been years since it ended. Years since I popped off, and all hell broke loose.
You know the moment I’m talking about. The one where I went nuclear. Where I said things that couldn’t be unsaid, where I burned it all down with the kind of righteous fury that felt so justified in the moment. I was the wronged one. I was the one who had every right to detonate.
Except.
Here’s the thing about time and distance and doing your own work: eventually, the smoke clears. Eventually, you stop rehearsing your case. Eventually, you get quiet enough to hear the truth that’s been waiting underneath all that noise.
It was my fault.
Not all of it. Let’s be clear. But the part I’ve been conveniently forgetting? The secret affair we had before everything imploded. The one I somehow managed to erase from my own narrative. The one where I was the one crossing lines, making choices, saying yes to things I knew would complicate everything.
Funny how memory works, isn’t it? How we can airbrush ourselves right out of our own stories. How we can make ourselves the hero or the victim, but rarely the person who actually participated in the mess.
I had this aha moment—you know the one. That gut-punch realization where you’re just going about your day, and suddenly your own bullshit catches up with you. Where you see yourself clearly for the first time in years, and you think: Oh. Oops. I forgot about that part.
The part where I was complicit.
The part where I chose this.
The part where I knew exactly what I was doing.
And here’s what’s wild: this isn’t just about us. This pattern—this convenient amnesia, this selective storytelling—it shows up everywhere. In friendships that imploded. In business partnerships that went sideways. In family dynamics that feel irreparable.
We all do it. We all rewrite history to make ourselves more palatable, more innocent, more right. We forget the affair. We forget the lie. We forget the moment we chose our comfort over someone else’s truth.
But the body remembers.
The soul remembers.
And eventually, if you’re paying attention, if you’re doing the work, if you’re willing to get uncomfortable—you remember too.
So here’s what I want to say: I’m sorry. Not the performative kind of sorry that’s really just a bid for absolution. But the kind that says: I see it now. I see what I did. I see how I contributed to the wreckage.
I don’t need you to forgive me. I don’t even need you to read this. This is for me. This is me owning my part. This is me saying: I was wrong. I forgot. And now I remember.
And maybe that’s the whole point of these years-later revelations. Not to go back and fix what’s broken. Not to resurrect what’s dead. But to finally, finally, tell the truth.
To ourselves.
About ourselves.
Because that’s where the real liberation lives. Not in being right. Not in being the victim. But in being honest about the whole messy, complicated, human story.
The one where we’re all just doing our best and fucking up spectacularly and occasionally, if we’re lucky, waking up enough to see it.
I see it now.
And I’m grateful for that.
With love and truth,
Ryder
We Started Matching His Energy and What Happened Next Will Shock You
And speaking of raw, unfiltered truth—this entire vibe, this whole feeling I'm talking about? It got captured. Mitchell Royel shot it in the shower on an iPhone, 1080x1080, no filter, no bullshit. Just water and mascara and that specific kind of beautiful that happens when you stop performing. And the soundtrack? Promises by CANNA maaple. Because of course it is. Because some songs just know. They know that moment when you're sitting there, soaking wet, finally letting yourself feel everything you've been holding back. That's the energy. That's the mirror. That's what happens when you stop pretending the crumbs taste like cake.
This year I'm done with the mental gymnastics. Done with the "but maybe he meant..." and the "I think what he's trying to say is..." I'm taking it all at absolute face value. However he dishes it—that's exactly how I'm receiving it.
He texts back in three days? Cool. I'll match that energy. He's vague about plans? I can be wonderfully non-committal too. He's hot one week and distant the next? Watch me become a master of temperature control.
And here's the thing—this isn't game playing. This isn't strategy. This is self-preservation dressed up as self-respect. Because I've spent too many years translating, interpreting, making excuses, filling in the gaps of someone else's half-assed effort with my full-hearted hope.
The mirroring is medicine. It's showing me, in real time, what I've been accepting. When I pull back to match his energy and suddenly feel the chill of that distance—that's information. That's my body saying "see how this feels? This is what you've been tolerating."
I used to think love meant meeting someone where they are. And maybe it does. But it doesn't mean staying there when where they are is barely interested. It doesn't mean contorting myself into smaller and smaller versions of my needs just to make it work.
So if he's showing up inconsistent, I'm mirroring inconsistency. If he's showing up half-present, I'm reflecting that right back. Not to punish. Not to teach him a lesson. But to stop teaching myself that crumbs are a meal.
And you know what's wild? The right person won't require this. The right person will feel the shift and lean in, not pull back. The right person will say "hey, what's going on?" instead of just matching my distance with relief.
The mirroring isn't about him at all, really. It's about me finally believing that I deserve the same quality of attention, effort, and presence that I've been giving away for free. It's about letting my actions align with my worth instead of my words claiming it while my behavior betrays it.
However he dishes it. That's the menu I'm ordering from now. And if I don't like what's being served, I know where the door is.
-Ryder+MitchellRoyel
DISCLAIMER:
This blog post presents a perspective on relationship dynamics that is intentionally provocative and may not resonate with everyone. The "mirroring" approach described here is controversial and should absolutely be debated. Some will see it as healthy boundary-setting and self-respect in action. Others will view it as manipulative, passive-aggressive, or a barrier to authentic communication.
Healthy relationships thrive on direct conversation, vulnerability, and expressing your needs clearly—not on strategic withdrawal or tit-for-tat energy matching. What reads as "self-preservation" to one person might look like avoidant attachment or emotional withholding to another.
This content is meant to spark reflection and discussion, not to serve as universal relationship advice. Your situation, your attachment style, your partner's communication patterns, and your relationship goals are unique to you. What feels empowering in one context might be destructive in another.
We encourage you to think critically about these ideas, discuss them with trusted friends or a therapist, and consider multiple perspectives before applying any relationship strategy to your own life. The comments are open—let's debate this.