Chapter Five: So… What Exactly Am I Doing Here? - True Story

If you've made it through Chapter Four, Part 2, you may currently have questions.

Honestly, so do I.

This entire project started because I needed somewhere to put a story.

That's it.

I wasn't trying to write a book about a man. I wasn't trying to expose anybody. I wasn't even trying to become Carrie Bradshaw with better cars.

I was trying to understand something that happened to me.

Somewhere during my Hot Car Summer, I met someone at an exotic-car shop during an ordinary afternoon when I wasn't looking for love at all. I was helping a friend.

Then came the cars.

The conversations.

The Porsche.

The attraction.

The questions.

The answers.

And eventually, information that made me realize the story I thought I was participating in and the reality I was actually standing in were two very different things.

Naturally, my brain handled this with perfect emotional maturity.

Just kidding.

I wrote.

I prayed.

I got angry.

I romanticized things.

I questioned things.

I imagined conversations that never happened.

I occasionally behaved like the FBI had hired a woman in a sundress.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I realized something:

This story isn't really about him.

It's about what happens inside of us when reality doesn't match the story we were given.

It's about how quickly attention can start feeling like intention when you desperately want something real.

It's about limerence.

It's about loneliness.

It's about lust.

It's about honesty.

It's about God.

It's about cars.

And, apparently, it's also about my inability to encounter a Lamborghini without turning it into a literary device.

But most of all, it's becoming a story about learning when to stop asking another person to explain your experience to you.

Because I kept thinking that if I could just understand why, everything would make sense.

Why lie?

Why watch?

Why respond?

Why not simply tell me the truth?

Why let me believe something that wasn't real?

Why me?

Eventually, I realized I could spend the rest of my life trying to crawl inside somebody else's mind and still never receive an answer that changed the most important fact:

I knew what I wanted.

I wanted honesty.

I wanted monogamy.

I wanted intention.

I wanted a love I didn't have to investigate.

And perhaps that's why I'm writing all of this now.

Not because I hate the person who inspired it.

I don't.

And not because I need the internet to decide who was right or wrong.

God knows I have enough screenshots without conducting a public trial.

I'm writing because sometimes the funniest, messiest, most embarrassing experiences of our lives become valuable once we're brave enough to look at ourselves inside them.

There are things Past Me did that Present Me wants to grab her by the shoulders over.

There are also things I understand about her now that I didn't understand while I was living them.

She wasn't simply obsessed with having a man.

She was desperately trying to understand why something that felt so real had been built on something that wasn't.

And maybe that's why AngelTech Exotic exists.

I'm taking the scattered stories, diary entries, fantasies, ridiculous moments, spiritual questions, beautiful cars and painful lessons I've been writing here and turning them into an actual book.

A real one.

In order.

Or at least as much order as my life is willing to cooperate with.

The blog will remain the messy garage where I take things apart.

The book is where I'm going to rebuild them.

And this time, I'm starting at the beginning.