Where Did I Put My Smile?
What loneliness looks like at 8 figures
Welcome to financial success. May I take your order?
The phone is ringing, the one you’ve been waiting for your whole life. First class tickets across the world, but you’ve stopped answering. It would feel like betrayal.
Because somewhere in the corners of a night, when your loneliness was heard like a rat, you made a pact. You’d trade it all for love.
And now your financial success interjects. The men are intimidated.
Another Tinder date, this time he’s talking about his ex and wants to pitch you his latest patent-pending invention.
Sometimes you try to look back and find where it was, the place where the love for your business came unraveled. A precise moment. A thread undone. Or was it lost love for yourself? Who knows, it's all a blur.
Because life doesn’t happen with a background orchestra. There are no symphonies to let you know you've gone off track. No, growth takes place undercover. A minutiae decision to not pick up a call. An email never sent.
It wasn’t the men’s fault, you had it in your head and you led with it. Get thrown off the horse a couple times and now things look like blanket statements.
"Men can't handle women who earn more."
Business is booming, you’ve worked hard to get to this point. But it requires extroversion, every morning you get ready by slapping on a smile. Quietly wondering what the point of it all is if you’ve got nobody else by your side?
Your confidence takes a blow, what is wrong with me? And now you're searching for your smile. Like keys misplaced, could they be in your pocket?
Obviously, cry me a river, rich people problems, so you keep it all inside. Like a fruit that’s gone off, you just push it down further. Haven’t you heard the reds grow like fungus?
You would have paid for it, you know. Love. You tried to, going so far as to investigate male escorts and billboard costs to advertise a Sugar Mamma service.
When the men’s motives came into question, you were not innocent.
But you're only human, you were lonely in love.
And when you find yourself at the crossroad, where your business no longer inspires you the way it once did. The place where you have let go of your own hand. You’ll act surprised when things don’t work out.
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This is an excerpt from my newest book Pay the F*cking Invoice - you can preorder your copy here » (expected release November 2025)