* I advise starting with Alberta if you haven't already, and working your way through the series in order*

As follows;
• Alberta
•Willa
•Harper
•Teddy
•Morgan
•Wren

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

***

My name is Morgan Keaton and if you had told me when I was seventeen and having my first dalliance with love and then, subsequently, heartache, that this would quite literally be the start of a lifetime of the stuff...I would have told you to fuck off and be quick smart about it.

I, Morgan Keaton, will not fall in love again.

Ive written that so much in my journal you could title it "loser" and it won't stop will it? I was clearly cursed at birth or before it, that or I was a cut throat bitch in a past life who deserves it. Either way, it sucks, love sucks, girls suck and I suck. The only love I can count on is that of my children, and especially when they want something from me.

I have had four long term relationships in my life so far. The teenage one. It lasted a year and a half. She was two years older than me, and stayed long enough to teach me a thing or two, some rather raunchy bedroom action, and also my first lesson of heartache when she ran off with an ex. I loved her, or so I and my heart thought, because let me tell you that first after taste of love, of heart ache, it felt like the end of the world...

It wasn't.

My second long term relationship was my first adult one, and quite literally, this time...it was  the end of my world as I knew it. Willa Jameson, a name that I will forever associate with the single most pure love I have ever tasted, felt and touched. She found me when I wasn't looking, and I hadn't wanted another taste of the love drug at the time, but in one weekend she smothered me and had me swallow it. It was a drug I had never had the pleasure of licking from my lips... a pure and unrelenting ecstasy, and the rolling in of a great fog that had me a little lost with only her hand visible to guide me home. When I had got to the end of that weekend when we met, she was the sun ray coming through the darkness. She drew me straight to her like a moth to a flame, and as we collided... I knew it then, this was the love of my life, and she was everything I had been looking for.

Willa and I had just over three years together. It was a step up from the last relationship, but it also meant that the bite this time, the bite would be poisoned, and if it had teeth, they would be fangs dripping with it, thrusting it's source into my veins so it could burn for an eternity, the greatest love I had ever known, lost. This time though with Willa it was different, she didn't break my heart. I did. I had wanted something so deeply that I wouldn't be able to keep her, and Willa loved me so purely that she released me to it, to my wants and dreams. That always seems to hurt more when I come back to it, because the love never went away, it just burned and burned and burned until I got so used to it. I numbed to it, and forced myself to find it again, elsewhere.

I would never find that kind again, and perhaps I shouldn't have been looking for it anymore, because I realise now that not all hearts are Willa's and not all love is given in the same way, from the soul. I think my error with my next relationship was that I was looking for Willa still, and Kristen was not Willa, not even close, and the longer I was with her, the more disappointed I was to realise it.

Jameson was born then, my first child, my only daughter, the first taste of love that lasted, an eternal tie created, and love suddenly felt more hopeful. The more in love with my child I was the more healed I became to the past, and the more healed I became, albeit a temporary healing until I saw her again, Willa, the less I wanted Kristen around. After a few years we were done, and honestly, I didn't cry over that one, not for me, only for my daughter as she had got a little attached, but Jameson was not created with Kristen...I had got pregnant solo before I even met her. So, it was easier for Kristen to just leave and not turn back, and I was glad of that. I didn't want to have a walking, talking reminder of another failed relationship hanging around.

I guess this is the part of the story where I stopped looking for love and instead threw myself into parenting. I would have happily continued on in that manner, perhaps a little lonely, perhaps a little horny, perhaps a little desperate for any adult company whatsoever when night came and it all felt a little sad, but in the most part I was happy.

The thing with me is...I attract attention, not always desired or wanted and not always when I'm looking for it. There was something to say about being born with nothing about you that stuck out at all, and nothing immediately shiny about you. I spent most of my life wishing people didn't look at my shine, wishing I could somehow dull it, make myself more plain, strip the shine away like tarnished silver that darkened if you left it without a polish. I wanted to be nobody, and to be able to blend in with my peers, at school, at work, and when out with friends. Wherever I was I wanted to be invisible, but the genetics of my parents had come together and decided to create something shiny. I am not saying this to sound like I am full of myself, or to say I am more attractive than anyone else, but from a little girl I was made aware of the way I stood out. Grown men have ogled me for longer than they perhaps should have, imagine that as a preteen or then as a teen who just got your breasts come in, that was when I began to wish I wasn't quite as perfectly genetically put together as I was. I wanted to cut my hair, colour it something murky, wear baggy clothing to hide my figure, and basically do anything I could do to make me less so. It wasn't until I hit about sixteen that I stopped hiding myself, the girls my age all obsessed over their looks, to the point it drove them to distraction, and it taught me that I was doing that too, but in the opposite way. At this point, I left my hair alone, it went back to blonde, and I wore clothes that fit. I leant in to what god gave me and within a few weeks I met my first girlfriend... and I didn't even realise it then but it was the shine that drew her in. The sudden interest in me when I was two years younger, it was because I was something she couldn't look away from, everything inside of her wanted to have this girl, the one who made her mouth drop open, and that's okay, we can all appreciate an attractive person, but she bypassed my personality, didn't care about what I wanted and made me a kind of trophy she walked around with on her arm. Eye candy...I was reduced to eye candy. And this ladies and gentlefolk is the start of a fucking slippery slope, because all of my relationships, long or short from this point on, my wants kind of got a little lost in the love affair, and the only one that didn't, was Willa. She took what I wanted and held it out in her hand, offering it back to me, telling me to take it above all else, but Willa is Willa and she is the person who should have had me forever. I would have been loved until the day I died, and loved in my entirety, not just for my exterior and how I looked.

What came next was the longest relationship I have ever had, Annie, nine years. You would think being nine years down, that it was a keeper, and I wanted it to be. I did. Annie was my children's mom and someone who loved me very much. She provided us all a good life, a life I didn't have to worry for anything in, not money, not attention, not travel, not excitement, and she provided all of that, but there were still elements of being the trophy when I look back. She had made me go to every event, every art opening, every show, and of course I wanted to be there, but it was the choosing of my clothes, and the way I became a piece of human jewellery that she wore around her neck. I see that now, yes she was proud of me and wanted to show me off. I was hers, and I liked that she did in a way, but I didn't like the part where I lost myself in the dress up, where I became the accessory and lost the beating heart of myself. I let her take our life and drive it away, and I just sat in the passenger seat and stared out at the view. I let Annie lead me through nine years and I didn't ask for one thing, not one, and the day I finally did, the day I asked to go back to baseball, to have one place again to call home...she couldn't let me have it. She didn't want to give up anything for me, and she couldn't adjust her life even in the slightest to accommodate my wants or needs. I learnt another lesson, don't ever let your partner take over every aspect of your life. You don't live for your partner and only their wants. You should live for yourself, and they should compliment that, and want that for you too, and you them. The fact you share life is the icing on the cake, sharing everything that makes you individual and bringing it together to make you stronger. The moment you give yourself away for someone else... you lose.

I lost.

Annie could blame me, for the opening of that door that Let Willa back into my heart, because she was right, when it opened I became haunted by the past. Willa beat inside of me again where she shouldn't still have access, deeply in my core, where only Annie should have been... but Willa had been there much longer... and she always would be.

A fact.

The thing was, seeing Willa again and covering old ground, talking to her, and being in her presence for a moment, having her look at me, for a flicker of a moment with that adoration and love, it made me realise what was missing with Annie. It made me realise that even after nine years and two more children together, that there was something that kept me up at night as she slept soundly... I wasn't living any of our life for me. I had lost myself. Willa had seen me that day, the Morgan she had known once a long time ago, the one who was independent, and full of life. She drew it back out of me... and now I heard my voice again, my inner voice, and my monologue. I was finally stirring and once I heard the echoes of myself. I couldn't help but tune in, to listen, and make my way back... to where Annie had picked me up, her trophy. I took it back then, with both hands, and melted that fucking trophy down once and for all. I wasn't doing this again, no more relationships with women who didn't serve me as I served them, no more putting myself in the position to become anything but great, in myself. I would love myself and then one day I would let someone in, perhaps, but my goodness my next relationship would have to be someone incredible because my heart was so tucked away I didn't think it would open up for just anyone. In fact I was currently shying away from any woman who seemed to be overly interested in me. Fear I guess. I wasn't ready to let anyone get attached.

So, now I am in my early forties, dating, scratch that, I'm not dating, and if I ever say that to anyone it is a thinly veiled way to hide the fact I am actually fucking, and not a lot but when I do go out for a drink, if I like her, it ends in fucking. To be honest I'm completely detached from it in any emotional way. I try and avoid over night stays and most certainly never call back. I'm pretty sure my nickname in the local lesbian scene is 'the ghost' and I've earned it, because I am shamefully good at it, and I don't care. I've never been selfish in my life, but now I had to be, as I built back up my life and relearnt who I was. I never let any girls take my number, for one reason...I didn't want them to ever think it was more than it was. I wasn't out to hurt anybody or lead them up the garden path.

The only girl who seemed to bypass my attempts at ghosting, was Leah, a girl I met at Teddy's wedding. I guess we had the unusual connection of a person in common, so it took her two seconds to find me online, my mistake, playing at a family event like that, rule number one should most definitely be, don't fuck around where you eat...

I made a mistake, Leah could reach out, not that it made it easy for her, my accounts were all private. She sent a message... and I ignored it, not daring to open it incase she could see it was read. I was now hiding from a twenty something year old, and I should be, she was way too young for me. It would never work, but every now and again I looked at the one unread message in my inbox and dared myself to read it...

Welcome to Morgan 💝