My boyfriend and I broke up last month. We sat on the couch in my living room until it grew dark. Stillness pooling around us like heavy fog. Finally, I put my hand on my (suddenly) ex-boyfriend’s chest and said: goodbye. A. looked as if he’d been slapped. Then, somehow, we both found a way to stand.
A. wants children. And I’ve decided I don’t. Or at least not right now. Maybe there are other reasons why we’re not right, but neither of us confesses them aloud.
Now, it’s June and my words run on empty. I walk to the grocery store and can’t remember why I’ve come. I find bananas in my freezer. I crave cigarettes even though I don’t smoke. I sit on my stoop and watch a wedge of geese veer into the evening pink. My period comes four days early.
I ask my readers what I should write about this month and they all say the same thing: love.
And so I’m writing about love.
When you’re a person who’s visible online, there’s a weird second sting to every breakup. You now have to find a way to explain to everyone that your relationship failed. It feels like telling fans you lost the game or confessing to your parents that you crashed the family minivan. You steel yourself against their disappointment. The loss of their collective hope. You don’t know how to face all the women who previously DM’d you their joy about the existence of a successful romantic relationship in this dating landscape.
You can’t help but feel like you’ve somehow let everyone down.
Another weird wrinkle about being an online writer is that your life becomes a strange play. A living novel that anyone can pick up and read. You know that your exes will still read everything you write online, long after you stop speaking to one another. Then, men you meet on dating apps will read about your exes even before they kiss you for the first time.
Meanwhile, you’re still cataloguing what’s been lost. An unbearable galaxy of shed idiosyncrasies. You, the obsessive curator in a dimming archive, taking stock: typewritten love letters. A smattering of books. Homemade sushi and kiss-kissing in the kitchen. A tiny word bank of shared expressions, sunset spots, and the stupid nicknames the two of you decided on for both your cats.
Sure, you’ll find something new and different and sweet. But never exactly that again. The multitude of miniature heartpricks is the price of admission to each strange and singular love story.
When I started dating A., I wrote about how, in the face of a fascist, anti-human, war-poisoned, robot-infested, rapidly warming future, I still believe in love. And I do. Mostly, anyway. I tell myself I just have to keep putting my paper boats in the water, even though most of them are scuttled. Even though the lake is on fire.
After my love life, the question I’m most asked is what projects I’m working on. Readers want to know what I’m writing.
Here’s my answer: I’ve started a novel and it feels like screaming (in a good way). Fiction feels like lying and flying at the same time. I love writing in third person. I get to swing the magnifying glass away from my own insides for awhile. Suddenly I can breathe again. I write late in the evenings and first thing in the morning. I read everything I can get my hands on and I indulge my dumbest and riskiest ideas. I make my characters embarrassing and unlikeable, poignant and complicated, patched up, mesmerizing. They’re always, of course, some version of me. I don’t let anyone read what I’ve written.
Much like life, I have no idea where my book is going yet, but, with any luck, maybe it’ll turn out to be some kind of love story.
COME WRITE WITH ME!
As a thank you to my paid subscribers, I offer quarterly workshops. Our summer workshop is about revision!
Join me for a craft workshop that will not only change the way you revise, but also what you see on the page. Revision, at its core, is about expanding vision and I’m going to share all my best strategies for transforming your work. Together, we’ll find the brilliance and poignancy in your draft.
This one is an all-time fan favorite. xx
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