Why You Don’t Need to Write About Your Ex
No more romanticising.
Writing and storytelling have always been fascinating to me.
There’s a unique connection between the two I’ve connected to in a meaningful way.
That’s probably why I love podcasts and books and documentaries when they’re done well: the storytelling lends itself to wanting to know more about the subject.
When I started to put my writing out into the world, people who knew me would tell me they could hear my voice as they read. Their feedback gave me confidence in my ability to tell authentic stories people could see themselves in.
Years ago, I had a conversation with a woman who helped independent authors publish books and booked promotional events to help sell their book.
A friend of mine from college had worked with her and I did my due diligence by talking to him about his experience with her. He had nothing but good things to say, so I ended up sending her the first chapter of a short story collection I was working on.
Overall, she loved it, gave me some feedback and told me when I was ready, she was eager to work with me on moving it out into the world.
As I was writing it, I kept getting tripped up in the details.
I had planned it to be a semi-autobiographical collection of stories about relationships I had through my college years.
What was it that guy said to me exactly when we were standing in the kitchen and he was trying to convince me I looked like Rihanna because of my faux hawk?
Did he try to kiss me before or after I made it clear I wasn’t interested in him and was only there to see his roommate?
How many of the doors in the house did he lock when he found me in his roommate’s bedroom laying on the bed staring at the plastic stars on the ceiling?
There was an emotional toll I hadn’t anticipated.
Will any of these guys ever see my book?
Will they see themselves in the stories and realize I’m talking about them? If they don’t like the way I described what happened between us, does that open me up to legal action?
I put that idea away on a shelf. “Later,” I told myself.
I never returned to it.
About three years ago, I worked on a full-length novel with a novelist friend I’d met through a yoga class.
With her encouragement and guidance, I was able to complete the first draft in about eight months. I joined a writer’s group through the library and a local writers organization to workshop my piece and get feedback on how to approach the massive undertaking that is trying to sell a book.
I was working on editing it myself when the idea to self-publish a different short story to help build an audience and help with name recognition on the road to traditional publishing made its way to the forefront of my mind.
I approached this collection differently.
It focused on my relationship with a singular guy from my past, one I’d had an on-off fling situation with.
As I outlined the book, I felt good about the direction I was going. It would be a deviation of style for me, which presented a challenge, but it was one I welcomed to stretch my creative legs.
The same emotional burden appeared when I started writing this collection but, worse, I was flooded with all sorts of emotions I didn’t understand why I was still harboring: pain, regret, anger, resentment, sadness, confusion.
I continued on writing pieces and parts of the story, convincing myself they would dissipate when I hit a certain point of the story, like when things finally turned sour for me.
Then came the dreams.
They would be replays of the situations we’d found ourselves in but there was a little more — a night out on the town or a trip we’d talked about taking but never did. I was living in a fantasy of what I thought could have been and had to confront the idea that this was never part of his plan.
Trying to push past my feelings, I wrote on.
The more I wrote, the harder it got to ignore those feelings.
I ended up talking it through with someone and they asked a question: “Why does this story need to be seen?”
Somehow, it had not occurred to me this particular story with this particular person didn’t need to be told and consumed by the public.
I wanted to tell the story because it was relatable, at least to my circle of friends I’d talked about the project with.
We all had stories of the one who got away, only to realize we were better off without.
It was to be a story of triumph and stepping into the fullness of one’s self-worth, despite feeling like you had little to offer in the modern dating rat race.
None of that added up in the long run to justifying putting myself through emotional hell to publish a book he would never read or care about.
His feelings weren’t magically going to change and he wasn’t going to come back to me a changed person who would be “the one” for me.
He wasn’t a major part of my life anymore and to be honest, wasn’t a major part of my life when I had feelings for him.
In truth, he was nothing I needed as a partner.
I romanticized the potential I saw instead of connecting to the reality of who he was: inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, flashy, and a host of other traits I look back on and wonder why I was attracted to him the way I was.
Why did he need to be immortalized on the Internet with my name attached?
When I answered that question, I put his story collection on the shelf, too.
The dreams and daydreams stopped.
I wasn’t living in the imagined past anymore. I shook free of those long-held emotions and moved away from the fantasy tucked away in the deep recesses of my mind.
And until today, haven’t thought about it once since putting it away.
It wasn’t for me to bear the questions about why and how and who while he could live in complete anonymity for the rest of his days; I didn’t need to put myself in that position to gain more views or readership.
Once I fought the voice inside of me telling me I needed to get this particular story out, I took firm hold of the power I’ve always been able to harness but had been too self-conscious about owning.
I let go of the silent expectation I had of myself that I would be the record keeper of my relationship’s past because truly, some things are better left unsaid.
