No. 2 - I’m Writing a Book About Love While Healing From Heartbreak… again

I'm writing something soft now.

Not soft in the weak way. Soft in the true sense. Soft like the bottom of a scar, like a voice breaking over the words, like the sensation of knowing you've been holding your breath for months. This book is me sitting with the pieces of me I once ran from. The pieces that loved too hard. Stayed too long. Let go too late.

I did not know this story would take me here when I started out. I imagined that I was writing something lighthearted. Irrelevant. Something to bring people laughter, make them feel noticed, maybe consider the unanticipated merry-go-round of dating within this modern bullshit of an era. But the deeper I wrote, the more I knew—I was writing through something. Not around it. Not beyond it. Through.

And what I was writing… was heartbreak…. again.

Not just from a person, but from a season. From a portion of myself I thought would be longer. From a conception of love I thought would get me to forever. I wasn't mourning the end of a relationship—though that pained me too—I was mourning the way in which I had come to define myself based on someone else's frame. I was mourning the person I had to become in order to keep something that wasn't meant to be kept.

So I did what I know to do: I wrote.

Writing gave me something real life did not—space. Space to relax. Space to ask the same question five times. Space to write the apology I never received and the closure I never gave. The characters started speaking the things I kept hidden. And in a flash, the main character's journey started resembling mine.

She’s not me, but she feels familiar. Her choices. Her defiance. Her silence. Her wanting to be loved without having to perform for it. She’s doing what I’m doing—learning how to choose herself without guilt, how to stop calling loneliness romance, how to finally be full without someone else holding the spoon.

This story has also taught me that recovery is not always tied to big epiphanies or fine conclusions. Sometimes it seems to be appearing every day, opening a file, and telling the truth in disguise. Sometimes it seems to be laughing through tears, or writing out a scene so beautiful you don't even remember it was a part of something that hurt.

I'm not trying to fix myself on the page. I'm just trying to see myself better. To pardon the softness humans told me made me stupid. To honor the love I gave even when it was returned poorly. To stop making myself a bad guy in my own story just because some other human couldn't love me well.

There’s something about writing a love story while your heart is still learning how to trust again. Every chapter becomes a kind of conversation.

A question: “Is it safe to love again?”

A whisper: “You never stopped.”

A declaration: “You’re allowed to take up space—even in love.”

I don’t know how it ends yet.

But I know it's reminding me of something I've forgotten: I deserve a love that doesn't hurt. A love that holds. A love that doesn't have to be chased or earned or watered down to survive.

For the first time in a long fucking time, I'm writing something soft, and I'm truly okay with being soft, too.