My love for words was born from the ones that were broken. It was in the months after my first love broke me to pieces that I turned to writing to try and stitch those pieces back together. Out of heartbreak and pain, I found an art that fit.
It was lethargic, really. As I poured my hurt onto a page, I realized I was solving my own riddles. It was as if by trying to articulate what I felt, no matter who read it, I was able to process some of my confusion. The words brought me clarity. And the practice of taking real-life experiences and trying to make them into something beautiful, allowed that beauty to take root.
My writing used to just flow. I was unabashed, untrained, unconcernedly spreading my thoughts. I proclaimed to write about life, but love was really my genre. It seemed to me that love stories were what people wanted to read about, and, in fact, as my writing grew, the analytics on my website showed me that this was true. When I posted about romance, my site could get thousands of views, and when I posted about most other topics, well, let’s just say the views were less impressive.
To top that off, as a writer, love fascinated me. I could find inspiration everywhere: in those deep gazes, and cutting fights, and shaking hands. The ride of my first relationship alone was enough to write novels about and the deep connection in my second relationship almost allowed me to craft a happy ending.
A writing professor once said to me that all new writers write love stories. And it’s easy to see why. Love stories write themselves. It is natural to find beauty in something so innate and it’s fun to dissect something so complex.
I wanted to write about love, and for many years I did. But, as the years passed, and my first blog posts were buried in the depths of the internet, and my heart began to heal, and then break, and then heal again, my interest in writing about the roller coaster of romantic love dwindled.
The writing on my website is broken into sections: reality, love & sex, travel, etc. The other night, I clicked into the ‘love & sex’ section, trying to draw inspiration. As I looked through my musings, I realized that the last time I posted something in the ‘love & sex’ section was almost 17 months ago, just after my last breakup. I’d loved to write about love, but for the first time since I started my blog, I’d run out of story lines.
Last year I got the rare opportunity to start from scratch. To move somewhere without a single person I knew, to enter into a world completely foreign to me. I’ve written about my move, about what it’s been like for me to enter into a career, I’ve written about the ups and downs, and the subtle beauty of the day-to-day grind. But, I haven’t really written about love. Because, truthfully, there has been so much else lately that has inspired me.
The world inundates us with romantic tales. Our pop culture, our movies and TV shows, some of the greatest songs in the world – they all spin a similar story. As a rule, a satisfying ending, to even the most complex tale, usually involves a completed love story.
But there is so much else to life. Romantic love is just one facet. So why is the first kiss almost always the ending to those great stories? Could that be why so many people end up disappointed in their relationships? Because they are told to believe that love is the answer, yet, once they find it, life is still out there waiting for them?
Romantic love has flashed in and out of my life since that last blog post, over a year ago, but I’ve been choosing to place my focus elsewhere. I have been choosing to write about the beauty I’ve found in all other aspects of my life.
I have been looking for inspiration in my friend’s laughter and in the smell of warm, roasting coffee in the morning. Seeing love in the way a musician sings their songs, and feeling it build in the effort and hours I’ve put into my career. I am working to feel passion embody all of what I do, not just in the moments after a long-awaited first kiss.
By doing so, I’ve realized something important: love is powerful, but a love story doesn’t have to be written in one particular way. A great love story can be written every single day, in every small gesture, in every simple, mundane, minute. And yes, I will continue to tell stories of love, however they may unfold, because love stories are living in all aspects of our lives, you just have to be willing to change the narrative.
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