Writing as Therapy, Writing as Revenge

Many writers are guilty of creating characters based on friends, family, enemies… We look for inspiration from what we know and those closest to us offer a plethora of personalities, pet peeves, fears, tendencies, etc… for us to draw from.

Most who are writers or who know a writer have probably seen the “don’t piss off an author, they’ll kill you as a character” images floating around social media. It’s true. We do it. And if you are a writer and you haven’t, I suggest you do. It’s extremely cathartic.

So I’m going to tell you a secret. My secret. My dirty, little, enemy smashing, pen-is-mightier-than-the-sword battle.

Besides losing my Dad to a heart attack, before that, nothing bad had happened to me in my life.

Except him. A boy I fell in love with.

Some of you know his name. Please don’t share it. I am not writing this blog post to point fingers, especially since I am partially to blame for the way things turned out. Please respect his anonymity. He is not in my life and does not wish to be.

Inherently, he wasn’t bad. He was a nice guy with a wonderful family. He was loving and fun to be around. He cared deeply for me. I had just turned 15 when he and I met. We fell harder and faster in love than would ever be advisable. And with the optimistic, bright but blind eyes of youth, we skipped forward toward our doom.

He was my first love.

But things happen and life changes, and whether we want it to or not, life changes us. After two years, I felt we were drifting apart, so instead of talking to him and working things out, I left him to try being with someone to which I was growing closer. The new “relationship” lasted only three months.

I missed him, the first one. I wanted him back, but he too had found someone else. Shortly after they broke up he came to see me.

I’d broken his heart, but he missed me too. There were roses. There was a note scrawled on a scrap of paper. I’m willing to try again if you are.

So we tried again to be together and it was tough. There was a lot of sadness over what was and wasn’t done in the past. Trust was gone, destroyed. But still we stuck it out and attempted to get back the closeness we had lost.

One day I called him and he didn’t want to talk to me anymore. He said something like “I’m seeing someone else” or “I have a girlfriend”. But we were trying, I thought. I was his girlfriend. At some point he decided this was no longer true and the change in our relationship status wasn’t worth mentioning to me.

He had stopped trying and moved on with his life.

These days (and some people might argue with me on this), I am a fairly level-headed person. But back then I grew obsessed. I see the level of it now, but I couldn’t admit it then. I would never use such a strong word to describe how mentally unhinged I had become over a boy. My love for him was so much, the pain without him so unbearable, that I couldn’t let go. I won’t describe in detail my obsessive behaviors because it makes me uncomfortable to think that I allowed my emotions to completely control me like that. But I felt it for years. I felt it even when I was in new relationships.

He was unforgettable and time wasn’t making anything easier.

When I met my husband I was very damaged inside. It felt so unfair to build a new relationship when I was still hung up on this old one. This old, known feeling would creep up inside of me. These words.

“I’m willing to try again if you are.”

I want to forget them. I don’t want to care about him and after thirteen years without him I can honestly say I don’t even know who he is anymore. But a tiny piece of my mind is still hung up on the idea of it all. The ideal.

To cope, I write. Some of my best pieces (poems, songs, and stories) have come from this pain inside. I throw daggers of varying letter lengths at him and it feels good, even though I am certain he’ll never read them. I can say all of the things I didn’t think to say back then. I can be spiteful and mean and yet not harm a soul.

This is the only way I might be able to live and love as I should. This is the only safe way to channel the anger. And every time I complete something and release that negative energy, that tiny piece of my mind that wants to remember him grows smaller.

Because of this self-prescribed therapy, my heart beats a bit again. My life is wonderful. One of my mantras has become “I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t made every single decision that I did yesterday. And today, I am happy”. The emotional suffering I went through has been an important building block upon which the current version of me stands. And I like me. (non-crazy, non-obsessed me 😉 )

So even if no one will ever be reading what you write, even if no one will ever know which character is your secret revenge character, even if you think your pain isn’t great enough to use as the spark for something greater, write.

Kill your enemies kindly, with words.