There’s this joke that you never want to date a singer or songwriter since it’s likely that you would have a song written about you (if you’re Taylor Swift, it’s an album). Well, speaking from the opposite side of the coin, I feel like it’s a bad idea to date a poet, for that similar reason.
I have been a creative writer since elementary school, but never got into writing poetry until the end of high school. All my poetry has been personal statements and narratives, which was something I was never interested in writing about until I felt emotions so strong, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Unfortunately, one of the only situations that inflicts strong poetry-writing emotions are romantic relationships. That being said, I have four different Google Drive folders named from the past person’s initials and filled with poems about our relationship. Though these poems will never see the light of day, or especially be shared with the person, these writings have helped me articulate the pain and serves as a good representation of being a young adult woman in the dating world.
BB
This was the start of it all. BB was my only actual relationship (and still is…), and it was also the only time where I decided to end something on my own terms. It was a hard decision to make since I knew how much he cared for me, but I just knew I wouldn’t be able to convince myself to love him the way I wanted to. That being said, I was completely distraught after we broke up, since I thought I was making a mistake for months. The poetry manifested from there and it’s basically me going through the five stages of grief until I feel more at peace about the situation.
It’s a little bit of a stereotype that the first relationship is the hardest to get over, but I definitely think it’s true. I still think about this relationship almost everyday — not in a bad way, but it’s just on the top of my mind. What could’ve been if I had just loved him back?
LS
This was incredibly short lived, but I think I wrote about this situation so much because this was the first time that timing really affected the possibility of something being more. I had met him in the beginning of July, and I was going abroad in August. He was someone I longed for while I was thousands of miles away, but it also felt clear that he didn’t feel the same.
This poetry is mostly about the confusion I felt during the whole situation, especially when I ended up being completely unadded and blocked on every social media we had each other on without notice or reason (yes, he even took himself off our shared Spotify playlist). For better or worse, I have genuine disdain towards this person — he was the type of person who said they were for open and honest communication, then ghosts you the next day. If I saw him around on campus again, I wouldn’t have something nice to say.
DR
Out of the people I’ve been with, this person manages to haunt my dreams and thoughts the most. I’m not completely sure why, since it only lasted a month and it’s been more than a year since we were seeing each other. I think I liked him because he was older, he was kinder, and he was always asking about me. Everything about him and our situation was comforting, and I was lured into that state before he randomly ended things one day — the excuse being he wasn’t over his ex-girlfriend.
The shock and sadness fueled all this poetry, where it wasn’t focused on me and what I could’ve done to salvage something, but what he could’ve done so neither of us had to go through this. I liked to think that if he had been ready, maybe things would’ve ended differently. At least it would’ve saved some of my feelings.
BC
This was the most recent, and had somehow managed to be the longest standing situation previous to my actual relationship years ago (three months isn’t long, but small victories). It ended suddenly again and while it was ‘respectable,’ it didn’t feel like his words were genuine. Maybe this was a problem because I had difficulty trusting him in the first place, even though he never really gave me reason to. I never planned on getting myself attached to this person, but of course things change.
Since the end of BC happened recently, there are still poems being written about him. Though we’re not in the same major, we somehow are in the same circles and everyone knows him. There’s an equal desire to forget about him, have him back in my life, or wish he never existed in my plane of existence — at this point, I’d be fine with anything, and the poetry reflects my brain going back and forth.
Final reflection
Sometimes I look back and wonder why I’m memorializing the pain that comes out of these relationships, but I’m more than ever grateful that I have found a coping strategy that lets me feel what I need to move on with my day. It feels childish, writing about boys that have hurt my feelings, but someone’s gotta do it. Everything’s an art form depending on how you look at it, and I know that these Google Drive poems are here to stay.