Does writing make it harder to get over someone?

Muses, memories and getting over it

Little Women (2019)

The Ancient Greeks believed the best stories were given to a few fated writers by divine entities. These goddesses offered the poets fame and fortune and, from this, the concept of the muse was born.

As art and religion have evolved, the muse no longer bears such a literal relation to the divine. Today, a muse is often a lover.

“At least you can write about it,” he tells me. I don’t want to admit that I already have, even though we both know the truth. The subject of my writing has often been dredged up during the dissolution of romantic relationships. “Don’t write about it,” would come as another instruction years later. I remember thinking that this promise would be impossible to keep. At least you can write about it sometimes feels like a consolation.

I’d say idgaf, but I’ve already written several poems about the situation.

Romantic muses are no longer sent to us from the gods. Instead, they arrive via Hinge notifications and offer inspiration in the form of debilitating three to six-month situationships. What stories do these muses give us? We elevate them to romantic heroes or depict them as the devil incarnate, or both. That’s what makes a good story. They might be just some guy, but you need a muse, and, if the scuffed white trainer fits…

At first, the writing is like throwing a party and waiting for them to arrive. After a while, it is no longer about them at all. You hold the dead thing in your mouth like a prize because the memory is power. It is the final victory. It is in your hands, at your fingertips, to evoke and mould as you wish. I promise to write about it (even if you tell me not to.) You promise to read it hungover and cry.

Hearts burst and break then splinter out into 100,000 words. Spat out, typed out, scribbled out over the years. In your notes app. In the back of notebooks. On the way to work. On the way home. Sad, drunk on the tube again. When the wound has healed, you can’t stop opening it back up again and peering inside to see what else you can scavenge from the wreck.

Does writing make it harder to get over someone? Experts are conflicted. A 2015 study from Villanova University found that journalling helped participants feel better about their recent breakups. Meanwhile, a 2012 study from the University of Arizona suggested that writing after a breakup only makes things worse.

The report’s lead author and psychological scientist David Sbarra told The Atlantic, “If you're someone who tends to be totally in your head and go over and over what happened and why it happened, you need to get out of your head and just start thinking about how you're going to put your life back together and organise your time.” Ouch.

Last year, some friends and I started a poetry challenge where we each wrote a poem a day and shared it on WhatsApp. At the end of the month, I realised a few of the poems I had written referenced someone from a long time ago. It wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone else, but I still felt embarrassed and ashamed. Get over it, I told myself. Only, I have been over it for a long time. Still, I can’t help writing about it. I can’t help returning to the same tired muse, poking the corpse until it twitches, briefly, back to life.

‘When I write about things that happened a long time ago I worry that people will think I’m obsessive or still longing for someone or not ‘over’ it, when in reality, it’s only because love is interesting to me to write about. If I’m not writing about us, I’m just writing about me.’ (Excerpt from my essay ‘Talking about love.’)

What does it mean to get over someone? Must we always cast things aside so coldly and quickly once they are no longer of use to us? We return to the soulless churn of productivity where yearning or lingering only gets in the way. So you learn to ignore the fact that everything is forever even when it’s over. Still, the memory persists. It echoes off the walls of your skull and you listen because it feels good to possess something for yourself, even if it is only a vague souvenir from a former life.

No experience is a waste. Don’t rip out the sadness only to let your heart grow thorny and bitter. Don’t be so hellbent on getting over it that you erase the good as well as the bad. Let the art that springs from it be beautiful, even when the inspiration feels gnarly and bleak.

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

My TikTok algorithm has finally stopped feeding me such a constant barrage of pessimistic dating content. Instead, I see women talking about decentring romantic relationships and centring their art. I have been doing this for years out of a tangled mess of default necessity and stubborn intention.

As you pour more love into your creative practice, you experience that intoxicating high of devotion and sublimity that we crave from romantic relationships. Your art won’t love you back. (Sometimes it will hate you.) But your creative practice will be one of the greatest loves of your life.

I cannot separate my romanticism from my creativity. Romanticism flows through it all. So the same small handful of muses stay woven through each work. This is not to say that all good art is inspired by romantic love. Especially not all good art by women. That would be sexist, reductive and plainly untrue. What I wrote about most in the second month of the poetry challenge was an old friend. A friendship so intense it danced along the cusp of romance, but a friendship nonetheless.

A muse can come in many guises; nature, grief, culture, cities, family, friendship. The only constant is the creator themselves. You are your ultimate muse. Inspiration might come from scattered sources, but it is all filtered through you. Grant yourself the grace of writing the stories muses give you, wherever they come from. Even if writing does make it harder to get over someone, keep writing anyway. When things fall into place, it will feel like falling in love.

March cultural recommendations:

Marie Davidson’s new album City of Clowns makes me want to dance. Listening to this in the fake spring sunlight feels like hot girl summer isn’t too far away. Finally.

I saw the new Leigh Bowery exhibition at The Tate Modern which featured some amazing photos of Poly Styrene at Taboo that prompted a revisit of X-Ray Spex. Since then, I’ve had the song ‘Germ Free Adolescents’ on repeat.

I rewatched BPM, Robin Campillo’s 2017 film exploring the lives of ACT UP activists in France fighting for better education and treatment during the AIDS epidemic. It felt even more beautiful and moving on a second watch.

I really enjoyed reading if you want good taste, fall in love by

Ismene Ormonde

. Beautifully articulates the tenderness of sharing your tastes with someone romantically. Truthfully, my teenage crushes shaped my taste almost as much as Tumblr and fashion magazines did.