I don’t know who this girl is.
She looks like me, but she’s a fraud.
A fraud who dated a man for 10 months in 2012.
I’d call him my ex-boyfriend, but that would only be salve for my ego; what we had was never defined.
So let’s call him my ex-lievkrollblum.
I’d gone nearly 9 years without thinking about him. But then his name popped up recently in an article posted on Twitter.
Suddenly I remembered.
I spent the last several days talking myself off the metaphorical ledge, the jumping-off point for my backflip straight into my personal dark night of the soul.
It’s been a rough week.
I went nearly a decade mentally blocking the r̶e̶l̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶h̶i̶p̶ lievkrollblum-ship from my mind. But for the first time in nine years, I Googled his name. I creeped his social media. I indulged my curiosity. I wanted to know what he was doing.
What’s he building in there? In that life of his, sans me?
Instantly, I felt ashamed.
I always considered myself above the behaviour of cyber stalking one’s ex. I refused to be that sad sack ball of emotion, crying on the sofa, eating a carton of Rocky Road Häagen-Dazs and cranking Adele on repeat. Miss me with that.
But I felt like this fresh interest in my ex’s life made me failure. That he had won this decade-long game of proverbial chicken and I had lost.
I deigned to care what became of him, and that made me pathetic and weak.
But then I forced myself to sit in my emotions. Analzye them. Reflect upon them.
Maybe it wasn’t healthy to shut out what I felt in 2012, to block out EVERYTHING — the good, the bad, the ugly and go — cold turkey for 9 solid years. Like some unfeeling robot.
Perhaps I should have let myself properly heal and grieve.
Then a radical thought revealed itself:
What if I allowed myself to be vulnerable?
So I’m doing it now. For the first time in almost a decade, I’m allowing myself to be vulnerable.
Why?
Because we’re all still knee-deep in this pandemic. We’re all still hurting. We’re all still suffering in one way or another.
What better time to contribute to the existential Chex Mix that is our current condition?
It’s like pricking your finger and letting the blood drip into the ocean. It mixes and mingles with all the salt, the sand, the waste. Eventually, it becomes one with the water.
I thought I was doing the proper thing. Hiding my vulnerability to heartbreak and embarrassment. Moving in silence to keep my pride about a thing that didn’t even warrant a “Dear John”.
“Now be a lady and leave quietly.”
For nine years I went along with the façade that it didn’t matter. That I didn’t matter. Perhaps that sentiment is 100% correct in his eyes. But it mattered to me.
I looked through my emails to see if I had retained any past conversations.
I had just the one; the email with the photo attachment. The one of the girl who had laid herself bare—alone in her room — out of quiet desperation.
I scrutinized the photo.
She tried to look sexy. She looked more like a kidnap victim suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
This girl was naiive and inexperienced. Young and dumb. She never spoke up about what she truly wanted. She was afraid to.
This girl…is me. Or was me. At my absolute lowest.
Sorry. I guess I’ll take the L on that one.
But I took it because I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be validated.
When I moved to Toronto, I told myself I would stop writing fanfiction and focus on adulting. Get the hair, get the job, get the dude. I was going to reinvent myself in a bid for acceptance.
So I stripped myself away — figuratively and literally.
I tried hard to play the role of the sultry, enigmatic, elegant woman.
But…I’m none of those things. Ya girl is QUIRKY.
I’m loud when I speak with my family on the phone.
I eat popcorn like a savage and will demolish a large bag before the trailers.
I love and extoll Nintendo WAY too much for a person in my age bracket, and write really weird, really niche content, like Alan Tudyk fanfiction.
It’s the writing I wanted to look back upon. When I was at my lowest, my family took a trip to Italy.
It was a bonding moment that occurred between myself and my sister where we browsed for Hey Arnold! fanfiction on my mother’s ancient laptop.
As silly as it sounds, it was the fanfiction that brought me back to myself.
Wolfgang and Nadine was one of the first fanfics I wrote when I returned to Toronto. The first step on my road to spiritual recovery.
Take a look at this cover art image (done by the amazingly talented LeSkuh/Squirreltamer):
It strikes me how this artwork encapsulates everything that I tried to convey, both in my writing and in my life.
I didn’t realize it then, but by writing Wolfgang and Nadine, I was actually manifesting what I truly wanted out of a relationship.
I wasn’t just scripting a funny crack romance fic, I was scripting the type of romance I wanted in real life. One that celebrated communication and vulnerability.
This one fanfic spurred on the creation of another, and another. Pretty soon I was writing original fiction and getting it published, both online and in print.
I felt valuable again.
Fast-forward to today: I have a loving partner who’s both affectionate and supportive. I’m working towards the realization of my full potential, the moment when I become the published author of a Young Adult novel.
I’m where I’m at in my life because I’ve finally decided to embrace the true me: quirks and all.
A fear lingers that all of this will be dismissed as the ramblings of a bitter, discarded woman. All my insecurities would be validated as true.
“Woof. Get a load of this. She’s one of the crazy ones. Bullet dodged. Blocked and deleted.”
A good laugh and a sigh of relief would be had by all.
But…
My biological father died last year. I never got to properly say goodbye. There were so many things I wanted to say that will never reach his ears.
Life is too damn short to live in fear of other people’s opinions and judgments of you.
I’m grateful for my ex. My experience with him taught me the value of self-worth. That I should never again seek it from other people. That I should cultivate it from within.
Let that be a valuable lesson to all the young women out there modifying themselves for their own lievkrollblums. Do what I’m finally ready to do: let go. Find someone that finds the real you irresistible.
My ex? He owns a business now, and I genuinely hope it survives the pandemic. It provides a much-needed source of escapism in people’s lives, and allows them to cultivate happy memories during these difficult times.
If there’s one thing I could get behind, it’s the transformative magic of nostalgia.
For him, it brings income. For me, it brings insight.
Insight to where I erred and how I could learn and grow.
Insight into my vulnerability not being a sign of weakness, but a badge of indomitable strength.
I’m me, and I’m whole again. Now that the healing has begun, so too can the growth. As a writer and as a woman.
