please keep my likeness and story out of your future writings
“all’s fair in love and poetry.” on publicizing the personal, being vulnerable, and how you don’t get to tell me about sad. (also, hilariously, about who gets the lego set after a breakup)
I’ve attempted this article— which is really more of a “personal essay” than my usual content here– a few times, each imbibed with the same question: what is the point of writing a personal essay? And bigger, what is the carnal urge we all have to tell stories? Not just at a party, or at dinner with friends— but publicly. And how have personal essays maintained cultural legitimacy? They’re somehow nestled in the gap between the perceived “story time” fluff of social and the way distribution via the Hollywood machine makes a story seem legitimized. And speaking of gaps— like many, I simply hated the recent “age gap” personal essay for its unnecessary moralizations about a very simple idea (“women should marry rich”).
I am no stranger to dreging my personal life for material and then exposing it to the idea of narrative, but I typically don’t do so publicly for the really-really personal. (There is something deeply embarrassing to me about publicizing your intimate experiences when it doesn’t “go viral” or launch a billion-dollar career.) But right now, I’m not interested— and frankly, am too stupid!!!— to unpack all of that for some reason bigger than myself. TTPD is almost here, and me and Taylor Swift finally have something tangible in common: a boy named Joe pissed us off so bad, we felt compelled to write about it.
I briefly (three months) dated (as in, not a relationship, but went on dates) with a guy named Joe. I “broke up” (in quotes because I don’t think you can “break up” with someone you’re not in a relationship with— but let’s use it for ease of reference) with Joe to focus on unexpected health events, and didn’t feel we were compatible or serious enough to weather that. Because… We were just dating. For three months.
I’ve been feeling an aimless malaise sinking in since last fall. It’s the kind of thing that curls around you slowly until you look up and suddenly realize how gray it is, and grayer still no matter what direction you amble towards. I can’t stay awake for more than a few hours; simple tasks are insurmountable chores; and so, too, are hobbies, for which I’ve completely lost my taste. A few weeks after I met Joe, I lost my actual taste for food, too, from debilitating, persistent nausea. I lost eight pounds in a month.
This fog rolled in, at first, in the background of all the other things in my life. Going to work. Going to parties or dinners. Going on dates. But in my quietest time alone, staring at the wall trying to get myself to literally just do something, anything with the passing hours, or sitting in my car at the beach parking lot crying because it seemed too hard to get out and walk into the sand— what I thought about most was how to talk to Joe about everything. I had a language for it for myself and my doctor and my friends. But he was new in my life; there was nothing conclusive to share, yet, about why I was feeling this way; and when I did share anything, he’d ask how he could help, and it made me really upset, to keep telling him he couldn’t.
I am used to bringing up chronic stuff (heart condition; gluten intolerance; dyslexia; et cetera) in context. You learn that part of dealing with the stuff is dealing with the education around it. And, dealing with your own feelings, about how much or how little education is required. As my friend Cat says, we have to teach people how to love us. I am overwhelmed with gratitude and fondness anytime my friends bring me gluten free crackers or pizzas to parties. My friend Sarah has a list of all our friends’ allergies and accomodations in her phone. It is actually easy, when you love someone, to do these things.
And the more I experience giving and receiving love, and the people who have been willing to learn to love me the way I need to be, the less patience I have for people unable to put in the work. On my second date with Joe, when he packed a picnic for us but pivoted to a nearby hike which required forty flights of stairs, I huffed that it would take me a while to catch my breath and amble up the steps after him, because of my heart condition. He said to take my time and that he’d give me space. And then he turned around whenever I paused to catch my breath to make small talk. Did I hike often? How long had I had this condition? What did it feel like? I finally squeaked, “sorry… I can’t talk… I just… Need to catch my breath.” We walked up the rest of the steps in awkward silence.
I told him the next day that we should probably not do physically exerting activities like that anymore, and I should have told him about that beforehand. He responded with a crude joke I will not repeat here, but will concede that I did laugh at it. I think it felt briefly nice, to have something that is a relentless part of my day-to-day personhood be reduced to a joke. Even if it was at my own expense.
There were other times like this, too. I started to notice he would sort of… Forget, I guess, when I said I wasn’t feeling well, or about some health parameter I’d mentioned a few times before. I can’t tell if it’s due to inactive listening, not understanding the relentless challenge of a chronic health condition— because, again, we only knew each other a brief three months— or a secret third thing.
One of the first times I felt nauseous, and told him about it, we left an evening out with his friends earlier than intended. We ended up chatting on my couch. It seemed like he thought we left other plans for other reasons; and for a while, I just froze as it happened. I lacked the language, as I was starting to realize at this point, to explain what was happening to me— but this was a time where he was doing it, not some nameless fog. He asked what was wrong. “I’m… Not feeling well?” The question came out as disbelief clocked back at myself, somehow. He apologized. And then the second time it happened, he said, “maybe I just won’t initiate anything, while you’re dealing with this health stuff. Let you come to me.” And I agreed that may be better. But he was incapable— because it did happen again. And again, too.
When, where, and how do you bring up that something is wrong, especially if you don’t know why? While we dated, I went through a wide assortment of tests to troubleshoot potential underlying conditions or causes to my malaise. Did I tell him about those tests as they happened? Just about the results? Just specific results? We ate together often; should I tell him I’m mildly allergic to every type of nut? Should I anticipate another joke if I do? What week of dating is appropriately timed to bring up doing an ovarian ultrasound or cancer screening? Maybe just when something is “actually” wrong. Or wrong enough that he would have to notice, that he would have to expect, or not expect, something of our time together.
I never felt quite ready to do any of that with him, but tried to ready myself through trying. In that way, we were very different. I appreciated how clearly he articulated his desires related to dating. “I’m looking for my person,” he said, on our first date. The articulation itself was as rare in LA dating as the actual desire for a serious relationship was. And he spoke very openly about how he felt he’d “done the work” to show up “as his best self,” and “felt ready for commitment.”
I developed an understanding that he was very clear on every facet of his personhood. I find that hard to do, too— as if I am water, taking different shapes big or small depending on the environment. Sometimes I am a force, and sometimes I am a small mist. Or a fog. But fog is still water. I wish I had stopped to ask him what he meant, to “feel ready” for anything before you do it. How can you possibly know you are until you try?
I lamented to a friend about all this, towards our end. I said I “felt bad for Joe. “She repeated, “‘for’ Joe?” Yes. He was doing what you’re supposed to do when someone is sick. Bring medicine, bring me home early from a date, ask how I was feeling, how he could help. He was just trying to be helpful, I said. And I felt bad that there was no way to help.
“Is he just trying to be helpful,” my friend asked, “or is he trying to help?”
I once got very frustrated when he asked, again . There was no more medicine to be had, no more things to do, words of consolation or otherwise, to be of assistance. I collected myself, and told him, much like he’d suggested to me, that he could just stop asking for help, and trust that if there was something he could do, I would absolutely ask him. It didn’t work. I grew more frustrated. To which my friend said, “if there was any other situation where you repeatedly said ‘no’ and were ignored— would you ‘feel bad’ for the person ignoring you?”
I did, once, try to incorporate Joe into a separate, complex situation of my life. On our second date— the aforementioned, infamous forty-flight hike— we ended up at a bar after. I remember telling a story, and he said, “I could listen to you talk for hours. You spin a good yarn.” (I still don’t know if he meant it as a compliment, or a coded insult— the idiom “spin a good yarn” typically means telling an engaging, but embellished or fabricated, story.)
But I really appreciated hearing that. and in classically-me fashion, it led me to a spontaneous vulnerability that sprouted, truly, like a whole-ass foot in my mouth. Picture me, dear reader, doubled over and muscling through the soreness of said forty-flight hike solely on the life support of a strong cocktail, as I said:
Me: Thanks. I’ve actually been trying to take my writing more seriously lately. Long-term, maybe in the next ten years or so, I’d like to be able to write full-time.
Him: Cool! Are you working on anything currently?
Me: [Oh shit. Oh fuck.] Well, the last thing I wrote was about my previous relationship…
I then segued into talking about another project, but Joe was dissatisfied with such a brief elaboration, and asked more questions. I had thought, before even meeting Joe, about the parallel “what ifs” of this book situation: what if I did something with this work, like publicize it; and what if that happened while I was dating something new? In the best-case scenario of both “ifs,” that meant the work would get publicized, and the lovergirl in me (I guess Taylor and I have two things in common) would retire to a healthy, happy relationship.
To not tell someone about the book, or that I was pursuing it beyond the confines of a cathartic hobby (I do think it’s my best work), would feel like I was keeping a secret I wasn’t. The subject of the book and I have been no contact, for years now.
Joe told me he wanted to read it. I think I blacked out and just said “sure,” and thought to ruminate later on if this was actually a good idea. He brought it up again. And another time as, “I’m ready for you to send me your book.” Like my malaise, I wondered if this was too much, too early. But in an attempted act of more pre-meditated vulnerability— which I now realize was a deeply misguided effort to trust that he’d confronted his potential emotions about the situation, and was making decisions accordingly— I sent it to him.
He read the book in three days and was nice about it. I told him I was going to pay a copy editor to proofread it—beacuse of my dyslexia, my work is famously laced with typos and a general indifference towards grammar— and he offered to help do that himself. (There is, in fact, a typo in the previous sentence— “because.” <y friend Jacob, who helped copy edit this article, asked if it was intentional— “because honestly, if so, iconic”— so I decided to keep it in his honor.)
I thought about this gesture, too, when my friend asked if he wanted to help, or be helpful. It was a way for him to be involved further in the book. I told him he could ask questions or we could talk about the book if he needed to. The first thing he asked was, “did [the ex] really call you a ‘cold-hearted bitch’?”
“Yes.” I didn’t really get upset as I told him that, but I do now, as I remember how Joe called me “cold” when I “broke up” with him.
I threw up before our “breakup” call. Despite being several weeks into my nausea at this point, I’d actually never thrown up from it yet. I have never personally witnessed someone go through all five stages of grief in a single hour as he did on this call. “Are you kidding me?” was the very first thing he said. (Denial.) Most of it, though, was anger. The standout denigrations were that I was “cold” (again, a repeat offender for me) and “cruel,” and there were many, many iterations of telling me I needed to do work in therapy (I had recently told him that I’d started going back, just before we met).
The very second thing he said was, “you owed me a conversation about this in person. I understand you’re a woman, and maybe you don’t feel safe doing that, but you know Joe. That’s not Joe.” (Yes, he referred to himself in the third person a lot. You overlook a lot of things when you’re trying to give someone the overall benefit of the doubt, which, put cynically, is the very art of dating itself.)
As I learned— telling someone you don’t want to sit with them in your trenches is a way to move them along to the bargaining phase. Especially if they are a person who sees their own personhood as lacking trenches— as having “done the work,” as if the work of being human ever ends. As you may imagine, a man who spends an egregious amount of time during “breakup” call explaining a woman’s own “attachment wounds” back to her is one such person. “You know there are things you can do, right,” he said, “to not shut people out when you’re struggling? You can change. You’re Amanda. You can do anything.” (He also talked to you, about yourself, in the third person a lot.) He lamented that he felt I was “just scared” and we could “just be scared together.” he suggested we go to couples therapy. I reminded him that we were not a couple, and had only been dating for three months.
The “breakup” call is not worth further litigating, mostly because I’ve already done so with my support system— who validate me without placation and provide earnest feedback. Famously, they were the ones who were adamant that showing him the book was a cursed endeavor. I maintain a deep sense of gratitude that I experienced Joe’s behavior towards rejection, hurt, or anger when he was already on his way out of my life— anyone who devolves to insults and contempt the moment they don’t get what they want is not a person to enturst with my heart, health, and sanity. And anyone who rescinds kindness when not in your favor is not actually kind.
I mention the “breakup” only to establish that I left the situation assured of my choice, if a little shaken by his reaction to it, and deeply ready to move on and focus on my health. But the next morning, I received a lengthy text— of where to send his belongings (I already had his parents’ address), a relitigation of his feelings that I interpreted as an attempt to have the final word, and, this.
And dear reader, that shit pissed me the fuck off!!!!! I cannot express, literally in any amount of words, the fit of seething rage this sent me into. Where he went through the five stages of grief on our call, I flew all the way from acceptance back to anger. This text haunts me. I rage about it as I do my dishes, I look at the text so often it doesn’t even feel real anymore, I tell acquaintances about it at rooftop parties in a now nearly-perfect, tight-five roundup of “what ever happened to that guy you were seeing?”— and then he told me, a writer, not to write about him!!!
I think about that ex I wrote the book about— who I was with for three years— and what he said about writing about him. Both he and Joe were professionally artists. This ex said it in the midst of the relationship, not a breakup. He told me to write about him when I was older, and had time and distance to reflect on our story. There is a scene about it, in the book. Joe asked me about it once.
“Did he really ask you not to write about him?”
I mustered a gentle tone. “Well, that’s not what he said,” I reminded. “He said to wait until I was older. I took it as earnest advice, as I think it was intended.” And, as if trying to make him feel better, “but who knows.”
I received a box of my things from Joe via mail a few days after the “breakup” call. There was the expected, like a book he’d borrowed, and then there was also… Every gift or item I’d ever given him. A handmade card. A painting I did of the sunset from that fucking forty-story hike as a Valentine’s Day gift. And, hilariously, half of a lego flower set— taken down completely to pieces— that we’d built together just a week prior, because we had been trying to find cozier activities to do at home, for when I was nauseous.
For someone who accused me of being “cold” and “cruel,” I found this gesture ironic. It became part of the tight five. And then this grown man mailed back a LEGO SET we built together! But thinking about it now— even though it was just another sign that I’d made the right choice— I’ll concede that, this box of things, this attention and vulnerability I’d once tried to give him, mailed back to me in pieces for me to dispose of myself— that actually, really hurt my feelings.
Maybe you are thinking: “that’s it? That wasn’t that bad.” It certainly doesn’t stand up to Cat Person or any other personal essay that may seem incredulous, merely by virtue of being recognized by a national magazine. I really didn’t think there was much to unpack here, either, about a three-month thing that didn’t earn a definition and definitely wouldn’t have worked out any which way, for any reason, until suddenly he gave me a reason. Please keep my likeness and story out of your future writings.
I think of what would compel someone to say that to a writer. My ex knew me long and deep enough to know that the best way to get me to do something is to tell me not to do it, and didn’t dare try. As a man to a woman, there may be the obvious implication, the subtext of fear that they will be misrepresented or lied about. That when Women Are Allowed To Say Things About Their Experiences they create false accusations, a thing we know and have data to prove is very much Not Real, the same way “cancel culture” isn’t. That is about maintaining power. Or maybe it was an attempt to reclaim power, in the face of rejection— man’s worst enemy, and the crux of many of our societal problems, and the reason I never take a person seriously until I’ve seen them angry.
I won’t bore you with parallels to Taylor’s new album, which is about her own Joe. There’s a lot of great discourse and press if you go looking for it, and of course, there will be the final word: the album itself. But what is relevant is that TTPD is explicitly about the five stages of grieving a relationship, as her Apple playlists demonstrate, and Taylor has a great answer to the “why do we tell stories” question.
“Over the years, I’ve learned that anger can manifest itself in a lot of ways, but the healthiest way that it manifests itself in my life is when I can write a song about it and then oftentimes that helps me get past it.”
After writing all this down, I think I’ve realized Joe’s request not to write baout him was a plea to have mattered. To have mattered enough to be written about in the first place, to be something a future contender would have to read about. and sure, it was also blatantly an attempt to deny my right to tell a story.
Where Joe looked at relationships as a destination– “I am looking for my person”– I look at them like art. I see every story, every artistic expression, as a method to find resolution through the act of seeking itself. “To get past it,” as Taylor says. Relationships are just something to be experienced by doing. And as writing the book taught me, when anything ends, there’s a period of rewriting, of taking stock and trying to understand what “actually” happened, or who that person “actually” was. I spoke very highly of that second date, at first. It was a ten-hour date! We had a good time! There was this weird exchange about my book, but we’ll figure that out! And the forty flights were just an anecdote, one I thought about like a quiet pre-meditation on all the ways my health has affected my life and made me feel powerless.
I get stuck, most, on the phrasing in his text: “my story.” Someone who did not know how to actively listen doesn’t get to tell me to not speak. You don’t get to tell me about sad!!!!! The implicit nature of experiencing another person, and to let them experience you, is to be vulnerable— to make yourself something shared, rather than private.
There was nothing important about all this until suddenly there was. Until he pulled that shit, during a period where my very favorite artist was promoting and releasing an album about her own breakup (an actual, real one, not in quotes— they were a couple for six years).
And I actually find it sad to associate these two things now, because I had always appreciated how much Joe tried to take an interest in my interest in Taylor’s music. How he put on the Eras Tour movie one time when I was nauseous. How he offered to have a little premiere party for his album and bring over his good speakers. Or how he played some of her songs for me on all the instruments he knew how to play.
I now think of Joe as someone who needed to be needed, wanted to be helpful and not help, and who was looking for “a” person, not me. The narrative of people in our lives is never fixed, it is contingent on their actions, and our feelings about them at the time. And when you endeavor to find someone to spend your life with— “your person”— that is a scary truth to confront.
Just like TTPD turned out to be, this article is actually about depression. Weeks before “the breakup,” I did decide to tell Joe— who, as mentioned, spent much of that call regurgitating my own mental health and “attachment wounds” to me— about a potential diagnosis. My doctors were looking to rule out underlying causes or illnesses through various tests, and if they didn’t find anything, would assume depression was the only cause to my malaise.
“Do you feel…” Joe started, then tapped a finger to his own forehead, “okay?”
I said I did. I gave him the same description my doctors had— that yes, depression is often the “emotional symptoms” (feeling down, hopeless, and so on), but it manifests physically too. There is a relief in knowing the “what,” and a separate, less linear five stages of grief, in knowing that there is help, but no solution, to a “what” like depression.
Joe added, “you don’t seem depressed. You hide it really well.” The last time I saw him, I told him I was feeling nauseous before he came over to my place. It got progressively worse while he was there. I felt bad, again, for feeling bad lately. We laid down to rest and I found myself confronted by his initiations of his own desires. Again. Found myself motionless until I put a hand on his chest, speechless that this was happening again. You hide it really well.
He finally stopped, and suggested the same thing he had last time: “should I just… Not… When you’re not feeling well?” As if he’d forgotten he’d suggested this, just weeks prior. There is irony in this idea, that he could have actually helped, by doing something he’d suggested himself, and he just… Couldn’t? Just forgot? I told him I wanted to be alone. You don’t seem depressed. He left, and that night, I was assured I would have to end things.
Like the fog that had become my life lately, the decision to part ways was curling around me slowly, until I looked up and saw it at my feet, telling me to run. And when I told my therapist about the “breakup,” she did in fact blow my mind, very similarly to how my friend did.
Therapist: Your nausea was a later onset symptom from all your health concerns. Your “malaise” as you say. Have you also noticed… That your maialse started roughly around the time you started going on dates again?
Me: [Oh shit. Oh fuck.] I… No…
Therapist: Interesting. And have you noticed that your nausea started when Joe read your book?
Me: [OH SHIT? OH FUCK?] No…
Therapist: Also interesting. And you threw up before the breakup call, which was new… How have you been feeling since then?
I told Joe on our “breakup” call that I had been really proud of myself, for how much I’d asked him for help when I did actually need it, and how I’d articulated when I didn’t. Even if he didn’t agree. “Maybe you’re better at doing that,” I said. I thought to share my newfound insight, that he seemed to want to be helpful instead of help, or maybe that he needed to be needed. And maybe, even, that he was just looking for a person, not his person. But it seemed cruel, because it no longer mattered. So I said something cruel about myself instead. “Maybe I have work to do, but—”
“You do,” he interjected, “you really do. You have a lot of work to do, Amanda.”
I feel that I have done some work on it all now, all these words later.
Oh, and speaking of how I feel: ever since our “breakup”— since I hovered over my toilet holding my own hair back, thinking about how to be nice to someone about something shitty and unforseen, desperate to find out what was wrong with me and similarly expel it— I haven’t felt nauseous a single day since.
if you made it all the way to the end— thank you! and i want to extend an extra special thank you to my friends— the WHs, ES, and many, many others— for your continued meaningful support, for reading and editing articles and all the silly things i write, and for reminding me that they’re not silly. 💕