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Catharsis Is Overrated
How to suck at processing your last relationship
I’m having trouble writing about my last relationship. I tried to write something about it very recently for a contest, but I knew it was bad, and it was a slog to write, and most of it felt artificially sentimental and calculated. I got some constructive criticism from my best friend Phuong; there was something missing. I don’t know what. I’m screaming at my laptop, ready to throw it out the window, paralyzed by my inability to write about this. I’ve started and stopped and started again and gotten distracted by Grindr and decided to have some soup and started again and then stopped and — wait, what?
Oh yeah, I’m to figure out how to write about him. Conner.
But I digress. I’m having an issue not digressing. I’m having trouble deciding if “relationship” is an appropriate label for what Conner and I had. It’s easy to give into his emotional unavailability and just say we had a “dynamic,” which sounds prissy. But that dynamic resembled, mirrored, felt like any relationship between two significant others I’d ever seen or imagined. It was a relationship to me, but maybe the shadow of one to him. So, I’m having trouble writing about what we had. I’m having trouble writing anything about what happened over those two and a half years beyond some trite, easy narrative about…
