Help Me Hera: Should I publish a creative essay about my ex?

Posted: Monday Aug 05, 2024

I’m worried my musings will be less Richard Gadd and more Martha.

Dear Hera,

Last year I left a relationship with my ex-girlfriend to date someone else. This decision, as she had predicted, was the wrong one; at the time I stood by my decision but recognised that the way I went about it wasn’t the greatest. My ex fairly and understandably blocked me on social media.

A couple months ago, someone let it slip that my ex had been making music, and despite avoiding looking into it in the past, I let them play the music for me. There was one particular song that stood out to me in that I could see myself in some of the metaphors and musings, catching a hinted potential for some lingering fond feelings. 

My issue is that I’m a writer and want to explore and pick apart my feelings in a creative essay and add it to my site of self-published works. To really delve into the politics of being perceived, of watching and reacting to art that people make inspired by events you witnessed or took part in and reactions in turn. However, I worry that my musings and reflections won’t come across like Richard Gadd’s critically-acclaimed reflective mini-series and will instead be more like an obsessed, self-absorbed email from Martha. 

I can’t even Sabrina Carpenter ‘All because I liked a boy’ my way out of this one, I can’t turn my potential essay into a song filled with vague metaphors. It’s especially awkward because I might be making a big fuss about nothing and reading too far into a song I wasn’t supposed to hear. But maybe that’s my medicine to swallow, to know a little but not enough and expose myself as some vapid person who can’t let the past go.

I just want to know, should I write my personal essay and pick this apart, or will I give off Martha from Baby Reindeer having pried where I shouldn’t have?

Sincerely and dramatically, 

Mini Martha

Read Hera's advice here: Help Me Hera: Should I publish a creative essay about my ex? | The Spinoff