Some Stories You Don't Get Over. You Write Them.

Behind the Books

I could tell you this book came from a deeply conscious healing process, accompanied by soft music, herbal tea, and a woman staring out a window while finally understanding the meaning of her life.

It would sound beautiful.

It would also be a lie.

F*cked-Up Stories, Brutally Honest Words came from carrying too many things I did not know where to put.

Love affairs that went wrong.

People I swore I knew.

People who died and left questions with nobody left to answer them.

Decisions I defended with admirable confidence for somebody who clearly had no fucking idea how they would end.

And silences.

A lot of them.

The kind that look like discretion from the outside and feel like an endless conversation with yourself on the inside.

I Did Not Write This Book Because I Had Already Healed

I wrote it because waiting until I was completely fine would have been an elegant way never to write it at all.

There is a lovely idea surrounding personal writing: first you live, then you heal, then you understand, and finally you write from an impeccable distance.

In theory, that sounds marvelous.

In real life, sometimes you write while still trying to understand what the fuck happened.

Not everything was resolved when I wrote these pages.

Some things were.

Others had only recently stopped hurting every day.

And some still had the habit of showing up at three in the morning without an appointment.

But I understood that I did not need to wait until I became an enlightened version of myself to tell what I had lived.

I did not want to write like somebody filing a report after the fire.

I wanted to write the smell of smoke too.

Why Does Silence Cost You Too?

Some silences protect. Others end up protecting everybody except you.

I have stayed quiet for many reasons.

To avoid hurting somebody.

To avoid opening problems.

To protect someone.

To protect myself.

Out of shame.

Because you also have stories you would rather hide even from yourself.

And because some truths come with far too many proper names standing around them.

You do not have to tell everything you know.

I still believe that.

But I also learned something less comfortable: there comes a moment when you stop keeping a story and start carrying it.

Those are not the same thing.

Keeping it is a decision.

Carrying it means not knowing where to put it down.

The Difference It Took Me Time to Understand

Staying quiet because I choose to
It is a decision.
I owe nobody an explanation.
The story is still mine.

Staying quiet because I cannot speak
It weighs on me.
It forces me to pretend.
It allows everybody else's version to occupy the entire room.

This book began to exist the day certain stories stopped asking for my silence and started asking for words.

Not everything you write has been overcome. Sometimes writing is precisely how you stop carrying it across your chest.

Sarcasm Does Not Erase Pain. It Takes Away Its Monopoly.

Laughing at something that hurt does not mean it never hurt. It means pain no longer has complete control over how you tell it.

I do not know how to write certain things in the voice of a solemn documentary.

It does not come out of me.

I can be talking about betrayal, a relationship that went to hell, or a decision I am still embarrassed to remember, and at some point a sentence appears that makes me laugh.

That does not make the experience less important.

It gives me air.

Sarcasm, at least for me, was never a way to deny what happened.

It was a way to keep what happened from taking absolutely everything.

Pain, yes.

But perspective too.

Anger, of course.

But also time's marvelous ability to turn some personal tragedies into stories you tell by saying:

—No, wait. You haven't heard the most ridiculous part yet.

Inside these pages, there is

memory
anger
desire
family
grief
betrayal
freedom
sarcasm
guilt
rebuilding

Some Truths Are Told Late

Not because they were lies before. Perhaps we did not have enough words yet.

The way you remember changes too.

That can greatly irritate anyone who needs a story to have one permanent version forever.

I have looked back years later and thought:

How the fuck did I not see that?

Or worse:

I saw it.

I simply did not want to call it by its name.

Some relationships look like love when you are inside them and, years later, look like dependency with excellent publicity.

Some friendships you defended for years until finally understanding that loyalty was traveling in one direction.

Some of your own decisions do not need an outside villain.

We fucked up.

Period.

That appears in the book too.

If I was going to tell my story in a way that always made me the smart, strong, good woman who never made a mistake, I might as well have written fiction.

And not even good fiction.

What Are the 23 Chapters About?

They are not twenty-three life lessons. Thank God. They are twenty-three places I once had to look.

The book moves through territories that do not always combine elegantly because life does not have the courtesy to organize itself into categories either.

A Map of the Mess

Relationships and desire
Loving somebody who was wrong for me.
Accepting crumbs.
Using bodies as bandages.
Discovering attachment and love are not synonyms.

Family and loss
The people who left.
The people who forced me to continue.
The women who taught me how to endure.
The family that offers more opinions than presence.

Freedom and boundaries
Stopping the negotiation of peace.
Being a free woman without apologizing.
Discovering what to do with freedom once it finally arrives.

Work and rebuilding
Understanding that building a business could also mean rebuilding myself.
Learning nobody was coming to put me back together.

And there are chapters whose titles already say enough: I Don't Rehabilitate Losers, Accepting Crumbs From a Nobody, Peace of Mind Is Not Negotiable… and Neither Is My Time, What the Fuck Do I Do With This Freedom Now?, and I Wasn't Perfect. I Was Me. And That's Enough.

I did not try to organize a life.

I tried to be honest about it.

The Letters I Never Sent

Because some conversations do not need a recipient. They need a way out.

Some things did not fit inside a chapter.

People I no longer had anything to ask.

Or people I perhaps did, but life had closed that window a long time ago.

That was when the letters appeared.

To the man who believed he was irreplaceable.

To the friend who hugged me while stabbing me.

To the family that had opinions but did not show up.

To the woman I used to be.

To my children.

To my mother.

To the man who came back after I no longer needed him.

And to the world, in case it still had unfinished business telling me who I was supposed to be.

I did not write them while waiting for an answer.

I wrote them because waiting for somebody else to close a conversation and closing it yourself are two entirely different things.

The Woman Who Taught Me to Think

Before every story, there was a woman who gave me something far more useful than armor.

The book also carries a debt I do not intend to pay because it cannot be paid.

My mother.

She taught me to read.

To write.

To solve crossword puzzles.

But above all, to question.

While many women were learning that being good meant obeying, I had a mother who gave me ideas.

She did not protect me from life's blows.

Nobody can.

But she left me with a mind that had developed the habit of asking questions.

That habit probably saved me more times than I know.

Her absence did not leave me without words.

It made some of them heavier.

Your absence did not silence me. I filled it with ink.

So, Who Did I Write F*cked-Up Stories, Brutally Honest Words For?

Not for anyone looking for an exemplary woman. That poor lady does not live here.

I wrote it for anyone who has loved the wrong person.

For anyone who stayed longer than she would now like to admit.

For anyone who lost somebody and discovered grief has a terrible relationship with calendars.

For anyone who laughed at a moment when she technically should have cried.

For anyone who learned late.

For anyone who is still learning.

And for anyone tired of books where every wound conveniently becomes a marvelous lesson.

Sometimes an experience was shit.

You survived.

Period.

I did not write this book so somebody would finish it and say:

—What a strong woman.

How tedious.

I wrote it because for years I was many things at once.

Strong.

A fool.

Brave.

Cowardly.

Generous.

Furious.

In love.

Heartbroken.

Free.

And sometimes a complete disaster.

In other words:

a person.

I do not write to come out looking good in my own story. I write to stop lying to myself about it.

No ‘heal in five steps’ workshops, and no forcing pain to become a spiritual teacher.

Keep Reading

Some stories you do not get over. You write them, give them a final period… and then decide whether to leave them alone or turn them into royalties.