On Coming Back to go Forwards
Coming back to writing Sven and Mimi (or something similar or adjacent) after all this time feels at once, exciting and also baffling. Itâs so nice to be coming back to the things I love, but renewed, open, striking out to new horizons.Â
Yet, where do I begin in a world that is both post-relationship and post-me too, post-male-lonliness-epidemic, Post-SATC and firmly entrenched in a world where there seems to be huge shifts in relationships between people in general, not just romantically, but in the whole way that people relate to one another. Where to even begin writing a love story in the age of Only Fans, of a world post-Tinder? Of political and interpersonal unease.Â
The start comes, I suppose, in stripping everything back to pure intent, to the nuts and bolts of why I began writing this anyway. Escapism, idealism, romance, filling a niche that no one else had yet filled, scratching an itch that, ironically, and despite my best efforts, is largely still unitched in my real life. The original stories worked, I think, for a few reasons:
Firstly, these were not people living in vast luxury or privilege as is the trope for so many romances. Only, I suppose, partial privilege if we count Sven and his family. They were ânormalâ and so, accessible to the reader.Â
Secondly, reading them back now, they are romantic and far sweeter than what I remember writing at the time. Thereâs a generosity and tenderness I donât think I fully appreciated until I came back to them, to see where they could pick up again.Â
Thirdly, these characters are vulnerable in ways that real humans, with their poor communication skills and bags full of personal neuroses, very rarely are. Theyâre the idealised conversations we wish we could be having but arenât. But absolutely should be.Â
Finally, the stories play on broadly popular fears and fondnesses that sit squarely in the sexualities of quite a few people of all stripes. These stories are not nearly as filthy in words as the things you can imagine happening between the pages and that's part of the joy of them, I hope.. Much like the very best thrills in a horror movie, the viewer/reader fills in the blanks.Â
There has been considerable growth and change about what this landscape looks like for me now, also. Iâm not a restless twenty something anymore, blessedly. Iâm 37, solidly single and solidly at the coal face of perimenopause. Iâm quite fucking tired quite a lot of the fucking time. The things I find attractive are fleeting and the thrill of chasing romance, or drama and passion is thoroughly unappealing now Iâve been through and come out the other side of a long-term relationship that deeply affected me. Yet, coming away thereâs a few things I still think about. Moving forward and being far enough away from that relationship to be able to analyse it with some objectivity.Â
Firstly, it was a vanilla relationship. Which, because of all of our issues, didnât really do the job at either giving us a good time or bonding us in a deep or meaningful way. It was something which I tried incredibly hard at. In hindsight, probably too hard. There was also emotional fear, my own previous sexual assault hovering in the wings. Intimately, there was the experience of disassociation twice and, once, a profound emotional betrayal, a deeply isolating pregnancy scare that left me weeping alone in a doctorâs office, convinced I was about to be a single mother. There was the use of that previous sexual assault against me. There were absurd, petty fights. Hardly the stuff romance novels are made of.Â
Secondly, it was a dynamic wherein we were, fundamentally, quite badly matched for each other. As much as we got on and had moments of patchy happiness, we were on a deep level possessed of differing ideologies. I believed in marriage and dynamism, I wanted someone who was a doer, a leader, not a follower. I was organiser in chief in my professional life and at home. I shouldered the burden of others and so, I wanted to be held. I wanted, perhaps more than that, to be stimulated intellectually, more Iâd argue, than erotically. And, as such, we were at a loss having no common interest in hobbies, the arts, culture, music, cinema, philosophy or religion at all.Â
Then, of course, there was the erotic. Or, the lack thereof, the boredom, my intense trying to make it better, the final twisting of past trauma back onto me. The psychic knife held out and turned backward. The worry that he seemed so uninterested and unfocused at points that I was worried Something had happened. Worried enough to sit him down and ask about depression and therapy. Worried enough to ask the internet for help and then, my poor, long-suffering mother, my friends who told me I deserved more. There was a great wall that, no matter how hard I tried, I could never scale. There was the banal, simple fact that the things I wanted: dynamism,stability, collaboration, intellectual conversation until 3am, passion of any kind would not come from him. He was not -is not - a bad person. He is with someone else now and, I hope, happy. Eventually one has to stop knocking and move on if there is no answer at the door. I had the wrong set of keys, thatâs all. I had to rest and return to myself.
And so, after literally two years I am finally back to the beginning again. Back to old, familiar patterns, like writing late at night and listening to a lot of music and yet, ready for something new having made peace with myself and my body and the possibilities of the future. Itâs a process and itâs not finished yet. It is, by definition, never finished. So, what does the future look like? What stories are there to tell?Â
The original stories of Sven and Mimi were the bright hope of romance, the newness of deep love and the possibility of life ahead. They were cute. They were goopy. They relied far too heavily on successive clauses and too many commas. They were very 2014. They were deeply, emotionally candid and I miss that.Â
But, now, the writing must be something else: more mature, darker, sexier, grittier, tougher.Â
I am going to try and find out and in doing so, I hope I find that some of you may want to come with me. Maybe.Â
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