Using writing as a therapy to get you through a broken relationship.
I hate break-ups, they can get messy. Rational thinking gets over-emotional and nonsensical. If you are the one who has been merrily sailing along thinking all is fine, a sudden break-up can leave you floating on an ocean with no paddle. Lost and confused, angry and sad, all these feelings can mess with your head.
A number of years ago it happened to me and as usual, I picked up my pen and started writing. With every crisis that you face in your life, if you can open your mind a stage further than the woe-is-me syndrome, something beautiful can always happen. In this case, it did. The said players in this scenario stayed friends. The friendship was allowed to blossom, surviving up to the present day.
I know he won’t mind me saying this, Neither of us fancied each other that much when we met. We were both at in-between stages of our lives and we met over a dating app. Our brief fling only lasted 3 months but getting out of it emotionally took another year. For both of us, something magical happened and it came in the form of a nonsensical poem. To most readers, it would not have made a huge amount of sense. To us though, it taught us much about our lives and personalities, how to read between the lines and express emotions in story form.
Poetry can be an incredibly powerful form of self-expression and therapy. It allows us to put our feelings and thoughts into words, to express ourselves in a creative, meaningful way.
Our poem helped us to find clarity perspective and a sense of release from a situation we both found ourselves in.
The story started when I received an email from him. He wrote it in rhyme because he knew I loved poetry. It started…..
Hi, What a wonderful way you have with words, Commanding and endearing in my eyes, So full of wishfullness and slanted verbs, like sending a spider, to catch a fly. The web takes time to prepare, she’s ready to reap, All silver threads that glisten and shine, made in the dark whilst others sleep…………
I replied and that started a poem between us. We called it The Spider and The Fly. I took on the character of the Spider, and he was the Fly. We created the Murky Splurge, (a place where mixed-up words converge.) It became our own personal space to express our feelings. He had returned to his previous girlfriend. It was a relationship he could not break free from. In the Murky Splurge he could talk in code. He spoke of hurt and jealousy and I responded. I was a Spider, calm and reasonable but a creative builder. I could scurry off in any direction and he would pull me back but never too close. As a fly, he was scared of getting eaten by a spider. He expressed “I could not venture into your web.……. ” We both became obsessed with a play on words which lead us to add more characters. The bees came in, they would cause chaos, I often wondered if they were the voices of people with opinions. The wolf became a friend to us both. It offered protection. He brought in a spectacular and beautiful dragon. He was captivated by her and lines were written to describe his emotional torment with his present girlfriend. Words to describe his fear, ‘her flames would destroy him and burn him to a crisp.’ He spoke of being tied to a stake, (guilt and shame) “or so the villagers said” he would write. We had created The Murky Splurge and we could visit at any time of day or night. We used our imaginations to set scenes and played out our stories. It was fun and therapeutic.
Then one day, he turned the fly into a frog because frogs could swim underwater and the dragon could not hurt him anymore. Spider kept on spinning. I guess I thought that if she could remain calm and protected in the Murky Splurge her words would calm others, the door of her web would always be open, Spiders do not eat frogs and a hand of friendship would remain. There was no blame or resentment, we buried it in the mud of the Murky Splurge.
10,000 words later and a time span of well over a year, I said it was time to close the poem. I wrote about the frog and the spider on the sand after a big storm had washed them both down to a beach. They sat by a wishing well, Frog would go west and she would crawl to the east. The poem had done its work and it was time for us both to move on.
I will never forget that experience. Through poetry, we can explore our inner worlds and gain insight into our lives. This can help us to create a better understanding of ourselves and others, and to find new ways of dealing with challenges. Poetry can be incredibly therapeutic and help us feel empowered and healed.
I wrote this shortly after.
The words which captivated a withered soul,
brought light and softness served on wishes,
on glass crystal dishes.
We drank from conniving cups steaming,
but no poison did we swallow only meaning,
the cross fire missed us, I care not now of your love,
or lies you broke, the twisting time of tales,
on dusty pages faded I see only desperate thoughts confused,
where no longer listening is used
I write list-fully with a flat melody.
From under the page a tiny mite crawls over the words in the murky light,
she stops at the comma it is brief this pause like a gasp mid sentence,
not a word more of sin pain and guilt,
…………………………just tightly wrapped up in a trust padded quilt
