I thought I was going to marry Louie.
We met on the first day of seventh grade. He liked a band called Cannibal Corpse, and I liked pissing off my parents, so we were a great match. He introduced me to some of my favorite bands, and looking back, he shaped a little bit of my personality, and it might be safe to say that I shaped about 90% of his. We dated, I think, all of seventh grade. Then, in eighth grade, he moved to Orange, California (shoutout people from Orange) and I never saw him again.
Just kidding. I did see him again: senior year of high school. He came back, and we dated briefly as well (BOO!), until one day I called him crying. I didn’t know much about how strong and how mature you’d have to actually be to make a relationship work then, but I knew I loved him. I also knew I couldn’t keep a relationship, not even if I tried. I needed space to grow, to see more, to become more. Being with him meant having to constantly update someone about where I was, what I was doing… Until I no longer knew whether I was sharing or justifying my choices. So I let go.
He cried the entire phone call. And yes, he still has my number.
Years later, Louie and I ran into each other on a Saturday night. He was even taller, even more weird-looking, and I was still in love with him. He still wore flannel shirts and old boots with stars on them, very DCC. Hey, he had a beard now. Sick. He looked at me, and suddenly I was sixteen again.
We were at , you guessed it, a local dumpster bar. The place was called something like Beers and Burgers and More, and I guess that “more” part was kind of illegal, because the place was packed. So we stepped outside and caught up in the middle of the street.
It was one of those catch-ups filled with years you can’t quite explain. That weird pause when someone asks, “Are you seeing anyone?” and you both say “No” and sit in silence. Then he asked if I still wrote. I said yes. He asked if I still kept all my diaries. I told him I had a Substack now. I described it as “spicy cultural commentary with some niche recommendations and a little literature nerdiness.”
He blinked. “So… you have an audience now?”
I laughed. “A pretty considerable one,” I said. Sorry, guys. I didn’t mention some of you being closer to me than most of my blood family.
And then he said, “I just can’t believe they’re all keeping up with you trying to figure your shit out. In real time, just like I did.”
He was right.
I went home, took my shoes off, opened my laptop, and started typing. Because that’s what I do, that’s what I’ve always done. Maybe every single thing I’ve ever written, from my silly Oasis-themed diaries to serious think pieces, has been me trying to make sense of myself. Of course. My manifestation journals, my shopping lists, my monogrammed Christmas cards, they’re all little bits and pieces of who I am, who I was, and who I’m trying to be, and they tell you everything you need to know about this writer, more than anything that ever comes from me. No boyfriend could ever have this intimacy that writing provides.
Writing is that itch on your back you have to scratch. It’s the original, most honest thing that comes out of you. Sometimes I write and realize that I felt something I didn’t even know I felt. I’ve had more epiphanies through writing than through conversations or heartbreaks combined.
My relationship with words has always been more stable and more essential than most of my romantic relationships ,which is probably why they fail (also BOO). And why I keep writing. It’s a cycle.
I need to know how I feel, and I write to access that. That’s something I’ve always done. The only difference is that over a year, things became more serious. This newsletter is more than just me, writing for myself, alone in my bedroom. My mom is not the only one reading this.
I am just in awe of the amount of people that look up to me because of my words, but when I remember my words got me everything I’ve ever wanted, I can see why they look up to me.
My words actually taught me a lot about love.
Way more than any romantic relationship I’ve ever had.
The writing process is slow, complicated, complex, and magical. Like the best kinds of love, it needs to be cultivated.
My words come to me without the sacrifice of having to ask (or beg) for them. I use them to navigate through the world, to make sense of all the love that I get, all the loss that comes with it, and everything in between.
Writing is my translation of the unspoken.
My words. As characteristically mine as my fingerprints.
Somehow, what I couldn’t share with him then, I share with you now. In real time.
I finally feel comfortable to be with who I look for to get comfort every time my world crumbles down. My words.
To Bella
EPILOGUE - THE RITUALS
A couple of weeks later, my best friend Sara called me. Half a bottle of wine in, she asked:
“Do you think [redacted celebrity] wrote his book just to convince himself he made the right choices?”
She doesn’t remember saying it ,but I do. That question lit something up in me.
Because yes, we also write for reassurance. Sometimes we just need to believe we’re right ,or at least, that we’re not crazy. We need to explain it to ourselves before anyone else.
Why do we type so fast when something hits us? Why do we rush to get the words out before they slip away? These words ,invented thousands of years ago, somehow become ours when we’re in that moment. Every feeling gets a name. Even a weird run-in with an old boyfriend makes you question your whole life.
Other people live differently than the writer. They run at 5 a.m., sporadically drink half a bottle of wine, make strange questions, cry to superhero movies, go to their 9-to-5s. Meanwhile, I write. They live. I write. But maybe I’ve lived more because of it. An author lives a thousand lives. Maybe love feels deeper. Maybe moments stay longer, it feels even better to think about a memory when it doesn’t exist in real life.
That’s how I live my life, writing and erasing everything I’ve ever encountered in my life in the after hours.
I write, therefore I am.
What a joy it is to be the writer, after all.
To have this monastic devotion to your words that could be seen as intense as obsession, but also as tender as care.
I love the idea of doing something so intensely that it allows me to feel the grip of death once in a while. My devotion for words could kill me one day, I’m certain of that.
The writer hopes their passion kills them.
So original.
Le cygne. End of act II.
“The most important is that I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I’ve done that day.
I can’t do it late in the afternoon because I’m too close to it. Also, the drink helps. It removes me from the pages. So I spend this hour taking things out and putting other things in. Then I start the next day by redoing all of what I did the day before, following these evening notes. When I’m really working I don’t like to go out or have anybody to dinner, because then I lose the hour. If I don’t have the hour, and start the next day with just some bad pages and nowhere to go, I’m in low spirits. Another thing I need to do, when I’m near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it. That’s one reason I go home to Sacramento to finish things. Somehow the book doesn’t leave you when you’re asleep right next to it. In Sacramento nobody cares if I appear or not. I can just get up and start typing.”
-Joan Didion.
“I get up and if I feel out of sorts I’ll do some exercises,I’ll feed my cat, then I go get my coffee, take a notebook, and write for a couple of hours. Then I just roam around. I try to take long walks and things like that, but I just kill time until something good is on TV. I have a fine desk but I prefer to work from my bed, as if I’m a convalescent in a Robert Louis Stevenson poem”.
-
“Yesterday’s poets are today’s detectives. They spend a lifetime sniffing out the hundredth line, wrapping up a case, and limping exhausted into the sunset. They entertain and sustain me.”
-
, M train.“There are certain things I do if I sit down to write. I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning. I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places…The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, “you’re going to be dreaming soon””
-Stephen King
If you’re interested in the latest news in the literature world, check out
If not, I’ll see you soon.
I absolutely love this, since I started taking writing in my journal and on Substack more seriously I have felt so much more grounded
Today I was like haven’t read anything by Amanda in a while and came to check what you’ve been up to, loved this <333