The Truth About My Romance Series

The Naked Truth Poetry Series is the raw telling of a twenty-something's journey through sex, alcohol and overthinking, explored through Latin dancing and travel endeavours while attempting to un-addict herself from certain sexy men who she knows she shouldn't be with, at least not permanently, all the while trying to fight against her heart, which always seems to want exactly what she knows is going to hurt her the most.

The poems and notes to lovers and friends that sew this romance series together are vulnerable, punchy and quirky, written by a normal person for other normal people who are also trying to figure out love, life, and their crazy and sometimes annoying brains, which often seem to be at war with their hearts. Also, it just so happens to be a true story—my story. It digs into faith, sex, family and psychology, getting to the root of why we latch on to relationships that can sometimes be as toxic as they are ecstatic.

My romance series is a true story, as in it really happened. It’s a true story, as in it’s the story of my life. I’ve changed all the names, but I don’t bend the truth for the sake of the narrative, to make things more interesting or exciting. For me, the most interesting thing is that these events really happened, these feelings were really experienced. My books follow the real-life evolution of one girl’s journey through non-love, obsession and inner demons. It’s her journey to discover what true love really is, to find who she really is, and to discover how to wield power that she’s had over her heart and her mind all along.

Because so many of us are ruled by our emotions. We’re held captive by our feelings, our compulsions, our addictions. We’re dependent on things that make our lives both heaven and hell, sometimes both at once. So many of us confuse love for something familiar, for attention, for a deep internal feeling that says: yes, not because it’s the right thing, but because it’s the comfortable thing, it’s the thing that’s been felt before, the thing that most likely has its roots in childhood, that was our coping mechanism to numb some kind of pain.

I want to portray my own story of compulsion and codependency, wrapped up in overthinking and alcohol and spicy scenes because I think it’s becoming more and more common for everyone to wear figurative masks and hide what’s going on inside. So many of us are sinking and drowning, flailing for something that we desperately need to hold on to, even if it’s the very thing that’s dragging us underwater.

I want my books to be an example of transparency and vulnerability that might help us realize that there’s so many other people who feel the exact same way. Our situations and details are different, but in many cases, our root needs and fears are the same. Many of us are running away or clinging on to the same type of thing, or for the same purpose. And I want my stories to encourage people to examine their own reasonings, to see beneath their own internal battles and let themselves get to the heart of the matter.

Another reason that I want to share my story is because I want to unravel the psychology of toxic relationships—not toxic as in physically or verbally abusive, but the emotional chaos that lights fire when a girl with an Anxious Attachment latches on to a boy with Avoidant Attachment, and there’s a push and pull that ignites steam sizzling with excitement and misery. I want to dive into coping mechanisms like alcohol, like obsessing over someone to bury the pain of someone else.

Of course, I could have created an elaborate fiction tale and threaded psychology through the narrative, which is what I plan to do in the future. But before I get there, I want to share my own story. I often felt as if my life were a romantic sitcom, with new characters weaving through, with me always getting thrown for loops by erratic writers. I couldn’t make sense of it because I was lost in the thick of it. I could identify my issues, but I couldn’t unravel them, because their hold on me was too strong.

The whole reason I started writing my story was to try and help myself write my way out of it, to write until something clicked in my brain, and I was able to make sense of why things were happening the way that they did, why I couldn’t control the way I felt, and why I always got tangled up in things that were doomed to crash and burn.

I want to show the raw nature of humanity, a vivid example of heart versus mind, of a broken soul, clawing for more, and yet only digging itself further and further into a hole. I wanted to show something real, explicit, uncensored, to let readers know that they are not alone, that your brain can be a fucked up place, but even so, you can still make it to the other side.

You can escape from the chaos. You can learn to fall in love with the peace, even if you sometimes crave the angst and pain of the past, the rollercoaster thrill of the trauma bond that made you feel as high as it did hopeless. I want to give my readers something that would have helped me understand what I was going through, had I read it while I was living through these pages. I want to give them inspiration and validation and a friend who has lived something somewhat similar to what they’re experiencing.

These books are not written in retaliation against the characters who broke the protagonist’s heart. I did my best to protect the identities of the love interests in the series, and while they will assuredly recognize themselves, I don’t hold anything against them.

If anything, I hope that this series is able to express to these particular men what they meant to me and what I was going through while we were entangled. If any of them happen to read the series, especially the more prominent love interests in the series, they will get to hear the thoughts that I was too afraid to voice to them, the dreams that I had for us that were torn apart, breath by breath, the reasons that I latched on to them too hard and yet still seemed to push them away.

Personally, I find it a thrilling sensation to share something so intimate and honest with the world, and I hope it will be encouraging, or at least entertaining, to those who read it. Publication day is steaming full force ahead, next week on April 13th, and I’m working hard to get everything ready in time.

If this resonates with you, feel free to join the official series Facebook Group. I’m honoured to have you along for the ride.