With That Being Said, The Honesty of RelationTrip!
In January 2010, I took a chance achieved a goal I established back in elementary school, I wrote my first book, “RelationTrip!” What became one of my proudest accomplishments almost passed me by. Drafted as a personal poetry book I was writing for my ex-girlfriend; the development process came to a halt as we broke up. I had only completed five poems when I stopped working on the project due to us breaking up. I stopped writing and started riding every wave of emotions that came my way. Confusion and anger consistently plagued my days at that time, and I did not want to write anything else, whatsoever. I put the pen down and became a shell of myself.
My mother came to town for a visit, and I was cleaning my apartment. My mom picked up a shoebox where I kept my writing supplies and asked what the pages were. I explained what I was working on and why I decided to throw the poems away. In a calm voice and a quick head nod, my mom simply said, “finish writing your book.” I gave her a sharp look and bluntly asked “how.” These poems were for a specific woman whom I was no longer involved with there was no way possible that book could be completed. Nonchalantly, my mom hands me the pages after she glances at them and says, “write about what you feel.”
Numb, I felt numb. I could not bring myself to express what I felt because I did not know which emotion to highlight. However, after a few days of contemplating, I accepted that challenge and started writing what I envisioned would be my future in that past relationship. I created a story loosely based on my experiences and immersed myself into the project.
The writing sessions resumed in June 2010 and wrapped up in early August of the same year. A new life was created. I became an author. I went from talking about what I wanted to do, and finally did it and it felt great. Accomplished was the overall feeling, but I remained unsatisfied. I wrote about the ups and downs of a relationship but ultimately gave it a happy ending while my reality was torn apart.
My engagement, friendships and a carefully established way of life I built flipped upside down all in the span of three days. Obviously, the weight of betrayal affected my world and what festered beneath came out through my pen. Writing Relationtrip was fun, and it helped me believe in my gift, but it was not honest. I would write about love and then turn around and write about pain and hate.
The writing that I did would turn into my second book, “Melancholy: The Book of Pain, Aggression and Redemption.” Told in three parts, I wrote Melancholy simultaneously as I did RelationTrip. Even after completing a tale of a complicated union, I wrote more projects that exhibited the real point of view in this specific section in the museum of my memory. Which brings me to “RelationTrip: The Whole Hearted Edition.”
Sixteen books later, I began work on a special valentine’s day compilation of poems regarding toxicity and happiness in a relationship. I spent months of sorting through and editing to build a valentine gift for the world, and when it came down to releasing the book, I could not let it go. Something did not feel right. What came to be was an idea that I flirted with for years about a new RelationTrip project.
Instead of crafting a new spin on the RelationTrip universe, I would present my first book in its most honest form. This new extension of RelationTrip is the original publication edited to fit all the missing pieces that illustrates the true vision of the first book I ever wrote. A book that’s relatable to anybody that’s been through the highs and lows of being in love or being in lust. This new installment of RelationTrip enhances the story and delivers more context to the many nuances of any relationship.