Letters to Viv: I'm Not a Bad Guy
Telling the truth about your life isn't bitterness, it's just bad PR for everyone who preferred you silent.
Letters to Viv
Open, soul-packed letters to the kind of human I write for: the curious, creative, exhausted by the hustle, and craving something more. I’m writing to you (and me).
Dear Viv,
The other day, I came across one of those quotes online. You know the ones. A celebrity may or may not have said it, half the internet is sharing it, and the other half is busy turning it into a motivational poster with a sunset behind it. This one stopped me cold in the cereal aisle of my own head.
It said: “I didn’t talk badly about you, I talked about what you did to me.”
I sat with that for a long while.
When my marriage ended, I heard a phrase over and over. “I’m not a bad guy.”
He said it to me again and again, like a man patting his pockets for his keys. “I’m not a bad guy. I’m not a bad guy.” And every time, I’d think, “Love, that’s a fascinating thing to reach for right now, because I never said you were.”
I was standing in the smoking crater of our life trying to work out what in God’s name had happened, and somewhere across the rubble, he was checking his reflection to make sure he still looked good.
Identity over impact.
He was so busy auditioning for the role of Decent Man that he never once read the scene he was actually in. It’s a neat trick, putting your own behaviour to a vote and then being the only one who turns up to the polls.
A lot of women do this, and I've done it with full marks, Viv. We start telling the truth about our lives and immediately feel responsible for how that truth might be received. So we edit, soften, and sand down the sharp edges; we add footnotes; we supply context; we provide a balanced reading of the opposing view; and by the end, we’ve handed in a fully cited dissertation defending the person who hurt us. Peer-reviewed.
Meanwhile, our own experience is sitting in the corner the whole time, waiting to be acknowledged. The poor creature has been there for years. Probably knitting. Definitely muttering.
I know this because I’ve done it. I’ve contorted myself into shapes a yoga instructor would flinch at trying to be fair, to see every side, to make sure every last person in the room felt understood. A lovely quality, right up until you clock that you’re the only one in the room nobody’s extending it to.
The truth is, I haven’t spent the last two years talking about a man. I’ve been talking about grief, about losing a future I thought was a sure thing, about standing in the rubble wondering what comes next. About rebuilding. Those things belong to me. They’re my story, my scars, my lessons.
Telling the truth about your life is a way of honouring your own reality. A way of saying: yes, this happened; yes, it changed me; yes, my experience matters, too.
Some people will be uncomfortable with that. Some preferred the version where you stayed silent, the one that made their life easier. And sometimes the truth only sounds harsh because someone benefited from the silence.
That’s not yours to carry, Viv. Your job was never to be the keeper of everyone else’s image, or to guard a story that cost you your own peace. Your job is to tell the truth. Gently, honestly, in your own time. And then to let it belong where it belongs, out in the light, where it can finally stop being a secret and start being a story.
XO,
Tanya
This is so powerful, and a great reminder for anyone staying silent to protect others from their truth. Thanks for sharing Tanya.