I didn’t get the guy… so I got a Substack instead

	Turning my Wreckage into Writing Tiff Talks May 12 Pledge your support It’s been years since I’ve written anything with actual substance. For the past few years, I’ve dedicated my extracurricular writing abilities to fluffy, girly little internet things. Cute content. Safe content. Content that never asked too much of me emotionally. But writing? Real writing? That disappeared somewhere between heartbreak, rejection, and me pretending I didn’t care anymore. Actually… no. Let me stop lying to both of us. I know exactly why I stopped writing. I got my heart broken by my dream. My first real writing job ended with rejection — the kind that doesn’t just sting professionally, but personally. The kind that makes you question the very thing you’ve always believed about yourself. Because for as long as I can remember, being a writer wasn’t just something I did. It was who I was. I’m Tiffani. I write. Or at least… I used to. Writing has always been my voice. My identity. My favorite form of oversharing. I genuinely believed I was born to do it — until someone in a not-so-nameless office(that has been redacted for legal reasons) decided I “didn’t cut it.” And honestly? Nothing humbles you quite like getting dumped by your own dream. So I stopped writing. Well… publicly. Privately, I became one of those emotionally unwell women who keeps 800 unfinished notes in her phone, writes dramatic poetry at 2 a.m., and secretly posts on Wattpad like it’s a government secret. (Shameless plug.) I truly didn’t think I’d ever come back to writing real things again — especially in an era where AI can write captions, essays, dating app bios, and probably your wedding vows if you let it. But funny enough, the very things that made me stop writing are the exact things that brought me back to it: Heartbreak. Pain. Rejection. Only this time, it wasn’t career heartbreak. It was romantic heartbreak. Recently, I found out that not one, but TWO men from my VERY current past — men I loved deeply, dramatically, and with enough emotional intensity to qualify me for a tax break — have both moved on happily with someone else. Quickly, too. Like… suspiciously quickly. Meanwhile, I spent years trying to be “enough” for people who found their forever in a matter of weeks. And I know I should say something mature and evolved here like, “everything happens for a reason.” But honestly? Right now I’d settle for a vodka soda and emotional compensation. Still, heartbreak has always done one thing for me: It makes me write. So instead of spiraling the way God and my ancestors intended*, I plugged my typewriter back in. And this time, I’m not going to let rejection silence me. I’m going to write through it. Through the embarrassment. Through the longing. Through the grief. Through all of it. So welcome to my circus. The clowns are emotionally unavailable men, the acrobatics are my coping mechanisms, and I’ll be your ringmaster. xoxo, Tiffani *a crash out did in fact occur but was omitted from the post at the time of publishing😉 © 2026 Tiffani 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104