I Dumped My BF Via a Poem
- Sheridan Guerrette
- 6 days ago
- 7 min read
I Hit Walls, Opened Doors, and Broke Up With Him Via a Poem
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Previously on What Sheridan Said...
Sheridan felt unusually perceptive last time, even as chaos wrapped itself around her days. Love, friendships, and work all lingered in a hazy limbo—just out of reach—stirring old patterns she thought she had outgrown. Projections, she realized, were everywhere; we stamp them on strangers, on passing comforts, on bodies and moments that dared mirror our own discomfort. We have become animals of projection.
Then a public storage unit parking lot cracked everything wide open: racial slurs cutting through the air, assault, lies flying under flashing lights while kids danced nearby, chanting “Karen.” In that charged moment, Sheridan chose raw reality over another cycle of moralized disdain. No more hiding behind data or weaponized wisdom. Sometimes real growth wasn’t just withholding—it was standing clearly in the truth, letting the projections fall away.
Animals of Projection
June 3rd, 2026
She Hit me, Yelled the N-Word, Then Lied to 911... Did I Press Charges?
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I Dumped My BF Via a Poem
I Hit Walls, Opened Doors, and Broke Up With Him Via a Poem
I’ve hit many walls this year, and I’ve also opened so many doors. This year we watched me learn how to love safely, how to build more openly, how to make friends, and how to continue to be better in every avenue I walk through.
I think that’s important. Not chasing perfection — though I openly admit I have this issue — but consistently striving to be better in every category. I’m not looksmaxxing, I’m curiousmaxxing. Okay, I really hate myself for typing that. I’m sorry. But when I write these, I usually let what comes out naturally stay in. Because why would I mask how cringe I can be sometimes? This is WSS after all…
What I mean is I find it difficult to move alongside others who aren’t at least chasing that growth in a couple of categories. Yes, I obviously want to continue to get hotter as the years go on. And while I’m slowly headed for a collagen collapse, I know my beauty will shine through with all the smile lines, the frustration lines, and the eye wrinkles. What I’m not cool with, however, is having the number one imprinted in my forehead. I’m number one, I know that, I don’t need my forehead to also tell the entire world that I’m number one. So as I continue to grow and soon grow older, I will be getting Botox between the brows. For obvious spiritual reasons.
I want to continue to grow in curiosity, my knowledge, my understanding of others who are not at all like me. I want to be better, healthier. I want whatever gizmo and gadget that promises me better hygiene. I want it all, forever and always. But I know what you might be thinking, so let me put a stop to it real quick. It’s the learning, it’s the growing, it’s the story of how I got there that is the most amusing and fulfilling to me. How I can say I read a full textbook cover to cover, and this is what I’ve taken away from it. How I’ve met someone from a culture I’ve never experienced before, and I’m a more understanding human because of it. Cheesy, but whoever coined the saying, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey,” you are my shaman.
Things have halted, changed, and adapted in my life. I’m now single, hiding in my parents’ basement, I don’t have a publishing deal, and I’m juggling between being heartbroken and motivated.
But as you know me, I’m better at writing my emotions than speaking them. So to ode to the title, yes, I did break up with him via a poem.
I cry a lot — at someone startling me, at someone stealing my last french fry, at puppy videos, and sometimes while writing. I’ve never been great at processing my emotions, or better yet, formulating words that leave my mouth to express anything I need, want, or feel. I’m a bit enamored by it. I freeze, and the only motions are the visions behind my eyes and my fingers’ ability to speak for me.
I’ve done this a lot. I wasn’t the best child, and I mean that in the sense that I was terrified of expressing my love, let alone saying the words “I love you.” It wasn’t until after I was an adult that I expressed that in writing first.
But that seems to be my pattern: feel, poem, vocalize. And until I’ve narrowed down in my own turtle shell what exactly all these things mean — if they even mean anything, or if I’m just projecting onto the situation — I need a lot of quiet, uninterrupted time to write my emotions before I can act on them, let alone vocalize them to another.
So when my boyfriend lost his job and his place of living, things just continued to go under. My emotions continued to go under. I was losing my own self in the process of not having the time, the quiet, to even understand what I was feeling.
He left and drove states away to stay with his sister. I felt guilty, but I needed the space. I needed to understand my own emotions as the groundwork we laid broke down underneath us. I needed quiet, and I needed him away for a while so I could simply catch my breath and listen to what my heart was trying to write out for me.
I spent a few days without replying to his texts or answering his phone calls. I wanted to answer, but each time I remembered the ‘us’ I loved so much did not exist anymore. I asked him for quiet and just said I was sad. I’m not sure if he took the full sign there.
It had been a few days, and I spent the morning staring at my notebook. I cried and wrote a poem that was 10 pages long. Too long. I stared at it for several more hours. I wrote so many different versions. It’s not ten pages long anymore, but two phone screenshots long.
I opened the texts I had only read the preview of. My read receipts hit our messages, and I clicked on my recent photos, and I sent him the poem, titled “I didn’t want to break up with you over a poem.”
I told you I’ve been going back and forth with a publishing company. I shared my manuscript of poems. There were promises said aloud, and I was waiting for the board to finalize its investment offer. It’s not happening. There is no investment offer — at least not right now.
When I learned and saw the Oz behind the curtain, my heart was absolutely crushed. So much so that it took almost a week for me to even cry about it. I’m slowly making my rounds to those closest to me whom I shared this news with intimately. I wanted to sit with my own emotions first, write a poem about it, understand it, before sharing.
But what I’ve learned — what I’m taking away from this — is that all those around me had complete faith that my work was good enough for a deal like this. Those who have read just a few pieces, those I’ve endlessly annoyed with “but what about this line instead?”, those I’ve met through poetry and writing groups, and those who love and support my work even if poetry isn’t their thing and they’ve never read a true word of mine. That’s the takeaway I’m choosing to hold onto. Not that the deal wasn’t real, but that my work being good enough — that was extremely real.
So what now?
Well, I’ve got a few ideas up my silk white sleeve. Ways to give back, ways to grow, ways to collaborate with others.
Life is meant to teach you. It’s not just the moments, it’s the people. Whether it’s a colleague who only lasted a day on the job, a best friend you’ve lost touch with since growing up, a romantic relationship, a quiet crush, the barista who barely says a thing, or the family you sit around the table with. Often the lessons aren’t that moving — unless you’re me and you’re wired to find the deepest lesson in just a second of sitting.
It’s about noticing things. Noticing the barista loves leather bracelets. Noticing that she prefers to wipe before *and* after making a cup, whereas her coworker only does before. It’s noticing why and how the colleague was let go. It’s not a lesson of blame or shame. It’s a lesson of noticing all the visible and invisible things that make us decide to walk that way, to say yes or no.
Relationships, life, and every moment have something worthwhile to teach you. That’s what my last little while has been about. It’s been soul-crushing, as I was dancing around like a happy ten-year-old who just wrote her first poetry book. That was the hardest part. Telling her, not no, but not yet.
So now she’s sitting in the corner, pouting a little bit, but that ten-year-old girl is writing another poem and strategizing how to make this deal real. Because even if relationships, friendships, a business deal, or any sort of promise doesn’t actually happen, it doesn’t mean it’s not real. It *was* very real. But most of the time, it’s not real in the way we think it to be.
That’s what I’m learning. That’s what I’m grieving. It’s always real, but not for the reasons you may think. My ex and my relationship, my book deal — it’s all real. Just not in the way I hoped.
xo, Sheridan Guerrette WhatSheridanSaid.com Life Behind the Artist: Wed at 9/8C
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