Heart on a Line
Why do I keep breaking my own heart?
People often associate heartbreak with relationships. Mostly romantic relationships. She broke up with him. He broke up with her-that kind of thing. There’s even a popular slang term in my country: breakfast. That girl don chop breakfast. That boy? I go serve am breakfast. In other words, they will end up heartbroken.
For some, heartbreak is disappointment. That project fell through. The job they applied for, they didn’t get it. They didn’t win the competition. They didn’t pass that exam. In some way, that’s another kind of heartbreak.
Yet there’s one more. One that hit me and I didn’t even realise I was suffering from until recently.
I cannot exactly pinpoint a particular event or moment when it began. But I just realised something was wrong and over time, the compound effect became more evident. It became heartbreak.
It’s very ironic because right now. I cannot even say it’s a person or an event that broke my heart. Instead, it’s a thing. A practice. An act. A hobby. A dream. I’m going to try to explain it. Perhaps this will help. I hope it will.
I sat with myself a few days ago and asked myself why I kept doing this to myself. Why I kept going back to a craft that hasn’t given me anything I want yet. Why I kept giving of myself, my time, my energy, my all to a void that never seems to get full? To a space that never answers. It’s like I’m screaming into a large open field every time I write. Expecting an answer. Expecting an echo. But can an empty field echo?
Every single line, every single sentence, every single word, every single article, every single short story, every single chapter, every single time. I tailor it to fit, to suit, to match, to make sense. To be something cohesive. I work hard, or what I assume hard work is. No time limit. Morning, Day, Night, Noon. Anytime and sometimes anywhere. I work at it.
I don’t know something. I use Google. I can’t seem to get something; I read an article. I try to learn because assuming that I’ve known it all is such a stupid thing to do.
And practice? Don’t even get me started on that. I’ve been hard at work, perfecting my craft, writing and rewriting and going over and over again even before I began to have an outlet to show people my work.
I started writing something between late 2008 and early 2009. Since I do not remember the time exactly, I often just say 2009. Yes, picture it: one very skinny girl in primary four around eight or nine years old, tearing the middle pages of her social studies notebook to write the crazy pictures she sees in her head as stories.
And I did not stop. All through the years, even when my audience was that one friend in my class who read all my stories. I kept going. I’d write articles even then, even if I only ever read them by myself. I had little projects of such stories. Just writing and writing and giving myself to it. Habouring a dream that one day, this would be my full-time job. My full-time life.
When asked my hobby, I’d say writing. When asked what I used my teens and early twenties to do, I’d say writing. That’s all I have known.
Now you can think that I write twenty-four hours a day. That would be far-fetched. More accurately, I think about writing at least 50% of the time and obsess about not writing 30% of the time. So typically, I wake up every morning, stare at the ceiling for a few hours, and more often than not, I think about the characters in my head. The characters I should write for this story or that story. Before bed at night, if I’m honest, I think about them too. Doing something as random as washing dishes or doing laundry, and off I am in character land. Plotting, trying to see how the settings fit.
If I’m not doing that, then I’m thinking on some thought. Someone said a word to me. Something happened when I went to get eggs from the corner store. Basically, something led to another and I’m thinking about the thoughts that would make my next article. I’m brooding one way or the other. For fiction or non-fiction, I’m brooding. I’m thinking. My head is often in the clouds because I’m thinking about this character, that story, or that article. Or that thought that would eventually lead to an article or a story or something. So when I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing.
Or I’m reading a book. That’s the next thing on my hobby list. Reading. Reading because that’s all I’ve known too. Fiction has been of such great comfort to me that somewhere at eleven, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to write words that would comfort others the way the words of others have done to me. So that’s me and my very narrow way of life.
With the rise of social media and outlets where I can share my articles with more people, I threw myself into it. I devoted myself to my articles, whether on Medium or LinkedIn, and now even Substack. I share some of my writing on Instagram too. So much so that someone asked me recently if I get paid for them. They didn’t have to say it, but the way at which they saw me work at it was like someone getting a financial reward from something. Like it was my job. And if I’m honest, that’s how I have treated every article you see here. That’s how I treat my writing. Like it’s a full-time job where I earn millions. Like it’s my everything.
I have been quoted saying that “writing is everything, my everything,” in a previous article. And I kid you not. It is.
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When I entered into the workforce, in my head, my regular 9-to-5 was a side hustle to the full-time work of writing. I remember one particular role where I was a copy/content writer. I’d give them my regular 9-to-5, and after my manager left the office, I’d stay behind, crafting articles, writing stories up until 11 pm sometimes. It was a secure environment and leaving work that late was fine since I lived a few walks away, and for that time frame, we were allowed to work late hours.
There are several other examples I can recount. While I’d give myself to the work that paid the bills, I’d push myself to give even more to my writing, even when it didn’t pay a lot of bills. Even when it exhausted me. Even when I developed headaches and a cold. All to publish that next article.
Since I wanted so much to write, I dabbled in various forms of writing. That’s how I became a copy/content writer in the first place. That’s how I got into so many roles where, even though I wasn’t writing what I wanted and earning from it, I was writing in some sense and earning from that. I did ghostwriting, scriptwriting, and even social media management. I really did put my feet into it all. As much as I was able to. Yet, my dream still remained fiction and, recently, non-fiction.
However, one night, three Sundays ago, I had to sit with myself and tell myself a sad truth. It might be time to quit. It might be time to throw in the towel. It might be time to acknowledge that this isn’t working. And that day, I cried in a way I’m not sure I have cried. It was also that day I recognised that my heart was broken. Writing was breaking my heart.
If I’m honest, I have lost the zeal to write new articles. I have lost the zeal to continue with the story I hope would be my debut novel. The other characters in my head, although real to me like the regular human beings in my life, I’ve stopped listening to them too. I have been in a lethargic zone where it feels like my life has no purpose anymore. What else am I supposed to do if not write? I fear that I don’t know.
I told someone how the rejections I have faced in the past two months made me feel. I was encouraged to keep going. The rejections aren’t even up to ten yet.
I remember one video where the author said she kept submitting her book to agents nearly one hundred times, and it wasn’t until the 99th or 98th time that she got a book deal. I am aware of all of that; I have written articles on it too. Accepting rejections, etc etc.
But here’s the truth: right now, I feel very crappy. Right now, it stings that the craft that I’ve given myself to so much keeps giving me nothing in return. That this dream I’ve held for two decades keeps appearing farther and farther away. My heart is broken, and I fear that I don’t know how else to proceed.
I used to rationalise and say, if at least for the sake of the five people who would read my article on Substack and the three from Medium and the seven from LinkedIn, I’d keep going. I used to say that for the sake of my characters, I won’t stop. The world needs to read their stories and only I can do them justice by writing them. So, I have to keep going. Yet even that doesn’t hold sway over me again in this pit I seem to have fallen into.
I have not written a fresh article since that Sunday when I cried my eyes out. Or for a while now. I have only shared articles I’ve written previously, months ago. This is the first article I’m writing in weeks, and it’s ironic that to even process where I am, I have to write. It irks me. It annoys me. I wish writing was a physical being so I could throw it some punches. I wish I could block her number. I wish I could mute her from my social media.
My email keeps pinging. This person liked your post. That person commented. That person highlighted. Those tiny notifications are the only notifications I permitted on my phone. I responded readily to them. I’d drop whatever I was doing to respond to comments on my post. Yet in the past few days, I saw it pile and did nothing to it. That zest and spark to respond, to even see what the notification is all about, is gone. It’s all gone.
It appears I have reached a breaking point. It appears the end is near for me and my long and tumultuous relationship with writing. It appears so. And I don’t know what to do.
I don’t even know who to ask for help. Do you seek therapy for this kind of thing? Do you go to a career counsellor? What do you do?
My friends ask me, what about your book, my debut novel. They know it means a lot to me and it does, but I’m afraid I don’t even want to think about it. I have the story in my head. I have several unfinished versions of it sitting on my laptop. The main character was inspired by my mother, and every time I see her, I remember the noble reasons I wanted to write that story, but I don’t have the zeal anymore.
It’s like a rubber band. All the years that I’ve put into writing have been me stretching the rubber band. And the thing with a rubber band is that if you stretch it long enough, it will snap. It will snap back and sting you if you’re not careful. I think I’m at the snapping point. I think I have stretched so much that I have snapped. And now, it stings. It aches. It hurts.
And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to progress. I don’t know. It breaks my heart every morning. It breaks my heart every night. I don’t even know what to do with myself in this state. I don’t even know how to get out of this state. I just really don’t know.
There’s no conclusion. There’s no “but guys, I’m working at it.” There’s nothing like that. My heart is broken. My heart is sore. The things I was chasing in my writing seem to further elude me. The joy writing used to give me has faded under the weight of all the hopes I placed on it. I don’t know what other dream to look forward to. I don’t know what other hopes to have.
I just fill my days listening to hymns. Holding the tears in and ignoring my laptop. Trying to think about everything else but the characters in my head or the fact that you can dedicate your whole heart to something and it would give you nothing at all in return.
Is this a slump? Is this what it is? I don’t even know. I just want to be left alone. Yet I fear that if I’m left alone, I might really quit. I might really stop writing. Yet I cannot imagine a life without the joy writing has given me. Without the delight of marshalling my thoughts into articles. Creating people and a world that only I can see but communicating it so that someone else can see it. I don’t know how not to be this person. I really don’t know.
What I do know is that right now, my heart is broken. And it’s not because of someone but something. It’s because of the one thing that is synonymous with my name. Temi the writer. Well, that writing is breaking Temi’s heart, and she doesn’t know what to do about it.
Originally published at https://aroomwithtemi.substack.com on October 25, 2026.
