Personal Essays

HerStry publishes one Personal Essay every Wednesday. Weekly Personal Essays are a way for writers to tell the stories they want to tell. There are no rules. No themes. Nothing is off limits. For essay submissions check out our guidelines.

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Posts tagged love

Valentine's Day Thoughts

Valentine's Day Thoughts

Sometimes I wonder why lovers hold hands when they walk around. I wonder how long they have been dating. Are they in that new stage, where it feels like they have to hold on tight, constantly let the other person know that they are there, that they aren’t going anywhere, that they want to touch them, that they want to be touched. Or is it the older couples, the ones who have been together for longer that hold hands. A gesture they don’t even realize they’re doing, their fingers just mindlessly reaching for each other, keeping their connection as they pace around the city.

True StoriesDiya MehtaAugust 14, 2024love, self love, Self Discovery, heartbreak, valentineComment

Tight Grip

Tight Grip

The amygdala assigns emotional significance to clutter I can’t throw away. To souvenirs and books throughout our house. To clawhammers, backpacks, yard signs we hang on pegboards. To ordinary places we visit again and again. This precious tiny thing deep inside my head also helps form shiny new memories. I want to hold on to my amygdala for a long time. Keep it healthy and functioning. Feed it. Maintain it. That sort of thing.

True StoriesKristina BuschMarch 20, 2024relationships, love, reflection Comment

Juicy

Juicy

On the dock beneath a Wolcott summer house, you show me how to cast. I flick my wrist and it goes nowhere near as far as yours. By means of sarcasm we agree it’s not the most vegan thing to do. Later by the fire, you hear the splitter splatter in the water as I roast a marshmallow in the din of our friends’ chatter and guitar tunes.

“They are taunting me,” you say of the fish, “can you hear them?”

True StoriesKristina BuschOctober 5, 2022love, relationships, lossComment

The Soundtrack of Fury

The Soundtrack of Fury

“Why do you always play the same songs?” I’ve seen her iTunes library; there are hundreds of MP3s. The overplayed list explores grief beyond the Lilith fair trope. Some get mainstream airtime like “Drops of Jupiter” and “Meet Virginia,” others obscure, folksy lesbian coffee shop artists. She glances at me for a second before returning to her screen. “I’m making the soundtrack of us.”

True StoriesKristina BuschSeptember 21, 2022love, LGBTQIA, relationshipsComment

Wounds Unseen

Wounds Unseen

Words may not have the ability to slough through flesh like a knife or a sharp shard of glass, but they can be used as weapons of emotional destruction. For me, a married woman's worst nightmare came to fruition when my mother-in-law stated her feelings about me with painful clarity.

True StoriesKristina BuschAugust 10, 2022marriage, abuse, love, family Comment

Hot Flashes

Hot Flashes

He thought I was sexy. Funny. Fun. Interesting. I assumed that growing up in Turkey and studying engineering hadn’t offered him much opportunity to meet lots of women. I felt a bit guilty—but mainly grateful—for that.

He was from a highly educated and sophisticated secular Muslim Turkish family; he’d come to the United States to earn his PhD from MIT. I’m a first-generation born and bred in Brooklyn, New York, American daughter of Orthodox-Jewish European Holocaust survivors on both sides.

True StoriesGuest UserJune 15, 2022love, love story, husband Comments

True Love, Fairy Tales, and George R.R. Martin

True Love, Fairy Tales, and George R.R. Martin

There I was, doing an assignment for a Bootcamp on confidence, writing a vision of what my world would look like if I had unlimited confidence.

I set out to write a vision of myself as a successful author of an inspiring and hilarious memoir. Between that and my editing income, I’d be doing so well that I could afford to buy a space to build a creative retreat. But when I put my pen to paper—I wrote about love. And instead of feeling empowered, I couldn’t decide if I should roll my eyes, puke, or cry.

True StoriesGuest UserJune 1, 2022love story, love, life lessons Comments

Feminist Amnesia

Feminist Amnesia

Writing a memoir is being in the diaristic present. I’m here but writing about then—a then I have not documented, a then that is lost, a then I re-create with each stroke of a word, as if I’m a time traveler denied access to my past.

True StoriesGuest UserNovember 11, 2021love, grief, LGBTQIA, DeathComment

Cowboy, Take Me Away

Cowboy, Take Me Away

He’s never been there before, but my husband drives through Arizona like he’s a native. Our kids bicker in the backseat as he squints into the Southwestern sunshine.

The highway carves a groove into the hills. Forests of saguaro fade to arid plains. Endless interstate stretches through hours of tanned earth, unfurling at the feet of piney, snow-capped forests. Our rental car pushes higher and higher. We tug layers over jeans and t-shirts.

True StoriesJulia NusbaumOctober 20, 2021love, travel, love story Comments

Feral

Feral

Besides my husband, I have lived with no other being longer than Mullen. When we lived in Austin, after I suffered a miscarriage, my husband saw a pitiful ginger tabby kitten at an adoption fair. If we had any reservations, they were nullified when the adoption volunteer gave us Mullen’s history; his was the saddest tale in the shelter. A few weeks old, he had been found in a plastic bag, riddled with fleas and mange, cast away on the side of Mo-Pac.

True StoriesGuest UserAugust 4, 2021grief, pets, mental health, love Comment

Daylight

Daylight

The first playlist I made for someone came in the form of a mix CD that I’d burned on an old Dell desktop computer. It was a summer mix, meant to be played in my best friend’s pink Sony portable CD player as we skateboarded and biked down the backroads of our small Florida town.

True StoriesGuest UserJuly 21, 2021love, love story, romance, musicComment

Impossible to Love

Impossible to Love

I see you,

with your dimpled smile,

your tubby legs,

your first stumbling steps,

a complete trust in the universe

that nothing will harm you,

even as your harried mother

calculates all potential risks.

True StoriesGuest UserJuly 20, 2021love, confidence, self love Comment

A Habit and a Hardhat

A Habit and a Hardhat

“A plane just crashed into the Twin Towers,” Sister Mary Frances said. Her eyes were wide, and she was breathing hard. She had just returned from dropping Sister Mary Michael at the Newark airport. “It’s terrorism,” she added.

True StoriesGuest UserJuly 15, 20219/11, Christian, grief, love Comments

The ABCs of Love

The ABCs of Love

A sweetheart story is what I crave. The sweep-off-the-feet type that rides my heart into the

sunset with the faint letters rolling in the background. As innocent as prince charming, in

desperate search of their damsel in distress.

True StoriesGuest UserJune 16, 2021love, love story, alphabet, poetry, self love, Relationships Comments

A Love Letter to Our Marriage Therapist

A Love Letter to Our Marriage Therapist

Dear Doctor S.,

I can’t believe I wake up each morning thinking about how much I love my husband, instead of engaging in the mental gymnastics of how to avoid him for yet another day.

True StoriesGuest UserMarch 3, 2021love, love story, marriage, children Comment

Never Not in Love

Never Not in Love

It took me ages to feel confident about saying I was “in love” with my first boyfriend. I didn’t understand what the threshold was, where affection crossed from love to LOVE; I figured this was because I’d never been in love before. When I finally did tell him, I laced the profession with caveats, afraid to be put on the stand and accused of lying at some theoretical future breakup.

True StoriesGuest UserDecember 17, 2020love, confidence, self loveComment

I Have No Exes

I Have No Exes

I’m the only disabled person in my family. I was one of the very few visibly disabled people in high school, university, and later in the workplace. My experience of disability has always been characterised by comparison.

True StoriesGuest UserDecember 10, 2020disability, relationships, dating, love Comment

Where Old Love Goes

Where Old Love Goes

Look at us, pretending to be normal, out to dinner on a weeknight, ordering the same beer like old friends. There was a food truck inside the restaurant and an exposed brick wall.

He took a bite from his dinner and washed it down with his beer.

True StoriesJulia NusbaumFebruary 20, 2020Relationships, marriage, love, ex Comments

To Love Two Ghosts

To Love Two Ghosts

She had skin like honey. Drizzled over each limb, down the nape of her neck. My own, in comparison, is pale; my back is scarred with past acne, my thighs raked with thin white stretch marks and dull, greying bruises. For her, the sunlight clung, in sheets of golden gossamer, to each of her limbs.

True StoriesJulia NusbaumMay 15, 2019love, Relationships, storytelling, feminisms Comment

All the Ones I Didn't Love

All the Ones I Didn't Love

I don’t miss him, but what I do miss is sitting on the cold sand of the beach in October, when the wind shivered my young bones, and I would huddle against him, burying my face into his cigarette, scented pullover. He would cross his arms for his own warmth, with a Marlboro Gold hanging from his blue lips. He never wore a jacket and even after all this time, this is the only way I can remember him.

True StoriesJulia NusbaumApril 17, 2019feminism, Storytelling, abortion, love, toxic relationshipComment