When I started this Substack about a year and a half ago, I just wanted to write about love. Not necessarily love only as an institution or an exchange between two people, but as the healing spirit that begins always within ourselves. I was very lost, confused and anxious about my place in the world. It was an incredibly lonely time. I felt that most of my loneliness stemmed from not being able to share my heart, and because I could not share, I could not change. Love is really the only force that moves us forward. Without it, there is no reason to.
I thought I was looking for answers, for clear visions but I know now I was just looking for love. To be able to engage in it consistently with my own soul and with others’. In the process of learning how to do that, answers and clear visions have found me. Sharing my thoughts here has healed me in extraordinarily surprising ways I never expected. I just wanted to figure out how to share. To the handful of generous people who have returned to listen and read, thank you so much. Know that I think about you everyday and that in me there is a soul somewhere who is praying for your brightest, most joyful outcomes. I love you. I really do.
The name from my publication originally stemmed from this idea that to write about love, I should inhabit a character, a mysterious romantic figure that muses about love in little vignettes from behind a gauzy red curtain. But this space has really become the opposite of that. Instead of shrouding reality with romance, it’s become a space where I like to romanticize the reality of the ways we find love and the honesty it takes. More so than a romantic, idealized escape, I want this space to be a reminder that love really does conquer all, even the strongest ailment there is: a lonely heart.
How to Cure a Lonely Heart is also the name of my upcoming book, which I hope to have out by the end of the year. When I started writing this newsletter, I published my first book, Learning to Swim While Drowning, a title of which I think really summed up what I had been trying to do for the years that I had been writing it. How to Cure a Lonely Heart, perfectly represents to me what I have been trying to do in my time with this newsletter and what I want to continue to inspire my work moving forward.
I hope that in my words, people come even a little bit closer to themselves and to the people they admire. I hope that it stokes your kindness, affection, and infatuation to burn brighter. I hope it helps you fall in love.
Thank you for comin here and caring about my addition to the infinite words and letters on the internet!
Talk soon,
Vic