This Is Where I Leave You
By: Scott Muska
Tags: Love, Goodbyepsily, Dating, Relationships, Breakups

This Is Where I Leave You

An ode to “PS I Love You,” a writing home without which I fear I’ll be more lost than ever. Scott Muska Follow May 22 · 4 min read

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

I have a hard time letting go of things.

Always have.

From the ephemeral to the more lasting and persistent, truly moving on has never been one of my strong suits.

I tend to fall in love with ideas and people and sometimes the ideas of people, and to commemorate moments after the fact that I could have handled differently but will never, ever get back.

It’s something I’ve been working on getting better at for years, this whole concept of truly letting go. And something I likely have years more work to do to really figure out, I think. It’s been a tough row to hoe.

One of the ways I’ve gotten better at coping with certain losses (especially when they’ve been sustained mostly by nobody’s fault but my own) is to write about them — to share them with others to feel a little bit less alone.

And since 2016, I’ve been doing just that, making my private life something of a public joke, for PS I Love You — a publication I landed at rather randomly after I’d been publishing stuff on Medium for several years. I don’t remember exactly how it started. I guess I submitted and Dan Moore, who would become a dear friend, gave it the green light to be published on the site. Then we just got really fucking weird with it.

That’s half a decade. Just about half the amount of time I’ve been writing pretty frequently and in detail (often much to my mom’s chagrin) about things many other people choose to keep mostly to themselves. And during that time, Dan, Kay and Tre (three people I can say have become some of my best friends) let me do and write pretty much whatever the fuck I wanted, all the time. They’d make the work better, sure, but they always edited me in a way that allowed me to keep my work my own. That’s really difficult to find. And I’m not sure where I’ll find it again. I’m actually not sure I want to. Maybe it’s time for me to try something new, stop being so anxious and writing about my dick all the time. We’ll see. We’ll fucking see.

My time with PS has been one of the longest and best relationships of my life, especially when it comes to online publishing, where every platform and way of working has an expiration date that often seems to sneak up on you right when you’re in some kind of groove. The internet has a way of pulling the proverbial rug out from under you, forcing you to pivot and find other ways to get your work out there, to communicate and forge relationships with the people who are kind enough to spend some time reading the things you’ve labored over alone at a desk for hours, days and sometimes even months.

But, you know, things — the best of them especially, sad as it is — they come to an end. Nothing gold can stay.

Pages flip. New chapters begin. People, platforms, etc. — they move on. It might not always be for the best, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you convince yourself it is and give yourself the tools to work with change — to be optimistic about what will come next, whatever that may be.

And something will always come next.

I just sometimes wish it didn’t have to.

But them’s the breaks.

I started writing for PS because it was fun and I felt like I had some shit to say. And my friends gave me carte blanche (sometimes within reason, sometimes when they were out on a limb) to say whatever it was.

I kept writing for PS because so many of you had some shit to say — and boy, you fucking said it.

I have so very much enjoyed writing with you, reading you, posting your amazing work on social and just enjoying the absolute fuck out of my time with this publication.

But this is where I leave you, in this form, anyway.

I hope we’ll stay in touch. I hope I see your work out there somewhere else (because if I don’t, that’ll be a real fucking shame). I hope we don’t get lost out there.

I won’t ever let go of the feelings I felt writing for and working with this amazing publication.

And for once, I’m more than happy to hang on — to not fully let go.