Every once in a while, and this is more rare now, there's a legitimately strange internet artefact that just pops up. This time, it's a Google Spreadsheet called "things i wanna text my ex" created by a guy named Sean Drohan.
He's a 24-year-old Princeton graduate who spent time consulting on college admissions in China. The spreadsheet was created on a lark, while having lunch with his friend.
"There's plenty I would like to say to my exes (and too much I've already said)," Drohan told Refinery29 via Facebook chat. "People enjoy anonymous opportunities to cry into the ether. There's kind of this unanswered question of to whom we say these things and why, but that's what's interesting."
Drohan says he's been a little surprised by the response.
"Just the level of earnestness," he writes. "People really took it as an opportunity to speak some truth. I think that I also try to cultivate that with people in my life, though. Like, I'm a compulsive non-small talker."
Most of the texts are pretty straightforward. Some are more cruel and others more kind.
"remember how you thought i was too dumb to get into princeton?" one person writes. "well i don't see YOUR acceptance letter anywhere, who gets the last laugh nowwww"
Others took the sheet as an opportunity for more poetic expression.
"A breeze hit my leg by the stove the other day and I thought it was the cat, but then I remembered I don't live with the cat anymore. I cried. When you venmo'ed me your half of the couch and desk at work, I went to the bathroom. I cried. Thank god for single-stall, gender-neutral bathrooms. My therapist says I'll be your biggest regret, but I pay him to say things like that. My friends say you're a dick, but they're my friends. I say that I miss you and I miss the inside jokes and language we had that's now a dead religion no one practices. I'm still shaken by our breakup, and trying to rebuild myself. I wish you had held my hand more, and I wish I had been gentler."
It is a legitimately fascinating exercise. I've added my own text, as have some others that I know. I won't tell you, and you shouldn't tell me.
After all, this is a safe space. Add your own. Check out the spreadsheet here.
Drohan has one closing thought:
"Don't text your ex tonight. If you want to, tomorrow."
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