Death by real estate| publishing journal day 11

Since this is after all a publishing journal – and because I have A LOT to say!- let me start by sharing the chapter, which I edited today.
The book I am publishing is the diary 1994-1996, and it consists of the entries of a retro/faux diary*.
I have translated my current day 21st century life, to a fictional life 25 year earlier. A literary construct that allows me to cultivate a sense of living in the past, as well as to fictionalizing my life.

This is the Chapter that was up next, which I revised today, and is now ready to go into the book. It is the diary entry of January 4, 1995
Sexual Innuendo | “1995” series
An entry which Lauren wrote within one month, after her lover Bear broke up with her, but the entry is not about Bear but about a second man in her life. One she calls “Slash”.
The upcoming chapters will be more reflective on the Bear situation, and will be very confronting because:
He broke up with me again, yesterday. Or Bear’s 21st century version Mr.Big did.
Yesterday, 31 December 2023, nothing faux or fictionalized about it, although technically it wasn’t a breakup but death by real estate.
But more about that later.

Now I know I am asking a lot of you, timeline wise, but this is the gist of it:
1.December 2019 my lover Mr.Big breaks up with me, for the first and only time until recent events.
– > I fictionalize these events to Lauren’s diary December 1994.
2.January 2020 I reflect on a second man in my life
->I fictionalize these events to a man called Slash for Lauren 1995
This is the post I shared with you today.
3.And now: 31 December 2023 my lover breaks up with me, for real this time.
->I let my shattered alterego on the last day of her 1998 write about this in her diary.
This is a blogpost that was published onto the main blog yesterday.
You can read it here:
-> And just like that. Gone. | 1998 diary

24 Hours ago, I still had a lover.
Someone with whom I had not slept with since January 2023 (true) but also someone who I had still seen a few times, and with whom I stayed in touch and he with me.
Someone whose birthday I remembered, who sent me the occasional photo he knew I would like and so on.

Someone who had refused all conversation starters I had given him about a shift I had felt in his energy, from as early as February 2023.
A shift I had brushed off in January 2023, in December 2022, when we had lovely dates, in which we both pleased the other, yet the sex was no longer the intense mental and physical pleasure dome it had always been!
Yes…. the shift was earlier, but because we obviously still cared a lot for each other, and still had the hots for each other, I had brushed it off.

It did not matter how I opened, which media I used, or if it was real life;
For the entire year, up until our final Whatsapp conversation yesterday the 31st, whenever I offered him the opportunity to tell me what was going on and what he needed;
He consequently, with no exception, ignored it, told half-truths and flat-out lied if needed.

At least that is all over now. Although I still do not know what is going on, I no longer have to. Death by real estate… of course I should have known he would find a way out.
An ugly one…. and WHY?!

All he had to do was say: “Goodbye. I can no longer have you in my life.”

I only function if I am not just wanted, but if a man works, every time, without exception, to be with me.
And makes it special.
Breaking up with me is super easy, because all you have to do is stop doing all the things you have done for 8 years (counting January 2023 as the end date), and we will never have sex again.

Even 2023 as a whole was proof of how easy it is to sexually break up with me.
Because apparently, he no longer wanted me, and tadaa! A year without sex.
After January; Still in touch, still had the privacy of his penthouse (I m guessing you can see the real estate construct coming!), still remembering birthdays and caring for each other.
But no sex.

He had no trouble having a good time with me, without doing anything drastic.
I think the breakup was totally uncalled for.
An unnecessary evil.

So how did he do it?
How does a man break up with his mistress after 9 years?
A mistress who had already asked him in the most direct fashion she had used the entire year, for a heart to heart, on December 11th.
Because she wanted to know what was going on.
And he had agreed, yet had not accepted her time frame, which she had planned generously before her holidays, in which she did not want any drama, but wanted to have peace in her heart, knowing she had left behind this year, what needed to be left behind.

And instead he pushed this heart-to-heart forward, to the midst of holiday season, but without saying a specific date.
And to then out of the blue, on the 31st of December, casually mention – closing with an emoji that was such a brutal insult considering the weight of blowing up their affair – that they could no longer use the condo to meet because he had had to sell it *insert any emoticon here, because they’d all be inappropriate*

I am convinced that that is not what he has been hiding from me this year. It is another woman, another life, a desire to be rid of me because I am a complication.
It is about not wanting a rerun from December 2019 when he broke up with me in a nice way, only to have our affair coming back stronger, and shining brighter than it ever had!

The condo was the way to end it. Selling the safe space we had for 9 years, the place he bought when he was in his early 30s, and that he never gave up for his wife claiming he needed it for his work here in the area – that sale, was literally doing the work for him.
He did not trust himself to be able to pull himself out of our affair, so he pulled his million dollar condo out instead.

After 9 years, he eliminated our affair by making it homeless.
And that was after not having sex for 11 months.
First starve it, then evacuate it.

And ignoring my attempts to have a conversation about it and instead blowing it up in the last hours of the year, made sure that it would as painful and cruel as possible.

9 years, and he has evicted me out of his life, without notice.
As if I ever gave the impression to be someone who will stay for even a minute, in a place where I am no longer wanted.


~Lauren/LS Harteveld
An unexamined life is not worth living

* An About section, on this diary project, has been added to the bottom of this post.

since 2018 my official blog is: https://laurenharteveld.com/
This is also where I write my Lauren 1998 diaries.
Plus letters to my coach Sara.

publishing journal is a stand-alone project, written on my oldest blog, which has software I do not master (explaining the light grey or blue color of the links; I cannot (yet?) change this);
And it also does not have a “Subscribe” button, nor would I know how to install one.

But you can follow publishing journal on
Facebook
and
Twitter

This blogpost was about the publishing process of

A letter from a stranger  
diary 1994 – 1996
including book 2, Dear Nikki

There are currently (I may have missed a chapter, which will be added as we go)
13 chapters in book one “A Letter To A Stranger”, 1994-1995,
and 22 chapters in book 2 “Dear Nikki”.
So with my resolution of giving this project one hour a day, I should be able to share the entire 1994-1996 diary* with you before the end of January 2024.

And it is expected to be for sale March 2024.

The books I’ll be publishing next are:
1.Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2019
2.I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW

All my other diaries and erotica are readily available in my BOOK SHOP

* ABOUT THE DIARY 1994-1996

In summer 2019, I started keeping a fictionalized diary, as a 25 year old younger version of me. Events that happened in 2019 found their way into the diary, translated to their late 20th century reality.
And I also absolutely, intended to LIVE, like it was 1994!
But this is a hard thing to do, I feel I am still (2023) learning there…. but that is my endgame;
To LIVE like it’s the turn of the century.

It was/is an amazing project, and to this day I consider the diary entries it produced on my main blog, my best and certainly my most interesting work, because it combines performance art (living in the 20th century) with diary writing, leaving ample room for fiction.

In 2021, I harvested the diary posts I had so far, with the intention of creating a published diary out of it. Two actually, volume 1 and 2, but I decided to put them in one bind.
But I abandoned the project in spring 2022, losing complete touch with the project….

December 2023, I have picked up publishing this amazing work, of vintage erotica.