I was given an assignment to write a monologue, and late at night after work, I was on my laptop looking at a blank white screen. I didn’t know what to work on, so I thought about everything that happened in my life that I could write about but as a different character. Not even things in my life, but maybe things that I have seen happen in real life or maybe in anime and books that I have watched and read, and maybe I will write about them. That is when I thought about writing something to do with heartbreak. So I started to write the assignment, but halfway through I got stuck, and I didn’t know what else to add on, so I decided to copy and paste the work and asked ChatGPT to help me finish it. The story that I was writing was about a girl named Noelle and she got her heart broken so she is just thinking to herself and she’s talking to her best friend about it I got the inspiration from an anime called A Silent Voice A deaf girl gets transferred into a new school, and she gets bullied by the main male protagonist later on. She and the main male protagonist meet again when they get older, and she realizes that she had fallen in love with him because they started to hang out a lot, and she fell in love with him. But the thing is that she was scared to tell him, and the many years of bullying made her want to kill herself. In the end he saved her, but the show ended before they started to date, so I thought about writing something about them breaking up because that was what I felt as the end when they didn’t get together.

This was my original story:

How do I feel? Fine. I mean, I feel normal, mostly. Not normal as in how I usually feel, but normal as in how one would be expected to feel in this situation. You know, awful. I’m quite sad. But sad is fine. I’ve been sad before. That’s human. That’s life. Something was there, and now it’s not there anymore. I’m grieving. It’s to be expected. I’m a little relieved. That’s also fine. I used to get anxious imagining I’d somehow screw up and make him not like me anymore. But here we are. I screwed up. He doesn’t like me anymore. It’s done. So I’m relieved. What I don’t understand is why I’m so angry. I’m not angry at him or at myself; I’m just angry. I don’t know where the anger came from. I don’t know where to put it. It’s just not fair! When we were together, I wondered how he felt about me every single day. I tried so hard to make him like me enough to keep me around, and he’s still gone. But he never had to worry about me because I always cared. I always loved him. No matter what, I was always there. And as soon as I wasn’t, I was dropped—just like that. It was stupid of me to care. Because he didn’t even want to admit that we were in a relationship! After a year and a half, I was still telling people, “It’s complicated.” And, yeah, it’s complicated. People are complicated. Relationships are complicated. After so much time, it should become less complicated! Do you love me? Or not? Do you want to be with me? Or not? It’s not that complicated! It’s yes or no. Well, after all this time, I guess I have my answer. And it’s no. I wasted so much time worrying. And for what? He left like I knew he would. I don’t know why I even bothered with something that I knew was going to end like this. I would have married him, you know. I would have spent the rest of my miserable life holding on to hope that he’d learn to love me one day. I would have married him even if he wouldn’t wear a ring. Even if he didn’t want a wedding. I would have signed a paper in a courthouse, I would have filed my taxes with him, and I would have done anything to get him to stay just a second longer. And I’d still be just as angry as I am now. And he’d still leave. 

When I got to this point, I didn’t know how to continue it because when I read it, it sounded done, but the work asked for 2 pages, and my work was not even one page, so I decided to ask ChatGPT to help me make it longer. And that is all I said to make it longer.

And this was what it gave me:

How am I feeling? Uh… I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out since—well, since it happened. And the weirdest part is… I keep giving myself different answers. Like, one hour I’m convinced I’m totally okay, and then the next I’m on the floor because I dropped a spoon, and apparently that is now a life-altering tragedy. So… yeah. I’m… somewhere between “fine” and “please put me in a coma.” No, seriously—every time someone asks, I say, “I’m fine,” because that’s what you’re supposed to say, right? It’s the script. “I’m fine.” “It’s whatever.” “I’m focusing on myself.” But inside I’m like, no. No, I’m actually drowning. Like not metaphorically—okay, maybe metaphorically—but it feels real. And I know that sounds dramatic, but I’m allowed to be dramatic. I just got my heart kicked down a flight of stairs. And the thing is… I keep replaying it. Not the breakup itself, but the whole thing. The whole relationship. Like a really stupid movie I can’t stop watching even though I know the ending sucks. Every time I think about one good memory, my brain goes, “Oh, you want nostalgia? Here’s the part where everything goes to hell.” Like—thanks. Exactly what I wanted. And I keep thinking, have I missed something? Some sign. Some weird little clue that said, “Hey, by the way, this is going to explode one day, so don’t get too comfortable.”  ​​​​​​​And maybe I did. Maybe I saw all the signs, and I just… ignored them. Because that’s what I do. I see the red flags and go, “Oh, look, festive.” And what really gets me, what really gets me, is how quick he moved on. And I don’t mean with another person; I mean emotionally. Like he woke up the next morning and decided, “Yep. That chapter’s done. Let me go have brunch.” Meanwhile, I’m still sitting in the rubble like, “Wait, what the hell happened?” And I hate how pathetic that sounds. I do. I hate that I’m here talking about him like he was the love of my life when he couldn’t even text me back half the time. But I cared. I cared. And I cared in a way that made everything feel… heavier. Like every little thing he did matter. Every smile, every silence, every stupid joke. It all mattered to me. And I don’t get why that wasn’t enough. Like—was I not enough? Was I too much? Was I… I don’t know. Wrong somehow? Every time I start to move on from that question, it just crawls back. “What was wrong with me?” And I know, I know you’re going to say “nothing,” and I know you’re trying to help, but that answer feels like a bandaid on a broken leg. You know what hurts the most? I thought I was safe. I thought—finally—someone chose me. Actually chose me. And I let myself believe that. I let myself… relax. And then it was gone. Just gone. Like someone turning the lights off while I’m still in the room. And here’s the part I hate to admit—the big reveal, I guess. The thing I only figured out yesterday. I’m not… heartbroken because I lost him. I’m heartbroken because losing him confirmed something I was already afraid of. Something that’s been sitting in the back of my head for years. I keep getting left. That’s the pattern; that’s the part that hurts. It’s not him; it was never him. It’s what he represented: another person who decided I wasn’t worth staying for. And that—God—that feels humiliating to say out loud. But I’m also—strangely—relieved to finally understand it. Because now I can stop pretending the breakup is about him. It’s about me. And not in a blaming-myself way, but in a… “I finally get what wound this ripped open” way. So yeah. That’s where I’m at. Not okay, not totally destroyed… just finally honest with myself. And honestly? That feels like the first real step forward I’ve taken since this whole thing started. 

After that, I decided to send it to my teacher. I knew I should change something around to make it sound more like me, but I was tired from work. The next day, she told me to stay after class to speak to me about something. Something inside me said to me that I was found out, which I was right about. She told me that the work I submitted did not sound like me at all, and now, reading it back, I understand what she meant. And that is how I find myself writing this work.

Cites:

(ChatGPT), Year (e.g., 2025), ChatGPT (ver 4) https://chatgpt.com/