I’m Gonna Pour Heartbreak In The Fountain

Early 2021 I had a dream in which I was truly, madly, deeply heartbroken. The kind of heartbroken that is too devastating to be delivered by a man, even in a dream. The kind of heartbroken that can only come from being a lonely member of The Unmothered Club.

In the dream, I lived in a tiny town with a fountain in the middle that provided drinking water to its residents (it’s a dream, don’t ask 😅). One day, I was unbearably Sad x Mad about my mum being dead and so because I was a witch (again, it’s a dream, don’t ask 😅), I went to the fountain, submerged my hands in it and sang (yes, sang 😅) the words I’m gonna pour heartbreak in the fountain. And similar to a waterborne disease, my song-curse infected everyone who drank water from the fountain and inflicted upon them the same debilitating heartbreak that had crippled me so viciously I felt compelled to spread it.

I woke up the next morning and did not remember any other details of my dream beyond what I have shared, but the one thing that has never left me 3 ½ years later is I’m gonna pour heartbreak in the fountain, and its implications.

Shortly after Taylor Swift released The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD), I started ruminating on the concept of I’m gonna pour heartbreak in the fountain. TTPD’s primary topic is heartbreak, expressed via themes such as anger, betrayal, death, delusion, escapism, grief, longing and mourning. A few weeks after listening to the album on repeat, I started to daydream about my dream. About a girl who lived in that tiny town who had the misfortune of drinking water from the fountain my witchy self cursed with heartbreak. And the more I thought about her, the more I felt compelled to write about her and her heartbreak.

I have written about heartbreak on the blog before through the lens of the death of my mum. My mother’s womb was the first home I had before I came into the world and The Grief Diaries is me clawing my way through the painful, overwhelming, seemingly impossible process of learning to live in a world where my mum no longer exists. I have written about that kind of heartbreak extensively and did not want to take that angle again even if it was the genesis of my dream. I have never written about the kind of heartbreak delivered by a man (even though I have obviously experienced it), and after listening to TTPD for the millionth time I decided it would be an interesting, challenging and hopefully rewarding creative endeavour to write short stories stemming from the cursed fountain of my dream. I was inspired by the worlds Taylor saw in her head that served as the backdrop for making TTPD and tapped into the album’s themes to create the female main character and her maiden experience with heartbreak.

The ‘I’m Gonna Pour Heartbreak In The Fountain’ series is an anthology of short stories centered on and/or around a promising young woman who drank the heartbreak from the fountain and became a Crazy, Unhinged, Drunk Girl at the cursed hands of her former favourite person who is now her favourite ghost.