I ve got good news and bad news.
The good news is:
I m not going to take my English work offline.
This entire site will stay as it is – for many reasons, some positive, some negative.
I don’t think it matters.

The bad news is that when updating and archiving this site, I realized I don’t have anything to write anymore.
It’s all been said.
There is no reason to keep writing as LS Harteveld, except for the performance project Lauren Harteveld (1995) but that will be an offline endeavor.

It’s my birthday Friday, and the year has gone by without sex.
My lover broke up with me in December, but we had not been intimate since summer; That’s how this worst year of my life probably started off on the wrong foot.
By thinking I was in a relationship, when I wasn’t.
Although judging from the hell I went through late July and August – I think I understood.
I picked it up.
Just that I projected it onto other things in my life that I could understand.
Money, career, mental health.
But it were never those things.
Never.

But it wasn’t just this year;
Going through my work to make books from it was an unbearable exercise.
It was awful to realize that in 2006 I ended my long term relationship to find out who I was sexually –
To have it end in 2020 with sexless year and literally nothing to show for but hundreds of blog posts.

 I know I am a writer, it’s the only thing I know how to do.
It’s the only thing I m good at.
And it’s the only thing that has been there for me, always.

But without sex and secrets, I do not need this account, from my pen name Lauren Harteveld or LS Harteveld.
If I m sexless, I m fine writing under my real name Suzanne.
LS Harteveld is obsolete.

And there is another reason I m leaving here.
Because I m beginning to think that the only reason I was ever good at relationships, was because I wrote.
The moment I announced I would take my work offline, I lost “touch” with all the men in my life. It was as if they were relieved, my manipulative pen, my magic, was finally gone.
I was human again.
Someone who could be ignored.

The 7 days between my last post where I announce I m taking all my work offline, and today, I have learned that it is all true.
It was, all true.
I created reality with my pen. You create your own reality.
And the moment I stopped writing and announced I would take the work offline, I lost the game. I quit the game.
Today was spent wondering if I even want back in.

Do I want to spend the next 14 years writing, writing, writing, so that I can be the independent mistress, who refuses to turn into a woman begging you to have a normal relationship with her.
Refuses to trick you into choosing for her.
Because she believes that ultimatums, ideas of a future together – anything EXTRA than a moment-to-moment real time decision and desire to really want to be together –
results in a false relationship.

If you want to be with me, you will.

If not not.

Writing gave me the power to make people want to be with me.
They saw the power of desire, of the moment, of being in the now. 
But seeing reality change and my power diminish days after quitting writing has made me wonder:
Was this what I actually wanted?

No.

What 14 years of writing have done, is to make absolutely sure I was never dated nor chosen, nor desired, for what I considered to be the wrong reasons.

But what one year without sex, and one week without writing and planning to take the work offline have taught me is:
My place is taken immediately by other people.
Within days!
Maybe hours.

I will leave this blog until I can do the name LS Harteveld justice:
A name designed to cover up a double life, secrets. 
Not a name I invented so I could defend the last breadcrumb of a relationship or a career as a writer.

I m not really sure how or when curating the work and turning it into books will proceed. Like I said, it’s very confronting to see how you spent the past 14 years, and have so little to show for.
But just writing this blog post, the one you’re reading right now, and coming to the conclusion to stop writing here, because it’s no longer functional – 
I hope you agree that’s a good thing.

To stay in touch you can follow this blog you re reading right now
– I ll write updates if there is any news.
The subscription button is somewhere on this page, probably on the right.

And you can follow this rock star blog under my real name.

The past 7 days I wrote a daily post on Facebook – and it really helped me see how I cannot deny who I am.
I am a writer, and my love life will always be intertwined with writing.
It was one of the blog posts I encountered this week, something I wrote last year:
https://laurenharteveld.com/2019/12/17/dating-from-now-on-rules-of-engagement-1994-project/

But I also learned to accept myself from watching the Netflix series Lucifer:
Just like Lucifer doesn’t have to, and shouldn’t need to, apologize for being the devil,
I don’t need to apologize for being a writer.
And I won’t.

And I HAVE thought about totally stepping on it and go entirely next level as LS Harteveld.
But would you?
If you didn’t “nourish” a relationship, or your sexuality- let’s imagine you took your wedding ring off, that’s a nice comparison;
If you turned your back, reasonably quietly, onto someone or towards a job or career or really just whatever it was – 
But let’s imagine it is something you ve been wanting for 14 years, something you left a quiet and comfortable situation for 14 years ago, because you wanted it so badly.

And then you turn your back onto that – whatever it was, and whatever the level of success you had achieved there – and you held your breath, slipped the ring off your finger and quietly put it on the nightstand.

And within a week the thing you’d been thinking about and writing about, and had been on a quest for 14 years to get and figure out, vaporized into thin air?
As if it never existed?
As if 14 years of dedication, growth and affirming didn’t mean anything?
Would you go back to claim it and “make it happen”?

Or would you make a different choice on where you were going to focus on for the next 14 years.
Money.
Career.
World domination.
Or maybe save the world, I don’t know;
It’s hard to think of something I could not have achieved if I had given it the time and energy I gave to figuring out my sexuality and my love life.

I don’t think I ll ever figure out what the purpose was of those 14 years I dedicated to my sexuality and relationships. But I do know one thing:
They end here.

~Suzanne

~Lauren
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

 

Books LS Harteveld/ Lauren

Lauren’s books are available at LULU
New books will also be added to Lulu, as sites are being curated.

coming soon: new books

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2020
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- (Dutch)
5. ALL THE THINGS – unpublished work 2010 – 2020

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow this blog. The subscription button to this blog is on this page, probably on the right.
.
Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/