Secrets From a Girl Who's Seen it All Before: The Manuscript

“When the fairytale ends, it doesn’t sound like the closing of a book. It sounds like silence in a place that used to contain laughter—and strangeness in a place that used to feel like home” (Makayla Wrigley). 

April 10, 2025

Makayla Wrigley, Editor

When the fairytale ends, it doesn’t sound like the closing of a book. It sounds like silence in a place that used to contain laughter—and strangeness in a place that used to feel like home. It smells like overpriced cologne lingering on your favorite sweater and silk pillowcases. It feels like watching a pretty man smirk while holding a match to the blueprints you drew up with him.

There’s a very specific kind of cruelty in letting someone fall in love with a made-up character.
(Not in the same way I love Derek Shepherd kind of way—more like the I-fell-in-love-with-someone’s-alias kind of way.)

I believed the script was ours. I played the role he set for me, set the scene, and planned the next season. While I was writing vows and songs, he was writing the next big plot twist—villainously creating a life where he could rewrite his own backstory.

It wasn’t just dishonesty—it was a mastermind at work.
(And unfortunately, no one appreciates art quite like the artist—so there I was, admiring every intricate, false little detail.)

I was the only one in the audience who didn’t know it was all just a show.
(Similar to my Derek Shepherd situation—except this one didn’t scrub in or save lives. He just buried painfully large truths with surgical precision.)

On a Friday night, I laid on my bed in a perfect outfit with perfect hair and perfect makeup, melting into silk pillowcases and the scent of him—still trying to find a reason to hold on. Twelve slow, sleepless hours later: I was blocked. Everywhere.

Any normal person might’ve let that go. But I’m not normal—I’m a perfectionist with an eye for detail. And he had my guitar.

Naturally, I ran a background check and called his mom.
The problem is, when you run a background check, you find a whole lot more than a phone number. Ex-girlfriends. Ex-almost-wives. A child. A home in Connecticut. His real life was out there, fully intact—haunting every good moment I thought I’d lived with the character he played for me.

I didn’t just get heartbreak. I got humiliation—wrapped in confusion, double-dipped in betrayal.

The truth was ugly: the man I loved wasn’t even real. He wasn’t the man of my dreams—he was the little boy who never grew up. The one who met me, studied my dreams, mirrored them, and performed them back to me until I believed in the story he made up.

I wasn’t ghosted. I was erased.
Ripped out of the manuscript like a chapter no one was ever supposed to read.

But that’s when I remembered: I’ve always hated how I’m the one who writes the stories, but no one ever tells mine. Until now.

Because this? This one’s mine.
And I’m telling it. Loudly. Clearly. Truthfully.

I came out of this carrying more truth than he’s ever been capable of holding.

He can keep his lies.
I’ll keep my guitar.

And every last word of this absolutely insane, wildly true story.