MODERNSHAME

MODERNSHAME was created because misery loves company. it is a place for emails better left unsent, texts that should have stayed in the draft box, and other pieces of ourselves that we put out there too quickly because we can.

why share regretful correspondence? because we have all been there, and a collective cringe is so much better than a solitary one, alone behind your computer screen thinking unsend! take back! undo!

you can't take it back, but you can put it here.

SUBMISSIONS will be posted anonymously. this is a site for shedding dirt, not getting it. no names will ever be posted.

we want authentic, but not damning. we will XXXX-out any identifying details contained in your emails if you don't black them out yourself.

include a brief explanation of the email, your city and state, and consider yourself absolved.

modernshame@gmail.com
Mon May 5

i don't know if we're really friends

a boy and i stopped seeing each other due to mostly mutual non-attraction. i wanted to be friends, badly i’d say, by the earnestness of this email. shudder, shudder. part of me wants to write him an email saying, uh, remember me, sorry i was sort of a nut, but …. no.
san diego, california
—-
mornin xxxx,
kajsdkfljskdljjsladkjflaskjdfkl blahhhhhhhhhhhh.
i was going to craft and compose an email teeming with articulate and well-thought out thoughts, but, i’ve changed my mind. i will say this. last night xxxx had her baby and i was there with her and watched her baby get born and it was at once very cool and very gross and i wanted to talk to you about it but i had a feeling that that was somehow not within the parameters of our relationship, me calling you in the middle of the night to talk about life, and basically i don’t know if we’re really friends. part of me wants to talk to you and figure this out and part of me wants to do anything but that, and just let what happens happen, even if that means we speak with ever decreasing frequency until contact teeters out altogether, as seems depressingly inevitable.

i’m not sure how you’re supposed to respond to that.