Megan Fox Says She's 'Not Trying to Get Anyone Canceled' by Writing About Past Abusive Partners in Book

Megan Fox revisits past traumatic relationships in her new book of poetry — but says she's not trying to get anyone "canceled."

The actress appeared onstage at Racket NYC on Tuesday night for a conversation about Pretty Boys Are Poisonous with moderator Samantha Leach, Bustle's editor-at-large. During the wide-ranging talk, which also included audience questions, Fox, 37, said she put everything on the table for this poetry collection since she currently doesn't intend on writing more books.

"I can’t control how other people react to my art.” she said, adding, “I had to write it for me. It could sell five copies or 5 million copies, [it doesn’t matter] … I had to do it for me."

Some of the poems featured in Pretty Boys Are Poisonous detail physical and emotional abuse from Fox's past relationships, though she doesn't name names. Why not? As Fox puts it, the men who hurt her are "irrelevant," and this is instead for women who've survived similar scenarios.

"For once, it should be about me," said Fox, who also expressed "frustration" that she feels she can't be fully vulnerable and candid because her celebrity status opens her up to being "picked apart."

"I’m not trying to get anyone canceled," she said. "I’m not karma." Fox also later added, "You’re never gonna cancel me because I’m not a bad person. ... You can try.”

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Fox said reflecting on her past heartache for the book was "not easy" — and she "had to pull that back" on some of her more "savage" poems. "I was taken aback by how much I’ve been through," she said.

Also during the discussion, Fox said she is now "disillusioned" to the concept of love she grew up fantasizing about: “I wanna believe, but I don’t know if I can anymore," she said, adding that it is an “existential crisis” of hers.

The Jennifer's Body actress is engaged to musician Machine Gun Kelly, who supported her by touting the new book on Instagram, writing, "my lady dropped."

About the book, Fox recently told PEOPLE that "some of it is literal, while other parts are allegorical," but "all of it is something women can relate to."

"Relationships are complicated. For most of us it's not a fairy tale. Relationships are not pretty. They are ugly. Sometimes they are a war," she said. "But through a wound enters an opportunity to grow and become a stronger more whole version of yourself."

She also told Good Morning America this week that she was previously involved in abusive relationships with "very famous people" that was never made public.

"This is not an exposé that I wrote or a memoir. ... But throughout my life I have been in at least one physically abusive relationship and several psychologically very abusive relationships," she told GMA.

She added, "I have only been publicly connected to a few people, but I shared energy with, I guess we could say, who were horrific people. And also very famous — very famous — people. But no one knows that I was involved with those people."