F&CK The Haters. No Chump Will Steal My Joy!

Know that friends will always come to your rescue

Last week I was devastated. There’s nothing crueler than familial hurt because it takes you off-guard. You don’t expect it. But when it happens it’s a cruel thief in the night, robbing you of your ability to trust, love, believe.

Last week, I sent you a note and expounded on it in this essay.

I’ve often said that friends can lift you up when you’re below the floor. They can serve as a patchwork of family when family ceases to exist. I believe love is earned, it’s far from unconditional. And when your family tears at that fabric, erodes the quilt you’ve made, it’s perfectly fine to refuse your love, to not forgive.

I accepted the limited relationship I was going to have with my pop where much of it centered on theatrics and my ability to perform. I accepted it because I loved him and I was willing to take what I could get. It’s funny because he was once a noble, honest man—free of duplicity and cruelty. I was the asshole. I was the two-faced bitch, and I own the kind of woman I was once. Yet, it’s interesting to see how our roles reversed: how I’ve gained perspective with age and he chose to return to childhood. No longer am I interested in talking about people behind their back or playing the mean girl—it’s tiring and it fills no void in the end. It’s you digging through emptiness trying to fill the hole in your heart with the hurt from the people you’ve wounded.

I see no point in being cruel when it’s far easier to be kind. Now, if I don’t like someone I merely excise them from my life and let them live theirs in peace. Who am I to disrupt it? Because crooks always come undone in the end. Always.

Today, I had my monthly chat with my dear friend Krista. Ours started as a professional relationship—I hired her as a designer and illustrator on client projects and it turned out we had much in common although we’re markedly different people. Our work relationship was easy so it made sense to evolve it to a friendship where we talk for a few hours once a month. She’s in Canada and I’m, well, wherever I am at the moment. We talk about our work, our art, and sometimes our lives and our conversations are wry, honest, and inspiring. She is a tsunami of joy and I always feel warm in her presence.

She’s good people, as we used to say back in the day.

So, this morning she wanted to talk about the thing with my pop. I was less emotional about it and what started as a story of betrayal dovetailed into my fear of what people think of me. Oh, she’s weak because of this. Oh, she’s sad because of that. Oh, she’s a loser, a has-been, a pick-your-mean-girl-phrase-of-the-week. I was worried about writing personal essays because in my world, fiction is for the esteemed. Memoir is cute and all, but reviewers and book people will always refer to your novel as the debut work even if you’ve written a memoir that was far more celebrated. It’s as if you’re not really an artist (so the cool kids say) if you’re not a novelist.

I bought into all of it. The self-indulgence of writing personal essays because it can border on navel-gazing if you’re not careful in exercising restraint or perspective. I bought into presenting myself as this shiny, smiling, unbent person because people want to be around happy people, hire them, etc.

And while I’m a damn good story writer and I have achieved great things in my life, I’m flawed, sometimes bordering on broken. While I love writing fiction, I realize my work shines when I’m the subject regardless of how much I hate to admit it. My personal essays reach more, touch more, and isn’t that what we want as artists? To get people to feel something, anything? Even if it is violent discomfort. I think of Plath a lot in comparing her earlier work to her final Ariel poems, and she is radiant when turning the lens inward. The language is chiseled and precise, the scenes violent and beautiful at once. Isn’t that what we want as artists—to go where we shine, where we are at a command of our prowess?

As Krista said, why would I let the haters win? Why would I let them steal my joy? Why should I let people who thrive on the misery of others make me miserable? Deprive me of the one thing I’m good at. Because while a handful of people revel in my missteps and sorrow, hundreds, thousands feel less alone.

When I wrote about starting anti-depressants and how it would affect my life, my writing, hundreds of people wrote me. Friends and former colleagues admitted their struggles with mental illness and feared of being real because the world doesn’t particularly like real. Or, let me revise—the world likes real in small, digestible doses. They want you a little messy, but still neatly assembled. Better to hide the mess behind closed doors. Better to perform for the peanut-crunching crowd where nothing is real and everyone still, invariably, hurts.

Krista suggested to find a way to make peace with the hurt and the art. Find a way to create the work you love and shield yourself with the refuse that sometimes follows it. So, I’ve decided on this—share only the best personal essays here, in this newsletter, where I have some control on how it’s distributed and who can read/comment on it. Strangers can’t swan in and leave their vitriol lest they be banished. And for the rest who secretly take joy in my faltering, well, I have to wonder about their character. Especially as some are mothers. What kind of values they’ll instill in their child when they’ve occupied the role of the petty child. How can they preach kindness when they themselves are unkind? I have to remind myself hurt people hurt people and it’s not my business to fuel their misery.

It’s my business to put good work out into the world and let people know they are not alone.

So, onward!

Warmest, f.