On Having Something To Say...

....without needing people to hear it.

(Quick note: If you enjoy this post, please feel free to ♥️ it! I don’t NEED it to feel seen, but boy does it help….)

After a year and a half of CONSISTENCY and DISCIPLINE when it comes to writing a weekly newsletter about the pain I endure at careless hand of the universe, I find myself struggling. Has the world gotten less cruel? HAHAHAHAHAHA. But all jokes aside, what do I have to complain about, really? Nothing more than I ever did, and that used to be the fun of it. I’d get myself worked into a real lather about some minor indignity, then vomit out a tight five to six minutes of content, then feel exorcised of my trivial little trifle, and in the best case, even seen! Thank you to those who write to say you feel trifled in the same trivial way! Hearing from you means a great deal to me, even if I don’t respond. And mostly, I don’t, because… I don’t know? I’m kind of embarrassed that anyone is listening? I both want to be seen and am humiliated by the wanting? If only people could just feel my gratitude without me ever having to express it, we’d all be a lot better off, don’t you think?

But recently, I’ve been paralyzed with self-doubt, and it ain’t the cute kind. (It ain’t that “you don’t know you’re beautiful” kind, which is both nauseatingly anti-feminist and also maybe the closest to beauty I can hope for?) The world feels particularly dark, and while I am sometimes compelled to address it, I mostly wonder, what right do I have speak up? I’m reminded of a particular quote from Priyanka Mattoo’s recent essay in her newsletter Wake up to Your Life, Babe re: handling the news (h/t to Chris Duffy’s Bright Spots for leading me to it):

Do you feel guilty that you’re relatively OK, and that others are not? Does this guilt lead you to some kind of hysterical need to let everyone know 1. that you’re well-informed and 2. actually, you’re not OK? Why is that? Is it helpful? Is it a good use of your energy? What would happen if you acknowledged the privilege of your position? Are you reading the news more than once a day? Is it from a reputable source? Does anyone who read the news or spend any time online already know the information you are forwarding? Is there an action item to be executed after it is seen? Is there a call to be made or link to be signed or money to be donated or favor to be done? Or did you just read something that evoked a panic response, and you’re passing it forward like an emotional game of hot potato, because it makes you feel like you’re doing something?

So maybe you don’t need to hear me say that I am sickened by the collateral damage (ie gleeful inhumanity, needless suffering, harm to children, etc.) of all that is being broken in the name of campaign mandates and making america blah blah blah again. Similarly, you probably don’t need to hear me say that I’m not so sure what some people with whom I’ve historically felt aligned seem to be fighting so hard to hold onto. What’s being broken was already broken! Higher education! Immigration! The social safety net! It’s like watching an arsonist burn down a hoarder’s house. The burning is bad, mean, wrong, destructive. But that hoarder really should have thrown away those rotting jack-o-lanterns years ago.

Many people love this painting perhaps because we recognize the feeling.

So if you don’t need to hear me reassure you that I, too, care about the terrible state of the world — though it is always terrible for some, isn’t it? And isn’t my despair over the gruesomeness-of-now a kind of erasure for all the constant suffering that never quite touches me? — then maybe I should stick to my usual petty bullshit? But then I think of another debilitating hot take I first encountered on Edith Zimmerman’s Drawing Links from I-don’t-even-know-who, who derided Substack itself for being a place for “women to monetize their journal entries.” Granted, I’d love to be a little more savvy about the whole monetizing part, yeesh. But still! I don’t want to be that, and yet, aren’t I already? I feel frozen with fear of saying the exact stupidest thing, something that will expose my inner life as one massive blindspot, and so I think, maybe I should just shut up, because with or without my feeble contributions, the world keeps turning.

A writer, activist, and dare I say friend, Courtney Martin, wrote a book back in 2010 called “Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists”. Before I even read the book, or knew that “do it anyway” was a quote from Mother Teresa — because I’m godless! spiritually void! Very lost! — I was so taken by the simple refrain, at least the way I heard it. Do it anyway? Even if people don’t like it? Even if it makes no difference? Is that… allowed? I want to do it anyway, I do! But then I get caught in a shame loop for needing the reminder in the first place. My expectation that my actions should be heard or heeded belies my own privilege, right? My need for my actions to be well-received belies my own weakness, doesn’t it? This line of questioning is very effective way to NOT do it anyway. I am so stupid for wanting encouragement, influence, approval! When so many people never get it and do it anyway without having to be told! And then I feel like a very bad girl, and spend another week not writing something when the act of writing brings me joy. Which I then figure might be for the best. Joy, after all, is its own brand of cliche.

But there is another, gentler way to look at all of this. Once (definitely more than once), in my 20s, I called my mom, disconsolate about not getting some writing job or callback or dramatic reenactment role on The Tyra Banks Show even though Tyra “loved my look.” I remember her telling me “Hallie, you don’t have to set the world on fire,” which at the time sounded very stupid because YES I FUCKING DID?! I thought she was urging me to make peace with my mediocrity and insignificance. Now that I have children of my own, I hear her words differently. My children are whole worlds to me already, and they have literally done nothing. Neither can ride a bike. One can’t even wipe his own ass. They definitely can’t open individually packaged snacks on their own, nor should they if we want any shot at saving this burning planet! But I don’t know how else to say it except that what they think, what they do, who they are, is so important to me. And if we all could really understand how important we were to others (kids, parents, siblings, friends, animals, anything really), if we could really live in the beauty of those who love us over those who don’t, maybe we wouldn’t be so afraid to exist and be seen. Maybe it would be easier to do it anyway, because we’d know that what’s important is impossible to lose. Because nothing I write, no matter how stupid, will change the way the two little boys who call me Mom feel about me. Those idiots can’t even read.