I’ve spent my entire day today and every part of yesterday I could spare from my real life responsibilities saving my writing content offline here. It’s over 374 pages in a single spaced word processing document, and I didn’t even keep everything or include any of the fiction. That’s a lot of words of care and hope and gratitude I’ve tried my best to put out there over the past 6 years, and now I’ve saved what means the most to me. So now I’m out. And I will not be returning here this time. It’s not good for me anymore. But I wanted to write something about my friend @accidental-muse, and to share personal things about myself I’ve shared before here in slightly different wording and less detail. I guess this is a farewell here but also, mostly, this is for Dani. I told her she can share this here if she wants to (and I hope my followers who have contacted me get to see it, but if they don’t…I know hers will get to see it and maybe folks who need to see it get to see it if she shares it…and she’ll get to see it even if she doesn’t). Anybody who has read my shit before ought to be able to recognize this is really me even though I’m not here anymore (for my sanity), and it’s not someone else or Dani herself concocting this or whatever other crazy shit some people here are gonna speculate.
It’s gonna be long (of course). It’s gonna include a lot (it is a sort of swan song, after all). It’s maybe gonna sound a little harsher than stuff I usually wrote here, at least in parts. There aren’t any tags because I’m out after this and the tags disappear on a reblog which is how this is gonna live its entire life. There’s no ‘keep reading’ break because that shit doesn’t work when you deactivate or even get marked with a cone. There are all your warnings on this wall of text up top. I hope you keep reading though.
I’ve had pretty severe social anxiety for basically my whole life. My mom (though I truly believe at this point after a lot of work with her, when I’m 44, that it was unintentional…something she didn’t even know she was doing…hell when it was happening, I didn’t really know she was doing it; it was my ‘normal’) emotionally neglected me and sometimes emotionally abused me. It gave me a lot of insecurity getting close to other people. It’s always been hard. Always. Moving school districts as a kid made it worse. Dating as a demisexual made it worse. The election in 2016 made it worse. The pandemic made it worse. Lots of loss of people I thought would stick around for me in the past 5-10 years for whatever reasons drove me to social media, specifically Tumblr, because of the anonymity, but also the intimacy…the energy. I know a lot of people call it a shithole and a cesspool and a dumpster fire, etc. etc. etc., but in November of 2016, it felt like an oasis of kindness in my local and non-anonymous social media sea of negativity and newly revealed ugliness. The people I found were kind and open and accepting and helpful (at least I thought…I was right about a couple of them…wrong about some others). It was EASY to make connections here.
I’ve been a writer my whole life too. Written words feel safer than spoken ones to me; always have. And I felt so safe here, I wrote some things publicly. And writers (and people) I really respected (and I still do respect all of them but one) responded to what I had to say and promoted it. People reached out to me with touching messages saying my words meant something to them; helped them. That was unique and it felt so foreign I had a hard time trusting it or feeling like it was sincere or feeling good about it/accepting it at all. I’ve been conditioned to mistrust kindness and care and positive attention because it always came at a steep cost with most of my connections in life if it came at all. It still makes me feel weird and uncomfortable to be honest. But this place helped me for a long time. It made me braver. It made me confident enough to share some fiction even. It made accepting compliments and kindness and positive attention easier. Every time one of you reached out to me helped me feel more accessible and better at being a person. Every single comment means a lot to me. I have an offline file of some of them that I read when I’m feeling extra shitty about myself. It took a lot of heavy weight off J. It made both of us feel less alone. I’m grateful for all of that. I truly am.
But in the past year especially, virtually everyone I came to Tumblr to feel connected to has left, whether they were nuked or deactivated, except for a very precious very few. And a couple of people I’d grown close enough to to actually meet in person just…disappeared. They still have blogs here. They didn’t block me or unfollow me (I don’t think, although I admit my follower count had grown large and unknown again) or anything. But they just stopped interacting with me…posting anything…just…poof. They stopped contacting me in other ways, which they also had (have) access to. I only met 4 people from Tumblr in person in the 6 years I was here and all 4 of them disappeared from my life by late this summer, most well before that. One of them disturbed J so much he was worried about their partner (the woman I was friends with before she disappeared, and the reason we met this particular asshole in the first place). He said, ‘I don’t like the way he talks to <partner.> I don’t like how obsessed with weapons he is. It makes me uncomfortable. I just don’t think he’s a good guy.’ Boy was J right, and we were relieved when we learned they divorced, but the woman still disappeared from a friendship with me, and I’m now more certain than we were then that he’s a violent, abusive piece of garbage. Because the stuff his partner at the time told me was scary, but now Dani’s told me way more scary shit.
One of the people I met in person I publicly called my best friend here many times. I wrote entire pieces about her, just like I write pieces about J all the time and a few about my actual best friend who’s been hardcore there for me in my life for decades. But over the past year, she’s faded away. A lot of people do. It’s the nature of life. Not everything is meant to be permanent. But man, I really thought she was. It’s become clear we don’t have much in common at the core and our friendship (like a lot of my friendships) became really lopsided, with me reaching out a lot and receiving little to no response, and one time even hostile response to an expressed boundary. I felt invisible. Like I felt when I was a little girl not getting any attention at home but criticism. Like I felt when no one showed but my best friend for my 16th birthday party. Like when LITERALLY nobody showed up for my bachelorette party before J and I got married (guess if there’s no penis cake or strippers or booze, you’re too square for someone to show up for Cherry Coke and homemade tapas and you only). Like I felt after the election in 2016, when all my ‘friends’ who had come to Kentucky Derby parties at mine and J’s house for 6 consecutive years…ALL of them…suddenly had ‘something come up’ on the first Saturday in May in 2017 (J took me and our son to a local amusement park that day instead; we didn’t even watch the race that year. J said, ‘Who cares if no one can come this year, peaches. More hot browns and derby pie for me…’ <3). She knew all these stories. And she disappeared anyway.
I work on my social anxiety and praise/kindness aversion and agoraphobia a lot. I really do. But all of those things have well established foundations for me. I have a whole lot of experience from a lot of sources that validates all the shit I have to work the hardest on improving about myself. Which just makes it fucking harder.
And then I couldn’t even write any new shit for a year and a half. NONE. Not a new fictional paragraph. Not a sentence. For 18 months and change. I thought I lost…I dunno…most of the me I kinda liked and felt good about. The me I WORKED HARD to like and feel good about. I still had J and my son, obviously, and that’s certainly nothing to turn your nose up at; they are fucking awesome. But as wonderful as they are, that’s not ‘me.’ That’s ‘J’s wife’; me connected to J (which again…is awesome…but where’s the me without J then?). That’s ‘Boy’s mom’; me connected to my son (which is amazing! I love being my son’s mom! But motherhood is almost entirely selfless). Those are pieces of me…extremely important pieces of me. But there was such a big piece missing with the writing, I felt like I was just gone. I really did.
But you folks know who showed up for me every single day this past year? Who willingly and enthusiastically went from a mutual ‘I like shit you post here’ friend to a real bad ass, show up for you every day friend? Who got sober at the same time she was showing up for me? Who read 95% of my fiction…ACTUALLY FUCKING READ IT, not just reblogged it or stated an intention to read it (only one person other than her and J have read this much of it) at the same time she was showing up for me? Who cracked open a part of myself I’d buried for…I dunno…my whole fucking life basically…’accidentally’…and it inspired an entire novel-length fiction piece in like 10 days after 18 MONTHS of crickets? And then wrote something so beautiful and moving about it that I cried for like 2 hours because I’m still shit at accepting kindness and compliments but like…I love it and her? Who drove me to a place where I can love what I made even if no one else likes it but me for the first time?
Over the past year, Dani and I have talked about SOOOOO much stuff. So many things. We’ve watched 3 entire TV series, 2 movies, working on almost finishing 2 more TV series, and in the middle of another together (plus like…Letterkenny and Derry Girls forever). Those fictional watches together have driven introductions to new music and re-acquaintance with beloved stuff I haven’t heard in a long time. Conversations about our youth, rampant racism, the neglect of the working class, sexism, homophobia, 90s fashion, how fucking Wesley Wyndham-Pryce on Angel looks FREAKISHLY like J when I met him (he wore the same fucking WATCH, people…it was fucking weird…but cool…because Wesley falls in love with a girl on the show who’s a lot like me…and I love that shit). We talked about alcohol and sobriety. We talked about what we had in common growing up Catholic and our families and the differences we have but we still dig each other a lot. We talked about anxiety and trauma. We talked about how some people are attracted to the same relationship dynamic they grew up in (her) and some people are attracted to the opposite (me) and how that can be good or bad either way, depending on what kind of dynamic that was. We talked about SHE DESERVES A GOOD MAN. Dude, we talked a LOT over the past year about how she deserves a good man. She does. SHE DOES. And we started watching Shameless and she saw Fiona (maybe a show spoiler here, so I guess beware a little), and saw a little bit of herself. Because Fiona deserves a good man too…but she doesn’t THINK she does…so she sabotages herself a lot. When she’s with a good man; when she attracts a good man…she pushes him away. And we finally, finally, finally, like…fucking 2 weeks ago maybe…started talking about making room for a good man. A man like MY man. Someone kind to her. Someone respectful and supportive. Someone who can provide not only humor and physical intimacy but connection and consistency and emotional intimacy. Make room for him, Dani; you DESERVE that; don’t push it away. It’s scary, but it’s WORTH IT.
A year, people. A fucking YEAR. Of this progress with patience and self-worth and determination and acceptance and forgiveness. A year of consistent routine and reciprocated, consistent, positive energy and friendship. A year of progressive CALM and PEACE. I got to be there for that. It was pretty fucking rad. It was amazing to have a friend who wanted to spend time with me and give me consistency. Who took the time to get to know me as well as I got to know her. Who made me braver and more confident while I made her calmer and more peaceful. Symbiosis. Magic. I believe Something Out There…divine intervention, collective energy, fate, luck, deliberate choices…some combination of all that shit…puts the people in your life you need when you’re ready for them. And whatever that Something is put Dani and me together this year. It felt (and still feels even though I’m not here anymore) like it was not an accident. She calls herself accidental. She’s an INTENTIONAL muse. She’s made my life better for a consistent year, the way J makes my life better. THAT level of consistency. Yes. The only people who have made my life better with such consistency are J, my best friend in real life of over 30 years, a contact I kept from Tumblr who has since left it, and Dani.
Every day for a year, folks. Sometimes whole entire days. Not just, ‘I’m here for you,’ but, ‘I WANT to be here for you.’ Not just for fun shit. Not just trauma sharing to collect goods she can use on me later for some kind of gain. Every day.
New trauma. Betrayal. By someone she thought was her friend. Someone she trusted. Someone she believed was an example of a Good Man that she could hold up as a tester to a person she was starting to make room for.
So yeah. It was, to quote a kind friend in observance, whom I agree with, there was a ‘radical energy shift.’ She’s angry and doesn’t know who she can trust, because she thought she could trust That Dude and she was super wrong. All this shit triggered all the old trauma she’s accumulated here from people who deceived her that they were trustworthy too, that she never got a chance to integrate. Maybe it came out a little erratic and ugly. Fuckin’ A, wouldn’t you get a little erratic and ugly if your confidence was betrayed on a level I’d equate with consent violation by a person who consistently preached the sacrosanct nature of consent? Betrayed by a trusted friend you openly defended against shit thrown at them for years? I fucking would. I’m just not brave enough to show my rawness to everybody, even if doing that would help and protect more people. She is.
For the record, Dani’s not crazy. You can’t diagnose my friend when all you see is her recent public posts. Sure, it looks messy. Trauma is fucking messy. I internalize mine. Dani doesn’t. My way’s not better or healthier. It’s just more convenient for other people. Dani’s HURTING. And she’s showing her compound pain to everybody to help them. Would I do it? Nope. I’m too shy and chicken shit and my own trauma prevents me from expressing pain and need and big feelings and I’m still working on it. Dani has spent this whole year working on herself. Healing. Finding peace. This shit busted it to pieces, at least temporarily. But she’s not fucking crazy. And even if she was? So what? Motherfuckers still hurt her and if it helps her heal to talk about it, she should be allowed to without the peanut gallery of pretend-internet-psychology experts talking about her because she called them out on the shitty behavior that hurt her enough to look ‘crazy.’ She still got hurt.
Picking on someone who is obviously hurting and dismissing them is just the dickest of all dick moves. I’m telling you as someone who’s spoken to Dani a whole lot about a whole lot of varied shit, nearly entirely positive and helpful, ALL of it making sense to me, that she’s not crazy. She’s hurt enough she’s not sleeping or eating and she’s still trying to help other people. That’s where the ‘radical energy shift’ is coming from. It’s coming from the last straw. It’s coming from a flood of pain she’s held back for literal years finally breaking the dam.
I’m not even here anymore because I’m tired of a lot of things, and I know, like every post I made when I was actually here, and like everything I’ve ever written anywhere that someone else read, they will take from this whatever they want. I can’t control that. But if you are a person who ever actually valued what I had to say while I was here, please be nice to my friend Dani. This isn’t the person I have been close to for a year, it’s a traumatized, tired, isolated and betrayed and insulted version of her who doesn’t know who she can trust. I wish I was brave enough to protect or help her in a more effective way than a polite ask on the end of a wordy post. But that’s all I’ve got left for this place.
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