open wide

Quite often now, and as my time wore on in ye olde fandom days, I debated with myself the degree to which I was producing content as opposed to just talking to people. One of the biggest reasons I finally left social media was because I could no longer stand how much it felt like I was constantly putting on a show, desperate for roses thrown onstage at my feet. Once I realized that I wasn’t sharing things to share them, but instead curated, cultivated thoughts and opinions to encourage people to click the little heart icon and give me a never-good-enough shot of dopamine, I thought, huh, I’m not entirely convinced that incentivizing human social interaction in this way is a fantastic idea. And this wasn’t just on my fandom/public accounts either. It was the same on my private account, in my private online friend group. I’ve always been a bit of a people-pleaser— I don’t mean that as a humble brag, it’s a fairly insidious personality trait—and my time on social media and in fandom exacerbated that already unfortunate aspect of me to a pretty nasty degree. Please people; reap social rewards. Ad infinitum.

And now I have a blog. And I try to balance what I’m interested in vs what I imagine a reader might be interested in when I post on it. And I write original fiction. And I try to balance what I’m interested in vs what I imagine a reader might be interested in when I do that, too. And I try to be true to myself as a person and a writer in both avenues, while also maintaining an emotionally healthy distance between myself and the mostly anonymous users who have access to what I produce, meaning, yes, there is still an element of performance to it all. And I try to be OK with that. I try to accept that from the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we fall asleep, there is an element of performance to our lives.

Where the rub comes in is that the more of myself I allowed to free-roam, the more “me” I tried to be, both here in this blog and in my writing, the less people cared. Which is a tough pill to swallow. When I performed, I got roses. When I didn’t, it wasn’t even that the roses got replaced with tomatoes. It was just the fact that no one showed up. I’m pretty certain there’s a few people just outside the door listening in, but for the most part, it’s just me and yellow here in the Squarespace void.

For what it’s worth, it’s not like I’m blaming or accusing anyone or feel entitled to anyone’s attention. When I was deep in fandom mode, if a writer I liked started writing for a different fandom/pairing, or even, gasp, branching out into original work, my general (and in the privacy of my own head) response was, cool! [close tab]. Sometimes, I even stumbled across the blogs (!) of writers I liked, but because they never talked about the reason I personally cared about their existence (their fanfiction), it was exactly the same thing. Great! [select big red X in upper right hand corner]. Fandom, for all it breathlessly strives to be an endlessly welcoming and socially progressive bastion of peace and love and Superwholock, is also incredibly mercenary.

I am trying very hard to exercise self-possession, here. As interest in what I have to offer dwindles, I am logically aware that the spaces I share my work in are not the right fit for said work. It’s not that the work isn’t good, it’s just not finding the right audience. However, I am also aware that the potential audience for my work, wherever it is, is deeply niche, and any fantasies I have of speaking to a larger human truth of being alive that are universally resonant will never come to be. Pop culture tells me to embrace being a weirdo, but then we all made fun of Jughead when he did exactly that.

Complete sidebar, but surely, that speech was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, right? Everyone decided it was funnier if Riverdale wasn’t in on the joke because a meme isn’t as good if it’s on purpose, but like… pretty sure they knew exactly what they were doing… anyway…

So here I am, right? Baring my soul as much as I feel I can pseudo-publicaly, and… crickets. I was certainly no fandom celebrity in the olden days, but people engaged with my work, and talked about it, and liked it. I produced; they consumed. It feels good when people like your work. It feels bad when they don’t. It feels even worse when you decide to let that go to your head, start cutting chunks out of yourself under the misguided assumption that people are interested, and not only are they not interested, but now I have pieces of myself missing with nothing to show for it. Come This Here July was maybe the most personal thing I’ve ever written. I’d like to be clear; no one owes me engagement just because of that fact. It was more the unpleasant realization that maybe I really am alone in how I feel. Maybe the facets of human experience I explored in that narrative don’t resonate with others near as much as I originally thought. I’ve talked before about how one of the few ways I can connect with people is through my writing, but that’s dependent on what I create being of interest or relevant to them at all. Connections are two way streets. If no one’s on the other end, it’s not going to happen. And then I’m left standing on my own, like a fool, ass in full view.

When I was in fandom, on social media, in a relationship, I could fake my way through my inability to connect with others pretty well. It didn’t matter that none of those things were good for me; they still gave me the tools to bury this significant personal deficiency instead of ever meaningfully addressing it. And now I have none of those things, and no apparent ability to patch this hole in my personhood, and I’m going to level with you with a bald, semi-mortifying admission; I am so, so fucking lonely as a result.

I did it to myself. I literally wrote myself into a corner. I made sure so thoroughly that people liked what I produced, with no regard for who I am. I remember the days on tumblr of people preaching that You Are Enough Come As You Are. But I wasn’t. And I’m not. Everywhere I go I lead with what I can offer. What I can produce. The content I can create. Can I be the nicest? Or the most amenable? Or the most competent or conflict-averse? Can I be a listening ear? What can I be for you? What can I give you? Or make you? Or create for you? Because whatever I actually am underneath all that fluff is nothing. The person I am, my “true self” as much as such a thing exists, which honestly I don’t think is much at all, is nothing. Because I never worked on her. It was never about her.

It’s actually the perfect internal tension for a character, one who is deeply lonely, but also doesn’t like people, and people don’t like her. And this is also the perfect example of what I do, and why I will never be enough on my own— because I can always create something better, more interesting, more entertaining, more everything. I can always do it better in my head. I can always do it better because it’s not about me. I can always do it better because the world in my head, while touching every part of me, simultaneously doesn’t affect me at all. What I have to offer as a real living breathing human person completely separate from my ability to create is not an impressive list. In real life, with the people closest to me, I’m difficult, and persnickety, and moody, and morose, and melancholy, and hypocritical, and depressed, and anxious, and quiet, and flippant, and sarcastic, and high strung, and you know what? The maxim rings true. I am weird. I’m a weirdo. I even wear hats a lot.

I don’t really know how to exist without producing content. I can’t conceive of a world where coming as I am is enough. Where just existing is enough. And, unfortunately, my experiences, both online and in the real world, seem to confirm this belief. People consumed my content. People will not consume my personality. And it’s not even like I want them to. Maybe I don’t know what I want them to do. Maybe it all circles back to the apparent axiom of my life that happiness is not a possibility for me, that fun and enjoyment are not emotions that are accessible to me… ever, really. And how could I possibly know what I want, or what I want from others, if the act of ‘wanting’ feels so deeply alien to me?

Do I really want people to like me? Because I don’t like them. Do I really want to like other people? Because most of the time, they exhaust or annoy me. Do I really want to publish a book, when it likely means shelving what I actually want to write about? Would I even want to publish a book where I had free creative reign when no one would ever read it? I swear I want a house, sometimes it’s the only thing I can really hold onto in terms of a concrete ‘want’ in my life… but do I really? Once I actually get a house, and the dream is realized, and I realize it is not, in fact, a dream, but just a house, exciting, but still reality, and something I have to wake up for every day… do I really? Do I really want that snack, when I know it’s going to make my stomach hurt? Do I want to take that sleeping pill, that will help me fall asleep after weeks of not being able to, but also make me feel hungover and shitty all day tomorrow? What about going back to weed or alcohol or hell, taking up gambling, anything to help me power through? Well, no, because I swear I want a house and all of those things will drain my bank account, which I need to get the house I so desperately want. I swear I want friends. And a wife. And a job I love. And maybe a pet, somewhere down the line. And people who love not just what I create, but me, too.

At the same time, I don’t know if I want anything at all. In my free time, I think, what do I want to do? And I don’t have an answer, really. I have to do something, because I’m sentient. But most of the time, it comes down to what I should do, or have to do. Or whatever will pass the time. More importantly, though, wanting things is a bad idea. Because if I want something, something real, and scary, and meaningful, and it doesn’t work out, you know, kind of like trying to get a novel published, well, then I’m left standing on my own, like a fool, ass in full view.

Part of the power of writing, and sorry, because this is obvious, but it’s that you can do whatever you want. You can write that one-in-a-million or never-gonna-happen scenario of Carolyn Mary Miller and Dorothy Mildred Francis falling in love despite the odds, despite Carolyn’s suicidal tendencies, despite Dorothy’s bad personality, despite everything, and still, they stay together because I say they do. It’s kind of universally accepted that playing God is a bad idea, but, like, that’s what writers do. I can come up with a million justifications and re-framings to make something bad something good, or something impossible, possible. If I was more well adjusted, it probably wouldn’t matter, but I’m not, so that means when my real life isn’t looking so hot, I can just write myself out of it. Doesn’t change anything materially. It’s just a band-aid. It’s a weird ass coping mechanism, and one I doubt can be CBT’d out of.

This blog post is content. I feel pressure to keep the few readers I have, and to keep readers, you need to produce content. I pay for this site. It’s not a crazy amount of money, but I still need to be able to justify the expense to myself when otherwise I’m pinching the majority of my pennies— I’m planning on buying a house, didn’t you know, because I want one so bad! I am, in a way, monetizing my struggles. But I’m also reaching out. But I’m also not, because I don’t make any money from this, and I feel conflicted about posting this type of… content… at all, especially because I have to weigh what type of posts do better than others, even when the numbers are so low it feels like it doesn’t matter at all, except it does, because if I ever manage to make any money writing or producing content or being sad publicly online, well, isn’t that all just going right into the house fund, which I want, and am saving for, and probably will fix all my problems once I finally get it, and finally, I feel, as I so often do when I feel any emotion at all, like I’m showing my whole, entire ass.

It is so weird, when you think about it, how we’re expected to package ourselves up online. There are expectations in the real world, of course, of who and how you should be. Online, though, it just gets even weirder. And being a person, but one who mostly learned how to be one online, feels kind of like a dog that’s been raised by a cat. Like, I kind of mostly get it? If you saw me from a distance, you’d be like, yeah, that tracks. But up close, and for any extended period of time, the disconnect becomes obvious. The fact that I’m just not quite all there registers. Doors and windows shutter on both sides. And then we part ways, and I imagine another world where the conversation continued, and we became best friends, and embarked on adventures together, and I was funny, and enjoyable to be around, and open, and likable, and lovable. And over and over, that doesn’t happen for me, and it can only not-happen so many times, I can only fail at hail-and-well-met-ing so many times before it does begin to weigh on me. I can only reach out, and have my hand slapped away, or ignored, or politely rebuked, or choose to drop it myself, before I’m reduced to crying it out in my car on my daily commute, as if being intensely sad will somehow make it happen faster, or fix me, or make me better at all.

From eighteen to twenty-eight, I could probably count on two hands the amount of times I cried. Not because I was so happy and had no reason to; more because I was nothing at all. The last year and change forcing me to become something instead of nothing has not been easy. The search for substance, and opinion, and backbone, and desire, has been almost entirely composed of steps backward. I’m so tripped up and tired and lonely and sick of this world and everyone in it, while also begging them to spare me a glance and I… don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know how to reconcile this. I guess for as long as I’m willing to pay it, I have the slight comfort of this blog to vent, or parse, or lecture, or whine. I have the grace of a solo commute to cry on. And word docs to play around in. And other stories in my mind to retreat to.

Years and years of being high-functioning online has taught me that I am not allowed to post something so maudlin without also including some kind of PSA about self-care or therapy or medication or [insert additional overbearing and overzealous generic wellness advice here]. I don’t have any to offer. I don’t even have a joke or some rueful mirth in the hopper. I am simply tired. I am disappointed that nothing has moved for me, writing-career-wise. I am sad that the most people cared about what I had to offer was when I was working from someone else’s IP, and I am sad that I care about what others think at all. I feel ashamed and stressed about the fact that I am trying to monetize so many parts of my life. I am struggling to come to terms with the fact that I am the way I am, and that is unlikely to change, and yet, at the same time, I don’t seem to have any idea of who I am at all.

I am lonely and sad. The best I can do at this time is say that if you read this far, you probably share at least some of my feelings. Staggered as it is, meager as it is, it’s two people, feeling similarly, on either end of what could conceivably be called a connection. It’s not much. But it’s not nothing.