In the silence between whisper and shout

Depression has been hitting me hard lately, so no 50,000 words this year. I've decided to take the advice of one of my favorite writing YouTube channels and aim for 25,000 instead. It's a lot more manageable, but I'm feeling a little guilty about it, just like I felt guilty about quitting my job after one month even though it was too physically demanding. College is on hold until in-person classes come back, so I don't even have that to focus on.

Which, of course, means, "I am crying, but I don't want anyone to know, because tears are something you Do Not Do in my house."

Rest in peace, Olivia, you amazing woman.

I have little to no interest in dating anyone or getting married. I've never had a crush that wasn't based purely on physical attraction. The more I think about it, the better "aromantic" seems to describe me. It just feels right.

(I spent an awfully long time typing all this, so I figured I'd better archive it here before it gets lost to the mists of Discord.)

( Read more... )

Is holing up in your room and not wanting to interact with anyone a normal response to hearing about the death of a relative you didn't like that much?

As seen on Vanity Fair!

(I didn't intend for that to rhyme...)

I deactivated my Twitter account.

It's funny. I thought it would be a hard decision, but it wasn't. I expected to feel sad, but I don't. I'm actually really relieved. 

Writing in general is painful for me, but I'd rather make up my own worlds and characters than worry about getting someone else's right. It's less stressful that way.

Follow-up to this post, where I try to explain what happened, how I got involved, and why it upset me so much.

Back when The Fault in Our Stars was a thing, I read it because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I didn't like it. I thought it was a load of pretentious nonsense. Soon after rating the book on Goodreads, I found myself participating in a discussion with other TFiOS-haters, one of whom linked to the Whittler's recaps on the Das Sporking LiveJournal community. I clicked the link and was hooked. The recaps were funny, informative, and articulated my feelings about the book better than I ever could. I wanted more and immediately set out to explore the entire community. Somewhere along the line, I read Eragon, didn't like it, and wound up joining the Antishurtugal LJ-comm as well. I eventually discovered Twitter and followed who I thought was worth following. But I didn't just want entertainment; I wanted attention. I had no friends, online or in real life, and saw this as an opportunity to finally make some. I wanted to fit in and be liked. I wanted to be one of the cool people. I desperately wanted them to approve of and include me.

That's how this whole thing started. I was happy for a long time, or so I thought. And I did meet some genuinely amazing and wonderful people. But my new world had a dark side, even though I didn't realize it at the time.

Because so many of the people I met were writers, I felt pressured to write stories as well, despite intensely disliking writing and struggling with it my whole life. If you weren't a writer, you weren't cool. At the same time, I was afraid to write anything at all, because I didn't want to risk failure and mockery. It wasn't enough to just take apart a bad book or bad fanfiction and explain why it didn't work. There had to be a bad guy, and that bad guy was the author. I don't even want to repeat some of the stuff that was said, which ranged from uncomfortable to downright nasty. I was scared that if I tried writing, someone would say things like that about me. I still am.

I thought seeing bad writing ripped apart was just a bit of harmless fun. I never questioned anything the sporkers said, because I automatically assumed they knew better than I did about what was good and what was bad. Even when books I didn't think were that bad (Divergent, The Jewel) and books I genuinely loved (City of Bones, The Great Gatsby, Throne of Glass) started showing up on Das Sporking, I didn't question it. I convinced myself not to trust my own judgement and that I didn't know anything. My opinions were insignificant and wrong.

Things weren't any better over on Twitter. If you said or did something that could be construed as problematic in any way, you were a horrible person. If you were anxious or unhappy, you were just whining. If you were happy or excited, you were willfully blinding yourself to all the suffering in the world. There was no way to win. I absorbed all this and internalized it. If I didn't think the right thoughts, feel the right emotions, hold the right opinions, or admire the right people, I would be a bad person. Feeling upset and helpless after seeing depressing news items obviously meant I was too weak to survive in the real world.

Around the same time, something happened in real life that I don't feel comfortable talking about. It wasn't a bad thing and I wasn't responsible, but I felt ashamed and horrified afterwards. I was sure that if anyone on Twitter learned what had happened, they'd hate me.

Then came the Lindsay Ellis incident.

Lindsay argued in her video Dear Stephenie Meyer that while it's okay to hate a book, it's not okay to vilify the author. I have disagreed with things she's said from time to time, but this was not one of those times. I thought she made an excellent point and linked the video on Antishurtugal, hoping to start a discussion.

The results were disastrous. Everyone refused to even consider that Lindsay might have a point and that bashing the author along with the book (which they all loved to do) might not be a good idea. For the first time, I saw what I had gotten into, and it wasn't pretty.

(Antishurtugal is also the place where someone told me that I couldn't really say I was obsessed with old movies because I hadn't seen Gone with the Wind. I'm sorry to say I believed them. I haven't wanted to admit I like old movies since. And I still haven't seen Gone with the Wind.)

I left Antishurtugal and Das Sporking and unfollowed a bunch of people on Twitter, but the damage had been done. I can't think about the things I like without feeling a stab of guilt over liking anything at all. When I feel unhappy or uncomfortable, I don't say so because I don't want to cause trouble. I don't share my opinions because I'm afraid someone will think poorly of me. I feel like I can't trust my own judgement. I frequently worry about doing something wrong. I feel like my life isn't worth anything. And I haven't told anyone any of this, because I'm ashamed. I feel like I brought it on myself because I was too stupid to see what was right there in front of me. That what happened to me was my fault.

I feel awful.