smart enough to wish i was more kind

meaghano:

“This is so brave.”

I have started to notice the way people say that when women write memoir-y things. This is a thing people do and it’s annoying but now I can’t stop seeing it. And I like to write these memoiry things, on whatever small scale (does twitter count?). I absolutely have that compulsion, and am fairly aware that I have a knack for it, and I find it really rewarding to do. It’s so funny to me though because, while I can’t speak for others, it seems to me like the least brave thing. 

I guess any courage I have is just knowing that everyone is really fucked up, and we’re usually fucked up in similar ways, so who cares. That’s not bravery so much as self-awareness? And it’s really not narcissistic so much as it requires empathy. It’s narcissistic to think you are the only idiot with money problems or love problems or work problems. If you look around and realize everyone else has variations on your same theme, it’s very liberating. And true! 

And so from there, writing about something crappy that happened to you - especially if it was your fault, if you did it! — and making it funny and compelling and entertaining? That is just advantageous, on a lot of levels — that’s just opportunity, baby. And it’s such a human compulsion to me, to confess. It so transparently satisfying on the basest level. Not in a bad way — I don’t think it’s boring (when it’s good), or any more self-involved or indulgent than anything else. I love reading this shit, and so does pretty much everyone else. It’s about the human fucking condition and it teaches about ourselves and the world. It helps us cope. It’s all there is.

But brave? Come on. You are taking something crappy and either making literal money from it, or sharing it with the world, who will then tell you they love it. You are benefitting from the bad thing! You have fulfilled the great promise of writing: you have transcended the crappy thing by imposing a narrative on it, you have made art from it, and you are loved more for it.

Everyone wins. 

You took a risk that people would hate you for it, sure, but the promise of their love for you outweighed it. Your desperate need to be loved by everyone in the world outweighed it.

“So brave!” Oh shut up. Unless you are a whistleblower or calling out a tyrannical government or a murderer or something (all legitimately brave!), say it’s good or funny or deft or revelatory or fascinating or compelling or “I just really love knowing that you fucked up and it gives me great satisfaction and makes me relate to you even more, and feel less bad about my own human self.” 

That is enough! That is all there is!

Know that while you may feel it’s brave to overcome the fear that others will judge you, once you get over that, it is really fun and really a thrill and really psychologically satisfying to be loved for all the reason you fear you’ll be hated. It’s a great, desperate delusional shtick. “Oh you think you love me? Well, let me show you the worst parts of my brain and my self. Oh, you still love me? Ha! Wow!” <— not brave. Kind of pathological actually.

It’s fun to do, though, and fun to read. It really helps people — readers — sometimes. I believe that. But I don’t know about brave. You’re a fucking writer. You basically are inept enough that you can’t function in your life without mediating through your own brain and then imposing it back on the world and expecting to be loved for it. Ha! 

Brave is getting out of bed in the morning and just living your life, and living with your choices. Brave is making choices without asking the public to affirm you for making them.

Or at least right now I am convinced of that, though I am kind of drunk tbh, and really having a hell of a time lately.

I just don’t think it’s fair to hold writing to “brave.” I don’t think that’s necessarily what it sets out to do. If we were brave, we wouldn’t need it. 

I’ve found that in the past few years I read things with an eye for the perfect blockquote that summarises everything that hits me about a piece of writing. Tumblr taught me that. I’ve found that recently it’s become almost impossible to do. That really, it’s always been unnatural. It’s only just dawned on me that I had learned to read wrong.

This piece about a grad student who had a side gig ghostwriting Sweet Valley High books hit me in so many places  because of so many reasons (not all of them contained in her smart piece) that I could no more hide behind just one giant, representative chunk. So here are a bunch:

1

Hadn’t I had always been too much of one thing or another?—too Midwestern. Too focused and bookish to the world outside academia; not focused enough inside it.

2

People—other people—had histories they talked about, outside of books. Courtyards I could half-see where people were dancing. Lives formed, marked by things I didn’t know. In Oxford, living near sweet-faced boys in black gowns who hinted of public schools I didn’t know and joined secret societies and vanished up into stairwells, laughing, I realized there were spaces that opened up somewhere—into big rooms, filled with light and people—that I couldn’t see. Had never seen.

3

I was unmoored, twenty-three, too old to depend on my parents and too young to make a life yet on my own.

4

Your task, my thesis advisor in Oxford told my tutorial partner and me, is to be original. Your thesis won’t pass otherwise.

I haunted the bookshops, certain my argument had already been written. Afraid to ask him: is original the same thing as different? As important, or relevant, or even good?

5

Partly, I think I kept ghostwriting for the same reason I kept signing on to be a TA. I was afraid of becoming dispensable. If I stopped—even for a few months—someone else would grab my place. The editors would stop needing me. […] “More” for me meant “better.” If I taught three sections a semester, that meant I was in demand. Eight books a year meant they wanted me. Me.