thoughts on being seen, what makes a 'real' writer & oversharing

answers from the void

This is a 15,000 subscriber special Ask Me featuring the questions you sent to clubreticent@gmail.com. Because it’s in dialogue that solutions are born. I hope we continue finding simple solutions to complex personal doubts together.

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Question:

Dear Valerie,

I've recently returned to my hometown after a long period of working and living alone in Madrid. I'm ok with this situation - I love my family and I'm thankful for their care and support - but at the same time, I can't help feeling I'm not living my own life anymore. At 30, I've just finished my Ph.D. and suddenly become unemployed, so I feel I'm back to square one in many ways. I still plan to move abroad to pursue an academic career, but I'm terrified of the inertia of early adulthood and parental expectations. I've had to say goodbye to so many things and people - some of them for the better - and I'm afraid to lose myself and give up on my dreams by walking the fast track of a stable job near home. I agree with your recent entry on female desire: it takes courage and self-reliance just to want more. Do you have any tips to work against your fear? How can I start to be responsible for my adult dreams?

Yours,

Desiring Young Woman

Answer:

Dear Desiring Young Woman,

Two years ago, caught up in an ironic sequence of coming off SSRIs and losing my job, I was packing up my half-started Parisian life with a roll of tape and a bruised ego, wishing they’d invent a tranquilizer strong enough for my very specific pain. I’d spent one whole year trying to make Paris happen only to find all my ambition and memories neatly packed into six humble cardboard boxes by the end of it — not even enough to fill half of the moving truck and justify its rental cost. It wasn’t square one — it was defeatcore circle of hell! There’s only so much crying at brasseries a woman can take. I felt ridiculous and cut off most of my friends to save face. Life ceased to be my own, the taste of regression so unpoetic and stale. Everything came crashing down before the engine was even at full speed: I wasn’t a disappointment to anyone but myself, infamously the biggest heartbreak in a desiring woman’s life. Failure is normal (according to pretty much anyone?) but when a vision you’ve tasted only momentarily is slipping through your fingers before you get the chance to prove your worth, you can’t stop feeling like there would’ve been more to it had you just tried harder, slept less, or been luckier.

First, I want to absolve you from that pain, because the what-if suffering is a loser’s game. Know that there’s nothing you could’ve possibly done differently to change the course of events. In times of crisis, we tend to deny ourselves both grace and credit, but you know yourself — and had there been a strategy, you would’ve absolutely applied it. Due diligence isn’t worth much when life has other plans. I had to muster up some self-respect to admit that Paris didn’t want me as much as I’d hoped — tragedy, then relief, relief, relief.

But something that feels like a major step back is just a window to new desire, I think. In fact, that has never not been true in retrospect (try to remember every time you’ve been divinely & painfully redirected before.) It’s on the precipice that new wanting is born. And losing yourself is only possible when you don’t have curiosity; what makes you think that’s going to happen? Desiring Young Woman, I can already tell you’ve got curiosity for days — it’s in every word you’ve written. It’s not going anywhere — unlike life’s volatile circumstances, curiosity is always yours to claim.

I think not resisting fear is important, too. Be scared and do it anyway, shaky voice, limbs trembling and all. Get curious, not about the pain itself, and certainly not its meaning (please don’t do that) but where it may lead you next. Leo Tolstoy wrote: “I’ve wasted time talking too much about changing one’s life. Everything temporary, external —what will be and what is— has nothing to do with us. One must strive only for what they believe to be true; what comes of it is secondary.”

What do you believe to be true, Desiring Young Woman? Go right there, run, crawl, tread water, fire-walk, and don’t look back.

Question:

On the day that you have posted the note celebrating 15,000+ followers, and encouraged us to write to you, is the same day that I shared my work on Substack for the first time. It's on the paradoxical silence of a poet. Being new to this platform, I don't know what I expected initially, but it's been so overwhelming already. The fact that I have shared something so deeply personal feels strange. I am also uncertain as to how I should proceed with this project. Did you feel the same way when you first started posting on there? What methods did you use to combat this?

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

R.S.R

Answer:

Dear R.S.R.,

When I started on Substack a year ago, I was lucky enough to swim in full oblivion to what or who this platform was made for, or the faith in my ability to grow. I just wanted my words out there bad enough to hit “publish”. I was a slate clean as they come, methodical in my yapping but devoid of a strategy. I did notice a lack of personal narrative on Substack — as in, people were writing about business, tech, or philosophy with a healthy distance between themselves and the subject of their writing. I knew I would never be able to do that — I like things up close and personal, disgustingly so, it’s how I’m wired, sacrificing parts of my privacy if it means my work is better that way (and it is). I don’t kiss and tell, I kiss and yell. In metaphors. So I went with my instinct. I, for one, believe there’s no such thing as fiction. Everything is real. Why be ashamed?