Feeling All Hell

The next time someone brings up an essay I don’t know. A writer I’ve never heard of. In that tone, the one that says “OF COOOURSE you know the famous creator of all writing that is good and holy? Ya know, the master of written work whose seminal prose is what winds the clock of time and grants us all the space in which we exist to write.” You know, how people do. The next time I’m reminded how I haven’t read Didion. I didn’t catch Biss. I don’t know know who Susan Sontag is. The next time they do it I’m going to bring up finding foil, lighters, and white powder in the bathroom when I was 8. The next time they do it I’m going to talk about the times I threw my body in between my parents while they violently argued over who used the last of the drugs. The next time someone tells me about their influences I’m going to remind them I was kidnapped at 5 years old by my aunt and Grama because my mother was neglecting me. That’s what influenced alla dis.

It might hurt your gentle sensibilities to know that some of us didn’t go to high school and college, buckling under the pressure of being middle class and misunderstood by your parents. I don’t want sympathy, I want eyes. I want ears. I want you to see me as equal. To know that while I suffered harsh reality you grew up carefree chasing bugs and butterflies. We existed in the same world. Trauma and butterflies both live here.

Stories still found me and I devoured everything but don’t you know that writing happened before they existed and storytelling predates writing at all? I didn’t have to read the canon to know what’s compelling. That’s all well and good for you. I don’t envy it, though I know you think I do or I should want to. I don’t wish my life on anyone else. I don’t think I’m better for having suffered so much. I’d just as well like to have grown up any other way. But stories are the only way I know how to talk to other people. Otherwise, I am silent. I’m sure you’ve encountered me silently observing, listening, absorbing everything until the story fills in my head and I can name those thoughts with quite sophisticated ease.

It’s not my fault the way I suffered and what I missed and it’s not your fault you grew up however you have. What I can’t take is the prescriptive nature of the academy. The way regular people reinforce it so fucking always in the ways they draw the limits. The way they make invisible concessions to the gods of “good writing.” The way the world is obsessed with boundaries without questioning if abstract is just as meaningful. Just as important. Just as worthy of consideration.

When I finally read Didion  I could only get through half of A Year of Magical Thinking because I couldn’t connect. I’m so sorry your husband and daughter died how they did, and so close together. I know you have suffered. But you suffered in the best hospitals. Without worrying about—anything—but your grief. When my mother died I got a bill for nearly a million dollars and I had a panic attack. So no I didn’t get past page 100 because our grief is not the same. I didn’t learn anything about writing about grief from the rich white lady, I’m sorry. I’m sure she was a genius.




The only reason I am here is because I don’t want to be there. I refuse. It took so much work to crawl away from a world intent on killing me. All I had was words. All I had was escaping to the library to read Star Wars extended universe novels and books on the psychology of handwriting. When self-education couldn’t take me far enough I turned to traditional education only to be othered. Only to be disrespected  and made to feel stupid and wrong. For doing it out of order. Then for not knowing the steps. Yet once I’ve relaxed into a new institution. Once they have experienced the spark of my passion it’s over. It’s “Asha is so smart.” It’s “you shine.” It’s “you can go far.” Was I not shiny before you noticed? Was I not supposed to know I shined before you told me?

It’s because they need more me’s. It's because they need me more than I do, more than they know. It’s because the world needs these stories now. They always have. I am what’s missing. And I don’t fill space by being whatever is expected. Which is fine because I don’t know what they expect from me, anyway