The story behind why I post on substack is not a short one. I wrote this essay to answer my own questions. Why I was writing on substack, why I was writing what I was writing? What made me desire this deeply personal digital footprint?
I have always been a writer. Since writing founding father fanfiction1 with my best friend at my family’s PC to filling up spiral bound, college ruled notebooks with my nightmarish sci fi world I have had an incessant need to write. Not yet an obsessive urge to document, simply to write, to tell stories. As JD once said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
I didn’t start writing based on observation until I read The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot and realized I could write about my own life. So I began to, everywhere.
I didn’t have a diary until I went into sixth grade. I had been writing my thoughts everywhere, on my homework, on napkins, on envelopes, literally anywhere I could find. I had reserved the notebook for fiction, for spaceships and girls who liked girls, and it just didn’t occur to me until reading The Princess Diaries that a notebook could house my thoughts. Then and there I began to observe.
Once I started, I couldn’t stop. My head moved like an owl’s, sharp and sobering, taking in the world around me in order to try and make sense of it (later). I would attempt —I have never yet succeeded— to make sense of the world by regurgitating it into whatever notebook I had chosen. It was usually black, fake leather bound, small and slim. I had dreams of being able to line all of them up on a shelf like my mother did, using a label maker to print out the dates and run them on the spines. Sometimes the dates were out of order. The shelf was never perfect. This dream devolved when I tripped, fell, and dropped my notebook in a lake. The notebook was almost new, there was nothing really lost, but I had to get a new notebook from the camp store, and they did not have the chic, black notebooks I had become accustomed to.
This diary had a built in (also matching) pen, and a cardboard cover quickly stained by my dirty fingertips. It was the best. I felt no need to ‘preserve’ it, to keep my writing small and factual; without the (unknowingly imposed) self constraints of the quasi-moleskin my emotions touched the page for the first time. I remember the feeling now, the tunnel vision, the sweat of my palms, of my bum, the excitement that seemed to root me to a picnic table.
I began writing poetry in chalk at summer camp. “I learned how to write a haiku in school,” I bragged as I bent over the hot asphalt.
Mama told me: I
Gotta go to camp, it’s hot!
I miss Chesapeake.
It was certainly not proof I was a poetry prodigy; but I was learning, experimenting. I was putting my feelings Out There for the first time, and I was loving it. Poetry’s jail has given me a lot of freedom. I was letting go, and no one hated it, no one thought it was weird. So I kept letting go. I told my diary everything, about how weird I felt, how all of my observations made me feel worse about myself. I thought I would never fit in, I thought I would never know love.
I spent the next decade of my life trying to fit in and find love. I still haven’t stopped trying.
Ever since I began to write I have been unable to stop. When I write, a weight is lifted off my shoulders. Yet without fail, as soon as the rush of endorphins wear off the weight is back. I have a backbone made of glass2 and break very easily.
The Weight is ever present. It is only noticeable to my eye in its absence, it’s presence cocoons me, a thick smoke I get lost in. It’s crumbs in my sheets, scabs on my head. It’s awkward and hard to address. It’s noticeable to the watcher within minutes of meeting me. Oh, this one’s got a big weight.
I stave off the weight as long as I can by microdosing emotive sharing in other ways — instagram — but it doesn’t work. I have deleted, redownloaded, and deleted instagram more times than I can count. I am sick of it. It is not real! It is not what I want! It’s literally fake. I struggle with online dating for the same reasons, I can’t connect through a screen, however much I want to.
I cannot connect through the screen, through short form content. Pictures, text messages, tweets, none of it hold my interest. I have such a vendetta against fake connections that I will embarrass myself in order to hold on to a real one. As DFW said, “Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.” I think he was talking about addiction, and in a sense I am to. It’s borderline voyeuristic, the high I get from sharing my inner thoughts with others.
I just want to be known. I have spent my life trying to know others, trying to figure out how they work, just for them to want to know me. I have surpassed wanting to be liked, being known is what I crave. I’ll double text, say the wrong thing, spend a couple hours on an outfit; these pedantic actions I swore to myself I would be above. I never wanted to be the girl that lives for other people, but I have become her. I am insatiable in my need to be known, to be truly discovered.
This animalistic need wakes me up early in the morning. I spend my early hours curled up in bed, drafting my text messages of the day in my head. It’s pathetic, he’s just some guy; I turn to my substack.
I’ve given you all another deeply personal essay because no one will ever know me like I know myself. But I want them to. Because how awesome would that be, to have someone who remembers who I am so well they know me as well as I know myself. Because to remember is to know. In a world of simulated and distorted reality, fast, messy, mistake-filled reality is the only path left to take if connection and community are the goals.
I’m not saying publishing this substack is going to help me find my soulmate,3 but with every word I write, with every word I share with you all, I’m Lifting the weight off my shoulders. What you all must remember is that this is my weight, but you have one too. Your weight is liftable.
When I send a too long text baring my soul, I’m lifting the weight. When I insist we phone call once a week to keep our friendship alive, I’m lifting the weight. When I write in my diary, I’m lifting the weight. I’m lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting. I don’t begrudge others for not lifting: I’m really good at it. Perhaps I should begrudge them, just a little, but I don’t. Maybe I’ll have to start begrudging; maybe I have to set some emotional boundaries — so I don’t get my heart broken so much — but for now I’m okay lifting. I’ve chosen this life— to be a writer; to refuse to coward to my feelings —some of this weight I love to bear.
Said fanfiction was of of the founding fathers being carpenters, and in turn taking up the role of Paul Revere, nothing weird.
https://genius.com/Gracie-abrams-let-it-happen-lyrics
or make this guy text me back
I have never felt so seen. I love everything you write here! Do not stop!