Cucu-craziness alert, it’s been one year since I started oversharing on the internet! In the time since I started taking my writing seriously, I have self-published over 45 essays and newsletters on Substack. I set out to post once a week, and although I did miss several weeks there, I also have had a pretty garbage year mentally— so now let’s hear it for the back of the dress!
Writing has been an outlet for me for as long as I can remember. There were times when I would skip recess in school to write and even made my own comic books that the other kids in my class would pass along and read as if it was a real series akin to the literary classics like: “Captain Underpants” or “The Magic Tree House.” (I genuinely think mine was called “The Chronicles of Pie,” because it was 2004 and of course it was.) Still, I tended to abstract my message and tried to keep my readers at an arm’s distance.
Before this Substack, poetry was my main means of literary expression. I still am really fond of a lot of my writing from this time, but also see it plainly for what it is: half-hearted attempts at obscuring the “truth.” I deliberately avoided using pronouns, left details vague, and refused to be honest in any of these poems— many of which were about really complicated and traumatic feelings and experiences. Looking back at this now I see this as cowardly. Just another effect of the long shadow of shame that comes from being in the closet.
Still, part of me needed to get this work out. I needed to publish. I posted on TikTok everyday for many months, finding no real success, and so my efforts dwindled. I don’t really know why I thought TikTok would be the best place for sharing writing content, especially since I have a background in social media management (picture me as a blonde 24 yr-old girl from Marshfield dressed in head-to-toe Alo) so I should’ve known better. But this too, I think was an act in self-protection. People on TikTok aren’t typically reading poetry, not unless there is a video of Subway Surfer to its right.
We talk a lot about Cringe Mountain. And in a lot of ways I feel like one of the first explorers to its summit. I also feel like one of those frozen boy-sicles on the side of the cliff that is used as a warning for future climbers. Saying, “Don’t attempt to reach the summit of Cringe Mountain! Turn back before it’s too late.” I am also picturing this as a sort of dark ride in Disney World with royalty-free “spooky music” piped in along the tracks.
Everyone is so afraid of standing up there, all alone in the cold, that they often allow this fear to prevent them from ever really trying anything. I think this is why I quietly posted to my TikTok so frequently. As much as I was hoping to be seen, I was also really hoping not to be. Every time I would see one of my videos get shared, my mind jumped to the worst places. Surely it was shared to some group chat with all my enemies in it, talking badly about me, saying my art was bad and that my hair looked dumb. Or vice versa. But at the same time, I would be fine with my art being shared if it meant that I would become fabulously wealthy or deemed as “good.”
This half-hearted attempt at earnestness started to feel a lot like when early YouTubers released parody songs on their channel. They would put all this budget into the filming, and the mixing, and the performance, and then at the end of their video act like it was all just a joke. They’d say they were just dipping their toe into the idea—unless you liked it and made them into the next big pop star. Then they were being serious all along.
And I didn’t like feeling like Shane Dawson.
It wasn’t until one of my friends convinced me that I needed to start calling myself a writer that I actually started feeling like one. We are who we tell people we are. And if I kept telling everyone that I was a joke, then that’s exactly what I would become. With the support of this friend, and honestly many of my really special and beautiful relationships, I stopped holding myself back and started allowing myself to write seriously and to release any notions of this so-called “Cringe Mountain.”
I went on chugging writing essays every week and began to receive a lot of positive feedback. Everyone tells you to enjoy the process of making your art—how the real joy we get is along the way. It’s not about how fast you get there. It’s the climb. But somewhere along the way while I was indulging in the art-making process, my speed started slowing and I realized that the cringe had caught up to me again. Suddenly any height I had climbed brought with it the feelings of vertigo— of feeling dangerously close to a teetering edge.
During this time I asked myself time and time again, is any of this good? Is everyone too embarrassed to tell you? Does any of this even need to be said? Who is this even for—and if it’s no one, is it just for you? What kind of self-obsessed narcissist needs to bleed out all over the internet to just to satisfy some sort of innate perversion to be seen?
Wowza! That hurt my brain and, I super did not like it.
After that pang too came the realization that I could no longer create—at least not freely—and certainly not anything that I felt was worth the pound of flesh that came along with it. I was revealing too much of myself, giving too much of my essential essence away. I was losing my aura.
I’m happy to say that although that period of blockage really sucked for a while there, I was able to also funnel my energies into other avenues. I like to think of this period as my time of soaking up creativity—much like a sponge. I went to shows, painted, and tried my hardest to experience the life all around me. I did this in the hopes that one day I would be in a place where I could once again wring myself out and let the creativity pour out of me in a wash.
I’m not really sure where I am right now in regards to this cycle, I have gone back and forth a few times during this process, and at this present moment, I couldn’t say for sure what I want to come from all of this.
All that I know for certain is that I am proud of myself for sticking to a process of any sort— at least in some small part.
All that I can say is that as I look back at even the essays I wrote during my darkest periods, or episodes of un-creativity, I can still find something that resonates. And in finding something that I enjoy in such personal work, I too am finding a sense of appreciation for the artist behind it all.
And perhaps self-love is the most cringe thing of all.
And perhaps that too is okay.
Thank you for reading!