I want to first thank you all for the amazing response I got to the previous posts in this “series” (it wasn't meant to be a series).
In hindsight, I thought I was prepared to write the “misogynist” post because my previous two posts had been so well received and the discussion that followed was, IMO, very engaging and thoughtful.
If you're looking at the “part 4” part of the title and wondering if you missed something, have no fear. Parts two and three are works in progress in my drafts. I'm just skipping ahead a little.
My first two posts (and I apologize for not linking to them, I'm just incredibly tired- but if you click on my profile they're easy enough to find) required a lot of vulnerability and honesty, even all the ugly. Neither were easy to be 100% genuine about.
What I didn’t take into account is that being the subject is a lot harder to be honest about. Writing about it was difficult. Tending to the comments and all the trust so many of you placed in me and our community was harder.
In my very first post I quoted Hemingway, who I'll simply paraphrase now: there is nothing to writing, you just sit at the typewriter and bleed.
I've understood that for a long time- I actually have nightmares about people being able to flip through the many notebooks I kept when that was the only way I had to spill my thoughts.
But I greatly underestimated what it would be like to take what should have probably been a private rambling public.
I've written and published so many dark and personal stories here I thought writing and posting “Misogynist” would be roughly the same.
It wasn't. I don't want to belabor the point but I thought I was telling you all about scars.
I was instead ripping Band-Aids off of wounds that hadn't healed.
Since then I've been sick and shocked and confused and struggling very deeply with a lot of trauma and confusion.
So I am going to take care of myself for a while. It's been a long time since I've done that. I've been dealing with all these open wounds while also trying to come to terms with what SCOTUS will rule in June.
(As an aside, I find it darkly hilarious that no one *really* knows how that ruling will go “until June,” because, y'know The Handmaids Tale and the protagonist. Whatever, I get lost in the weeds sometimes.)
TL,DR:
I have to deal with some of the wounds I opened when I wrote and published that last post. They are much deeper than I realized and they're haunting me.
I don't want anyone to worry about me while I'm gone (I know it's incredibly arrogant to think you would) so I thought I just take a minute to let y'all know:
I'll be back when I'm better.
