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Last week, I had dinner with a friend. We went to Sant Ambroeus and ate the most delicious vitello tonnato and I had a martini and we talked about many things including what make us very very angry. As it turns out, she and I have the same emotional trigger. I do not care if you disagree with me. I respect many opinions that are not my own and I believe two smart people presented with the same set of facts can come to two different conclusions and that neither conclusion is necessarily wrong. The world would be a bore if we all thought and did and said the same things. But my girls, I really cannot stand it, I totally lose my mind, when someone acts as though I am not making sense.
I told her a story about an argument I had with someone last October that still makes me shake with anger with I think about it. The details of the disagreement are not important but the person I was arguing with was pretended I was not making sense. My sisters in christ- I know I was making sense. I might not always be correct but I always have a logical thread to my thinking. I am a virgo rising- the only thing I make is sense. I tried to be diplomatic, I talked through each step in my thinking, slowly. “Just listen.” “So even if you disagree with me, do you understand why I feel the way I do? Do you understand how from my point of view, this felt really aggressive and cruel?” I said.
“No, Hannah, honestly you sound insane.”
Remembering it fills me with rage, I may have been hyper focused on my point of view, but my point of view made sense. From my relationships- romantic, friendly, parasocial- I do not need agreement. I need acknowledgment and respect. I cannot handle being told I am crazy. It bothers me because it is condescending, unkind, manipulative, and cowardly. I am not stupid- you my girls are not stupid either- and I will not and you should not stand for being spoken to like you are an irrational child with no basis for your feelings. Pretending not to understand someone’s reasoning, when their reasoning makes sense as most reasoning does, is a dismissive and emotionally stunted way to win an argument.
Calling women crazy whenever they express their sincere feelings is misogyny.
All of that to say the scariest thing about writing is misinterpretation. Writing well requires a great amount of emotional honesty and vulnerability- I believe that is true even for fiction writers. To demonstrate humanity in black and white on a blinking screen, one must share very honestly not only their perspective but also the bad choices and cruel actions (that they perpetrated and were victim to) and happy moments and fears that forged that perspective. A writer can bear her soul on the page and people can misunderstand what she means to say.
Terrifying.
Every person has a story to tell and when women tell theirs, people call their books self-indulgent or trivial. 365 pages of honesty can be dismissed with “hyper emotional”. One sentence taken out of context can change an entire narrative. But stories are valuable, writing is therapeutic and reading helps us connect with others and with ourselves. And so while the worry weighs on me, always, I still write.
When I worry that all of my writing is bad, that nothing I say will sell, that all of this really is boring and masturbatory, I try to keep working. Because no one else can tell the stories I can tell and because even if I am crazy or a bad person or self-obsessed, I still have something to say.
If you see me alone at the Sant Ambroeus bar with veal and a notebook, please say hello.
…
I love you more than you can imagine.
xx
Hannah
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We are on the same page! I’ve always being proud of how “cool and collected” I am. However, I’ve learned that, at times, this quality of mine borders on pathological, because there have been time when expressing anger would’ve been the appropriate response. Since then, I’ve been making a conscious effort of expressing when my feelings have been hurt (especially by men). Some people have not taken this change in me very well and it makes me fucking angry! I am not crazy for expressing how I feel and I’m allowed to feel however I want even if it doesn’t make sense to other people. It totally makes sense to me. As always, I enjoy your essays very much!