Everyone Hates Me & I'm a Bad Person (Thank You, I Love You Too)

A quick update about the state of my psyche, contracting shingles at 35, & famous people problems

I’m sure you’ve seen the video. It’s about 10 years old, but it is aging well: If People Left Parties Like They Leave Facebook. I am not leaving Facebook, my income depends on it. I’m just taking a weeklong social media break. I want to begin by acknowledging that no one cares and I don’t need to announce this, I could just do it. But it feels important to share that for the past several years I’ve started having what I jokingly (but in all seriousness) refer to as “famous people problems.”

This came to a head about six years ago, when out of the blue I began getting recognized by strangers in public. They would come up to me to tell me they loved my writing and ask for a hug. This started at the same time I was getting VISCOUSLY verbally assaulted and abused both online and in real life by community members and people I thought were my friends, all because of some random post I made on FB about my own life or a broad social pattern. It was WILD. I had no idea my words were so powerful. I wasn’t even doing the online sessions and classes yet. My page was friends only, there were only like 400 people on my friend list.

This experience was also very socially isolating. When the social feedback you receive is so wildly polarized, it’s really hard to get an accurate read on your own impact, vulnerabilities, and responsibilities. And the thing is, I’m not a celebrity. I don’t have millions of dollars to soften the blow of public scrutiny. I don’t even have a husband who pays the bills while I build my business. I live in a small, extremely conservative town where social reputation matters. And, at the time this started becoming a thing, I was a sick single mother of two children making less than $20,000/year.

After Hurricane Helene, I made the leap to monetize my Substack and start taking myself more seriously as a writer; to acknowledge that I am, in fact, brilliant at information synthesis and socio-cultural analysis, and that my words matter and make a contribution to the so-called meaning crisis. I had recently lost an entire friend group, subcommunity, the love of my life, and two close female friends over social issues that mirror the impact of my writing. So when people sent me these messages as they became paying subscribers, I couldn’t take it in. It hurt that there were people who saw me accurately—and beyond that, it hurt to realize that everyone doesn’t hate me and I’m not a bad a person. You know how it is.

So I want to say thank you. I can’t exaggerate how damaged my heart, psyche, and body have been by the trials I’ve faced in my life, or how my presence on social media exacerbated that damage while also liberating me from the prisons of in-person invalidation and marginalization I was facing. A lot of people in my real life community didn’t see me until they read my writing. And the people in my online community have consistently saved my life.

As I lay in bed on week two of a nasty shingles flare at age barely-35, surrounded by the debris of Helene, I am thinking about inflammation. How my body is inflamed, social media is inflamed, my community is inflamed, and the mountains are on fire. I have been crying myself to sleep every night for a year and a half, but now I am remembering to breathe slowly and tell myself, “I am safe in this moment,” over and over and over again. I need to rest, clearly. And, for what it’s worth, there is so much therapy happening over here, and it’s helping.

I’ve been reading about parasocial psychology and I know it’s unpopular to tell your audience “thank you, I love you too.” But it’s true, and I do. I still can’t take it all in. I’ll be glad to take a break so that I can begin to tell the difference between fantasy and reality when it comes to that feeling that everyone hates me and I’m a bad person. I know none of this matters and nobody cares, but it does matter and everybody cares. Thank you, I love you too. See you on the other side of the pause.