The erotic autobiographical essay I’ve been publishing here, Wallflower at a Sex Party, violated the privacy and permission of another person. It has been removed. I’m taking my violation of this person’s privacy and permission seriously, feeling the full pain and regret of it, and working to understand how I could have been so thoughtless in the first place, so that I will never repeat the violation. I recognize that not-repeating a violation doesn’t do anything to undo the damage already caused.
It’s pretty clear that I need to take a long step back from my relationship with social media and online sharing. As some of you know, I’ve already lost most of my income and have “shut down” my business (meaning, I’m not advertising Holistic Housekeeping services or course building right now, although I am still accepting old and new private session clients), which depended on my online presence and social media marketing.
For the first time in years, I’m actually in a position where my primary source of income no longer depends on online self exposure (meaning, I am not making much money right now, not that I have any other income at the moment). In hindsight, I can see how violating myself with financially desperate social media self exposure made me vulnerable to violating others. None of this is an excuse for what I did, just a way of denoting how I’m going to understand and prevent this from happening again.
I’m not sure when I’ll resume writing. Maybe in a few weeks, and sticking to more benign topics for a while. From now on, I’m going to stick to erotic fiction or fictionalize the parts of my story that bleed into someone else’s story. It’s super gross to treat other people like characters in “my story,” not only dehumanizing and objectifying them, but disregarding the consequences that sharing that piece on the internet might have on another person’s wellbeing, work, or relationships. Not using someone’s name is not the same thing as writing unidentifiable characteristics. The characteristics I wrote were identifiable; I might as well have used their name. And some of the details I shared were not my business to share.
I saw my brain doing mental gymnastics to justify my doubt about crossing boundaries and uncertainty about whether the details were identifiable. I didn’t listen to that doubt or see those justifications as warning signs that I was doing something out of line and out of integrity. I let my sad girl artist ego dominate and tell me that “almost no one reads this publication anyway,” which is really stupid. Because, obviously, it’s on a public platform. I wanted to gain more readers. The fact that I even believed “there was no chance they or or anyone they knew might read it” was a glaring red flag that I was doing something out of bounds in the first place, and a direct contradiction to my desire to gain more readers by sharing that piece.
I’ve learned about a thousand other ways to prevent this from happening again. But at the risk of falling into the temptation for excuses and explaining and implied begging for absolution through public displays of repentance/remorse, i.e. making this all about me and my feelings (which was a big part of what caused the breach in the first place) and drawing even more attention to something that this person never wanted attention drawn to in the first place, this feels like the minimum of what I should share about the many horrifying reasons why/how this could happen, when I really should have known better and done better. Or when I did know better, but didn’t do better.
It hurts to hurt other people, especially beyond the scope where apology or retroactive self accountability can do anything to undo what has already been done. And although I am not a licensed therapist and most of what happens in Holistic Housekeeping sessions is relegated to talking, listening, and decluttering, my work often touches on mental health and intimate relationships. So I completely understand and support you or any of my clients if you decide to unsubscribe or terminate our working relationship if this is a breach of trust for you, too. I see that there should be consequences when we fuck up in a way that affects someone else, and I’m willing to accept those consequences.
Sincerely, Alyssa
(Comments are off because I’m stepping off platform for a while and can’t moderate.)