Deep & Complicated & Layered

“QUEEN of the mommy bloggers” but she died without a crown

I wasn’t even a mom, yet, when I found Dooce. I was actively trying to get pregnant, however, and was blogging “anonymously” at BabyRabies.com about the whole process, right down to how frequently I was having to finger myself to check my cervical mucus.

I hated myself, really. But in a way that I’d always coped with hating myself- by laughing at myself and openly inviting others to laugh at me, with me.

I hated myself for not having a fulfilling career in journalism at that point. Hated myself for feeling like the college degree I worked the hardest in my life I’ve ever worked for anything for was a total waste. I hated myself for feeling so isolated, so bored. And I hated myself for wanting to have a baby.

When I discovered blogs in 2006ish, I was drawn in by how very NOT dry they were. How they felt fast and fluid and played out in my head, as I read, like a real conversation.

I immediately connected with bloggers, like Heather, who wrote with reckless abandon, dropping f-bombs, caring not what an editor would approve of. Mostly, what I connected to in Heather was that she seemed to have made hating herself and laughing at herself into a super power that made other people love her. I could do that, I thought. I could turn this self-hatred into something positive.

The first time I opened the Wordpress dashboard and let myself write felt like what I imagine driving the Audubon feels like for anyone who loves to go really fast- FREEDOM.

I see now that what I recognized in Heather’s writing was the dance I’ve been perfecting my whole life- putting on a mask of irreverence, of confident indifference, drawing out my own absurdities into caricatures that would distract most people by making them laugh- with or at me, it didn’t really matter.

Because if they saw me laughing with them, playing it cool, they couldn’t see the searing hot self hatred underneath. More importantly, I could ignore it, too.

I heard of Heather’s passing (it’s reported she died by suicide) when I woke up from a depression nap on Wednesday. I have to take them a couple times a day lately because just existing is so exhausting.

As soon as I read the news, I knew the rest of my day was shot. I tried to stay offline, to dissociate, to focus on work, but the tremors in my hands grew stronger. My breath picked up speed, heat radiated down my back. My body was going to process this with or without my mind.

I’ve been working really hard to learn how to love myself over the last 3 years, starting with leaving my marriage, progressing to checking myself into partial hospitalization, and currently letting myself feel all the shitty depressing feelings I need to. It’s exhausting work that I don’t get paid for- in fact, I pay a lot for it. I’m “healing” and on the verge of eviction.

I’ve had to spend a lot of time the last two days letting myself feel what I need to feel, and reminding myself that even though I related to a lot of what Heather wrote about, I’m not Heather.

Yes, my mental health, like hers, can be debilitating. Yes, I may have to try so many ways to treat it, over and over, the rest of my life. Yes, it may make me lash out at people. Yes, it may change me.

Yes, I saw myself in her writing from the beginning, but I am entirely in control of separating myself and my health from her ending. I am not doomed to one because I related to the other.

I’m grateful to see some discussion that’s nuanced this week. I’m glad to see so many holding space for Heather’s entire humanity. I hope that’s just the beginning of a new normal on the internet. That we have evolved to holding space for people’s deep and complicated layers. Could we just try?

In my head, I have an entire monologue about trolls and GOMI, and witnessing an organization so dear to me and many others- that was literally saving lives, including my own- get ravenously dismantled over a single weekend day. But I won’t wade deeper into that personal pool because I still can’t turn my emotions into words that make sense.

To exist online, you must be in constant pursuit of perfection, but also constantly apologizing because we can never be perfect, but also apologize perfectly, but also don’t ask why someone is apologizing or why someone wants you to apologize.

Mostly, assume the worst about everyone and always tell a woman who makes money writing on the internet to go get a “real job.

I have been on the receiving AND the giving end of all of that. I am not a victim or a martyr. I am simply a human trying to navigate this bonkers online existence.

I can’t even begin to grasp how all of this affected Heather, just that she likely felt it all on a level maybe nobody else will ever understand.

She was given the title “QUEEN of the mommy bloggers” but she died without a crown. I can’t decide if that’s a modern-day Greek tragedy, or simply the story of a life lived on the internet.

I am certain I don’t want to end this with a moral of the story, a succinct statement about what we can learn here. Because really… just… fuck… I’m sorry, Heather. I hope you found peace.