Yesterday, we released a video on YouTube, and my safe little corner of the internet turned into a savage, enraged, inhospitable, hideous lion’s den.
People with a love for capital letters and exclamation marks found me, attacked me and told me how shit and crap they thought I was.
“Who the hell IS this woman? She is SO ANNOYING”
“STOP BEING SO DRAMATIC AND KEEP YOUR HANDS BY YOUR SIDE!!!!!!”
“Why don’t you shut up and let your husband talk?”
“So WOKE”
“This channel is HORRIBLE”
and so it went on.
Three days after releasing the video, there are one thousand comments blinking at me. Baiting. Waiting for a reply.
As I write this to you, typing and licking my torso with my tongue, I wonder how others do it.
I have an urge to reach out to all solo content creators – the ones with no Brian by their side, a Brian who ignores all comments because he says they are written by a bunch of tossers with no life.
How do they do it? How do they act as their own gatekeeper? Stand waist-deep awash with strangers’ opinions and decide which ones pass through. How hard that must be.
I left our regular evening hot tub meeting early tonight. Brian and Tessa were discussing AI, and it was distracting me from my self-pity. Annoying me.
I climbed out of the steamy water sulkily and squelched to the driveway wearing nothing but my frayed, baggy swimsuit and that disgusting towelling dress that makes young surfer girls look gorgeous, but makes me look like a bloated old lesbian nun.
The night was beautiful. Cold, crisp and clear. I sat at the end of the driveway with my knees pulled under my chin, hoping that a car would stop and attend to my needs.
Brum brum. Screech of brakes.
“Jesus Christ, are you okay, love? Do you need a lift back to your convent or something?”
There were no cars. Only stars for company.
It was then I had a thought.
I’m unsure if it was my thought or my mum talking to me from the grave. I don’t know. I still can’t work out if I am gifted and can communicate with the dead or if I am a paranoid schizophrenic who is fucking mental and needs hospitalization.
The voice said:
What if you switched this from yourself and made it about them? Turned it into a positive? What if you’ve provided a place for these people, a space where they could all meet and didn’t feel alone? What then?
I could picture it.
Those angry people. All living in empty, grey, high-rise buildings with no outside space. No grass, no people, no trees, no soil.
Opening their front door one bright Thursday morning to pick up their single bottle of milk that had been pecked by a bird with bird flu; looking upon yonder and seeing me. Standing innocently in my garden. A big garden with acres of land.
And in the corner of that land is a space. A safe space where people, strangers, are gathering and shaking their fists. Standing shoulder to shoulder, All chummy. Voicing their annoyance and anger.
So the person (who doesn’t have bird flu because they didn’t drink the milk) walks over and joins them.
They leave the empty flat behind and stands on the grass (my grass, actually), wiggles their toes in the soil. Begins to discuss how crap my video was.
And for one small minute, that person no longer feels alone.
This is the thought that gets me through. Pushes me forward. Pulls me from my soily hole of self pity.
Quote:
Don’t Take Anything Personally. Nothing others do is because of you – Don Miguel Ruiz
I am proud of myself for being able to offer a piece of my land. A place on the internet where people can unite and get angry. Albeit about me.
No matter. At least they are together. For one small moment, they will have felt companionship, oneness and unity.
They had company.
And for that, I am happy.
Come to mama pleb
Until next time,
Yours, wishing-they-would-invent-towelling-knickers-then-realising-they-do-and-they’re-called-nappies
Liz x
PS: I’m chucking that hideous towelling robe in the bin. Whenever I wear it, I cry. That tells you something.
PS: It can’t be my mum; she wasn’t so compassionate. If she’d got a sniff of anyone saying anything bad to her girl, she’d have gone on YouTube and ripped them all to shreds.
So that confirms it, then. I’m a nutter.
