Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137135 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
But then Art and I divorced, and my writer’s block hit. Then depression snuck in not long after, due to not having words in my head that could form a complete sentence, much less compile a whole book, which to an author feels like the purpose for their very existence has been taken away. And since I was down in the dumps—ha! Not the fun kind I discovered later—sleeping a ton, not answering their every beck and call the moment they messaged, and since I no longer owned a bottomless bank account, the women—all but one in our group of eight—I believed would be by my side to my dying day, decided I was no longer needed in their lives.
They had each other, after all. So there was no use for me anymore.
That left me with just that one very special human outside of my blood relatives who was steadily in my pitiful corner. The one person who gave a big middle finger to all those bitches and chose me over all the rest of them. The one friend I had since before I ever thought about writing my very first book.
Vivian Lowe.
Completely ironic in itself, really. Authors always seem to talk about how they lose all the friends they had before their career took off, because they don’t have anything in common any longer or because their ex-friends just don’t “get” them anymore.
My experience was the complete opposite.
I lost all the “friends” I made after becoming an author.
Vi pointed out that probably meant they were only my friends because of my “status” and what they thought they might gain from me as my “star” rose.
Which was just extra depressing to think about, all those years believing they loved me like family the way I loved them.
And if I’m being totally honest, it hurt more when they deserted me than it did when Art and I decided a divorce was the best next stepping stone in our life’s path. At least he had a damn good reason to separate his journey from my own. A reason I fully support him in. I’m so very happy he’s truly found himself along the way.
But by going our own ways, that was one less person in my everyday life for me to worry about. And yes, I’m fully aware that when people say “that’s one less thing to worry about,” that’s usually a good thing. Like a weight lifting off one’s shoulders. But not for me.
For me, I literally live to worry about other people. I have “the disease to please,” as a former therapist once told me—a people pleaser “to a fault” and “most likely to the detriment of my own self.” Taking care of and nurturing others is my lifeblood. In the past, if I went a full day without helping someone with at least one task, my mind and body reacted like I didn’t take my daily dose of Prozac.
With so many people to socialize with—my husband, my big group of friends, their kids, acquaintances, and even strangers at the gym—those days were few and far between. Yet then Art moved out, and I didn’t feel much like staying digitally connected 24/7 while I tried to keep myself busy, finding it irritating to stop what I was forcing myself to focus on to be drawn into a group message about which shoes one of them should wear with a certain dress and having seven fucking people who threw in their input and then went off on countless other tangents.
To me, that wasn’t really helping anyone. Telling you to go with the black pumps instead of the knee-high boots along with other people, does not add a single drop of happy hormones to fill my nurturing cup. But when I stopped giving my input for something six other women voiced their two cents for, suddenly that made me a bad friend. And add to that a girl can only stand seeing “check your DMs” on her public social media posts so many times before she finally psychologically snaps.
Posts, I could handle all right in my downward spiral. I could just like someone’s comment in acknowledgement. If someone’s response sparked any sort of life into my existence, then I could muster up a quick reply—a GIF if I couldn’t come up with words or something more than just a like. I didn’t want my amazing readers to think I was one of those snobby bitches who thought they were too important to mingle with their fans.
But messages… FML, if you open one, then the sender could see you read it. If you read it but didn’t respond, that opened up the exhausting dialogue that went along with being “left on read.” If you did respond, then that wouldn’t be the end of the conversation. Oh, no. That was just the opener for being sucked into a back-and-forth conversation that could go on for hours. And when you’re diagnosed as severely ADHD and with God only knows how many anxiety disorders, and top that off with a hefty helping of “the disease to please,” it sends a person into a downfall that lands them in the fetal position on the floor of whatever room they were trying to pretend they were okay in.