I do feel bad for Sarah Desssen (Though I probably shouldn’t…)

I won’t repeat what Sarah Dessen did or the controversy that went on for days afterwards. Or the fact that many of the writers who jumped to Dessen’s defense later were forced to issue apologies (even if most of the apologies were insincere and half-assed).

The truth is that Dessen’s comments were not the worst of the lot. Some of her friends were despicable. The fact that the comments came from people who make their living examining the world in an empathetic manner to help them understand people makes it more offensive.

The sad truth is that I saw myself in Dessen’s comments. (That’s NOT a compliment by the way. It should shake Dessen to the core). Because I read her tweet and some of her other posts around that time as a sign that she was depressed and anxious. I’m depressed a lot. And depressed people – like alcoholics or others – fairly or not, often see ourselves reflected in the actions and thinking of people around us. So there is some projection in this, and I apologize if anyone finds it offensive.

I was depressed at the time. The beginning of winter is always hard. Places starting to play Christmas music before Thanksgiving always grind me down. The cold weather means I spend less time outdoors and become sedentary, which means fewer endorphins. I had a birthday last week, which was depressing. In the past year we’ve buried my uncle and my grandfather, not to mention some friends. I spent time with my father cleaning out my uncle’s house in Kentucky. I now have two books that no agent (or anyone else) wants to read. I’m not sure I have the energy to try and write another one, or pitch more articles or look for a job. I could go on, but the point is that it’s a lot. It’s enough to make me forget that anything good has happened to me this past year – or even in my life.

I understand the performative nature of posting on social media. I don’t do it often. And when I do, I try to be subtle. (I am a New England wasp) But sometimes I post things on social media to get people to respond. To get a reaction. To get a sign from the universe that people care. It’s needy. It’s pathetic. I tend to think a little less of myself when I do.

We do it because it often helps a little.

I have an active google search for my name delivered to my inbox, and so I understand the temptation to come across one’s name and after reading the article to complain on social media, can you believe this? I’m having a hard time and then I come across this nastiness! Because one’s friends and readers will reply.

I mean, I wouldn’t do that. Not because I’m a better person. It’s because – and this is similar to why I never throw myself a birthday party – I don’t believe that people would reply with positive responses that would buoy my mood. But I understand the thought behind posting it.

There are many problems with this particular instance, of course. To single out one obvious point, the student who made this remark may have been an obnoxious, know-it-all college student (which is to say, a college student), but the committee she was on picked Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy over your book. If you don’t understand why some people feel that this is important, then I don’t know what to say.

And here’s where people will say in her defense that she’s not writing shallow pablum, but if you honestly would prefer that college students read your young adults novels to reading about race and the criminal justice system and having lectures and discussions about this, then I don’t know what to say.

I’ve written thousands of articles. I’ve gotten dozens upon dozens of rejections for my novels. Part of me has given up ever thinking I’ll get published. So that’s where I’m coming from. That’s part of where my depression is rooted, in the fact that I have accomplished nothing of any value. I’m not going to claim that having a novel published will solve all of my problems, but I will solve the problem of being an unpublished novelist. That’s one less problem. Then I’ll have the problem of critics and being ignored and all that, but you know what, it sounds preferable to spending my free time sitting at the kitchen table, alone and childless, wondering if I’m wasting my life because no one has ever cared, and there’s no reason to ever believe that someone might.

What I read in your statement was exhaustion and depression. You have a life that a lot of writers would envy. You have a written a shelf of published books (where most of us have an unpublished and rejected chunk of hard drive space), money (you’re not Bill Gates but you’re doing very well by writers standards), a partner, a child. Hell, your books may not chosen as required college reading, but you write award winning YA novels that get considered. Most people are lucky to get one of those things in life.

Despite all this, it does not bring you joy.

Maybe that’s temporary. I hope it’s temporary.

Because when you pull yourself out of this state, I hope that you will be able to see just how cruel and nasty and vicious you were. How much pain you caused. I think one of the great lessons of adulthood is how little other people think about us. As human beings, we tend to center ourselves in the world, but it’s rarely about us. Much of the pain we cause in the world is because we are careless, and much of the pain we receive is because other people were careless.

Depression is a state where we think that we are worthless, that devalues ourselves and our lives, but it also makes us the center of the universe. It cuts us off from so much because the universe becomes a closed system in which everything becomes an attack on us. I can say that with clarity and certainty because I’m not depressed right now. But I know that one of these days, I will go back to thinking otherwise.

The comment that you saw as so painfully wounding to you was about a college student who wanted her classmates and her school to face important serious urgent issues in our society and to use this opportunity for required reading to not spend the time on something easy, but to tackle something difficult.

To write for younger readers is to hope that they will remember the stories, that they will take something away from them as they move on to other books, other authors. That they will seek out ever more complex work. That the books will help them to grow as readers, but also as people. This young woman read your work, knew your work, and she wanted to challenge her classmates, she wanted something more. Unlike what some of your friends think, that doesn’t mean that she hates teenage girls and is a misogynist, but that she read you at a certain age and then when she got older, she wants to build a fairer, more just society.

That sounds admirable.

And even if she didn’t like your books, no one should be attacked for that. People are allowed to not like your books. Not liking your books doesn’t make someone a misogynist. Not reading YA books as an adult doesn’t make someone a misogynist. Not wanting YA books to be in a college curriculum doesn’t make someone a misogynist.

I hope that you get better, Sarah. It sounds like you’re going through a hard time, and I hope that you get help and find some peace. I mean that sincerely. I’m not just concluding this way because I worry you’ll read this and sic your friends on me to drive me to depression and suicide. (Which honestly struck me as a possibility when I started writing this, so I guess we’ll find out if you’re doing better).