Dissociate your way to success

If you haven't gone full possum during an interview, then are you really living?

I was being interviewed by The Sun, which just published my essay, “And These Too are Defensive Wounds,” when I started dissociating. One minute I was in the middle of answering a question about my motivation for writing the essay, and the next minute, I was staring up at the corner where my plum-colored wall meets the white ceiling.

What was I saying?

What was the question?

“Sorry, I'm dissociating,” I said to the editor interviewing me. “Can you ask me another question or say something—anything—so I can jump-start my brain?”

In case you’re like, Give her the gold medal in self-care, you should know this is all a new language for me, a new technique. For years, my MO was to ignore the sudden spaciness and feeling of disconnection and just press on until I was a jabbering, wild-eyed beast. Apparently ignoring a terrified child is a form of abuse, and I have been trying to parent myself better.

The editor graciously offered to change the subject, but I wanted to answer his question, I really did—it’s just that I’d lost it somewhere on the ceiling.

The essay we were discussing is largely about dissociating. In it, I describe having to write a letter to the parole board, 18 years after my mother’s boyfriend killed her, declaring whether or not I felt he should be released from prison. Writing the letter required deciding where I truly stood on that, which in turn required facing head on the worst parts of her death, which I’d suppressed after learning of them at the trial.

So doing a thousand-yard stare during my interview seemed pretty on-brand, and I hope that my being honest about it will appear in the published version of our interview.

Animals and our defenses—I’m fascinated. Horned lizards shoot blood from their eyes, sea cucumbers expel their intestines, and octopuses (that’s right, “-puses”) squirt ink. I, part of a highly evolved species, vacillate wildly between Fighting, Fawning, Freezing, Fawning, and Fighting again. The genius of this response is engendering a sort of “ew” feeling in people until they leave me alone.

That’s not great. I mean, am I going to do this when Terry Gross has me on Fresh Air, as has long been my dream? Am I going to do this when I’m asked to speak at conferences or at book signings, or any of the other parts of publishing a book that I’d be so flipping honored to have to do? Can I just count on myself to sabotage my career by going tits up like a possum in the street?

I wasn’t always like this. I majored in Theater for fuck’s sake. I was a quick-witted, sassy, Oscar Wilde-quoting thing who came alive when I was talking to a group of strangers. But also: it was easy to be Always On because I was avoiding.

How long did I shove my worst experiences into the basement, label the box “IT’S FINE THIS STUFF IS FINE,” and turn up the music so I couldn’t hear it banging around down there?

But you can’t avoid AND write a whole book, not if the book is about the things in the scary box. That’s the trade-off, that’s the wonderful devil’s deal—you get command over your story and the incredible feeling of having wielded it and made it artful and having joined your voice in the ongoing human song of existence… but also you’ve let the thing out of the basement and now it’s stalking your hallways and making you spend way too much on massages and anxiety blankets.

To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes, said Kurosawa. I’ve taken this advice seriously since my early 20s. And to never avert your eyes, but still show kindness to yourself? That’s the work of my 40s.

Does anyone else here dissociate when talking about their art, their writing, their work? Do you have any tips n’ tricks? Also do you know any modern authors whose social anxiety I can learn from?

I’m thinking next time, I’ll try a grounding practice like guided meditation before any interviews or public events, and—this is critical—have talking points in front of me.

So: Trauma for Dummies. I actually started it over on Wordpress a billion light years ago, and some of the older writing is… oof. But I leave it up like performance art, a public record of a younger me contending with PTSD, trying to write about it, trying to avoid writing about it, and so on. Besides, next to my Livejournal posts from 2004-2007, which are also still out there, these posts aren’t nearly so cringe to me. I’m a big fan of cringe, anyway! It’s the stink of life. Suck it up your nose hairs, roll in it. Cringe lets you know you’re close to something vulnerable and real and human. Cringe is not always high art, but it is artistic. I’ve never been interested in a cringe-less person, story, or existence.

I decided to resurrect TfD here after spending a little time flirting with Primrose Path, a Substack that’s weird and sporadic and focused on one strange pattern at a time. Like the pattern from finding a squirrel skull in a leaf pile, to the Surinamese Cockroach I saw rooting around in it, to a Surinamese poet who wrote a poem about death that featured bones. It’s how my mind arranges events and information (when it isn’t shutting down mid-answer) and I wanted to explore its weird subliminal wisdom.

TfD is something different. For 15 years, I’ve been circling, avoiding, and finally writing a memoir about some truly mind-warping things, and in spite of an MFA program, multiple online workshops, and a wonderful community of writer friends, I often feel so alone in this process. It’s also Gen X nostalgia! Birds and weeds I like! Disaster movies!

I suppose I am creating the Substack I need when I am writing about trauma or trying to write in spite of it.

If you’re writing through something hard, I hope you find something in this leaf pile that crystallizes something for you, or anyway makes you less afraid and alone while you do it.

We haven’t got much time, kids. We’ve got to sing our lives. Sing it messy, who cares.