Humans
Vol. 3, Issue 11
Istopped myself from sending my mother a nasty email last week and it was probably one of the only true acts of God I have witnessed during my five-year spiritual journey in sobriety so far. By now I'd hoped I'd be able to levitate off the sidewalk like David Blaine or juggle flaming shish kebabs, but, nope, my level-up is not sending a spastic email response to my mother. But believe me – it's serious growth.
See, I have a terrible email history, one full of cruel typo-riddled responses to friends, girlfriends, parents, and strangers on the internet. These are truly unhinged moments that just explode out of me like screeching demons and into someone else's inbox. And since I have yet to delete approximately 39,000 emails in my Gmail account from as early as 2008, there is plenty of history to access.
I wasn't going to completely nuke my mom but it would have come in hot, for sure. And besides that response being lousy sobriety, I also need to remember that all emails are permanent. ( I can attest to this. The work emails collected by Hulk Hogan’s lawyers during discovery were not some of my best moments.)
I am very careful with my tone now, but I also try not to engage when I receive a not-so-nice email anymore. Again: This wasn't always the case.
****
When I did a quick Gmail search recently to find an old TSB newsletter about shame, up popped one of the most embarrassing and disturbing email exchanges I'd had with an angry Gawker reader from 2012. I’d forgotten about it, but it all came back to me after I read it.
I was about six months on the job and taking a lot of criticism (some of it justified) for my editorial decisions and my interactions with the commenters. On one particular day – a Saturday, no less – I’d posted an incorrect story about CNN's Anderson Cooper in which I claimed I had definitive proof that he was, in fact, a gay man. I have the photos! No more hiding, sir! (This was the era when outing people on Gawker was a common practice and poor Anderson Cooper was a frequent target.)
My flimsy evidence hinged upon an obvious photoshop of his famous silver-haired head on to the body of someone dressed in BDSM leather gear, which my source claimed was an actual photo taken at a famous gay bar the night before. It was not.
Even by Gawker's loosey-goosey tabloid standards, it was a foolish and almost fireable mistake. I quickly posted a retraction, but it was too late. The backlash was swift and merciless, especially in the newly-refurbished comment section, which most Gawker readers found annoying and were already riled up about. I wasn't usually affected by this stuff, but one person completely rattled me.
Their name was Harrison. I don’t know if that was a real name, but that was the name they used when they excoriated me for two days about this post. Most of their emails ended with “Please die," but I responded anyway. It escalated to even more ridiculous levels after each response and, at one point, I vaguely threatened them to come over to my Brooklyn apartment to say all this stuff to my face. Yes, it appears I was ready to fistfight with Harrison, possibly to the death, to defend my blog-editing abilities and Gawker’s new commenting system.
But Harrison was not afraid. They scoffed at me – "Oh, stop being so dramatic!"
And, friends, this is what I wrote back:
Yeah, okay, Harrison, I'll stop being so dramatic. That's your most hypocritical and ridiculous request so far.
Stand your ground, you limp fucker, or just move along and enjoy your life as you intended. We done here?
I’m still not sure what “Stand your ground, you limp fucker” means, other than it's completely deranged. I never received a response, either. Harrison had ended the fight.
****
I've been reading The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, which is a self-help book that uses Toltec wisdom to outline "a practical guide to personal freedom." The writing is sparse and repetitive, very much in a similar vein with Allen Carr's Easy Way series of books. Since I've been sober I love reading this type of shit so these Agreements blasted me right through the heart, especially the first two: "Be Impeccable with Your Word," and "Don't Take Anything Personally."
I always considered myself someone who never took things personally, but after reading this book – and some of my past emails – it's clear that I'm a total mess: Fear. Anger. Shame. Insecurity. All of these emotions run wild in me and sobriety hasn't made them disappear. I could feel them gurgling when I reread these emails, even though they were from almost a decade ago. But according to The Four Agreements if I learn how to stop taking things personally I'll finally be free from this torment:
There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally. You become immune to black magicians, and no spell can affect you regardless of how strong it may be. The whole world can gossip about you, and if you don't take it personally you are immune.
Immune! Immune from black magicians like Harrison.
But it's going to take me a while to get there. A few months ago I sent an angry email to the customer service department of the Active exercise app because they automatically re-upped me for another $90 premium membership I did not want.
And I recently debated if should reach out to a former Deadspin commenter who had trashed me on Twitter last month over some horrible thing I had (allegedly) said to him 12 years ago. I'm paraphrasing but they Tweeted, "I can forgive a lot of things but he [Me!] said something to me I'll never forget."
What could have I possibly said to this person? I wanted to find out the context in case I have to make amends.
The Twitter handle was a commenter name. I plugged it into my Gmail search to see if any of the 39,000 emails revealed any clues. It turns out we had one email exchange back in 2009. They had sent me a link to a dumb story in the hopes that I'd publish it in a nighttime roundup. I never responded. But their email signature included their real name – and cell phone number.
I did a quick Google search to find out more. They worked as a part-time librarian in the midwest. They were 41 years old. I drafted an email to let them know – in the kindest possible way – I saw their Tweets about me and that I'd love to resolve this issue and apologize.
I let it simmer for a couple of weeks. I was about to send it but I reread it again and it still came off too confrontational. It also felt phony. There was no way I could send out this version. Why don't I just call them instead? We can resolve this like real humans ...
Wisely, I deleted the entire email I had saved in draft. I also finally deleted the old 2009 email that had their contact information. And last I checked, they made their Twitter account private. I didn't take it personally. – AJD
Stood Ground
by The Small Bow
Defeated but not deleted
Here's the full thread of my email responses to "Harrison" between Saturday, June 9, and Sunday, June 10, 2012. I've only included mine because it better highlights my insanity. It also should serve as a reminder that sometimes the best responses are the ones we never send.
June 9, 9:49 p.m.
Harrison: your name is stupid. Please die as well.
June 10, 2:17 p.m.
I only wish you were an actual human being who lived nearby to come sit with me this afternoon and share your wisdom. It would be novel. And brave.
June 10, 12:23 p.m.
Ask my mom what exactly? If the nasty little human on the end of this email strain who gets off on telling me to die because he's upset over a commenting system and an admittedly amateur mistake is a person with whom she's had sex with as he's nastily implied? I think she'd be taken aback by that, Harrison.
June 10, 1:42 p.m.
So you would be happy if I were dead? You would feel no shame amount of guilt or shame whatsoever if I, at the end of this email, took your constant requests to go die to heart? That's a lot to live with, Harrison. I'm not sure you'd be able to handle the guilt. Just in case, though, I'll be sure that if and when it does happen, that I post our email exchange and then you can apologize to Anderson (for me) and to my mother (for you).
Cool?
June 10, 2:08 p.m.
Yeah, okay, Harrison, I'll stop being so dramatic. That's your most hypocritical and ridiculous request so far.
Stand your ground, you limp fucker, or just move along and enjoy your life as you intended. We done here?
Fin.
****
Illustration by Edith Zimmerman
