Wednesday, April 5, 1995 - Dublin
“I’m reading “The Diary of Anne Frank” at the moment. Her diary is like mine except longer letters. I really enjoy reading it. I hope my diary is published some day. I did an essay on Anne Frank. I got excellent. I have to read it to the class. How embarrasing.”
March 30, 2023 - Charlottesville, VA
1. I have been thinking about saying nothing. The act of saying nothing. Choosing to say nothing, when something could be said. I have always behaved as though speaking were better than not speaking. My body sends very certain signals telling me that silence is weakness. By extension, I have come to internalize the belief that my words have some magical power: they can protect me from the harm that the words of others might cause—by offering a retort, a rebuttal, an accusation— and they can influence the behavior and feelings of other people by being completely correct and honest. If I can just say the right thing, the logic goes, all will be well. Which is all just to say that disabusing myself of this notion is taking a really long time, and I keep making the same mistakes.
2. At dinner recently, a friend expressed frustration—jovial, animated— about passivity, the passivity of someone close to her, their seemingly passive acceptance of less-than-ideal situations where it seemed (to her) as though a simple statement could go a long way towards solving the problem. It drives me crazy, she said, to watch people not say exactly what they mean. Did you watch the television adaptation of Normal People? I asked. Oh god, she replied, that scene in the kitchen. It made me never want to watch TV ever again.
3. As a child, I was teased and prodded relentlessly by girls in my class at school. I don’t wish to say anything broad about the way girls treat one another, or any cruelty they might inflict - I went to all-girls schools, so I never had the opportunity to be picked on by any boys. It wasn’t really ‘bullying’, not calculated or coordinated, purely opportunistic. One of the girls would say something deliberately inflammatory to me, they’d maybe tell me that a girl I was friends with didn’t like me anymore, or tease me about my off-brand shoes. My reactions were predictable, and the point: I’d explode with rage, tell them to shut up, use the f-word. Twice, I threw things (a cling-film wrapped sandwich, and a tin pencil case filled with pens - only the sandwich made contact with its target). And I always, without fail, got in deep shit for these outbursts. Sometimes my parents were called. Often, I was made to stand at the top of the class and atone. Each school year, my new teacher would receive a report from my previous teacher about my ‘behavior’, and I’d be told I was being watched.
4. If you’re Irish, and you were in secondary school in 2000/2001, you’ll remember the teachers’ strikes. Each week that autumn and spring there would be a day, sometimes two or three in a row, of planned industrial action. At the time, we were mostly delighted with so much time off, but as the disruption dragged on, students began complaining that we were missing too much school, particularly the sixth years who would be sitting the Leaving Cert that June. Finally, in March of 2001, students around the country walked out of classrooms en masse in protest against the strikes, with our frustration, as I remember it, aimed at the teachers who were themselves protesting suboptimal conditions. It makes no sense to me in hindsight. A very clear situation in which it would have been prudent to shut the fuck up. Instead, we planned a countrywide walkout using our Nokia 3210s. On the busy main road in front of our school, the students of Holy Faith lined up and encouraged the passing traffic to honk in support. According to my diary from the time, a girl in my class lead the assembled mob in a chant to the tune of of Independent Women that went “All the nation for education, throw your hands up at me.” After we were done, most of us went back inside. I had maths next period.
6. I recently reconnected with an old friend. We had not spoken in five years. Before that, we’d been friends for a decade, and it was an oft repeated maxim in our friendship that we could always ‘pick up right where we left off.’ In our 20s, we were always dropping the ball, failing to text back, or becoming so wrapped up in our own dramas that we would forget about one another for a while, now and again. But our maxim proved mostly true and over the years, we were always able to fall right back into intimacy after long breaks.
When we stopped speaking in 2017, it was something I said. I said it intentionally, and with great conviction. For five years after that, whenever I was reminded of my old friend, usually through social media mentions of her bestselling debut novel, I felt a sort of sour regret, not to say jealousy, but it never occurred to me to examine why I’d ended our relationship. That came to me later, in the summer of 2022, when, in thinking of her out of the blue, I searched for the email I had sent all those years ago and found what I had written unbearable - selfish, judgemental, unkind. I am lucky that she accepted my apology, and that she now sends me ten-minutes-long voice notes recounting some drama that makes me laugh, and my life richer.
7. In spite of what this newsletter might convey, and contrary to my statement of April 5th, 1995, I do not wish for my diaries ever to be published. They are deathly boring, embarrassing, and often incriminating. They don’t tell a story. I can tell a better story in this way: by leaving a lot unsaid, and choosing to engage with the past selectively, in ways that help me understand something about the present.
8. Many people I love are struggling, and many more I am acquainted with in passing have been experiencing crushing amounts of stress. Recently, one of the former asked for my advice. Finally, I thought: a chance to fix everything with my words. I charged in gladly with my instructions for fixing their problem, holding nothing back. They took my advice, but soon became overwhelmed, and then un-took it. They returned to the problem, time passed. They decided on a different path. My anger at this situation threatened to consume me, and it was this, finally, that snapped me out of my grandiose self regard: we cannot make anyone do anything. We cannot make them see and feel what we see and feel, which seems impossible given the existence of art, but the fact remains. I untangled myself. I stepped away. I fell silent, and then I returned to offer only a listening ear. I trust that this person whom I love very much will find their way.
9. For a few weeks after a minor medical procedure, I found it difficult to answer the question, How are you? I felt blank, completely without words or even thoughts, as if they had been surgically removed. Each evening, in my diary, I wrote a bare bones summary of my day, then scrolled TikTok until I felt tired, unable even to read any of the books on my nightstand. The algorithm showed me videos of people cleaning their houses. I did not feel depressed. Simply mute. It passed, lasting less than a month in all. I’m back to speaking now, but I’m trying to be more measured.
10. The drive to my therapist’s house is beautiful. The road winds west towards the Blue Ridge Mountains, past rolling green foothills, and horse farms with pristine white fences. The road is narrow by American standards and serpentine in a way that requires the driver to stay alert. On one particular stretch of straightaway, there is a steep hill down which I like to let my car glide, resisting the temptation to press my foot to the brake as I plummet, gathering speed that feels a little frightening. My thrilling momentum is arrested on the other side, the ascent, and I push my foot gently on the gas to reach the top. I crest the hill and return to responsible driving. If, as happens some Wednesdays, there is a car or truck in front of me during this drive, and that car or truck sticks rigidly to the speed limit, the frustration I feel threatens to ruin my day.