Collateral Damage — An Excerpt

Growing into my own after growing up in the wreckage of addiction

Exactly four months ago to the day, I wrote a post about being a Pick-Me Girl and waiting around for editors to choose my writing, and something or someone to tell me I’m worthy and valuable.

I’d just spent the last Christmas ever with all our kids living at home. I’d been rejected by every single one of the writing residencies I’d applied for. My mom’s fifth deathiversary was coming up. I knew I needed to cut ties with my biggest client but was scared of the financial insecurity. The cold was relentless. We were in the middle of our hardest parenting season ever. I desperately wanted to get away while simultaneously being terrified of being alone with myself. I was exhausted in every way but also felt something deep and strong churning inside of me.

Intense need and fear paired up like this often tell me it’s exactly the thing I must do. So I hit the “book now” button as a commitment to choose myself. I’d escape the winter and spend a few days alone in the sun working on my memoir.

The first night I stood in the dark backyard crying, because the place reminded me so much of my mother. My Airbnb host’s brother stepped out of the main house, dreads past his shoulders, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. After a snot-bubbly introduction, he took my hand, smiled, and told me there would be clarity beyond the tears.

The next day, my mother’s fifth deathiversary, I sat in the sun and wrote. I listened to Tracy Chapman. I remembered her. More tears came, and finally some clarity.

And then I went home and didn’t touch my memoir manuscript over the next four months. I didn’t talk about it.

Today, The Rumpus (a long-running literary magazine that hosts columns by two of my writer crushes Roxane Gay and Cheryl Strayed) published my essay “Speaking Ill of the Dead.” This essay is an excerpt from my memoir Collateral Damage.

If my writing has ever meant anything to you, made you feel seen or heard, laugh, cry, or think, I have a huge favor to ask.

Please read the essay and if you love it:

• Share it with your friends and/or share it on social media
• Help me get the essay picked up by Longreads. You can submit my essay for consideration by sharing a link with Longreads on Twitter (@Longreads), either by DMing them, replying to one of their tweets, or using the #longreads hashtag.
• Help me get the essay picked up by @MemoirLand and saribotton by tagging @MemoirLand and @saribotton on Twitter.

And if you don’t really care about the memoir, here’s something else I did while on my solo trip:

• I got the nose piercing I always wanted

My daughters asked if I was having a midlife crisis.

It’s not a midlife crisis, it’s a midlife reset. It’s more obvious to me than before that I’m at the top of the rollercoaster, with the bubbly feeling in my gut, right before I hurtle down the steep hill, picking up speed. The years will go by even faster, so I feel a greater urgency to do what I want and be who I am.

It’s not just a piercing. It’s doing something new after 30 years of believing the little shits in 6th grade who walked by me oinking every day, telling me I had an ugly pig nose. I was afraid to draw attention to my nose for three decades. When I told my girls, one of them said: “Fuck the haters, mom.”

Yes, fuck the haters.

I hope you do something today just because you want to and then tell me about it.