Trusting the Voices is Witchcraft
On Saying Goodbye to Fear
Quick Note: Tonight is One Page Wednesday! If you live in Portland, OR, come down to Literary Arts in downtown. Cecily Wong is our featured reader. You can bring a page from a work in progress to share with the crowd or simply enjoy the show. Free. 7pm.
I still have room in my schedule for book editing this summer. You can read more about my services on my website.
Okay, here’s today’s post.
I’ve all but deleted my Twitter, but this isn’t an “I’m leaving Twitter” post. Enough has been said about why we should leave the site now controlled by a far-right troll who is using the website to boost conservative talking points. I’d rather talk about why I waited this long to leave a website I’ve wanted to abandon for over three years. I want to talk about fear.
Sometimes I hear voices. Or I don’t hear voices per se, but sometimes it feels like knowledge is delivered to me. Sometimes it feels like I just know things. I don’t know where the information comes from. Maybe, I’m mad. It doesn’t matter. Last month under the Taurus new moon, I heard a message loud and clear: It’s time to stop being so afraid. My first thought was that I’m not afraid of many things. I’m an out queer trans woman who freelances (lol) for a living. The knowledge persisted, saying something like And think how free you would feel if you stopped holding onto whatever fears you have left.
People often point out that I don’t seem to hesitate, that when I want to do something, I go do it. (Side note: but to me, my whole life feels like hesitation, waiting.) I think that’s partly true, but mostly because I don’t share all my desires. I keep some for myself, and I hesitate, and they wither. The wants I keep to myself are the scariest ones, the ones I’m most afraid to share. Leaving Twitter feels like an easy one, a freebie. It’s a way to get started. Writing this post is me releasing another fear.
I think most of my fears are not uncommon. Fear of what others think. Fear I’ll never be good enough. Fear that if I don’t do it the way everyone else does, I’ll tank my career. Fear I’ll lose everyone I love, either because I’m too difficult or because I’m unlovable. (Aren’t they the same?) Fear I will die alone. Fear I’ll end up houseless, because I got in a bad car accident and insurance refuses to pay. Fear I’ll see mass human extinction in my lifetime. Fear I’ll see more genocide in my lifetime. (We’ve already seen so much.) Fear I’ll write a post about hearing voices that guide me, and everyone will determine I’m crazy (another way to sink my career). Fear that I’m not nearly as beautiful as I think I am.
I met a friend for dinner the other night, an old writing instructor from my undergrad days. It seems we meet once a year and laugh and cry a little, and it’s like we didn’t spend the year apart, and then we go another year before meeting again. I always love seeing her. She supported me a lot when I was an undergrad student at PSU. She wrote me letters of recommendation for grad school. She’s a big part of why I’m a writer. I’d received the message about releasing fear the weekend before our meeting and had spent the previous days thinking on it, writing about it, and talking it over with my wife. At dinner, my friend and I ate risotto and seared tuna and the richest chocolate cake I’ve had in a long time. Afterwards, she smiled wide from across the table and told me I look freer than I have in a long time, like I radiate happiness. She is like me. She says what’s on her mind, not afraid to be taken as too sweet or woo or genuine. It felt like she saw the change I was trying to make.
What is witchcraft if not alchemy? And alchemy is nothing but change. I am changing.
I was never any good at social media anyways. (I have ~1,500 followers on Instagram and Twitter, despite being on both for over a decade.) My problem is I never wanted to play the game. Even when I tried to play the game, I couldn’t keep it up long enough to make any sort of real change. Despite being bad at Twitter I stuck with it, because I was convinced I would sink my career if I let go of the website.
I had a dream years before my first novel The Boy with a Bird in His Chest came out that I would throw a release party in a DIY venue, similar to The Fort in the book. I’d have dirty punk bands play, and it would feel like the book was real. In reality, the pandemic was (is) raging, and I didn’t tell anyone else about the dream, so it flitted away. I’ve always dreamed of publicity that isn’t tied to social media. I think others want this, too. I want to find readers in unique places. In April, I did an event with Jessamyn Violet in celebration of her novel, Secret Rules to Being a Rockstar. Jessamyn is also the drummer for the band Movie Club. For the event, I interviewed Jessamyn about her book, but the setup was more late-night talk show than it was literary event (complete with a Top Ten list from Jessamyn à la David Letterman), and afterwards, her band played. It was such a fresh way to honor a book’s release (AND SO MUCH FUN). My old agent turned publicist extraordinaire, Cassie Mannes Murray, writes a newsletter about publicity, and I love seeing how her mind works. She’s always coming up with inventive ways to get books in front of readers. (You should hire her!) These people give me hope that there can be another way, one where we aren’t begging for engagement on a tweet on a website owned by a far-right billionaire.
When we let go of something, another thing comes to fill its place. What moves in after we release fear? Hope? Excitement? Simply, possibility? Releasing Twitter opens up other avenues, gives me time for something else. I’m passing my account over to my wife who will post book news from time to time, but I’ll be gone. They’ll read me the nice things you say about me and my work, but someday, like all of us, the website will be gone. I’m a little terrified, but by now, at the end of this post, I can already feel other emotions moving in to take over fear’s old home. Time and attention for my desires, and no time or attention for what others may think.
A Spell for Deleting Twitter
I don’t drink because I have an addiction, and having an addiction means I don’t have great impulse control. There aren’t many things that remind me of drinking (Can anything remind you of the first thing that made your mind quiet?), but social media often feels like drinking. An alarm sounds off in my head when I’ve scrolled too long and need to put my phone down, but my body won’t do it. It’s too cliched, but I often think, “Just one more thread. Then I’ll be happy.” Like drinking, abstinence might be the only solution. I need courage, so right before I go to bed, I take a candle (orange, red, yellow, or white is best), and I carve Give me courage to release my fears into its side. I open all the windows in the room. I rub cayenne (not too much, bbs), ginger, and cinnamon on the candle. I light it and imagine fiery gods surrounding me. I beg and plead for courage. I imagine the flame inside me. I am clear on what fears I am releasing. I ask the fire gods to visit me in my dreams to show me what courage looks like. I snuff out the candle and go to sleep. I dream of my parents yelling at me because they are sick of my shit. I say nothing, walking away. I dream of a quiet park and the wind in trees and the wind through a marsh. In the morning, I relight the candle and ask for courage again. I delete all my tweets and write a newsletter. I hit send and I’m free.
(This spell is adapted from Michelle Tea’s book Modern Tarot: Connecting to Your Higher Self Through the Wisdom of the Cards.)
What I’m reading: The Paris Review: 243, Spring 2023 issue (UGH, isn’t Rivers Solomon’s “This is Everything There’ll Ever Be” SO GOOD??)
What I’m watching: The Other Two Season 3 on HBO:MAX.
I've been thinking (and writing about) something similar, about staying off social media and focusing on other things that are more important to me. Thank you for your beautiful words, as always, Emma <3