Hey everyone. I meant to post this a while ago, but then things were uncertain and I didn’t. It’s the essay I wrote for my Fellowship application - I told myself I’d share it if I got the dang thing, and since originally I didn’t get it I just forgot. But what do you know! I am a Fellow now! So here’s the essay. I was pretty proud of it, and there’s a little part of me that hopes it’s the reason they decided to give me the award.
So it occurred to me that I don’t post too many things that I write for school. I just finished up the semester, and for the take-home exam for my Gender & Communication class I had to write about an author from the course with whom I had disagreed. How fortunate that there was, in fact, an author with whom I heartily disagreed: Laura Kipnis, who wrote Against Love: A Polemic. The book just tears the concept of love into sad little pieces, and it doesn’t help that it’s funny and well-written to boot. It made me super depressed for a little while! Well, given the opportunity to respond, I decided to write my own polemic against hers. Isn’t that original? Isn’t that unique? Not at all obvious or trite.
So here it is! Something I wrote for school:
So I have inside of me what I could describe as a terrible seed. It is a secret I go to great lengths to hide, lest my secret shame be revealed. I don’t actually have any fear of it germinating, buried as it is beneath layers of fear, neuroses, doubt, small-mindedness, and self-pity. It dwells in salted ground, always just at the edge of perception. It’s like when I was young, and the older kids would try and convince me that if I swallowed a watermelon seed it would take root and grow in my stomach. I knew it was silly, but from then on I was always conscious of every small, black seed as it slid down my throat, fearing despite reason that my abdomen would one day swell and burst, ripe with fresh watermelon.
I’ve been feeling a little bit overwhelmed by things lately. All of these big adult choices have been weighing heavily on me, and I’ve been prone to periods of late-night introspection. I decided it would be good to put my thoughts down and clear my head a little. Tonight I decided to write about Suzy. I’m posting it here to get my feelings out in the open, but I don’t want anyone to feel like they need to read it. It’s pretty long and personal and not very happy, but here it is. I haven’t really proofread it, so please excuse any mistakes. If anyone can correct or add to my details I would really appreciate it.