It's still surprising to me how much one event or one person's behavior can impact me.
This week, I wrote again for the first time in months. New fiction. It was a shorter drought than the last one, and according to the beta readers I sent it to when it was in drafts, it's similar quality to my older stuff, but I was afraid before it came out a couple days ago that I'd never write again...again. Because of one person.
Last year, someone worked through nearly all of my old fictional long form work plus a couple of short stories. And they said they liked them. Lots of praise about them being emotionally evocative; about the characters feeling so real; about them fostering hope and a believe in real love; about me being a talented writer. The five years of writing leading up to that person reading the material during the worst bout of writer's block of my life had been spent letting people read my stuff with J's encouragement to get me over social anxiety and imposter syndrome that's really pretty raging. I was doing better. So much better that when this person gave me that praise, I believed them; I accepted it. It can't be overstated how rare that is. In fact, it may have been the second total time in my LIFE I accepted praise that didn't come from J without questioning it.
And then I found out that a LOT of things this person told me over the past few years were lies. Or at least gross exaggerations. On top of them being mercilessly cruel to me at a very vulnerable time, these lies and/or exaggerations started feeding the Imposter Syndrome monster I'd starved for so long. Despite all the progress I'd made and support I have from J and beta readers who have become dear friends, it grew stronger and started telling me that since so much of what this person told me wasn't true, the praise about the writing wasn't either. And because the praise sounded like my actual friends' praise, then maybe that praise was dishonest too. Maybe I shouldn't write even when I can because I'm not any good at it. It's a waste of time.
When I sent the drafts to the beta readers, as soon as I hit 'send', all I could think was that I'd just sent them a pile of flaming garbage; the worst thing I'd ever made; why was I letting them even look at it?
And then today, after hearing other people reassure me that my writing doesn't suck, I came here, and saw a friend's post that made me want to respond to it. But I'm afraid to respond to it. Because I don't want this person who lied and hurt me so much to know I'm here. I'm even afraid to privately reach out to the original post creator, because I don't already know them well. I'm afraid they could be connected to this person I don't want to find me.
So this one person has set my progress with Imposter Syndrome back about 5 years, and made me question my talent, and made me afraid to reach out to new people here on tumblr, something that used to be easier for me here than anywhere else. I'm doubting my skills and my safety. Because of this one person.
It's amazing the impact one person can have. I keep trying to tell myself that if one person can have this much negative impact, they can have this much positive impact too. Hopefully I've never made a negative impact like that on another person.
