I have this distinct memory of driving down South Willow Street in Manchester, NH, preparing to turn onto the interstate at a series of traffic lights on a bridge, and internally bemoaning the fruitless direction of my life. I remember how badly I wanted to be a writer -- it's all I've ever really wanted to do -- but all of the advice I'd gotten was to write the things *you* want to read. Write what's on your insides, they'd say. And I knew in that moment, with my turn signal clicking and my heart in my shoes, that if I wrote what I really wanted, then I would lose everyone.
My world at the time was filled with religion and church expectations. I was married to a pastor, a new mother myself, and my life course felt very set. Women in my position wrote cookbooks or memoirs of their faith intended to encourage other women only -- they didn't write about girls who saw ghosts and learned magic and fought just as well as boys. Women weren't allowed to preach at our church, let alone best a man at something.
But this was my community at the time. I'd come to depend on friendships and routines and the support of my family, and all of it was built on these beliefs: that there was an order to the world, and within that order, I could not have the same kind of authority as men.
So I didn't write.
I didn't write -- and I lost everyone anyway.
It took another couple years from that moment on South Willow Street, but eventually I woke up to what I'd done to myself. The world was shifting. People I'd once respected had begun to say and support ideas that were more extreme than I'd ever been used to that I felt I had to start educating myself outside their worldview just to help myself feel less insane. And that's when I started to understand -- all of these relationships, this entire community I'd relied on my entire life, existed because people like me tolerated being used. There had never been any genuine respect for the person under the gender. Leadership was pleased with you and comfortable with you as long as you said the right things and did the right things and *were* the right things. The support I thought I couldn't bear to lose was entirely dependent on my compliance and unwavering obedience, not love and respect for me as a fellow human being. I had never really known what that would look and feel like.
The process of piecing this all together was traumatic. The woman I'd been on South Willow Street was right to fear it. Every new lightbulb moment was rage-inducing and horrifying and gut-wrenching. I spiraled briefly into madness. I needed medications and therapy, and if I hadn't had a few solid friendships outside the church in the midst of this, I don't know if I would have made it at all.
Eventually, though, I learned how to choose myself.
Eventually, I started writing again.
And this time -- oh, this time.
This time I got to experience what I'd been wanting from the start.
I got to meet people who liked the same things as me. I got to meet people who laughed at the same jokes that made me laugh. I got to be loved for who I am, not for how well I perform. I found I could withstand letting go of relationships that couldn't compare. I learned how to say No, lovingly and often. I discovered that learning to love myself exactly as I am -- the thing that I'd heard pastors decry my entire life as one of the many slippery slopes to Satan -- was actually the secret ingredient that made loving others easy. I learned the thing the church has always actually feared was never really our sins -- just the loss of control.
If I had one thing to tell that woman I was on South Willow Street, I'd whisper so gently to her to choose herself instead. I'd tell her to choose the pen and the page, which are always there for you without conditions. I'd tell her to start there -- that is your new standard, I'd say. I'd want her to know it's worth the risk. I'd want her to know the pain will be as terrible as she fears, but that she is so much stronger than she knows. I'd tell her -- and I'll tell you -- if given the choice between community and writing, choose to write. Because a community that can't accept you for you isn't a community at all.
