Spite Alone Holds Me Aloft
Lingua Ignota’s Caligula opened up a Pandora’s Box for me, but in a good way. I didn’t realize how much I held in and kept to myself, and how keeping my feelings bottled up was the one thing that hurt me and caused so much of my mental anguish. On The Sopranos, Dr. Melfi describes depression as anger being turned inward and on a surface level, I understood that. It took so many years for me to fully grasp that concept, and with further reflection I realized, “OH SHIT THIS IS ME”. I’m an angry person, I have been an angry person for a very long time. The thing with being a woman raised in this world, you’re taught that showing anger isn’t “nice” and if you do show it, you’re considered a cunt.
I’ve had friends and a couple of exes show concern when I actually let me anger out. For a while, I considered it to be powerful because of how rarely it came out and how scary I could be but looking back on this now, I realize that’s not healthy because when I am driven to a point of anger, it’s like a faucet that cannot be turned off. Anger shouldn’t be something people should be scared by. It’s a genuine, human emotion and it’s impossible to live in this world (Especially this week) without experiencing feelings of anger. There are healthy ways to release it and now that I’m in my thirties, I’m just starting to realize that.
While I believe I haven’t done a good job of handling the anger, I have managed to at times direct it where I need to direct it to be a functional human being. One glaring example of this is my podcast. 80% of the reason why I love doing it is because it gets my brain working and thinking about things in different ways, analyzing film and pop culture, getting to talk about film and pop culture because I have no one else to discuss it with in the way I want to discuss it.
However.
I would be lying if I said 20% of the reason why I also do this podcast is out of spite. Spite for the people who commented that my film degree is fucking useless. Spite for the people who probably thought I’d record six episodes and quit. Spite for the people who think this is a useless endeavor because I have a small but loyal listenership rather than the thousands other podcasts have. Spite the men who dominate Leftist podcasting and think their knowledge of analyzation of film and pop culture is any good. It’s not. It’s shit and I know I can do way better than them. All my life I’ve been taught a white man’s opinion carries its weight in gold and is king. Siskel and Ebert, A.O. Scott, Leonard Maltin—who gives a shit? All we have heard is white men with shitty opinions. Ever since I’ve started engaging with Leftists, it’s a barrage of suggestions for white men hosted podcasts who invite other white men on their podcasts and it’s nothing new—it’s all the fucking same opinion from The Dick Brigade. I’ve had to dump those podcasts because I grew bored, I grew tired. Sure, they talk the talk but they clearly don’t walk the walk. One guy I used to follow on Twitter many years ago said something true in the bluntest of manners—no matter how hard you try, you will never be one of the guys. In a sense, these men are my contemporaries and the ones I do know respect me and the work I do, but by no means do they give a shit about me. I can’t rely on them, but I know I’m better than them, so I keep creating, keep writing, keep recording. Each episode I strive to make it better than the last. Why? Because I’m fucking better than them. I run circles around those mother fuckers and I want to rub their noses in it.
While the podcast is a good example of this, I’ve also had this laser focus in my writing, photography, and general work ethic. The one thing that causes me mental agony is also the one thing that keeps me going.
SPITE ALONE HOLDS ME ALOFT
I couldn’t think of a better sentence that describes me in a nutshell and I want to remind myself every time I feel like giving up, I can’t. I can’t because I have to prove to other people this cunt doesn’t give up and will never surrender.