I am, in literature and in life, inexplicably drawn to the bad narrator. I want Maria in Play it As It Lays, strung out on pills, Ottessa Moshfegh’s anti-heroine spending her family’s money into oblivion, Scott in The Sarah Book, driving drunk with his kids in the backseat. I want Fiona Apple on repeat, going bat shit on the symbols, playing the only sound that has ever accurately captured the angst of being the other woman.
Before I was drawn to the flawed narrator in books, I found her in real life. In middle and high school, I clung to friends and lovers who made horrendously bad decisions, who lied through their teeth about the car they didn’t hit or the cop they didn’t shoot (my writer friend said I should edit this to something more believable, but I can’t write this any other way, both really happened).
My obsession with the unhinged narrator, the boundary pushing friend, the dangerous lover, has continued on well past the developmentally appropriate stage of adolescence and into adulthood. I always liked the story of our lives told through their words. I want to be as close to the flame as possible without getting burned.
These dramas…these over the top horror stories seething with blood and immortality…they made me feel better….Like a less damaged daughter. A failed student. A slut. An athlete gone to seed. 1
I have tried endlessly over the years to understand my magnetism to “bad” people, how this rubs against my sensitive soul, my longing above all else to be loved and seen with tenderness and care. My own desire to be good, obedient and clean.
One explanation: I am bored, seeking the edges of a life darker than my own. Growing up my parents prioritized comfort, family dinners, keeping your word, being “good.” The problematic narrator of the books I loved most always resembled some sort of femme fatale. Someone glamorous and urbane, anything but boring. She was everything I was not, and therefore everything I wanted to be.
Another explanation: I am seeking in both my own writing and in others, to be seen in my entirety. A sense of wholeness. Isn’t that what we’re all seeking? Acknowledgement, absolution from our deepest fears. Salvation. To be wiped clean.
***
As a child, I learned of badness through the Ten Commandments, a list of Thou Shalt Nots. As I got older, I violated most of them.
Thou shalt not covet
I covet my neighbor’s ass, as well as her apartment
***
On a snowy January while the world was on pause, I moved into my first solo apartment, a stabilized studio in a Brooklyn neighborhood where I had always wanted to live. My room had an ornate fireplace, a rent I could mostly afford, and these large gothic windows with stained glass awnings that looked out onto a boulevard of giant trees that held the snow just right (what kind of trees).
It was what I always wanted, but I was crying every day. Nothing had happened, no one had died. I had just published my first piece for a major publication. I adopted a cat. I hired a handy man who built shelves and a monthly house cleaner who made sure I kept them clean. I bought sheets that matched and cookbooks that looked nice. A friend mailed me a sourdough starter. I bought the plants that are impossible to kill, and basil and cilantro seeds to grow on my window sill. I got on antidepressants.
But the sourdough molded and the plants that are impossible to kill withered, and the herbs I had so scrupulously planted never sprouted. I was chasing a man I had seen for two years, who texted me photos of squirrels at two am, but took days to respond when I asked to hang out. I cried and then forgot what I was crying about and then cried some more. I had the outline of the life I wanted, but something was gnawing at me from the inside out.
Living alone for the first time, I was baffled at the idea that I was the only one accountable for myself. I had to get out of bed each day, shower, and feed myself. All I kept thinking was Who’s in charge here? And where are the adults?
I went down several internet spirals, trying to escape my loneliness, and somewhat fatefully landed upon Chelsea Hodson’s writing accountability program, Finish What You Start.
Despite the fact that I hadn’t written for nearly a year, I enrolled. I needed something to show up for.
I was fearful in our initial consultation, ashamed of the essay I had just put out to the world. I wanted to be messier and write louder. I wanted to write outside of ego, to write through complicated desires, past my fear of being liked, and get closer to the brave narrators I had always admired. Chelsea gently reminded me of two things
- The most important person you’re writing for is you
- Ask yourself what the writers you like most would do. Do that.
I began reading narrators who were making terrible decisions. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. The shames that were hard for me to face in myself, became easier when I saw them on the page. I read Problems by Jade Sharma, a story of loneliness and depression and addiction and the want to be loved, and held my chest the entire time. I read The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan and sobbed. Bad Sex by Clancy Martin and Cherry by Nico Walker and How to Murder your Life by Cat Marnell. I read Chloe Caldwell’s essay “My year of Heroin and Acne” again and again. In each admission, I found solace in myself.
In an interview with The New Yorker, the Author Diane Williams discusses the relationship between this type of fearless writing, and one’s desire to be good.
What is the opposite of being dutiful?
The opposite is being a wild person. And you can be a wild person on the page.I have always felt that this is my obligation, to permit the wild person access to the page.
And how do you give the wild person inside access to the page?
Deliver a person who will recklessly tell the truth, for one thing. Nice manners are of no use here.
***
Thou shalt not make idols out of men
In the bedroom and sometimes outside of it, I get on my knees
I worship
***
I spend my days working as a high school social worker in the city. My office does not have proper walls, but I turn on a noise canceling machine and students hear the shhhh and they begin confessing. Often, I hear stories of violence and regret and shame: of hitting girlfriends or robbing stores or stealing from their families. In these stories of badness, there is relief, for them, and for me. It is more than catharsis. In the re-telling, we both learn that we can have unlovable parts and still be loved. We can have badness and not be all bad.
I recently had a dream where I had murdered a baby in cold blood, and my students were hiding me. I asked if they’d forgive me, if the mothers I babysat for would forgive me. A student told me again and again No one is the worst thing they’ve ever done.
I have always been scared of my own “badness.” I learned to hide the messy parts early— jealousy and rage, obsession and greed, impulsiveness, in favor of the sides I found more agreeable, but dangerous none the less- people pleasing, self-righteousness, pride. I wanted to be loved and to be loved I thought I had to be good. And yet, I always had the sense that my darkness was bigger than everyone else’s.
No one is the worst thing they have ever done
When you work in any caregiving profession, everyone approaches you as if you’re a saint. I could never do what you do. Or they are so lucky to have you. What they don’t acknowledge is how self-serving any caring profession is. People bravely expose themselves, while you remain cloaked behind a title. You are deeply close to others’ pain, getting the benefits of intimacy, without the risk of disclosure, shame, rejection. You heal yourself through healing others.
So I am not as selfless as I thought, then can I still be good? What is good?
We mustn’t forget and should respect the violence inside us. Small acts of violence save us from greater ones. 2
Beware of the one who tells you she has no evil in her.
***
Thou shalt not bear false witness
I tried to tell the truth but I lied
I lied again
***
Around the same time as starting Chelsea’s program, I was beginning Jungian analysis. For two times a week I dug and dug into what Carl Jung calls the shadow self, “the hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors.” 3
I was beginning to uncover some unpleasant truths about myself. I had built a career, and an identity around being good, but found the good versus bad binary was crumbling. And underneath it, I began to crumble too.
I was less kind than I thought. I avoided eye contact with homeless people.
I was more selfish, less generous, more narcissistic, incredibly petty. I slept with your boyfriend and then lied about it. I recycled improperly and never bothered to fix it.
I was superficial and status seeking. I was deeply egotistical. For every 700 dollars I spent on designer clothes, I donated maybe 10. I never read the news.
I did not want to save the world. I wanted to save myself.
When you have built your self-image on being “good,” incorporating the darker side of one’s ego throws you. I got drunk alone on Monday nights and almost always came to work hungover. I slept with strangers and married people and people in committed relationships. I lied to friends and family and consistently had drugs in my bag from the night before.
I was scared to bring my shadow to light, as if the more I uncovered, the more threatened my relatively shaky goodness would become. I felt like I was rotting from the inside out.
In my haze, I turned back to writing, and to the books of those who showed themselves, courageously, on the page. I couldn’t face myself head on, but as I read other writers who shed light on the shadowy parts of themselves, who boldly shared their grossest, most deplorable parts of self, my own shadow felt lighter.
Dianne Williams, again: “Wildness usually encompasses the unspeakable—an insistence on speaking what is too difficult to speak about.”
Writing isn’t therapy. But inking your shadow self publicly, taking a stand, offering yourself up for criticism and asking others to engage with it, can be life-saving, for reader and writer alike. It’s the truth that the messiest narrators, the most unredeemable characters embody. It’s how these characters, and the authors who write them, risk their likeability and moral compass on the page, by showing us their darkest, dirtiest, most evil thoughts. Almost always, I am endeared by the so-called evil narrator. Almost always, I can find something redeemable. From the distance of a page, I can forgive them. And maybe, at some point, that will allow me to forgive myself. I promise to be better.
***
I make promises I can’t keep.
__________________
The Chronology of Water: A Memoir, Lidia Yuknavitch 1
An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures, Clarice Lispector 2
https://www.thesap.org.uk/articles-on-jungian-psychology-2/about-analysis-and-therapy/the-shadow/ 3