“There is no one who doesn’t shudder at the sound of an oath on a girl’s lips” Dorothy Dix, How To Win and Hold a Husband.

The one thing I’ve continually failed at in this experiment is not upsetting Ian with angry words and stressful stories.  One day I’ll make a deliberate undertaking of it, but for now, I’m merely self-conscious about after the fact.

In the last week, a bunch of idiots at my horrible grad program, Stonecoast MFA (sorry Elizabeth and Suzanne, you were great) decided that blah blah long story anyways, it ended with a bunch of CNF writers saying some really personal, hateful things to my writing partner, Matthew, which is NOT OKAY.

(now I can say this, because I’ve been in CNF workshops with all of them, and the girls in question are some of the most narcissistic bimbos I’ve ever met, like how B***** dad fighting in Vietnam TOTALLY RUINED HER LIFE. Call the waaaamublance.)

I take this kind of personally, because I had a pretty decent life, some trauma that I don’t like to talk about because it’s not really anybody’s business, parents who loved me, but I was told, by these same idiots, that my stories–and therefor, the life I lead–wasn’t worth hearing about, that my pain wasn’t painful enough.  My mentor, a man I formally respected, told me that I wasn’t allowed to use the word “addiction” because I guess he owned it or something.  That’s basically saying “You’re boring and no one cares.”  I didn’t write CNF for a long, long time because no one ever gave my work feedback, just told me what a horrible person I was (for what, I don’t know.  I wrote about records.  Sorry I wasn’t molested).

So I was ranting and raving to Ian about how these girls attacked me for no reason, and I called former classmate B***** a c****, because she is.  Her essays were all about her blowing dudes at NIN concerts for coke and she was TOTES ANGRY BECAUSE HER DAD WAS IN VIETNAM, plus she called me a bitch in workshop and the workshop leader let her get away with it.  And now she tried to use me against Matthew, like he should be ashamed of me and of himself for being friends with me.  I’m more hurt by her attacking him than I am at her attacking me.

But Ian, like most normal people, hates the c-word, so he got all mad at ME, and I ended up not only carrying my PTSD, but his stress about my dirty language.

I know I shouldn’t have said that about B***** because it was mean, and I don’t want to stop to her hateful level.  If I was a better person, I would pray that she finds some sort of happiness because she seems to hate everyone and everything, most of all, herself.  And I’m torn between feeling like I can lean on Ian when I’m terrified of my own ugliness and being afraid to let him see the ugliness inside of me.  I know Dorothy would say to keep it tucked in . . . but neither her, nor Arlene, nor HGB ever say what you do with that ugliness if there’s no outlet.