Everybody can see your underwear!🩲

Baring it all on the internet

Hi reader,

Your poem is shittier than shit. Your writing advice stinks. I’m gonna have to block you so I never see this on my feed again.

These are all comments I’ve memorized by heart. (There should be another term for memorizing hurts. This one doesn’t feel right.)

Today, I am walking to the post office with my phone in the left pocket of my sweatpants. (I have not changed my clothes because I do my best work feral. It’s a thing.) I brought my phone because I’m terrified. Tax season isn’t for months, I don’t have any creepy fan mail, and my electricity bill has been paid. No, it’s something much scarier.

I just posted a story on my Instagram account.

David Casco Photography

It’s a picture of me sitting cross-legged on the couch in the Airbnb Corey and I were staying at this week. I added a caption: It’s hard to feel the fear of being seen. To sense at any moment someone can react to your poem and say something mean. You can’t stop this from happening. Today, on National Poetry Day, I offer you an affirmation: it is safe to write a poem.

There is no mail, so my hands are empty the entire walk back home. The phone gnaws at my fingertips. It is hungry. I am a slave, and I must feed it. I check the story replies every few minutes.

Maybe you’ve done this too—when I rewatch it, I try to see it fresh from the lens of a certain person. How they would see it. Then maybe I can control their perception of me. Maybe, digitally, in a strange reverse manner, I can please them.

I delete the story after an hour. Lol, the irony.

Nobody said anything. Nobody told me I’m a fraud, I’m cringe, or that I suck and should give up on writing. But the slight (incredibly slight, let’s be real) possibility of that happening was too painful to allow it to.

So I made sure it didn’t.

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Sometimes, sharingontheinternet feels like being a kid on a trampoline and having all the other kids laugh and yell, “Everybody can see your underwear!” Some days, we wear our best lace knickers and grin proudly, and other days, we run out of laundry and have to show the world our teenage years’ leftovers.

Sometimes, what we offer is loved. Sometimes it is ignored, and sometimes it is hated.

Last week, someone messaged me and asked a question I’d received numerous times: “How do I get over the fear of posting my work online?”

And I want to tell them the story of two writers I know who shared a poem that everyone in the poetry community didn’t like. Maybe it was politically incorrect. Who really knows.

I confess that, like the rest of the poetry community, I unfollowed them before really knowing what happened (as a good literary citizen would, I thought at the time.) I want to say I haven’t heard from them in years—their poems aren’t anywhere to be found. Sometimes, I miss them.

I want to tell this person in my dm’s to be careful, to write on eggshells, to rhyme with one eye open. I want to validate their fear and share mine. Commiserate over the darkness and wait for a shooting star together.

But obviously, I don’t. Instead, I write a love letter to myself and disguise it as advice. (This is usually what we do when we give advice, anyway.)

I say, just start. Just write one poem. The rest will come. You’re safe here.

Whatever that means.

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I’ve contemplated that maybe gettingfuckinghurt is a prerequisite to making good art. And that maybe I’m delaying something wonderful by deleting the stories. Perhaps I need to jump over the obstacle to grow my hind legs. Perhaps I could use a few punches to my poem’s guts.

I have done my absolute darndest to protect myself and my poems. Instant blocks. Quick reports. Constant monitoring of the comment section. Instead of jumping over the bar, I fear I’ve just closed the door to the arena entirely. My arms are aching from holding it closed. My soul is exhausted. Control is a hard boss.

I wonder what have I missed out on by dodging the punches? What muscles have atrophied in the cast I’ve created for myself? Even safety comes at a cost, I’m sure.

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I’ve heard it before: writingontheinternet should feel a little risky. If you don’t hesitate for a second before pressing post, have you really gotten close enough to the truth?

But should I tremble so much I can’t walk to the post office and leave my writing at home, all alone? Am I in a codependent relationship with my words? Is it time to retire the babysitter? Are my poems growing up? Do I need to let go?

I try to distill my questions like this until I get to the purest one: am I enough?

Anna Fusco

says she doesn’t fear the rejection of strangers because she’s already experienced the worst rejection of all: her father leaving. Nothing could even come close. She says her fear of rejection doesn’t exist because she herself has accepted herself entirely. How can anyone object to that?

I weep at the thought.

Love,

Maria

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P.S.

I write these letters as a public exploration of my journey leaving my corporate accounting career towards an art-filled life as a full-time poet, my family’s immigration from Mexico to Canada as Russian Mennonites, and a whole lot of learningtolovemyself. Mix in a few craft posts, and well….that’s me.

It’s never expected that you would write back, but if you’re inclined, I’ll write back in the comments, and we can chat a bit. If you’d like to support my work by becoming a paid subscriber for a few bucks a month, that would truly be *swell*.

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