i got the ick

an internet creep

My favorite part of writing on Substack is the comments. Whenever I write a post that feels like it’ll finally be the one—the one that causes all my readers to unsubscribe because I’ve gone too far, I’ve said something weird and unrelatable that no one else will understand—I am proven wrong by your words. You share what the writing brought up for you, your similar experiences. You validate my feelings and then expand on them, often more eloquently than I was able to in the original post. You give me the gift of validation and normalization of my private inner world. And it really does feel like a gift: to be witnessed, to be understood.

On Thursday night, I got an idea. I wanted to give this space back to you. I posted to Substack Notes:

I want dear diary to become your diary too. Maybe as a recurring segment, maybe just a one-off post. Maybe neither if only one person engages, lol. I’m going to link to a site. You send me an anonymous message: not about me, about you. Maybe you share s…