I guess hi!!! A greeting to my general subs

Hi Substackettes! Well I’m already going back on my original plan and making a public post because I got quite literally zero paid subscribers (which, for the record, I am not complaining about and it was to be expected, I think I was a little too cocky when I made this and thought I was Rainn F-Q or something). But also I realized that the $8 a month was the default that Substack made and that it is way too high so I’m changing it to $4 or 5 a month. I put a lot of really hard work into my writing, especially for things I will be publishing to people who paid to see it, so I want that to be an option that is desirable for as many people as possible. So hopefully that new change will translate into more paid subscribers! I am working on a paper right now to be posted there, it’s gonna be really cool.

Thank you for caring about what I have to say. I started my blog (it’s in my Linktree, I can’t even be bothered to type the full URL in here because I’m too broke to get my own domain so it’s a bunch of gibberish that screams at you THIS IS A POOR BITCH BLOG LOOK SHE’S SO BROKE HAHA)… anyways I started that blog this summer. I made the mistake-but-also-blessing of adding in a section where readers could message me. It was a mistake (and I use that term lightly) in that I had no idea how many people were going to reach out to me, and it swiftly ended up facing the same fate as my Instagram DMs, which is that I really tried my best in the beginning to respond but got overwhelmed asf and now both inboxes lie completely untouched because I can’t deal with 1) the sheer volume, 2) the guilt of acknowledging the people and heartfelt messages I haven’t responded to, and 3) me being a people-pleaser and knowing that if I did open the floodgate of starting to answer my messages, I wouldn’t be able to respond to each of them with any less than a novel.

But it was also a blessing in that I became acutely aware of the impact I had on people, in a way that couldn’t be conveyed to me just on TikTok.

Someone messaged me and told me I was one of the reasons he was still here today. Someone else finally worked up the courage to leave a shitty relationship because of me documenting my experience with the same thing. It made me sad how many of my messages were long paragraphs detailing the situationship/relationship someone was in and ending in asking me what they should do, usually being if they should leave or stay. For the record, it’s really not worth reaching out to me about, because I will tell you every time that if you need to ask a stranger on the internet if you should leave them, then you probably already know the answer yourself very well.

I’ve shared a lot of writing that I made both during times when I was in such relationships as well as reflecting on them afterwards. So many people resonated with this, and I am so grateful for that. However, after reading how many of my blog messages were about the topic of a shitty relationship and suffering at the hands of a man, I realized a new direction needed to be taken. I never meant for so much of my art and work so center around that suffering. While I’m eternally proud of being able to help someone feel less alone, I think there’s so much about us and our lives and our internal experiences that are far more worthy of being spoken about than that. There’s so much more to my story than the people who made me sick. There’s so much more that we could be connecting about together.

So I’m giving this as a preface that I don’t want anyone to subscribe to this expecting me to write manifestos giving you advice on how to dump that shitty situationship. I am more than that, you are more than that. We have other things to talk about. That being said, I probably will write about it. Just not a lot. My brain is the most interesting thing about me and that is such a minuscule part of it, there’s so much more I’d rather share with you guys.