Recently, musician Melissa Etheridge announced that she and her wife, actress Tammy Lynn Michaels, had split up. She called the breakup amicable and said that they planned to continue raising their two young children together. However, Michaels doesn't seem to want to go along with Etheridge's story. She posted a poem on her blog, Hollywood Farm Girl, last Thursday, and the poem's title - "no more censorship for me?" - hinted at what the rest of the post contained. Here are some choice selections from the poem:
secrets, with-holding,
whispering to all but
the one whom holds the vows
and the toddlersyou withdrew your hands
from family and intimacy
to pluck those strings moreso thank you for telling an interviewer
that you WON'T censor me on my blog
(i thought i was to say nothing, my bad)cuz i did not go anywhere, honey.
and you and i both know it
please stop telling the press it was mutual-
I had two thoughts after I read this poem. The first one was oh snap. The second was, breaking up sucks even more when you have to do it on the internet.
Last week, my longtime boyfriend and I broke up. Along with all the other shitty things that come along with a breakup, like giving back each others' stuff, we had to delete our "in a relationship" status on Facebook. Although we both removed that from our respective feeds, several people still saw the status change and thus learned about our breakup not from us but from the internet.
How much should we say about our breakups and other major life events online? Tons of people keep blogs, like Tammy Lynn Michaels does, but unlike her most of the people who keep blogs about their lives aren't famous and don't have many readers. Until recently, I maintained a personal blog, and it was mostly just pictures and lists and things I wanted to remember, and the only people who read it were people who know me in real life. I know as well as anyone that writing about hard times is a way to heal, but there's a reason I have a paperbound journal in addition to a web platform. There's a snippet from the Adrienne Rich poem "North American Time" that seems particularly relevant here:
I am thinking this in a countrywhere words are stolen out of mouthsas bread is stolen out of mouthswhere poets don't go to jailfor being poets, but for beingdark-skinned, female, poor.I am writing this in a timewhen anything we writecan be used against those we lovewhere the context is never giventhough we try to explain, over and overFor the sake of poetry at leastI need to know these things
Rich is right - and I wish more people in the public eye would take her words to heart. When you write something or say something in an interview, you should not be completely shocked when your words are taken out of context and used against you. I applaud Michaels' bravery as she deals with her hurt, but I know that I'd rather deal with my own pain offline, where there's no record of it happening.
Cross-posted from TheGloss