How To Disappear Completely

A common subject in my therapy sessions is, unsurprisingly to anyone who knows me, my utter discomfort with being the subject of positive attention. This is, perhaps ironically, a situation that co-exists with my utter discomfort with the idea of being the subject of negative attention, so you can imagine how well I deal with being perceived in almost anyway beyond passing recognition — and even that makes me a little nervous, just in case.

I mention this because, when it was announced that I’d been named as the new editor of Popverse, there followed two or three days of people congratulating me, or saying that it was a great move on Popverse’s part, or similar sentiments, and it was the most uncomfortable thing in the world to me. It was something that I found myself entirely unable to acknowledge, never mind respond to, because anytime any of the social media mentions (or emails!) came into my vision, I folded in on myself in a vain attempt to disappear entirely from view, if not from the very concept of actually existing just to be on the safe side.

I knew, objectively, that this kind of attention was a good thing and that I should appreciate it and file it away for future humblebragging purposes, but I froze at even the first step of doing so; instead, I was just horrified by the very potential of people having any kind of opinion on me or my work and wishing that I could burrow into an alternate reality where that wasn’t the case.

All of this is to say: if you were one of those people and are now one of the people reading these words, I am sorry for not replying, and I do appreciate what you said, honestly; if my brain wasn’t wired quite the way it was, then I’d have been able to say that to you directly. As it is, I’m just going to blush and then step away quietly in the hope that we can all pretend that never happened in the first place. That shouldn’t be too hard, should it…?

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