I had to put this online because it is one of the most righteous, tough, motivating pieces of writing I've ever seen. It wasn't written by me but by a friend - actually the coolest girl in our school - who I've known since I was about 13. It's an excerpt from a round-robin exchange between the cool woman, a moping woman and other friends and it put a big grin on my face. I've edited certain details out to protect the guilty and have subtly marked where these edits are. Can you spot them?
"For an outsider, it's really not clear what that guy has done that's so wrong (I'm not saying he wasn't wrong!!!). He treated you very badly in a romantic liaison because - and sorry but it was obvious a mile off - he's a stereotypical self-obsessed OCCUPATION. But why should that have any effect on either of your careers? Even if other people in the industry actually knew he was a bit of shit with his love life (which they probably don't), it really doesn't bear much relation to his ability to DO HIS JOB or talk about HIS JOB. THE INDUSTRY is full of arses behaving inappropriately (men and women) - nobody would have job in that industry if being an arse in your private life bore any relation to your ability to get the job done. You know as well as anyone that it is an industry of people who are out for number one, who play a game, and pick and drop people as it suits, quietly slipping knives into backs if necessary - I personally wouldn't go looking for mates in that sort of environment, let alone someone I'd trust my heart to (though there are undoubtedly going to be some nice ones, but they will be a small minority).
If you sit around waiting for proof of some sort of karma then you are going to waste your life; if you want proof of karma you've got to live like a Buddhist and patiently wait until you die! It's you that is giving yourself a life sentence on this one... so what if you see or hear him at work? The first face to face meeting would, without doubt, be a bit nauseating. And you'd probably need to go and get pissed and overanalyze everything with a friend for the entire evening. And then it would be over, and you'd never have to go through it again.
I know you're still feeling humiliated by it all, but it is you that is torturing yourself for being a bit crush-blind and getting your fingers burnt - we've all done it. No one else cares. Who else (apart from the people that you tell about it) actually even knows? Stop talking about him. Stop writing stuff about him. Stop caring about his career. His career is not going to be affected in any shape or form by his behaviour towards you. And nor should it really... we've all been badly behaved in romantic situations over the course of our life, and it would be pretty tragic if it meant we all had to spend the rest of our lives stacking shelves and crying over our thwarted ambitions as penance. Underneath it all he is clearly insecure and pretty damn feeble - karma will get him on a personal level, but you will probably never get to hear about it. The only person who is risking their career by not letting it drop is you. Other people will not understand why you are still thinking about it - let alone publicly talking about it - now.
Sorry for the tough love via email - it no doubt sounds much harsher in your head as you read this than it does in my head as I write it - but SOME IDENTIFYING DETAILS ARE JUST TOO OBVIOUS TO INCLUDE. Enough now. Stop wasting energy that should be directed towards your own ambitions and HAVING FUN."
On behalf of every crush-burnt person out there... Thank you! It doesn't matter if you agree politically that private and public are separate. I don't, having witnessed how the mistreatment of women is endemic pretty much everywhere I've worked and how men who mistreat women in 'private' also belittle, marginalise, downtalk and discriminate against women at work. I believe that abusers of all types rely on their victims staying silent and their peers supporting them and that dedicated repeat liars, traitors, manipulators, deceivers and cheats are out-and-out abusers. I do not believe that men who are emotional abusers deserve careers, acclaim or success supported or enabled by women; and in 20 years I have seen that the hardcore, pathological emotional abusers were all men. I will not protect abusive behaviour, collaborate or discreetly gloss it over. But I still love the underlying message of this, which, in the words of Alice Sebold, is You save yourself, or you remain unsaved. And life is too short to mope.
