Losing My Cool Via Email

A strange thing happened to me today: I lost my cool.  And I lost it over an email. Four emails to be exact.

This woman, a complete stranger, called me up and read me the riot act about not returning an email.  You see, I used to host a writer's group in Hilo, a free workshop to express creativity in the community and company of others.  Because we know writing can be a lovely, yet lonely pursuit. So this woman had been trying to get a hold of me for a few days, and I was remiss in my response.  Somehow she found my phone number and rang me up with a "Miss Manners" lesson poised on the tip of her tongue.  

The mostly one-sided conversation that followed was so intense, so unexpected and strange, that I stood on my front lanai, still and unmoving as a day without tradewinds.  I stood and watched a small green lizard hop from one red ginger blossom to another, nabbing ants as they marched up a dry and peeling stalk.  A neighbor walked past with Peanut, the pudgiest beagle in Hilo.  Afternoon constitution. She waved, my neighbor. But I couldn't. I just stood there stupidly on my front lanai, completely speechless, while a disembodied voice chewed me up one side and down the other.  Then I remembered myself.  I made short our conversation and hung up. But before I did, I told the woman on the phone that I would return her email. 

 <<insert string of expletives here>>    

My phone conversation with the ethereal conscience of Emily Post has been simmering on low heat all day. I tried to read past it (Chinua Achebe, in honor of his recent passing.)  I tried to nap through it. (Couldn't sleep.)  I even tried to appease it with one large glass of wine.  (That didn't help either.)  I don't know why this is bothering me so much.  It shouldn't, right?  My annoyance and outrage probably has nothing to do with this woman I described to a friend as a "freakshow, wackjob, nutwing, asshat of a woman."  Witch alert!  Double, double, toil and trouble.  My cauldron runneth over.     

So what, then?  Instinctively I shrug my shoulders, even though I know the answer. 

I felt... broken.  On the phone, via email, in general.  I still feel broken after all these months.  What's more, my brokenness was exposed to a complete stranger, and she responded in such a rude, insensitive manner.  I know, I shouldn't expect others to understand.  I shouldn't, but...  I did.  I needed someone, in that odd moment, to understand my pain.    

There I was, watching Peanut green the neighbor's lawn, feeling no air in my lungs.  The woman on the phone was incensed, personally affronted that I hadn't returned her emails (4 of them, 3 to yahoo and one to FB), but had "free time enough to post to Facebook several times each day." She's not even a "friend" of mine on Facebook. How could she see my posts?  Just a bit creepy. 

Her first email was late, late Wednesday night, as in a few days ago. And it wasn't like "Hey, help me find a missing child," --or-- "I'm bleeding out. Do you know how to make a tourniquet?" It was something I thought I could respond to tomorrow. I mean, I just finished my last class today, collected the midterm essays, took them home and graded about half of them. And I haven't showered. That part is solid truth-telling.

So, here's what I sent her. I told her I would respond to her via email. Here's what I just sent:

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Hello [full name of angry person],

I'm responding to your phone call and must say that I was frustrated and distressed after I hung up. I tried to talk to you today, but you seemed more interested in reading me the riot act about not returning your emails. I told you I would reply via email (in truth because I was being polite and didn't want to yell), so here it is: The past two years of my life have been a living hell. I assure you, this is no hyperbole. My daughter was diagnosed with bone cancer, and three days later we left the state for treatment. I quit my whole stinking life overnight: graduate school midway through a PhD, my job, my house, my pets, my community. It's hard to describe the devastation, other than to say it's like an evisceration. Body, mind, and spirit, my life has been torn up, turned upside-down and inside-out. So, really? REALLY? Over four freaking emails, all sent this week?

I'm sorry, [full name], if I didn't return your call in what you consider a timely manner. I'm sorry that when friends packed up my house, the software to update the Wild Mind website was misplaced. I'm sorry I've had my mind on just a few hundred thousand billion other things, aside from the free writing group I used to host. Believe me, it would be great--super fantastic, actually--if that's all I had to worry about. I'm sorry that you went down to the gallery and that we weren't there. I'm sorry you were quite put out. I am sorry about that, actually. I'm also sorry that this week is midterms at the college and that I'm teaching five classes to help pay down the mountain of medical bills that arrive each day in our mailbox, and I'm sorry that I've been grading my ass off for days and days and nights and days. In fact, I've been so stressed and busy this week, I can't rightly remember when I last showered. And I'm especially sorry that I go on Facebook as a means to relax and connect with family, friends near and far, and the cancer community. You must be so disappointed in me.

Oh wait a minute... I don't even know you. I really don't need to explain myself, do I? I'll do it anyway.

Imagine my surprise when I received your call today, complaining that I hadn't returned your email from this week. I mean, you probably don't know that I have 22,027 unopened emails in my email account right now. That's what happens, [full name], when you take almost two years away from your life, when you live away from home and out of a suitcase at the freaking Ronald McDonald House, when you think about nothing else but whether your child will live or die. Yeah. I'm a little behind on email.

I'm sorry if this email is a bit terse, verging on rude and inappropriate. It's not like me, but I'm not feeling much like myself. You see, I'm tired and grumpy. I'm thinking about what will happen in two weeks when we fly to Seattle for scans and medical appointments. It's called scanxiety, wondering whether the cancer in my daughter has relapsed or not. And we have to do this every three months, [full name]. Every three months. Every. Three. Months. And I worry about it much more than that. So maybe you can just give me a stinking break for not returning your email, for not updating my website, for not being a perfect human being in a screwed up situation.

Perhaps you've just caught me on a more-than-blue-moon kind of day. Everyone has their breaking point, right? My breaking point came today, after I felt I needed to defend myself on the phone to a complete stranger about why I haven't returned her email when I haven't even responded to emails from my own family. Yeah, I'm a little tired. I'm depressed. I'm over-freaking-whelmed.

And then I had this crazy, crazy thought. You know what? I don't need to offer any excuses. I don't need to defend myself, the way I live, the person I am, or how I spend my time.

I don't make excuses for who I am, [full name]. I don't need to. Not to you or anyone else.

Please do not call me again.

Piper Selden

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 I felt like screaming at this woman. If you don't like me, then bug off! Or as my grandmother used to say: "Peddle your papers elsewhere." I'm not buying nuts today. 

Who is this person I've become?  There are days I don't recognize myself, and I have no patience for it. My inner diplomat has gone missing. But maybe it's relative. I didn't yell, and I didn't swear at her. What I can say is this: If she'd been in front of me, I would have stared at her incredulously, stared deep into her eyes, then I would have vomited on her feet. That's the way I lose my cool for real.   

As the late Chinua Achebe writes in Things Fall Apart, a story that captures the depth of shared human qualities: "There is no story that is not true." 

And so it goes, when things do...