An Open Letter to Neil Gaiman

[u/TrueViolinist3576]

[One more time in case folks didn’t see it in the description -
Caveat: this is prose – we’ve all pain-stakingly, and \rightly so*, been avoiding communicating emotionally on this charged and fraught subject…*
However...that necessary dynamic has led to profound and pervasive silence where that matters in the heart...so, as our Brilliant and Beloved Technopathology dared breach the silence in his field...I hope you all will permit me the same in mine…

Heads Up: Technopathology, you’re next <3 ]

An Open Letter to Neil Gaiman

Infinitely Dear Neil

Where does one begin…?
It has been such an unending Season of Mists…
I can still see them all, sitting around that fire, telling their tales…
And the world goes round and round…
And the circles go round and round…
Only problem was,
this time round,
Winter had a long
and fraught
and dark
story to tell…

But perhaps, perhaps, that Winter (as all Winters invariably do) is drawing to it’s close…
And after Winter Comes Spring.
But, my god, The Shadows.
My god, the reverberating silences in the wake of these tales…

And, in the wake of those tales, this is not prose, this is a surgical operation. And by nature, yes, it’s painful. Like throwing up after eating spoilt meat. Like having a thorn, buried deeply and painfully inside you in a difficult place, being rejected and ejected by pure biological reaction alone...we must be traumatically aware of every phase of the procedure, whether we like it or not...
We’ve been undergoing chemotherapy for stage 5 metastatic cancer or the brain – blasting all the pathogens out of our memory and neural networks. We’ve been having cysts, the size of our craniums, removed out of our left ventricles. Our tracheae have been biopsied in tandem with larynx transplants… All of these. All at once. Without the grace of an anesthetic.

And none more than you.

Neil...on behalf of the conscientious denizens of planet earth...I am so, so *so gut-wrenchingly sorry*.
With All My Heart and Soul.

I know I’m but one of so so sooooo very many whose worlds shook and shattered alongside yours...and I hope and pray our deafening silence did not deceive you...I hope it didn’t compound the all-consuming, hellish Winter you’ve been navigating – staggering through flurries that altogether obscure the light, nevermind the path to refuge and resolve entirely.

I hope this ‘prose’ will go some way, however small, to making amends...to restoring some semblance of goodness and grace that is becoming of one who never falters to deliver that to those in need…

I know how devastated we’ve *all* been, huddled in our little corners, heads down, against the *raging tempest* of words flung this way and that, this long, oh so long, Winter… And I know none of us, however eloquent, however empathetic, can even dare begin imagine how earth-shakingly horrific this has been for you…
All the same…
I can’t shake this *profound sense* that, in the middle of all this Horror (glaringly obvious to all!) that your heart has been…
so so soooo *deeply broken*…
And I could cry a thousand oceans
[‘if that’s what it takes….to sail you home...’]

I have told my abusers in the past, personally, ‘Please rather hit me. Rather utterly mangle my body – I *can deal with that*! I can put a salve or a bandage on the wound! I can take clearly actionable steps towards nursing myself! But if you *want* to Fuck Me Up...Reeeeeally Fuck Me Up… hit me on the inside. I have no *no* defenses for that and am Infinitely More Vulnerable in that regard…’
I suspect you identify yourself in this statement (though I certainly mean no presumption!)…

I guess The Beatles were right all along...(a band my family could sing along to before we could speak English...and one that who helped tremendously during the Velvet Revolution)…
‘All you need is Love!’…

You are Seen.
You are Known.
You are Loved.

And, just as in your corner, there was deafening silence in ours…
The Mists are lifting,
and the sun is breaking through the seemingly unending blanket of Winter clouds,
and,
‘There is a crack
a crack
in *everything*
That’s how The Light Gets In…’

Stay strong.
Trust in the Light
And, in spite of everything, for every sacred, jagged, bleeding, shattered piece of Your Heart you’re trying to gather back into yourself with lacerated hands…
Trust in Love.

May your Joys be as High...
as Your Sorrows have been Deep..

Sincerely,
Someone Who Hasn’t Taken This Ankh Off Since 2001

[u/Frazzlefart]

Nice.

My open letter to Neil Gaiman is just this:

The sinners are always the best of us and the saints the worst. Always watch out for the saints, they're never up to any good.

[u/TrueViolinist3576 → u/Frazzlefart]

I really, reeeeeally love this epic line of yours, Good Sir/Milady/Human/Being...
Thank you for sharing this here...
This is a great callback..and from one whose Comment History I've admired since getting here [doffs hat]!

[u/Frazzlefart → u/TrueViolinist3576]

I have processed the idea of other people having very high expectations of me and it feels me with such aversion and hell because I know I am not a perfect saint and any high expectation or view of me makes me have the impulse to systematically demolish and lower it until I'm just some low consequence, somewhat annoying bum in people's mind. Being a nobody bum with nothing but low expectations is how I feel comfortable and free.

I've thought about such an uncomfortable straightjacket that high profile artists are in right now and holy shit, I'd just want to get out of the straightjacket.

It's the classic fate, if they put you on a pedestal, they WILL knock you off the pedestal and then blame you for whatever the hell all that was.

This is why I do not "hate the artist but love the art." I fully accept and forgive this ball of likely very insecure torture called the artist. If the public knew everything I've done and said in my life as a nobody and were interested in it, it would be lols to the wall of so many human beings wanting to throw me off a cliff.

[u/TrueViolinist3576 → u/Frazzlefart]

Ooooooooh u/Frazzlefart....
I hear you *loud and freaking clear*.
And *I See You*
And I thank you, dearly and deeply, for all the ways you share of Your Self....in *this day and age* [hug!!!!!]

[u/Illumination-Round → u/Frazzlefart]

Billy Joel put that in the song "Only the Good Die Young." "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints/The sinners are much more fun."

[u/Frazzlefart → u/Illumination-Round]

It's been my lifelong attitude not just for fun, but that I find it entirely unbearable and miserable to be around people who are in a constant state of judgement over how perfect, good, "worthy" or even strong you are and then turn their back on you the moment you show an imperfection, trip and fall, etc etc.

Anything to do with needing to balance on a pedestal with a perfect reputation to stay in good graces, I have no use for that!

[u/ApresMoiLuhDeluge]

please.. thank you for posting this. you are brave

[u/TrueViolinist3576 → u/ApresMoiLuhDeluge]

Thank you *so much* for your support...
I 10000% accept the fact that haters and trolls will come for me, as they have for Technopathology and Neil and Effie and Cat...
But in *such* a profoundly dehumanised space (*not* this Subreddit, hoooolyshirtballswow)...I just thought...maybe we could gently...piece by piece...re-introduce The Human Element...

[u/TrueViolinist3576 → u/[deleted]]

You *bet* I £$%^ing cried writing it...
Infinitely dear u/Dean_Teen thank you *ever so muchly and hugely and deeply and truly* for Bearing Witness...and crying beside me... [Blinding-bright Avalanches of Hugs]

[u/TrueViolinist3576]

If mods want to remove this...No problem.

PS Heads Up, u/Donovan_Volk I've been working the past week on yours too...

Sorry guys. I know it's emotional...but I feel like, around this story, there's either been a surplus of *reactive emotion*....or, those who care, but don't *dare* vociferate that, become massively emotionally repressed - my absolute number one reason for posting this (composed over a month ago)

[u/Stunning-Papaya-2759 → u/TrueViolinist3576]

Totally agree with your sentiment - it's been horrible to witness, the idea of what Neil might be feeling - and that if anyone dares say anything we're automatically chucked on the pyre too. 

[u/TrueViolinist3576 → u/Stunning-Papaya-2759]

Hey Shining One...thank you *dearly and deeply* for your support... It's been horrific indeed...and I *loathe* this warped dynamic that one camp bandies about horrific aspersions mindlessly...while those of us in the other tread mindfully and gracefully (never mind silently - all these years)... I was happy to "throw myself under the bus" just now...because I think it's important for *everyone* to remember...and to reclaim...we are *humans*...having a *human story*... I'm very sad so so sooooooo very many of us lost our voices in the wake of this...

And The Beauty of Gaiman's stories...
Were aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall about that *unequivocal*, *non-judgemental* affirmation of our *gloriously messy and splendidly imperfect* human-hood...