Everything Happened | vol. 224
Dooce
A long time ago, I got in trouble for some of my personal writing on the internet. The electrocurrent of mortification coursing through me felt permanent, and I didn’t know how I could move on from the embarrassment.
This was long before anyone I didn’t know was reading things I wrote, before I’d ever had a byline. It was when I was in a journalism Master’s program that I’d applied to out of jealousy when a peer, a fellow raggedy punk kid from Ohio, got a cool magazine job seemingly (to me) out of thin air. I hated myself for the unquenchable desire to reveal my insides to others in this way. Why couldn’t I be good at literally anything else? Fixing cars. Knowing Excel.
It was Nick who yanked me into clarity: why do they get to tell you how to think about your life? He talked me out of deleting the entire blog. (I still deleted the post.) Later that night, after I was glandularly incapable of producing more tears, a thought occurred to me like food aid parachuted into a war zone. Did I kind of get Dooced?
I didn’t, not in the strict sense of having lost my job. But I was having to be accountable for being my rude, funny, honest self online. This was not the arc of a loser, I thought. Heather Armstrong, then at the peak of the blogging monetization frenzy, was not a loser. She was talented, funny, beautiful, and had great taste. She had a special sauce that so many people tried to imitate, but she was an original.
Maybe this all-encompassing mortification, this failure, was just one part of a bigger story for me. Maybe one day it would be funny.
If this newsletter is how you are finding out that Dooce, Heather B. Armstrong, died Tuesday by suicide, then I am sorry. I didn’t think I’d write anything about it because my friend Kate expressed it all so perfectly yesterday and you absolutely have to go read Kate’s words. It’s complicated. It’s dark. And it’s so very, very sad.
Tuesday was my birthday and I had the most simple, perfect day. Nick took Jane to get me donuts and coffee on the sly before I woke up. I got a little baked and kayaked on the river in the overcast gloom. Lunch with a friend, then a full-body massage. I got to cuddle my favorite dog, Xena, who belongs to my massage therapist. At home, I watched Netflix in an empty house and when I couldn’t keep my eyes open on the couch anymore, I took an afternoon nap. For dinner, my kids terrorized our favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican place. It all felt so peaceful. When I was making my bed that night for sleep, out of nowhere, I thought about how in her mid-’00s website bio, Dooce described herself as a “SAHM (shit-ass-ho motherfucker)” and I laughed out loud. I always thought the contraction of shit-ass-ho was pure poetry.
When the news broke, several friends mentioned that they were just thinking about Dooce after not thinking about her or necessarily following or reading her for years. She just popped into their head. She died Tuesday night; she popped into my head Tuesday night.
You hear hospice nurses say that when a patient dies, they often get a message from them in their head. They hear their voice speaking clearly and they know it’s over. Ambient waves leaving the body, electrons arcing, leaping into the consciousness of others. Listen, I don’t really believe in that. But it happens whether I believe in it or not.
Rest easy, Dooce. You made us laugh in all caps.
yr mate,
Evie
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This is such a tragic loss.
Also, side note: My birthday was also on Tuesday. Happy belated. :)
I was really sad when I saw the news yesterday. I discovered her blog when I was in 19. I used to work in one of the University offices in and I ran through those archives between answering phone calls. Only now does it seem odd to me that I was reading mommy blogs in college? I remember seeing her at a book signing up for her first book at a bookstore on Melrose in LA and being genuinely excited to meet her, if only briefly. All that feels like such a long time ago. I hadnt kept up with her, but reading her story was one of the reasons I knew what to watch out for when PPA hitting hard post baby number one. Thinking about her kids.