Someone just left this comment on one of my pieces on Facebook:

This kind of writing has poetry and genius and many legit things to say but, I have to say, that while it may be therapeutic for you, it’s deeply disturbing for me and I don’t need that at this point in my life. Maybe you should think about that. If you see your writing as a struggle against emotional/ mental issues, maybe you should keep in mind our struggles as well and what you’re saying to us. Some kinds of therapy should be gone through with a professional trained to deal with personal hells. Rather than FB. It’s not too late to find a way of writing that’s healthier for all of us. I hope you will take this for what it is and not take it the wrong way. I feel it has to be said.

Well, he said it.

I’ve blocked him, since he doesn’t have the agency to stop reading what he states he doesn’t want to be reading.

The odd thing is, he recently solicited my work for a chapbook. He said my writing was lyrical and eloquent, and he’d love to showcase excellent work like mine in a collection he curated. What a mindfuck.

The piece he was responding to in his comment above wasn’t about death or dying. It was about life and living, and it was based on a dream, which is where a lot of my creative work originates. The piece wasn’t therapy, nor is any of my writing. It wasn’t me foisting anything on anyone or trying to make anyone uncomfortable. But I do talk about things in my poetry and prose, even in my discussion of political issues that are important to me, that aren’t always easy.

Nobody has to friend me or follow me or read me. This is my writing space, my discovery space, and a space that’s important because it allows me to connect with other people who are creative, insightful, compassionate, complicated, interesting, delightful, and more.

I don’t need anyone telling me what I should think about, write about, say, or do in this world, certainly not someone I don’t know who appears to be projecting his own issues onto me, my writing, and whatever dynamic he thinks exists between us. (There is none.)

And the mandate that I find a way of writing that’s healthier FOR ALL OF US? Please. That would be a misguided, Sisyphean task, and that’s assuming there’s an all of us who’s reading my work. (There isn’t, and he doesn’t speak for the few who do.)