The Power of F*** You
Have you ever been so hurt by something someone’s done or said to you that you feel physically winded?
Have you ever then experienced the pivotal moment when your pain morphs into anger? When the ‘how could you’ becomes something more like ‘f*** you’.
I’ve come to realise that there’s a real power to be had in that moment and if you harness the anger contained within it can lead to incredible things. Let me share an example from my own life with you…
My son’s dad and I had only been together a few months when I became pregnant. We were young and in love and really wanted to make a go of things but there were cracks right from the start.
Nevertheless we pressed on and got married and when my son was about 18 months old we decided to move hundreds of miles from my home city of London to the village my husband grew up in. With its quaint buildings and beautiful landscape I thought it would be the perfect place to build a family. I also hoped it would bring us closer together.
Ironically however, it almost immediately meant us spending more time apart. My husband started hanging out with the friends he’d grown up with and would go out to football and post training / match drinks several times a week. At the weekends he would be gone from Saturday lunch time to the early hours of Sunday morning. I meanwhile was left holding the baby, literally. I’d given up work to raise our son so I had few opportunities to meet people and make new friends.
One weekend it all got too much for me and I started to cry, telling him how lonely I’d become and begging him to stay at home for once. I’ll never forget his response:
‘You’ll never make any new friends if you sit around crying like a baby.’ And off he went.
At first I felt so wounded by his words and the contempt with which he’d delivered them that I only cried more but then I felt a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach, like a knot tightening. A knot of determination.
I was aware that I’d reached some kind of rock bottom but I was determined that I wasn’t going to sink any lower.
How dare he talk to me like that? I thought to myself. How dare he treat me with such contempt? The anger I felt forced me up and off the sofa. Forced me to wipe away my tears.
And I vowed there and then that I would never, ever beg him to spend time with me again. And that if I was going to be left on my own most weekends (and many week nights) I was going to take that time and I was going to use it to pursue my own passion - that passion being writing.
And that is how my first novel came to be.
Night after night, when my husband was out and my baby son was asleep I’d sit at the dining room table and I’d teach myself how to write fiction.
There were many nights when I shed tears of exhaustion, when I longed to just veg out in front of the TV. But I knew then that I’d never be free.
So I tapped into that anger and let it fuel me. And I wrote and wrote and wrote. And after about a year or so I had the first draft of my first novel.
That novel ended up winning me a three book deal with a major publishing house. It ended up winning me my freedom.
I used the money from my book advance to move back to London and a year later our marriage ended.
My son is now 26 and a lot of water has gone under the bridge. I no longer look back on my relationship with his dad with anger, I look back with thanks.
I have literally gone from ‘f*** you’ to ‘thank you!’
I see my experience back then as the furnace that forged me into the woman I am today. Strong, free-spirited and self-reliant.
That’s one of the best things about the power of f*** you. If you use it to fire you up to change things for the better you’re able to reframe any previous hurt with gratitude.
And of course, the power of f*** you doesn’t have to be limited to a personal hurt, it could be inspired by an issue like racism or war or any other injustice.
If you can alchemise the pain you feel at the injustice into anger you can use that energy to inspire you to take action to create a positive change. I did exactly that a few years ago with my novel Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, which was fuelled by my fury at the plight of refugees, and the dramatic rise in people living in poverty here in the UK. Writing that book felt like a massive f*** you to the politicians who had enabled that to happen.
I hope that reading about my experience helps you to reframe any pain you might be going through. Here’s to using our anger wisely and creatively.
Until next week, thanks so much for being a part of this community. I’m really appreciating the lovely feedback I’ve been getting about these Wonderstruck letters.
Siobhan