You Are a Child, a Coward, and a Fraud

After you left, I wrote an essay called “You Are a Child, a Coward, and a Fraud.” The essay had three paragraphs: one about your childishness, one about your cowardice, and one about your fraudulence. It seemed self-serving, so I added a section about how I, too, am a child, a coward, and a fraud, a paragraph for each. I am nothing if not fair. But you are, and will always be, a child, a coward, and a fraud.

I Am a Child, a Coward, and a Fraud

I wrote an essay about an essay called “You Are a Child, a Coward, and a Fraud.” The essay wasn’t technically an essay, in that it wasn’t nonfiction: I never wrote an essay called “You Are a Child, a Coward, and a Fraud.” However, I took notes about writing that essay, and I planned to write that essay. I truly believed, and still believe, you are a child, a coward, and a fraud. But I didn’t so much want to write the essay as to tell you what I think of you. I also didn’t want to tell you what I think of you. You had already caused me great pain, and I didn’t want to invite more. However, writing the essay would have also dredged up the pain of your childishness, cowardice, and fraudulence.

One day, I realized I needn’t write an essay nor speak to you to express my belief that you are a child, a coward, and a fraud. I could instead write a tiny fictional essay about writing an essay called “You Are a Child, a Coward, and a Fraud.” I sat down and wrote it. I drove to therapy, reciting the essay. Reciting it kept me from thinking about the pain of your childishness, cowardice, and fraudulence while expressing my belief in your childishness, cowardice, and fraudulence. I couldn’t wait to tell my therapist about my cleverness. At her office, after I recited the essay, she said, “That’s wonderful!” and psychoanalyzed it in my favor.

I left therapy with a plan to send off my wonderful essay. However, imagining sending it off stirred up insecurities. Who would actually publish this “essay”? Who would not see it for the lashing out it was and the work of art it wasn’t? As I drove home, I again recited the essay, to convince myself of its worth, but the more I recited it, the less convinced of its worth I became. I switched up phrases, eliminated words, then unswitched phrases and returned the words. I came down firmly in favor of one version, then firmly in favor of another. By the time I got home, I determined my tiny fictional essay of which I’d been so proud was poison. I would not publish it, or submit it, or think about it. I would put it away and let it die.

Because really, the fuss about how best to convey your childishness, cowardice, and fraudulence only served to obscure this disturbing fact: I had also often experienced your maturity, bravery, and honesty. Indeed, it was my love of your maturity, bravery, and honesty that made your childishness, cowardice, and fraudulence sting. A part of me ached at the thought of my words hurting you. Should you ever happen to read my work and care what I think of you. Should you ever happen to think of me at all. It is too much to contemplate. For I am, and will always be, so sad that you’re gone.
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Jennifer Wortman is the author of This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love., a story collection forthcoming from Split Lip Press in May of 2019. Her fiction, essays, and poetry appear in Glimmer Train, Normal School, DIAGRAM, The Collagist, SmokeLong Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, Hobart, North American Review, Confrontation, Juked, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Colorado, where she teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop and serves as associate fiction editor for Colorado Review.

Artwork by Dev Murphy