If You Didn’t Like Michaela Watkins’ Performance, Please Don’t Tell Her

If you told me you didn’t like this article, I might not be able to handle it.

Well, maybe not if you told me. I don’t know you. You could simply have bad taste (the only excuse for not enjoying something I write), or you could be an internet troll. If a family member or a friend, however, let it slip that they didn’t think this was very good, I would spiral. I would exist under a cloud of despair, one which the sunshine may never pierce through again. The shadow of sadness would follow me around for so long, because someone didn’t like my article. Maybe, though, I’d eventually get over it.

But if my life partner, the person I love, who knows me better than anyone else, whose opinion I value and respect more than anything—if that person said he didn’t like something I wrote, I would lose it completely. I would question my talent, my worth, and maybe even my whole reason for existing, in a way that I may not recover from.

Read more at The Daily Beast.