Silence did not ring in the room for long before Melissa Febos stood at the podium. She took a breath and read her passages. The words felt raw.
Aspiring writers and women took up a majority of the space. After learning about Febos’ story, some longed to hear more.
“Writing oneself in ink is an act of resistance and rebecoming,” Febos said, pausing before reading further.
Febos is the author of multiple critically acclaimed essay collections. She visited NMU as a part of the English department’s Visiting Writers Series. Her essays discuss her life as a queer woman as she struggled with addiction, relationships and her overall mental health.
Filled with spiritual analogies, metaphors and compelling storytelling, her work reveals the truth of finding paths to recovery in many aspects and made it clear that it is never easy. Febos utilized her writing as a means of release, and the result was hundreds of pages of art.
“There was a way to make my suffering useful – beautiful, even,” she said in her speech.
Febos read from her works “Girlhood” and “Abandon Me,” as well as an unreleased book called “The Dry Season.” She spoke about how she heavily relied on forming romantic relationships and struggled to set herself free. In her words, she worshiped her lovers as if they were gods. For years she felt trapped, bound by her need for intimacy. Her writing emphasized that feeling and depicted her troubles in captivating prose.
“I think college, especially undergrad, is a really fraught time and there’s this weird notion that you’re supposed to have yourself figured out in high school, and that’s not true,” Natalie Colby, a graduate student who attended the event, said. “When you get to college, and you still don’t know yourself it’s really hard. To hear [Febos] talk about her journey, being 32 and still figuring things out, I think that can be helpful for a lot of people. Then, they can know that they don’t have to have it figured out at 18.”
Colby studied the essays of “Girlhood” in her fiction workshop class. She especially liked how Febos discussed the issues surrounding consent, and women feeling obligated to please men. She believed that voicing these issues is valuable.
“There [are] so many ideas she has explored that are really pertinent on college campuses, and those things are important to know about, in a really intentional way, that you don’t get when you enter college,” Colby said.
At the talk, Febos said that amidst her hardest days, she was “out of her mind.” Her struggles had caused her to spiral out of control, and writing was what helped her crawl out of it. Her feelings took over, no matter how hard she tried to change them.
“Feelings have terrible manners. They don’t leave when they want you to, they leave when they are finished,” she said.
After years of suffering, Febos felt she had escaped. Writing about it helped her, and her work helps others in similar situations. During the event, Febos explained her writing process, and how she found some of her ideas. Through her words, NMU students could learn more about writing and self-discovery.
After reading her final passage, Febos expressed her relief in her writing, and how, in it, she had finally found herself again. She looked up at the audience and let out a sigh.
“Here I am,” she said.
