You have to know when in the conversation you are going to say no.
You have to know when you are going to say, “That doesn’t work for me.”
You have to know when to say, “I’m done.”
You have to know when to say, “This isn’t worth it.”
“You aren’t worth it.”
The more I said what I thought, the more I was willing to dive into the difficult conversations, the more I was willing to say yes to me, the less I was willing to allow people in my life who left me emptier and unhappier and more insecure than before I saw them.
My friend who asked for all the money isn’t the last person I walked away from during this Year of Yes.
No. No that friend was not.
No.
12
Yes to People
When Chris #1 told me that I was going to be presented with the Ally for Equality Award by the Human Rights Campaign, I was immediately more worried about my dress than I was about my speech. Giving speeches didn’t even give me a twinge these days. I cared about what I was going to say, of course. But I was no longer afraid to say it.
I was rounding the corner into what felt like the final lap of my Yes run. It was starting to feel simple. I had the hang of it, this Yes thing. I owned it. I was smug and self-righteous about it. Oh, arrogance, there you are . . .
I just felt like I had the whole thing under control. I was running like a gazelle toward that finish line.
And then like any long race, that final lap got hard. I hit a wall. Turns out the beginning had been easy. The toughest part was yet to come.
I was still struggling with how to speak up for myself. How to stand up for myself. How to gladiate for myself. It was ironic.
I knew a large part of the reason I was getting this award was because by portraying LGBTQ characters on TV, I was speaking up, standing up, gladiating for others. And I couldn’t do it for myself.
Shedding weight was one thing.
Shedding people was quite another.
I had just shed a friend. A close one.
I had never felt more alone.
I was fighting the desire to take to my bed with Doctor Who and a box of Thin Mints. I wanted a little veal practice. For the first time in a long, long time, I wanted to be numb.
When it was time to try on gowns for the event, Dana stood over me as I curled up in a ball on my sofa.
“I don’t think I can do it. I’m sick. I’m dying.”
Dana didn’t say anything. Not a word. She stood there a moment and then, just when I began to wonder if Chris #1 was now hosting How to Make Shonda Move Her Ass Seminars, she turned away.
And began unpacking gowns. Stunningly beautiful evening gowns.
No need for a seminar. Turns out that is How to Make Shonda Move Her Ass.
Later that week, the dress hangs on the closet door. Sandie stands at the foot of my bed. I’m trying to remember how veal practice works. I tell her I cannot go to this event. I feel too alone. She tells me that I will go. She tells me that she will go with me. And then she tells me to invite more people. Invite your people. Gather your people.
“Alone,” she snorts and shakes her head at my foolishness. As if being alone was ever an option.
The morning of the HRC gala, I write my speech. That evening I feel vulnerable standing there on that stage. I feel like I’ve ripped a page from my diary and am reading it aloud. And yet, it is exactly what I want to say. I want to give everyone what Sandie gave me. The snort, the head shake, gather your people.
Here it is:
HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN SPEECH
Delivered March 14, 2015
Los Angeles, California
YOU ARE NOT ALONE
I have been a writer since before I could spell.
I used to dictate stories into a tape recorder with my sister Sandie. Then I tried to get my mother to type them up. I was maybe three. And when I learned to spell . . . writing opened worlds.
Nothing else provides that singular hum in my brain, that special trip to the imagination. Writing was . . . well, for me it was like sitting down at a piano for the first time and realizing that I always knew how to play. Writing was my melody. Writing was who I was. Writing was ME.
I spent my school days writing in journals. I still have them. Little fabric-covered books, frayed and fading. They’re boxed up in my attic—about twenty of them, I think.
Little books filled with hopes and dreams and stories and pain.
Let me describe myself as a kid: highly intelligent, way too chubby, incredibly sensitive, nerdy and painfully shy. I wore Coke-bottle-thick glasses. Two cornrow braids traveled down the sides of my skull in a way that was just not pretty on me. And here’s the kicker—I was often the only black girl in my class.
I did not have friends.
No one is meaner than a pack of human beings faced with someone who is different.
I was very much alone.
So . . .
I wrote.
I created friends. I named them and wrote every detail about them. I gave them stories and homes and families. I wrote about their parties and their dates and their friendships and their lives and they were so very real to me that—
You see, Shondaland, the imaginary land of Shonda, has existed since I was eleven years old.
I built it in my mind as a place to hold my stories. A safe place. A space for my characters to exist. A space for ME to exist. Until I could get the hell out of being a teenager and could run out into the world and be myself.
Less isolated, less marginalized, less invisible in the eyes of my peers.
Until I could find my people in the real world.
I don’t know if anyone has noticed but I only ever write about one thing: being alone. The fear of being alone, the desire to not be alone, the attempts we make to find our person, to keep our person, to convince our person to not leave us alone, the joy of being with our person and thus no longer alone, the devastation of being left alone.
The need to hear the words: You are not alone.
The fundamental human need for one human being to hear another human being say to them: “You are not alone. You are seen. I am with you. You are not alone.”
I get asked a lot by reporters and tweeters why I am so invested in “diversity” on television. “Why is it so important to have diversity on TV?” they say. “Why is it so challenging to have diversity?” “Why does Cyrus need to be gay?”
I really hate the word diversity. It suggests something . . . other. As if it is something . . . special. Or rare.
Diversity!
As if there is something unusual about telling stories involving women and people of color and LGBTQ characters on TV.
I have a different word: NORMALIZING.
I’m normalizing TV.
I am making TV look like the world looks. Women, people of color, LGBTQ people equal WAY more than 50 percent of the population. Which means it ain’t out of the ordinary. I am making the world of television look NORMAL.
I am NORMALIZING television.
You should get to turn on the TV and see your tribe. And your tribe can be any kind of person, anyone you identify with, anyone who feels like you, who feels like home, who feels like truth. You should get to turn on the TV and see your tribe, see your people, someone like you out there, existing. So that you know on your darkest day that when you run (metaphorically or physically RUN), there is somewhere, someone, to run TO. Your tribe is waiting for you.
You are not alone.
The goal is that everyone should get to turn on the TV and see someone who looks like them and loves like them. And just as important, everyone should turn on the TV and see someone who doesn’t look like them and love like them. Because perhaps then they will learn from them.
Perhaps then they will not isolate them.
Marginalize them.
Erase them.
Perhaps they will even come to recognize themselves in them.
<
br /> Perhaps they will even learn to love them.
I think that when you turn on the television and you see love, from anyone, with anyone, to anyone—real love—a service has been done for you. Your heart has somehow been expanded, your mind has somehow grown. Your soul has been opened a little more. You’ve experienced something.
The very idea that love exists, that it is possible, that one can have a “person”. . .
You are not alone.
Hate diminishes, love expands.
I do a lot of talking in my writers’ rooms about how images matter. The images you see on television matter. They tell you about the world. They tell you who you are. What the world is like. They shape you. We all know this. There have been studies.
So if you never see a Cyrus Beene on TV, ever? An older, badass, take-no-prisoners, Republican, conservative, Rumsfeldian gay man who loved his husband, James, so deeply and tried desperately not to kill him . . .
If you never see James dragging Cyrus into the twenty-first century . . .
If you never see young Connor Walsh on How to Get Away with Murder getting to have the same kind of slutty dating life we’ve seen straight characters have on TV season after season after season . . .
If you never see Erica Hahn exuberantly give what’s become known as the Leaves on Trees monologue telling Callie that she’s realized she is a lesbian . . .
If you never see openly bisexual Callie Torres stare her father down and holler (my favorite line ever), “You can’t pray away the gay!!!” at him . . .
If you never see a transgender character on TV have family, understanding, a Dr. Bailey to love and support her . . .
If you never see any of those people on TV . . .
What do you learn about your importance in the fabric of society? What do straight people learn? What does that tell young people? Where does that leave them? Where does that leave any of us?
I get letters and tweets and people coming up to me on the street. Telling me so many incredible stories. The dad telling me about how something he saw on one of my shows gave him a way to understand his son when he came out. Or the teenagers, all the teenagers, man, who tell me they learned the language to talk to their parents about being gay or lesbian. The teenage girls who have found a community of peers and support online because of the Callie-Arizona relationship—Calzona.
I get story after story.
There were times in my youth when writing those stories in Shondaland quite literally saved my life. And now I get kids telling me it quite literally saves theirs. That is beyond humbling.
And every single time it comes down to one thing.
You are not alone.
Nobody should be alone.
So.
I write.
We are only on the edge of change. There is still so much more work to be done. I’m going to accept this award as encouragement and not as accomplishment. I don’t think the job is finished yet. I have a lot of lesbian and gay friends whose marriages I would like to see recognized in every single state in this country.1
And there are so many minds and laws that still need to be changed. I want to applaud the HRC for their work in fighting so hard for equality and the end of discrimination of all kinds for the LGBT community. The work you are doing is tremendous.
Writing is no different for me now than it was when I was talking into that tape recorder with my sister Sandie.
Yes, it’s on a larger landscape.
Yes, it’s all of Thursday night.
Yes, I am less shy, arguably less nerdy, clearly better styled.
The glasses have been replaced by contacts.
I am still often the only black girl in my class. (Look around you.)
But here’s the thing: I am no longer alone.
The characters that lived inside my head are on the television screen. They are not just my friends now—they are also everyone else’s. Shondaland is open, and if I am doing my job right, there will be a person here for everyone.
I want to say how much I appreciate all of the support and kindness I have received. A lot of people out there have been quick to come to my defense in wonderful ways. Especially after I tweet angry. I’m very proud of what I said to the person who tweeted me the nasty comment about “gay scenes.” I would say Bye, Felicia again and again. But sometimes I wish I thought first and tweeted later—because think of what an even more awesome thing I COULD have said with a rewrite and some notes?!
But seriously, still, I am eternally grateful.
Finally I want to say this:
If you are a kid and you are out there and you are chubby and not so cute and nerdy and shy and invisible and in pain, whatever your race, whatever your gender, whatever your sexual orientation, I’m standing here to tell you: you are not alone.
Your tribe of people, they are out there in the world. Waiting for you.
How do I know this for sure?
Because mine?
Are sitting at that table right over there.
Thank you.
* * *
1. On June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court legalized same sex marriage in all fifty states (high five, America!), and so this part of my speech is now thankfully out of date.
13
Yes to Dancing It Out (with the right people)
I’m sitting in the editing room at Prospect Studios with my editor Joe Mitacek. We’re fighting over what song to use. This debate has raged on for weeks. It’s the Season Ten finale of Grey’s Anatomy. The scene is iconic: Meredith and Cristina are dancing it out in an on-call room for the very last time. The song that will play as we watch them dance has epic meaning for me and for the fans who have watched these characters grow from interns to attendings, cautious young women to powerhouses. We have been with them for more than two hundred episodes at this point. More than a decade of our lives and theirs. This is the very last time anyone will see Cristina Yang on-screen. The scene, the song, the edit—everything has to be right.
When the scene was initially filmed, a fast, awesome hip-hop dance song was used to rev the actors up and give them energy. Now, in the editing room, there are opinions coming in from all sides. Everyone who was there during filming believes that anything other than a fast dance song is going to make Sandra and Ellen look bad dancing.
I find this to be ridiculous.
I don’t believe either Sandra or Ellen has ever looked bad dancing in her life. It’s not possible. Sandra has a rock-star cool rhythm-nation thing happening and Ellen’s got bounce, somehow both luminous and everything gangsta at all times. That the two of them can shake it with such distinct individuality and yet still convey so much kinship and harmony is what inspired the entire concept of dancing it out in the first place.
They’ve been doing it for ten seasons.
This ain’t no trick of editing, people.
These women can move.
I was not there during filming—I am never there during filming (well, almost never) because I can’t be in five places at once. This time I wasn’t there because I was at my daughter’s school. I missed the live performance. So I haven’t been pre-influenced.
And anyway I don’t care.
I don’t want a fast song.
A fast song feels wrong.
A fast song bugs me.
A fast song is all . . .
Joe wants to know why I don’t like it.
It’s a reasonable question.
Except I can’t answer it.
I don’t have a way of explaining why I don’t like it.
I don’t know why.
I just don’t like it.
It makes me prickly in my true-north-y creases.
We argue. We debate. We fight.
These are not useless exercises. I want my editors to fight with me. I like to be challenged. I like to be proven wrong.
I am deeply suspicious of instant agreement.
Instant agreement terrifies me.
Joe has be
en working here in post-production for almost the entire lifetime of the show. He’s gone from assistant editor to lead editor in his time here. He’s been around the block. He knows how these editing debates go. He knows he has a shot at prevailing if he can get me to stare at the story from a different angle, a different perspective. If he can tilt the landscape just a little bit . . .
So we battle it out.
yesyesyes
Once I said Yes to difficult conversations, once I said Yes to saying No, I made an interesting discovery. That discovery was: happy, whole people are drawn to happy, whole people, but nothing makes a toxic person more miserable and destructive than a happy, whole person. Unhappy people do not like it when a fellow unhappy person becomes happy.
I am absolutely sure that this is true.
Because I used to be an unhappy person.
And nothing was more frustrating than seeing a fellow bitter, jaded, toxic, dark and twisty friend find their way up into the sun. Like a vampire trying to save one of its own, you want to drag them back into the dark. And you truly think you are doing the right thing. I was clinging to the dark and twisty misery. It was what I knew. And I needed it. I needed it the same way I needed the fatness. It was easier than trying. Being dark and twisty gave me permission to not want anything more than the miserable status quo. To never hope, to never be optimistic. Dark and twisty takes up the time and space in my head. It’s a hall pass: I don’t have to do anything about my problems if I am busy complaining and feeling sorry for myself.
Now I was the one standing on the mountaintop with a clear, sunny view. And I could see there was no room for twisty up here.
yesyesyes
Before the Year of Yes, if you had asked me who my close friends were, I would have confidently rattled off a list of names of people I love, people I have known for years and years. The people for whom I would do anything.
My people. My posse. My tribe.
My Bonnies and my Clydes.
My Ride or Die list.
A Ride or Die list is no joke.
I mean, I’ve never ridden or died and I am a middle-class girl who used to hang out in the pantry in the suburbs where the only Bonnie I had ever heard of was Bonne Bell lip gloss, but, you know . . .
Year of Yes Page 17