Hazel Hayes: “The Abuse Was Emotional, Verbal, Cerebral; It Gets in Your Head and Under Your Skin”

The debut novelist wants to start hard conversations

Although Hazel Hayes is technically a debut novelist, she has been creating and sharing stories for her entire career: following her start at Google, Hazel became known for curating talent and producing content for YouTube.

Hazel recently joined Zibby on Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books to talk about her novel Out of Love which follows a relationship in reverse from its last day all the way back to the beginning. The two discuss the necessity for rituals and routines, why it’s important to show all of the different forms interpersonal violence can appear in, and which experiences from her own life Hazel loaned to her protagonist.

Read an excerpt of their conversation below and listen to the rest of the episode here.

ZO: Tell me about writing the abuse part of the book.

HH: You see these ads around with women with black eyes and women with marks and women with scars. Those ads are important. Representation in the media of that kind of abuse is important, and that kind of domestic violence. What we actually have seen in the media for way too long is men gaslighting and negging and love bombing. Everything that we grew up with was the guy turning up outside our house with a boombox. ‘Oh, isn’t that so sweet?’ She told him to go away. He’s really not listening to her.

Every rom-com is, ‘She said no, but I’m going to chase her anyway.’ Not to call that abuse, but that’s the kind of thing that we’re being told. They get to cross these boundaries. Then the boundaries that they’re crossing get bigger and bigger and bigger. We don’t know where the line is.

When it’s more insidious, it’s emotional. It’s verbal. It’s cerebral. It gets in your head. It gets under your skin. There are so many tiny ways that it happens that you don’t see because that’s your partner. ‘Oh, he’s taking care of all the finances. Isn’t that so sweet?’ Then you break up and realize you can’t get any of your money back. These are the little things that creep in.

I thought it was important to talk about that in particular in this book because it’s something I experienced. It’s something that so many people who I know personally have experienced. When you start to have these conversations, it’s devastating, especially with friends you’ve known for years and you love dearly and you care about. Then suddenly they say, ‘Actually, my ex did this thing and that thing and the other thing.’ You’re like, ‘Holy shit, I can’t believe someone treated you that way.’

They didn’t feel like they could say it because it wasn’t this cut-and-dry, black-and-white abuse.”

https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/hazel-hayes-out-of-love?rq=hazel%20