Demanding Success and Meeting Failure (Again and Again and Again...)

I've tried to write this blog post for over a week now.

I have always had this complex about success. And sure, success is a complex beast, but I don't mean that kind of complex. I mean that I put obscene burdens on myself, and when I fail, I beat myself into the ground for...well, ever.

But if you follow me on Twitter, or read my home blog, you know this already.

Case and point: My life-long belief that, if I wasn't first published as a teenager (and I mean, novel-published-by-a-major-publisher), then I had failed, and should stop trying to be a writer.

I feel ridiculous even putting that into words, much less into words on the Internet.

In my logical, sane, non-sleep-deprived moments, I know this mentality is preposterous. It's a waste of time and a pointless attack on a mind that is already prone to self-doubt without insane expectations. But when I am exhausted and buckling beneath the pressure, this insecurity bubbles up like carbonation in a fresh can of soda.

I read about teens (or even writers in their twenties, but younger than me) who have this or that novel coming out this year, or their second coming out next January, and I, to put it bluntly, freak out. Shaky, hazy film footage from the last five years speed across my subconscious, inundating me with my lack of publication (aka success) until I melt into a puddle of gelatin on the carpet. Pulling myself together leaves a gnarly stain.

This is likely a symptom of one of my biggest issues -- I don't have a lot of faith in myself. I've been determined to turn my writing into a career since I was seven, but even then, I didn't have much faith in me, just my determination. I'm pretty stubborn, but not very self-assured.

Maybe I am just making excuses for myself to quit, giving myself an out before I ever really have a chance to fail.

If I was fair to myself, I would acknowledge that I didn't have the most creativity-encouraging childhood. Most of my writing came out of necessity, not from freedom of expression, and I certainly didn't have the connections to get published at that age. I'm not saying my family didn't support my creative decisions (though sometimes they didn't), but more than anything, our relationships were in too much turmoil for me to focus on my own dreams. I also endured childhood mental illness, beginning at age eleven, which consumed my life until I was 22 (and I still grapple with on a weekly basis).

When it comes down to it, writing is what I love. It's the only thing that has ever empowered me despite my crippling depression, the only calm to my stormy anxiety. I'm not about to give it up just because I didn't publish the first novel I ever finished (at age 13) -- a MG fantasy/action-adventure/romance entitled Discovering Sandy, that was horrible enough that my floppy disk (man, I'm old) didn't think it was good enough to save.

There and Back Again

Sadly, this post is not about The Hobbit.

I have just come home from Atlanta, from my father's wedding and the kind of stress only felt in urban settings. I came home to heat and lightning storms and my grandfather's blood pressure spiking.

I didn't think I could handle another mile of sprinting for sanity.

It's no secret in my family that stress -- good and bad -- takes a disastrous toll on my psyche. I might seem fine in the moment, when I need a clear mind to help someone or make sure something gets done. But once I am home, alone or with someone, I shatter like cracked glass. I cry and scream and shiver and stop eating. It's just a natural progression.

I had a breakdown like this two weeks ago. It led to an impromptu getaway to the nearest big city, alone and without plans. Just a weekend away to relieve the pressure. It seemed to be working -- I got a lot of writing done and slept a lot and ate like a normal person. I smoked a cigarette, remembered why I hated smoking. I felt better.

When I came home, the cage around my lungs immediately reappeared.

The stress hasn't lessened since. And I'm not sure I can bear another day of my body in perpetual tension.

I just can't make myself relax. I don't know how to step back from the situations and stressors I face and breathe without the feeling of unbending metal in my chest. I used to deal with this seemingly insurmountable depression and anxiety by harming myself -- chain-smoking an entire pack of cigarettes, drowning myself in a fifth of vodka, numbing my skin with a handful of pain meds, cutting my arms and legs with bent razors, forcing the little food I ate back up my throat.

These dangerous cycles emerged. I have nearly died twice because of my own self-damage. In the last year, I have managed to break all of these habits, but I won't lie -- in moments like these, I really wish I could fall back on them.

I know I need to be working on my novel -- I want to be working on my novel. And maybe tonight, after a short (unneeded) nap, I will feel up to it. But right now I feel like I am right where I started when I first entered recovery -- raw and so full of emotion that I can't feel anything and unsure of every choice I make.

I have gone there, to sanity, and back again to madness.

Discomfort

Sometimes, I think my problem lies in my perpetual discomfort.

Not physical discomfort, per se (though it does manifest itself in joint pain from time to time) -- no, I am referring to a certain kind of mental and emotional discomfort. Usually self-imposed, self-inflicted, self-defined, this kind of discomfort is often with myself, my position in life, and my goals.

I am always 'making decisions' -- what I want to study, if I want to continue my education, where I want to live, if I want children. Some small, most large, these decisions plague my mornings especially, when I am most thoughtful and have the energy to consider greater things than 'what's for dinner?' and 'do I have homework due tomorrow?' (Often the only two things I think of after work.)

Lately, I have been questioning my decision to return to graduate school.

I took six months off earlier this year for health-related problems -- my thyroid was crashing, couldn't seem to be righted, and as a result I was frequently too exhausted to do much of anything, let alone function in a classroom. In that six months, I started a new job at the university library, began and dropped two novels, landed a publishing deal for a third, and felt...better. Better than I had in a long time.

I came back to school this summer to keep my job. And because, perhaps foolishly, I thought that I might want to finish this damn degree. I was half-done before the first summer session, and had a fun idea for my thesis. I was kind of excited, to be honest. But then I actually started taking classes again and felt the same way I did before I left -- stifled creatively, overwhelmed by tasks I cared little for, even with my grades at stake. This isn't a reflection of my professors -- I respect them endlessly -- but a reflection, perhaps, of something within me I haven't yet wanted to face.

Maybe, just maybe, this isn't something I want.

Ah, the discomfort of reevaluation, constant self-analysis.

The London (Children's) Olympics of 2012

In an effort to conserve our minimal paychecks, my pseudohusband (PH) and I gave up cable when we moved into our new house. This means we have missed the beginnings of Perception, the endings of The Closer, Inspector Lewis, Anderson Cooper -- and the London Olympics.

Yesterday was my twenty-third birthday, so we spent some time with both of our families. In both houses, the Parade of Nations danced in muted silence across large LCD screens. After hearing of the special tribute to children's literature via the internet, we stayed at my grandmother's until 0330, watching the rerun of the entirety of the opening ceremony.

I cried. PH cried. My mother cried.

Why, you ask? It seems like a strange reaction in retrospect.

My mother is writing her dissertation about children in film. We have both studied children's literature for the last several years. I have focused on (more than once) youth in media. And I have never been more moved by the portrayal of (and honoring of) children and young people in...well, anything, really.

So often, especially in the United States (sadly), children are marginal. They are on the fringe, the ones most overlooked and subjugated. We shelter them until they are teens, and then when they rebel against those boundaries, we scoff and turn our backs. I cannot fathom why we do this, and do my best not to participate in this disenfranchisement of youth.

I am only twenty three, which is still young, and yet I am (at times) treated with more respect than those four years my junior simply because of those four years. And that is ludicrous.

All this said, the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics completely shattered all of these horrible stereotypes. They not only honored the children's literature tradition in Britain (which I will get to shortly), but Danny Boyle empowered children throughout the entire ceremony. Young people opened the ceremony with a beautiful, heart-wrenching medley, and closed it by lighting the torch. No some superficial celebrity or worthy-but-expected athlete. Eight young people, not yet old enough to compete in the Olympics themselves. These children are the future, and were selected by elite adult athletes to represent that future in Britain.

I am tearing up as I write this.

Danny Boyle told an amazing story, and children are included at every step of the way. Because whether we like to admit it or not, children are important.

The children's literature sequence -- absolute brilliance. I never in my life thought I would see Mary Poppins defeat Voldemort, or hear J.K. Rowling read from Peter Pan, and yet my life feels that much more complete after witnessing both. I'd do just about anything to be one of those children, 'sleeping' beneath white light blankets and showing the world just what they are missing when they ignore children and the literature that is made for them.

I'd like for someone to just try to tell me, again, that children and the novels/stories written for them are irrelevant, non-literary and forgettable endeavours. Just try.

I hope, someday far from now, I can show my future children footage from this opening ceremony. Because I want them to know, no matter what popular opinion is (which I would argue is swiftly shifting, especially now), that they will always matter, and their stories will always matter.

So thank you, Danny Boyle, for doing what so many cannot because they are too blind.

Tea with Grandma

It came in the mail yesterday.

I didn't know to expect it, because I didn't know it existed. This token of my childhood lost in the chaos of teenhood found its magical way back to me, like the key to a secret garden of memory.

And it completely wrecked me.

It is a card. The front features a simplistic drawing of a small room with a table and wicker chairs and an open door and a closed window. There is a vast but undetailed landscape beyond the glass. A teapot and cups are arranged on the tabletop for a party for two.

Based on the date stamped on the right corner, she sent it to me when I was four. She first thanks me for sharing my bed when she visited last. Then she moves into fantasy. Beautiful imaginative, she asks me if I want to join her at the table for a "tea (or koolaid) party," whether I would prefer the chair by the open door or the chair by the closed window. She asks me what kind of cookies I would like, what we should talk about.

And nearly twenty years later, in a kitchen she had never seen with a fiance she hadn't met, I could hear her voice asking me to join her and began crying inconsolably.

This wonderful woman died when I was eleven.

She was my father's mother, my Grandma. She was strong and independent and creative and so unbelievably encouraging of my various artistic endeavors. She stole moments from my tumultuous childhood and filled them with magic, with Pollyanna and Heidi and antique shows and finger-painting. She read every story I wrote, told my I was beautiful, taught me to embrace being a black sheep among my classmates. When I was ten, I was in her second wedding, and when we moved to Germany, she was the one I had the most difficult time saying goodbye to.

She wasn't sick for very long, but I guess that's selfish of me to say. To her, I am sure it was an eternity, waiting for the next system or organ to shut down, for the next tube or wire or oxygen mask. Waiting for the day when she couldn't speak, couldn't think anymore. She never let me know of her pain -- when I was with her, she smiled and asked about school and boys and my writing, which she continued to read as long as she was able.

ALS was the subject of many school papers, many presentations, because I needed to understand what was happening to her. I needed to understand why and how she was being taken from me before my high school graduation, before my wedding, before my children were born, before my first novel was published.

A week before my twelfth birthday, she was gone.

I don't talk about her very often. The memory of her loss isn't so much a memory as an open wound, something I am reminded of several times a week (especially as I plan my wedding and prepare my novel under deadline). It's the one pain I am not capable of expressing without my bones breaking down, without coming unhinged, and no one likes coming unhinged as often as I feel like I could. That said, I try to remember everything I can about her, clinging to those moments with her like a life vest, so when something of hers mysteriously and suddenly returns to me that I am unprepared for -- well, you can imagine the unhinging.

My poor cat. I was holding him when my fiance handed me the card.

Maybe I will share tea with her this morning. I'll take the seat by the window so she can enjoy the sun, and I'll tell her of my fiance and my cats and my book deal. I'll confess how much I dislike graduate school, how much I love my job at the library, how much I miss her. And I will cry, but I will smile, too.

And maybe the gash on my heart will heal, just a little bit.