Oh What the L

There’s a great many things I’ve said (and many more that I’ve thought without having said) which I never thought I would, ever. I have an ability to surprise myself, and I suppose that goes along with the dubious talent of letting my mouth work without my brain’s permission sometimes. I usually don’t go more than a couple weeks without hearing some phrase fall out of my face and being just as surprised as anyone else within earshot.

“OOPS.”

If I’m lucky, I’ll catch the ones no one should ever hear, and be the only one in the room who knows how terrible I was just about to be. That said, one of the things I can honestly count among those strokes of genius is this: Stephen King just broke my heart.

I’m a fan of his dramatic works put forth onto the film screen, notably The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, both of which will draw numerous honest tears from beyond the gates of my steel wrapping. Buckets full, to be sure. However, since I’ve never read either of the written works upon which those films are based, I cannot say whether or not the writings would do the same for me, and the only other thing of his I’ve read is an article he penned about the psychological draw to the horror genre, which I don’t experience in the slightest, although I loved his take on it. No, I’m pretty damned inexperienced when it comes to Mr. King, and my awareness of his popularity in his field hasn’t ever inspired me to expand my personal library to that effect.

It so happens that he wrote a book about writing. It’s a fascinating memoir, given to me by a friend who is also a writer, and I find myself completely taken with it. Each page is delightful. I regret that I lack the stamina to consume it all at once, but if I had the ability, I would inhale this book like a Trader Joe’s Lemon Bite. For however differently King and I feel about Horror, we seem to think in a similar way about life, which is surprising. What really got to me (and why I’m writing this) is a section of the book wherein he relates a story about “novelizing” 1961’s The Pit and the Pendulum, a hokey horror film loosely (apparently very loosely) based on the Poe classic. He had no idea he’d plagiarized anything when he elatedly printed up a few dozen copies of his version of the tale on the basement drum-press his brother used for a town newsletter. He sold almost all of them, most to his eager classmates who were titillated by the slightly naughty scare-story. He was having the time of his life, experiencing such acceptance and success over his brilliance, when one of the teachers (whom he had known to be disapproving of his interest in the genre) hauled him in front of the principal, accusing him of wasting his talent on “garbage” writing. He described how the teacher stood over him with a copy of his precious book, short and trashy though it was to her, in her hand, rolled up like a newspaper with which you’d whack a bad puppy. She berated him, and about it he says:

I was ashamed. I have spent a good many years since—too many, I think—being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction and poetry who has ever published a line has been accused of someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all.

Ouch.

Honest to God I almost cried. (I say “almost” because the ache just sits in the torso between the heart and the throat and won’t convert to actual tears sometimes.) It wasn’t just the sheer empathy of it that got to me, although that would’ve been enough. I could sense his regret and sorrow, even if such emotions have since been resolved, and what seared into my guts from him saying that was the window of self-awareness it opened for me. Because where he suffered rejection at allowing his talents to see the sun, my suffering has been from doing the exact opposite. Where his pain that day came from someone’s criticism, my pain and my inaction comes from my own.

Fuck.

It’s fair to say I have a bit of talent. I’m a decent writer, I can be a bit funny, and more than anything, I can say without much hubris that I’m a damned good singer. I don’t even have training, I’ve just been singing on instinct all my life, and I love it beyond measure. I love almost every creative thing. I can even paint fairly well. Whether writing or painting or singing, I’m happy as a birdie on a pleasant breeze when caught up in them. But here I am, nearly forty myself, and unlike King I’ve only begun to even fantasize about having a life built on this kind of work.

But why?

I’ve had plenty of “encouragement”. You know, the “you’d be great ats” and the “why don’t yous” and the “have you ever trieds”. Mostly, though, this always translates in my mind to some kind of expectation or criticism of not having done more with myself. It feels like admonishment and assignment. “You owe us,” is what reaches my ears, and my heart cringes. I don’t. Please say that I don’t. I’ve already given everything I can, I think to myself, even if it was in the wrong ways. I’m in a years-long process of finally giving to myself the space and acceptance I would have needed as a child in order to have bloomed naturally. And it’s not all criticism, there have also been plenty of beloved friends’ compliments, which I honor and cherish. Compliments about anything have always meant a great deal to me, but they don’t help me to alleviate my own fears Cowardly Lion or answer my questions when it comes to exposing my true feelings about myself and life through these creative expressions.

I guess, when it comes down to it, I’m just afraid of making mistakes.

I could explain the minutiae of that fear’s origins, but in the end I’m now working on the root of it. (Picture trying to excise the remnants of a dead Giant Redwood with a spade and a hand-rake.) Hearing King speak about this woman, who was likely well-meaning (she did compliment him on his talent, albeit rather back-handedly), hit me in the soft place because I’ve never even gone as far as to try. Her words scarred him to the point of being ashamed of his work over most of his career, despite all the success he’s had. Think of it! I bet you there’s no one on this planet who even knows what a book is who hasn’t heard of the great Stephen King. His mind has conjured (channeled, some would say) some of the most terrifying tales known to us, and his legacy will exist as long as books do. It’ll take a civilization-ending apocalypse to bring down the castle which Stephen-the-King built. Yet, he’s suffered for her careless words on that day, when he was experiencing such blissful joy at having produced what he knew at the time to be his greatest work. Though I could say that I understand, I can’t claim it honestly for one reason: He never let it stop him from doing it again.

As for me, I’ve sat inside my mind for these thirty-some odd years I’ve been alive, hiding from what I love, projecting any ambition onto friends and husbands. Disallowing all but the most trusted from even seeing me for who I am. Petrified, frozen, and impotent. I’ve asked myself recently, what good is my individuality at all, if I don’t add it to the mix of all human contribution? It’s the very picture of hiding my light under a bushel. Where King has suffered from criticism, I—the coward—have avoided it altogether, the price of

YOU CANNOT JUDGE ME IF I DO NOT SHARE IT.

which is that all the pieces of my life are at a standstill. I’m nearly the same age now as King was when he says he finally got over the impact that woman’s words had on him. I’m still working on it. For me it has never been the criticism of a careless teacher, rather the anxiety and trepidation of giving away my deepest feelings and talents which has hampered any possible attempt. I can’t even admit how many blog posts I’ve written which have sat in my computer’s hard drive until they’ve outlived their relevance. Song lyrics, waiting for either me or someone else to put them to music, unsung in countless notebooks. Paint supplies mocking me from a box in the corner. And it’s not like I’m not aware, I’m just scared to show myself. I think even the grind of a day job would be easier if I was at least doing something to get all these ideas and impulses out of my head once or twice a week. Still I’ve cloistered my very being for the senseless fear of rejection and the unwillingness to share, even with myself.

Stephen King, ashamed? What the hell excuse does that leave me? Clearly, he kept creating. He kept pushing. This man whose greatness is undeniable, carrying such a burden, and I cannot even claim to be on the same battlefield because I do not fight. He didn’t resist himself despite how anyone resisted him. Doing that—resisting yourself—will kill you eventually, believe me. Resistance of who and what you are is the only thing that really ever kills anyone. Since I’m not ready to even begin dying yet, I can’t look at this as anything other than a sunbeam from the heavens. I have been left no excuse. I might go as far as to say I’m proud of the scars my life experience has left me, but it is a useless pride if I let the wounds cripple me. I have no place depriving Life of whatever it is that I am from my participation in the great dance. There is a certain bliss in failure owing only to its ranking above never having tried. I believe T. Roosevelt’s “grey twilight” is what I’m truly risking, not catastrophe, if I remain hidden.

How can I get to the place where I’ve earned a right to be ashamed of anything, if I haven’t even gone so far as to take a few shots?

I remember Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act 2 (don’t scoff, those movies are freaking GOLD) telling her young student that whatever she felt like doing the most at the beginning of every day is probably what she was supposed to be doing in life. In the movie it was singing, of course, and it seemed a little too literal that it should be the same for me, but it kind of is, not that I’m a one-note, if you’ll pardon the pun.

As such, lately I’ve been examining this stagnancy and facing that it doesn’t do anything for me at all. I’m chopping away at that tree trunk with my spade, and planting new seeds. Watering my dreams, looking at my life from a different perspective than the one I was given when I was young. Instead of falling, I’m trying to believe that I might just be able to fly. My wings are kind of effed up, but whatever. I don’t know anyone who’s lived past 30 who can’t say the same, in a way. Leave it to Stephen flippin’ King to make me think about taking chances. How appropriate, I think, to quote Shawshank:

I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Too right, Mr. King. Too right.

Shawshank breakout

It’s funny, but for an online presence I never wanted, I’ve sure been storing up a lot to say. Don’t worry, I won’t say it all at once. You probably wouldn’t want me to anyway—and I have a feeling that a few of my thought bubbles are going to get me into trouble but I care so much less about that now. So let’s see, where’ve I been?

I was in school to learn software development when I started this. I got *right* up to the point of finishing my AS in that, when the DoE closed my school because apparently no one could play nice. I was already doing temp stints as a minor tech help desk lackey, first at a county office and then at a big fancy hospital. I was enjoying myself quite a bit, until the actual working location for that hospital thing was moved into a literal closet of a building and they selected an elite few of our original team to work nights, two at a time, for the last three months of that job. The contract had a long slow death, and in some ways, I’ve had the same.

Then began part two of my expertise development in “How to Co-dependently Suck Your Own Life Dry With a Mentally Non-Functional Husband”. Second marriage, starker realization. I’ve learned a lot, y’all, but let me tell you—and I can’t emphasize this enough—it is NO way to live. I like to say that I’m a fast learner, but if I am, the gaping disability hole in that is in relationship, because I ended up doing damned near the same thing in the second marriage as I did in the first one. The last year has been a psychotic train ride with a let-down of an ending. Dysfunction runs deep. And it’s not entirely fair to say that it was the same- there were a lot of elements about this relationship that weren’t, but when it works out in the end to be this similar…let’s say I think I got the messages this time.

So I’m fresh out. I’m out of the relationship, out of money, out of time to get my shit together, and all out of fucks to give about anything other than making my life right for me. If there’s anything I can take with me about the experiences I’ve had since I started this gratuitous online showing-of-butt that is a blog, it’s that I’m prioritizing self-love. I don’t feel any pride about it having taken me this long to get that through my head, but hey, some of us do this love thing backwards. I’ve observed that most people are self-oriented and have to learn to include others in their sphere of consideration. I’m the opposite, and I guess that’s what I’ve been balancing.

I started my life with my world upside down, and I’ve been standing on my head to try and see the world straight ever since. Turns out that’s not so great- it makes you dizzy and sick in all the wrong ways. So I’m making changes. Things are happening now which show that things really do work out for me. I find it kind of apropos that my husband effed off back to Canada exactly four years after we became a couple, and my ex (my son’s dad) is effing off to another state for a new job. It’s like I told the Universe, “You know, this drama can really just go fuck itself,” and the Universe said, “You know, you’re exactly right!” I’m kidding of course—but it’s funny to think that I’m getting my slate wiped clean like this. I have to constantly choose the thought that freedom is not terrifying.

I’ll cut myself off here, but I think this post signifies a very new and different stage for me. If you’re along for the journey, thanks for finding it worth the attention.