Quick News from My Life

In a nutshell:  One of my nieces (22) gave birth to a baby girl.  My nephew (18) (with whom I've had quite a troubled past) moved to Missouri on a whim last week.  He was supposed to be going on a two-week vacation with his girlfriend but instead he decided to never come back.  For now.  Another of my nieces (20) found out this morning she is pregnant.

I'm going to choose to believe this is a blessing, this latest pregnancy.  Earlier this year, my sister was hospitalized with Spinal Meningitis due to an infection near her spinal cord that allowed the virus to enter her bloodstream.  The infection spread to her brain.  After six weeks of intense antibiotics and surgeries the Meningitis cleared up and she was able to go home.

She has permanent brain damage affecting her short-term and long-term memory.  She suddenly can't remember what she was doing (which can be dangerous if she's cooking or even showering).  She can't remember what she was saying.  She can't remember her childhood.  The doctor says her short-term memory will probably right itself.  But her long-term memory may be gone forever.

It has also been recommended that she have plastic surgery to repair the hole in her back causing bacteria access to her spinal cord.  If she does so, she will have to enter a nursing home for six weeks, and she will not be allowed to sit up for the first four weeks.  If she does so, it will at least cut the chances that something as life-threatening could happen again as easily.  If she does not do this, infections will continue to weaken her immune system.  She is, of course, refusing to have this surgery.

So, time is slipping away.  Memories are slipping away.  Maybe a little bit of happiness is what she needs, and maybe a grandchild will bring her some happiness.  I'm choosing to believe this.  Her other daughter (18 this week) will most likely never have children, so this may be my sister's one shot at ever seeing her grandchildren.  Maybe, knowing that a baby is on the way, one she'll want to watch grow up, maybe she'll change her mind about having the surgery.  I'm choosing to hope for this.

New Year's Resolutions/Confessions

Happy New Year!

The past year has been one where I've been very unhappy.  I don't know if it's been THE most miserable of my life, but it's up there.  This year I learned how I look to creditors (like a wet-behind-the-ears child), I felt like a prisoner (had to give up my car for a few months when we lost our second car), I feared losing people I love (friends and family), and I struggled with money (having to support my sister and her brood when she blew through $10,000 and then again when she up and quit her job and didn't get another one for over a month).  I've been very stressed out.  Normally, I don't talk about my FEELINGS, so I don't really open up to many people.  I've always felt a little like my problems are less than others' problems so I bottle myself up.  This post is going to be about expressing some FEELINGS and making some resolutions.

First, I wanted to run through the six major emotions and give an example of how I've felt each one in the past twelve months.  The six emotions are fear, disgust, sadness, anger, happiness, and surprise.  I've said it before (though somewhere else, I believe), those are some depressing emotions.  The only chance for happiness is, well, happiness, and possibly surprise.  Let's see if I was surprised for the better this year -

1)  Fear:  This year I've been afraid that I'm just a convenience to most people.  I feel this way a lot, in every aspect of my life.  From my house, where I feel like a convenient meal ticket, to my job, where I feel like a convenient filler, to my friendships, where I feel like a convenient backup.  I wonder what's wrong with me?  I fear that people often realize there isn't much to me, that I'm too boring, too shy, too nervous.  I fear that I have to admit they're right.  In the beginning, I meet new people and they want to go out after work or out to dinner on a weekend.  We make plans a few times, we go out.  Eventually I ask them to go out and they're busy.  Then they aren't busy as long as someone else is coming.  Then they make plans with that person right in front of me and don't invite me and that is very painful.  But then I think how I'm not exciting.  My hobbies are reading and video games.  Who the hell would be interested in me?  Sometimes later they ask me after they've been rejected and don't realize I was standing right there and now I know they're only asking me for their own convenience.  I'm probably not even Plan B.

2)  Disgust:  I've felt disgusted with several members of my family.  From my sister mooching from everyone around her to my niece's "I just tell the truth" piss-poor attitude, I've felt disgusted at a lot of the hypocrisy surrounding me on a daily basis.  On Christmas my sister, who got pregnant at seventeen years old, told another niece she was a whore for getting pregnant at twenty-one.  ON CHRISTMAS.  Then, hours later, several members of my family decided to rant and rail about this WHORE in front of a guest, a somewhat stranger, a ninety-year-old invalid who my sister-in-law takes care of and who has no family and came to our house to celebrate Christmas with someone.  I was so embarrassed.  My mother was mortified.  She tried to get them to stop but, you know, sorry, someone has to tell the truth and they're all just telling the truth.  The truth hurts.  It's also ugly.  And often hypocritical.  And disgusting.

3)  Sadness:  It was sad that my middle sister, who is handicapped but pretty much totally independent, was told she might have to make a choice between death and being bedridden for life.  It's been frustrating and sad to see someone punished who is trying, who is taking care of her children, who helps her parents and everyone around her whenever she can.  What force in the universe has decided this?  I know it's just the luck of the draw, just circumstance, but where am I supposed to scream about the unfairness of it all?  I'm somewhat sad that I have nowhere to turn for even cathartic blame.  Luck.  Fucking LUCK.  So far my sister has staved off making this choice. I don't know when her LUCK will run out, though.  It's sad that I know in my heart it will be soon.

4)  Anger:  Anger.  I have felt a lot of anger.  I'm angry at myself, mostly.  I've made my bed.  I've relied on my parents for too long and caused the situation where I have no substantial credit history.  I've allowed myself to get comfortable in a mediocre job.  I've procrastinated.  I've wallowed in so-called "writer's block."  I've secreted myself away and pushed away my friends.  Isn't my sister who lives with me just projecting her internal FEELINGS when she calls people lazy, calls them stupid, calls them WHORES?  My anger with her is anger with myself.  I haven't saved money.  I haven't endeavored for a better job or developed the discipline to turn my talent into something real.  I haven't changed my routine of wake up, work, play on the computer, read, sleep.  Again, who could be interested in me?  Not just socially but financially, career-wise, etc.?  Who am I and what am I doing?  Where am I going, where have I been?  I'll be thirty-four and I can't even FIND my diploma for graduate school.  What the hell have I done with it?

5)  Happiness:  I don't know.  There were little moments.  I was happy when I got my car back after about six months of never being able to use it.  I was happy when I discovered the writer Haruki Murakami.  I was happy when I found a Chocolate Orange in a random place at the grocery store because I've searched up and down for them.  I was happy listening to Gene Wilder read an audiobook.  I was happy when an antibiotic finally cleared up the acne on my face (please let it last).  I'm trying so hard to think of something big.  To think of a moment that carried me through longer than a day or two.  Maybe...maybe happiness is just those little moments?  Maybe I should print that out and tape it above my bed.  Maybe every day I need to sit down and remember the one thing that made me happy that day, even if it's just the hot UPS man calling me "dear."

6)  Surprise:  I was suprised to admit to myself it's okay to be unhappy.  I've spent so much time being upset when my somewhat happier childhood was brushed off as though I was less of a person for feeling happy.  Pain is supposedly what makes us human.  I hated the words, "You don't know how that feels," because it was like my life was not valid because I hadn't experienced this or that.  I still don't cater to that theory.  Everyone, even happy people, are valid.  Their opinions and FEELINGS are valid.  But...I'm a little less happy than I have been in the past.  And that doesn't break my theory.  I don't feel stronger.  I don't necessarily feel weaker, either.  I feel...different.  I feel...focused?  I feel...exposed?  I feel....

So I've made some resolutions.  Some I've made before, like reading and writing schedules.  It WILL happen.  This time (I mean it) I don't have a goal as much as a routine.  I will read one book, then take a day off to reflect on that book, then read another book, etc.  One thing I've learned about myself recently is that I don't like to read books back-to-back.  I like to ruminate.  I like to bounce around ideas and uncover flaws and discover wonders.  I like to return to particularly intriguing passages.  When I was finished reading 1Q84 by Murakami, I tried immediately reading another book and what happened was I hated the newer book because I wanted to return to parts of 1Q84 and think.  I know, it sounds like homework, this routine.  It sounds like all of the pleasure is being taken out of picking up a book and getting lost in it.  But I promise, for me, this is how I can make myself happy.

The next resolution is about money.  I'm going to keep a ledger.  I want to see where my money goes.  I already started an informal one and for the most part my money goes toward the little groceries we need to keep the house running (milk, toilet paper, bread) and I go to the store for those things almost daily.  Last week I bought five gallons of milk.  FIVE GALLONS.  Everyone at my job knows when my parents call me they're going to ask me to pick something up at the grocery store after work.  So my resolution is this:  I will keep two columns - one where I write down the exact amount I've spent and one where I round up to the next dollar.  At the end of the month I will put the difference into a separate account.  Also, any money left out of my paycheck at the end of every two weeks will go into my savings account.  That's a third account, by the way.  I will have two checking accounts and a savings account.  The savings account is for absolute - and I mean life-and-death - emergencies.  The second checking account is for smaller emergencies, though my plan is to try very hard not to touch it either.  These two accounts are secret.  I also have a 401(k) and life insurance.  I WILL start saving money.

My final (big) resolution is to get out and do something.  The local bookstore hosts readings, bands, and other events and I'm going to attend at least one of these events each month.  There is a great wood-fired pizza place right down the street and the bookstore has wi-fi, coffee, and well, books.  Yeah, I'll need some money.  But when I look at how much money I spend getting Subway when I could be making cous-cous and salads that last for several meals and are awesomely fresh-sealed in a jar, I realize that splurging on a $7 pizza and a $10 book once a month isn't what will break my bank.  And now that I have my car back, I can go anywhere I damn-well please for as long as it pleases me.  And I WILL.

I need to do these things to put myself on some sort of track.  These things aren't major life changes but they are what I feel I can do right now.  Do what you can with what you have, right?  Right.

I WILL have a happier new year.

Sorry Speeches

Whenever I read a review of an author's lifetime work, it often includes certain themes the author revisits time and again.  Stephen King, in his earlier work, often wrote about childhood innocence and coming of age.  The author I'm reading now, Haruki Murakami, often writes about loneliness.  Jorge Luis Borges focused on the labyrinths of time and memory.  It's funny, because I think it was in King's memoir On Writing where he talks about hating when people ask him if there's a theme to his writing.  That could have been in any number of interviews with various authors I've read over the years, though.  Regardless of whether an author realizes it or not, often there is a moral or consciousness the author returns to, and sometimes it isn't recognizable until long after that author is gone.

I think quite often about what the themes of my writing would be.  I understand the process of writing to be cathartic, and authors are really working through the issues they have with the world at large, or within themselves.  I think one such issue I have is with regret or remorse.

There are often scenes in stories, television shows, and movies where a character, let's name him Bill, hurts the feelings of a second character, who shall be named Sally.  Bill makes Sally cry herself to sleep, perhaps unintentionally.  Sally shoulders the weight of her feelings for a long time, possibly years.  Maybe she only shoulders that weight for twenty seconds, but the point is she shoulders it in a way Bill, at the time, doesn't, because he is most likely unaware or uncaring of how he made Sally feel.  Eventually, Sally feels the need to expunge this weight from her chest and so, in a tearful and emotion-filled speech, she unburdens herself in Bill's face.  Normally, within the context of storytelling, Bill will reach an epiphany about his actions and apologize, sincerely, to Sally.  He will then endeavor to be more careful with Sally's feelings.

I call bullshit. 

I call this, because in my own experience no one apologizes even when the injured person shines light on the past behavior.  I know I can't base all writing on my own experiences, but personally, whenever I'm the audience for said scene, it just makes me angry and frustrated.  I've never received an apology when I've told someone how he or she made me feel.  It doesn't matter the situation. 

Usually, the other person will instead justify why they performed said behavior.  It can never be his fault.  Someone else's feelings can never be his responsibility.  It has become such a sore point in my life that I actually fear confronting someone who has hurt me because I know it will end in more pain for me.  There was a reason said behavior was necessary, and no matter how prepared I am to combat any response, the other person is ready with more justification, or just ends the conversation by walking away, brushing me off, or calling me names.  In most instances, instead of confronting the person, I retreat into my bedroom and cry in a ball, mentally enacting the scene from above with that person as Bill and myself as Sally, because the only apology I'll ever receieve is an imaginary one.

Professors in college asked me, time and again, why I had written the stories I had written.  Most young authors give a flippant response, or a response that is so intense and pretentious it's almost laughable, because life for them is still a ball of chaos and confusion.  I had no idea who I was or what I needed when I was twenty.  I still don't completely understrand my own life.  Whenever I get a rejection letter from a magazine I often get a hand-written note telling me it's well-written but that something is missing.  I'm slowly concluding that something is purpose.

There are other themes I revisit.  Imagination, longing, and identity are all tangled up with this idea of regret and remorse.  They all seem to go hand-in-hand.  I went through a writer's block for a very long time, so long I'm just now recovering from it, because for years I struggled with my identity as a writer, mainly because I was struggling with identity in general.  Even now, I regret allowing any other person to try to define me, but that's what happened and why I became blocked.  I imagined up a pseudonym, to the point of almost allowing that personality to take over my own personality.  I'm leaving that imaginary person behind now and examining what it means to be myself. 

I suppose that when I wait for an apology when someone hurts me, really I'm just waiting for that other person to define me.  I also suppose I'm waiting to give a definition to that person.  I want that person to justify my identity in the same way he or she is justifying his or her own identity by denying the behavior was wrong.  The right thing for me to do would be to confront that person, but once I've confronted her, let her own subsequent behavior be what it will be without expectation.  But to paraphrase Dumbledore, what is right is seldom what is easy.

I'm sure I will write scenes where Bill apologizes to Sally.  I think maybe those scenes are written as some kind of guidance toward what is right.  But real people often choose what is easy.  But since my writing is, after all, fiction, and in fiction characters don't have to be realistic, I suppose I can try to define a behavior, I suppose I'm really the one defining these fictional people.  As a catharsis for defining myself.

The Remedial Honors Class

It may be emerging from my previous posts that I struggle quite a bit with FEELINGS of inadequacy.  One constant struggle is the number of books I read in a year.  My goal recently has been to read one hundred books or more every year, and to increase that number as time goes by.  I've tried diligently to reach this goal, and have almost always nearly succeeded.  If you noticed several qualifiers in that sentence, you're a smart cookie.  The truth is I've never read one hundred books in a year.  The reason is because I can't.

I think I may need professional therapy over this issue more than any other issue I have (some may disagree).  Since I just read an article stating the average American reads four books a year, the fact that I read somewhere around sixty should not put me in such a state of anxiety.  I read more books each month than an average person reads in a year.  Shouldn't that make me feel good about myself?

Well, really, the problem is I'm not out to compare myself to the average person.  I'm comparing myself to the average writer, the average scholar, the average "intellectual."  I don't know what the average is for those individuals, but I assume it's higher than four.  I assume it's higher than one hundred.  I know another problem here is with me making an "ass" out of myself at least.  Why am I making up an arbitrary average? 

I've seen a few websites devoted to clubs where people document the one hundred books they've read in one year, and they form a community with the intention of encouraging each other toward that goal.  That's noble and I wish I thought for one second I would be able to carry out that goal, because I would join one of those websites in a second.

A friend once asked me if I read every word.  My reply of "of course" shocked her.  Her response was that she basically speed-reads through most of the books she reads, and she goes back and reads every word of the ones she finds to be outstanding.  She told me her husband reads every word, too, and so it takes him a long time to read, just like me.  I wish I could read faster, especially since I find most books to be mediocre.  But I can't.  Maybe it's the writer in me, searching through the bad and mediocre just as thoroughly as the outstanding, knowing there are lessons in each.

Recently I conducted an experiment where I timed myself reading a page of fiction.  I ended up consistently needing nearly two minutes to read one page.  When I would try speed-reading I would just end up frustrated that I didn't know what was going on by about two or three paragraphs later, because I have to know what's going on at all given times.  I can't just "get the gist" of a novel.  Even a mediocre one.

Today I tried to push myself to a certain page goal, because I wanted to be through a certain part of the book I'm reading before I return to work tomorrow.  The amount of pages to reach that goal was around 150.  It took me nearly six hours.  I know a lot of people would glare at me with contempt for whining about this so-called "problem," but it's like when my friend at work complains about having gained ten pounds and so now she has begun needing size 3 pants.  It's a problem to her, and though I shush her when someone who is buying, say, a size 16 or so is around, I know that weight gain means something more to her, like it's the symbol of lost youth or the fall of her marriage.  For me, the inability to read at a pace I feel is expected is the symbol of medocrity or laziness.

I devoted my entire attention to that book today and still it took me forever to get through it.  It isn't the time spent reading that does me in, but my ability to perform.  It's like having incredibly high metabolism, so that no matter how much I consume I gain nothing. 

I've decided to accept the number of books I can read.  I've decided for now to know my limits.  That doesn't mean I won't ever challenge them, but I think a major step forward for me right now would be to stop punishing myself, especially for something I've made up in my head.  I've decided to try to be happier with myself because ultimately, lately, I've been on a search for whom I'm supposed to be.  I don't know entirely yet, but each day I learn a little more.

On the Art of Suggestion

When I was going through workshops for writing, the most common mistake fellow writers would make during their critiques was to offer no solutions to augment the criticisms they gave. They would vaguely say, "I didn't like the part where the boy died" or "I got confused when you started writing in fragments on page ten." That's nice, and while it helps the author to some extent because he knows he has something to fix (possibly), he may not be able to see why he needs to fix it because he doesn't understand why it was unpleasant or confusing. Generally, fragments are confusing because they are unfinished thoughts, but maybe there were effective fragments and uneffective fragments and being pointed in the general direction of the effective ones would help. Telling him to cut his entire tenth page or to change his ending so the boy doesn't die isn't enough either. What if the boy dying isn't really the problem but some misconception about the events leading to his death? What if the reviewer just can't handle death scenes or just would have liked a different ending and is pouting about not getting what she wanted? What if the author does change that ending and the story suffers because the death wasn't really the problem at all?

I think about this when I read people's critiques of various projects. Take for instance Dan Savage's "The Trevor Project," a series of articles and videos directed at kids who are questioning or declaring their sexuality. Many of the videos in particular are celebrities talking about their own experiences with bullying or violence and how they felt like the pain would never end. The message is that while the world seems too cruel a place for any kind of happiness to be conceivable, there is hope and these people are glad they made it through the pain because their lives are better and they hope in turn to make the world better for kids who are experiencing the same as they did.

Now, look, I understand the common argument against this project. The argument is that the message shouldn't be directed toward the LGBTQ or generally bullied community, but instead the message needs to be directed toward the bullies and those who allow them to continue acts of hateful violence. Too true. But...I think that's very idealized. I would love to see every single school, office, city, state, and country adopt policies completely protecting the rights of every person to live their lives as peacefully and happily as they can imagine. I truly believe in the idea of protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But I also understand that this cannot happen overnight and it can only happen in small steps. That's why I don't understand why anyone would call a project like "The Trevor Project" a failure or critique it for what it's trying to do. One major outcry I hear is that kids don't care about the future because they live in the present and only the present. First of all - NOT true. Kids dream. They imagine their lives ten years down the road. They imagine their weddings and their children and their careers. True - a lot of kids in violent are otherwise harmful situations can't always think about the future because it seems so far away and unreachable, but that does NOT equate to only living in the present. In fact, they are in the very essence of that idea thinking of the future - albeit thinking of it as something they're unsure will ever come. But they dream about it coming, nonetheless. Even the smallest hint of how the future can be better can give their dreams a reality they had never dreamed of before.

Secondly, I hear the message isn't good enough. How can telling them it gets better make their current pain go away? It doesn't. I and the dissenters say the same thing though in different contexts. They say it doesn't go away in a condemnation of slapping a Band-Aid over a ten-inch cut. The kids are still in pain, they are still being bullied, they must still face intolerance every day with nothing but some silly message about how someday they'll wake up and it's all better. Well, yeah. It doesn't go away but that's not the point of the message. The point is to reach out in any way possible to help in any way possible. My question is, how can reaching out possibly be wrong?

Thirdly, I hear it's patronizing and demeaning to the intelligence of these kids. I think that is a slap in the face to the thousands, no, millions of kids who have posted comments about how much hearing someone else share their pain has helped them. I just read a comment about how an adult who had suffered through bullying in her youth would have given ANYTHING to have felt some shred of normality, to have felt like she was not alone. That's what I hear from so many kids I know, these kids who believe their feelings or desires or dreams are wrong because they don't know anyone else who thinks like they do. You know what "The Trevor Project" gives them? Knowledge. Knowledge that other people do think as they think. Others dream as they dream.

All of that said, what I want out of the critics is a solution if they don't think "The Trevor Project" is good enough. I want them to build upon this project - because ultimately a project is something that will be worked on, hypothesized, theorized, rearranged, carried over, torn down, rebuilt, rinse, repeat. Many famous authors say that a story is never finished, not even if it's been published for a hundred years. Make a video pleading for zero-tolerance as a government mandate in all schools. Write an article about how to approach the parents of a bully to get to the root of the problem. Start a campaign to force authority figures (such as principals) to complete some kind of psychology training to prepare them for the violent mentality of those who cannot accept differences. "I'm just talking, folks, ya get it? I'm talking. I'm talking. Talking. You talk to people, you find out about them. Maybe you reveal a little bit about yourself in the process. But the main thing is you get to know them, you go inside their head. You find out what their dreams are, what their hopes are...." (Believe it or not, that quote is from the first episode of Night Court.)

The other day I desperately pulled a teenager I know aside to talk to her in the only five-minute time I knew I had to be alone with her. Her world is turning upside-down right now. You know what I said to her? I told her to talk to me. That's it. I asked her how she was doing. I told her she could tell me anything that was bothering her, worrying her. And she did. She knew we didn't have much time. At first she was reluctant. One reason is another friend of ours made the comment that this girl shouldn't have anything to be depressed about because what do teenagers have to be depressed about? She said that to the teenager. I was horrified. She has everything and nothing and everything to be depressed about. The teenager told me how much she hates high school because the other kids are just assholes who go around making everyone around them miserable. I told her how I felt the same way and how much better college had been for me. In other words, I told her it gets better. I will never, ever forget her smile. I told her she will have so many more options for friends and situations in college. I told her how I thought I would know the people from my high school forever...and how I didn't even recognize a personal bully when I saw her ten years down the road. She had faded from my life like a pressed flower. I asked the teenager if she was getting therapy. She is. She's really stressed out by her mom right now, too. The other day, her mom came and told me and the other friend that the teenager is manipulating people and not to be sucked into her lies. But you know what? Even if that's true, what if it's not? I've never known this child to manipulate me. What if her mother is the reason she's crying out for help? You know what's going to happen when she goes away to college? She'll get away from her mother. And maybe it will get better.

So I watch the videos on "The Trevor Project" where these kids talk into a computer screen and feel like they're talking to someone, anyone. And while they receive messages that are unkind, they also receive an outpouring of support they never dreamed possible. In any way possible. Let's take this idea and build upon it. Let's shape it into something less confusing. I don't like that the boy died. But I do know how we can begin to fix it.