What, have I not been posting?
When I was in high school, I had to give a presentation once on Edgar Allan Poe.
The teacher, who was normally an evil bitch that I hated, had chosen him especially for me. It was a very kind thing for her to do. I’d been reading him since I was a tiny wee lass, and I was clearly a goth chick of the type who would be overjoyed to do a presentation on Edgar Allan Poe. Inasmuch, I suppose, as goth chicks are ever overjoyed to do anything, but I was always a pretty cheerful goth.
I did pretty much no work on it. The day before the presentation, I looked at one (1) book on EAP, didn’t write anything down, and came to class somehow convinced I would nail it. I didn’t even know the date of his birth or his death. I’d done a more complete and in depth biography of Billie Holiday when I was in the 3rd grade. I completely bombed, it was utterly humiliating, and I got a D.
I really should have gotten an F. It was that bad. There was just nothing. And I was standing in front of the class with my nothing, shaking like a leaf.
I dropped out of school shortly thereafter. It was the 2nd time I dropped out, and I’m sure it wasn’t exclusively because of this report, but I know it was part of it.
A couple years later, I ran into someone I’d gone to class with, and he made some kind of mention of this debacle - laughingly, of course, and not at all meanly, but it almost made me cry just to think of it again. I cut him off as quickly as I could, and tried to get Kai away from him - I didn’t want her to know about it. My shame about this is *still* so strong that I literally cringe to even think about it, and it takes a maximum effort to write it out. And trust me, I’m glossing over some of the parts that make me want to hide.
School was the only thing that I was sure I was good at. It was the only thing that I had unshakeable confidence in. And I completely fucked it up, completely blew this thing I should have aced, just because I didn’t try. There was nobody and nothing to blame it on but myself; this spectacular failure was all my own doing. And I didn’t even have a good reason for not doing it - just laziness, and an absence of priorities.
I spent a long time thinking I couldn’t really do anything. I mean, sure, I had my skills, and the things I was good at; I’ve always taken pride in my job and in doing it well, no matter what job I had. But for the most part, I thought I couldn’t really do anything outside of that. Again, I’m not saying it was because of this one failed school project - but it stands for so much in my memory.
In the last few years, I learned how to try. I had to be pushed by someone else into every major decision I made; or, if not pushed, I had to be given permission by someone - anyone, really - before I felt I could do it. But I did do things, eventually. I went back to school, five years later, when someone gave me permission to do that. I quit working in restaurants, when a friend gave me a job doing something else. I sang in public for the first time, with the combination of much alcohol and someone else’s permission. I started writing poetry, because someone gave me magnetic poetry and thereby took away my excuse. Finally, I moved to Oregon, because my sister told me I could. Other people gave me permission, but I was the one who was doing the things - and that was the first step.
A while after I moved here, maybe a year or so, I started really thinking about things. In the many things I was noticing about my sister and I, and the commonalities between us, one really kind of stood out. So I asked her one day, “Do you notice that we tend to get everything we want?” She laughed, kinda, cause I think she thought I was joking, but I pointed out to her that really, the things we actually go after, we almost *always* get them. And I’m only saying “almost” because it seems likely that there are several exceptions I’m just not thinking of right now. Now, I’m not saying that everything comes easy for us, or that we are continually showered with money and fruit; just that, when we really decide we want something, nothing really gets in the way. Sooner or later, we succeed.
I started trying for more, then, though I didn’t really have anything to go after. I just started believing in myself just that little bit more. I found this atmosphere of support that was not quite like anything I’d ever experienced before. It was not so much encouragement and cheering me on as it was just *assumed* - instead of “woo, yay, go for it,” it was “well, of course you can do that. Duh.” It was a revelation. And for some reason, I started to believe it. I started to believe the things that people said when they said nice things to me. I started to see that some of the time, when people were trying to convince me I wasn’t useless, they weren’t just trying to make me feel better.
I can’t really explain this feeling. After spending that long thinking I couldn’t really do anything useful or interesting, I suddenly realized that people who I genuinely respected and admired just assumed that I could do anything I wanted.
This revelation, combined with the previous revelation about how I tended to *get* whatever I really wanted, made me think this:
Maybe I *can* do anything I want.
Or rather, and more importantly:
Why do I think I can’t?
One day, I was taking a shower. (This is the good part of the story, and not just because I was naked, wet, and soapy.) It was November, and NaNoWriMo had just started, and I had just declined to join, as per always, since I was no longer a writer. I was washing my hair, and thinking about a fragment of a poem that I’d dreamed months earlier. There were only three lines of it that had escaped unscathed from my dream, and they were short lines at that. But they stuck with me, and I was turning them over in my head, when suddenly I realized that, instead of finishing the poem, I wanted to write that story. There was a whole huge story to be written there, and I wanted to do it. And the voice in my head, which will always be there, said, “But you can’t write anything!” And the brand-new voice, which I think will be there from now on, said, “Why not?”
And damned if that I-can’t voice didn’t shut the hell up.
So I got out of the shower, I sat down at my computer, and I wrote 4,000 words in under two hours. Then I joined NaNoWriMo. Then I cried.
I think I was crying because I hadn’t even known how scared I was that I had lost that. And I was crying because it had been 10 years since I did anything that made me that proud of myself. Mostly, though, I was crying because I was so unbelievably grateful - for the ability to write, for the strength to overcome my fear, and for the atmosphere around me that allowed me to do it without being afraid.
I spent the next two months, while writing the novel and after finishing it, giddy with power. That, you see, was the moment I was sure of it - I could, in fact, do anything I wanted.
It took me a little while, despite other people saying so, to realize how terrifying that is. If I can do anything I want, you see, then all my failures are on me entirely. There is no acceptable excuse; either I decide to do something, or I don’t. I nearly drove myself to distraction with stress and anxiety in March because by god, I’d decided to write another novel, and regardless of the myriad other things that were going on with me, I was going to write it. That was the first time that I really needed permission to *quit*. And, someone gave me permission to quit, and after the 15th time it was said, I did.
Not forever, of course; it’s still there, and I’m picking it up again soon. Just, the tables got turned. And I was so afraid that if I stopped, I would never be able to do anything again. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference between “I can do anything” and “I should do everything.” Sometimes, I’m afraid that if I don’t use that - if I don’t do *something* with it, I will lose it completely, and go back to being the girl that couldn’t really do anything.
I think somewhere along the road (and I think it was recent), I started understanding that failure wasn’t the end. Not just that it’s okay to fail, which is an important thing to know, but that failure isn’t permanent. You don’t keep failing forever. The next time you try, it’s better. Instead of failing and saying, “Well fuck, I guess I better do something else instead,” you can fail and say, “Well fuck, I guess I better do that again.” And, honest to goodness, there are people who will stick around, *and still believe in you,* while you try again. And again. And, sometimes, again.
And whoa-my-god, did that turn my world all topsy-turvy.
So, now, here I am. Many times defeated, and many times abused, as the song says. But even when I feel like something a Republican scraped off the bottom of their shoe, even when I’m paralyzed on my couch with only enough strength to change the Buffy DVD every 3 ½ hours, even when I let everything in my life go to hell because I’m such a frickin’ mess - even then, I have this *knowledge*. I have this little tickle of power in the back of my head. I know that if I *wanted* to, I could do anything.
And I know that sooner or later, I’ll want to.