I Deny All Allegations

January 15, 2017

Have I ever told you about the time that I wrote an angry email to Neil Gaiman? 

So. That happened. 

It goes in the annals of my “instantly regretted” decisions. I have a bad feeling about that one. A feeling like that one is going to come back to bite me in the arse. 

It’s like…I don’t know…when you sneeze at the assembly on your first day of 8th grade at a new school while you’re being introduced and you have a huge long thing hanging out of your nose (true story) and you’re hoping that (miraculously) nobody notices. 

Sometimes I manage to forget the Gaiman Incident. (I was virtually out of my mind when it happened.) So it’s easy to forget. (Like the things that you did before you blacked out at that New Years Eve party.) I mean, what insane person would do something like that? 

A batshit crazy sleep-deprived nursing mother.

My fervent prayer is that I’m so absolutely inconsequential that the afore-mentioned email was read by some staff-hireling-intern-peon who read the first line and didn’t even continue with the rest, deleted it while muttering their disdain for “envious psychopathic wannabes,” got up to go to the toilet and accidentally hit their head on the low beam of Neil Gaiman’s quaint study and blacked out and, consequently, had short-term memory loss from the previous hour and NO ONE IN THE WORLD but me and all y’all have any knowledge of the infamous “Angry Neil Gaiman Email.”

Let it be. 

I wasn't actually angry with Neil Gaiman.

I was angry with myself.

I was angry because I hadn’t done what I’d set out to do with my life. I hadn’t been published. I was, I don’t know, 30 years old and had just popped out another baby and had picked up “Interworld”. (And hated it.) Which was painful. (I enjoy Neil Gaiman’s work.) But I found the writing middling weak and the plot hole-ish and then I kind of lost my mind.

I know. You’re all waaaay over my priggish literary absurdity. Listen. I’m kind of intense about weak writing and being let-down by writers I admire. But I’m not that crazy, ok?

Disappointment wasn’t my problem.

The thing that brought on my black-hole like spiral that lead to an evening of alcohol intake and dark introspective torment was that my pal Neil was writing about the multiverse, albeit weakly (in my totally stupid opinion.)

Some of you gentle readers know that, at this fateful point in time, I’d been working on a story about the multiverse that (in my totally stupid opinion) has the potential to be an epic sci-fi series. I’d been plugging away at it for a few years. (Read: a few short hours a week when I wasn't nursing a baby or doing laundry or mediating disputes over toy dinosaurs.) And there was no end in sight. 

So I read his book and a feeling of intense panic overcame me, mounting with each mediocre page that I turned… “No! It’s happening! People are realizing the limitless possibility of the Multiverse! Someone else is going to write my story while I’m nursing babies and changing diapers! MOTHER EFFER!” 

My husband found me moaning on our bed flanked by a glass of red wine and my laptop. 

He started talking before he realized the scope of what he’d unwittingly stumbled into, “Hey babe, uhhhhhhhhhh what’s going on?”

“I WROTE AN ANGRY EMAIL TO NEIL GAIMAN! IT’S TOO LATE!”

“Oh god.”

He gets major props for not backing out of the room. Cause that was some crazy shit to walk in on. 

I was 30. I hadn’t been published yet. When I was 20, I planned to be published by 30. In that moment it felt like I'd lost a decade of possibility. 

Being published was The Goal. It was the Point of all the work. It was the trajectory that I believed my life was going on. It was all I’d ever wanted. To tell a story worth publishing. To tell a story worth reading.

But, it didn’t happen. 

And why it didn't happen is a story in itself. And the years I've lived instead are more precious than having a whole library full of my published work.  

But I had an expectation for myself, apparently. I thought I could still Write, despite everything. 

I thought I could do pregnancy, in which I vomit almost continuously for the duration, mother a baby, do life, pop out another baby, care for the babies, one of whom has Sensory Processing Disorder and NEVER SLEPT FOR YEARS, and then get pregnant again, and do life and mother three tiny humans…AND write the great American novel. 

Apparently I lack this ability.

But I really thought it was possible. I thought, “There are single moms out there whose lives are shit and who stay up half the night writing because they’re desperate and they’ve got the drive and they craft amazing things that we all want to read and why the hell can’t I do that, too?! What is wrong with me?! Am I not dedicated/talented/driven/disciplined enough?! WHY DO I SUCK SO MUCH?!” 

Many years have passed from the Gaiman Incident dark night of the soul.

There have been more dark nights. And days. And bright ones. 

And it was just last month that I realized that, for the last 15 years I’ve had an expectation for myself that was impossible. But I’ve been judging myself by it, brutally and critically, for a long time. And pronouncing myself a failure because of it. 

I thought that I could write consistently, despite the demand of my life. And you know what? Maybe someone else could have.

But I can’t.

I had to look the reality of my personality/abilities/life in the face and acknowledge my limitations. It wasn’t pretty. There was disappointment and tears. 

But I accepted the reality of where I am. Of WHO I am.

A lot of peace has come with that reckoning. 

Let me tell you, just doing this blog was a victory. (Which, coincidentally, I thought no one else would notice, because it’s such a small thing.) 

But then something extraordinary happened. 

Jo and her husband came half-away across the country for a surprise visit. (WHAT?!) And then, on an ordinary Friday night we walked into the house of the infamous Katie Ryan and saw this picture on her front table. 

I mean. Ohmygosh. THEY MADE THIS FOR ME.

People jumped out at me and shouted, “Surprise!” 

I didn’t know what to think. (I couldn’t think.) I couldn’t process. Then I saw my mom, returned early from out-of-state. And THEN I saw my older sister, from the other side of the country, who hasn’t been out here in two years. There was crying and laughing and I was utterly confused. Was this a weird early birthday party?

Why was there a picture of my blog on the table? 

They put a glass of wine in my hand and I walked around in a haze; you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Guys. It was a surprise blog launch party FOR ME. 

They had done this FOR ME. 

I knew Katie was excited about my blog. And it was awesome to have a friend so jazzed, but I thought that was that.

Apparently not.  

Apparently she was so impassioned she called up my husband and told him they HAD to celebrate what I’d done. And my husband was IN. And my family hopped on board faster then a flea on a dog. 

Guys. They did this for me. 

Never in a million years would I imagine anyone doing all that to celebrate my blog, celebrate my writing, celebrate what it means for a mom of four to even try. To have kept writing, in little tiny spurts and starts and stops. But to KEEP WRITING. To keep working on that book that made Jo want to “fucking kill herself.” To journal, to process, to face my weaknesses, to accept praise for my strengths. To acknowledge my limitations and come to grips with the pressure I’ve put on myself. 

Sure, I mourn that I’m not where I wanted to be.

But I celebrate that I’m still writing. That I have a plan and goals. That I am so loved by my family and friends that they would go to all that effort to pull off an epic surprise party for me. 

What delightful people I have in my life. What a priceless gift they’ve given me. 

Today I want to tell you, good freaking job. I mean it. I’m talking to you. I’m talking about your Thing. You know, the Thing that you do that when you do it you feel excited and you spend time thinking about the minutiae  of it and you never get tired of it even when it makes you crazy because when you do it, you feel like Yourself.

Listen, your plan for yourself might not have panned out as you imagined it 10 or 30 years ago. And yes, you might have written a few angry emails to Neil Gaiman and been found moaning on your bed from time-to-time. (Or the floor.) 

Guys, your Thing might not look like how you wanted it to, but please keep doing it. Keep doing your Thing. Keep working, keep honing, keep enjoying, keep challenging yourself. 

You might never be acknowledged. You might never be seen. You might never have a surprise party or a review or ten million dollars. 

Guess what? It doesn’t matter. That's not the point. 

Don’t do your Thing for praise, or fame, or glory or wealth. Those are nice but arbitrary.

Do your Thing for you. Because what it grows inside of you is extraordinary. 

Release the concepts of success and failure. 

Don’t stop. Don’t quit. 

Acknowledge your limitations, embrace your strengths, never let die the loves that you have. 

Neil Gaiman would never allow for that.