Yes Risk Joy
I once read a Roland Barthes quote that goes:
Am I in love? --yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.
And I've never fully stopped thinking about it, because it resonates deeply. Not only in love, but that too. I am the one who waits. I always have been. In life, in love, in everything between. This is also why I used to relate to Aaron Burr in the Hamilton song Wait For It when he sang, "I'm not standing still, I am lying in wait." I comfort myself with the knowledge that eventually, when the time is right, I'll get to bloom, and until then, I'll content myself with planning and preparing.
But why shouldn't my time be now? Why should I continue to wait indefinitely? When will it feel like the right time to begin? Never, probably, because I am a master of procrastination and I can always find a reason not to act. It's terrifying to do anything that might bring risk with it, to put myself out there and trust that I have what it takes to make it work. What if I don't? What if I fail? My therapist has repeatedly told me that the opposite of success isn't failure, but rather stagnation, refusing to move at all in either direction, and that sounds right, but it feels wrong. I'm safest when I stay in my comfort zone.
I've wanted to apply for a writing residency for years now, and I've researched so many and saved links and dreamed without ever actually doing it. Today I thought, what if I did? What if I unabashedly put it out into the universe that I want this? That I believe it could be for me? It feels like something that only more established writers should get, or more talented writers, or just any kind of writer who isn't me, and why is that? It's not because it's true. It's because I've spent my whole life telling myself a story about me that no longer serves me, if it ever did. I'm allowed to change the narrative. I'm allowed to do a lot of things I've held myself back from doing, and it could start with applying to the artist residency program at the Anderson Center in Minnesota, or for a MacDowell fellowship in New Hampshire, or to the Hedgebrook writer in residence program in Washington. That's the one I really want, but I missed the 2025 application deadline.
when I was in high school, I was asked by a rehabilitation counselor what I wanted to do with my life, and when I said I wanted to be a novelist, she replied that she wanted to be a millionaire but that wasn't going to happen either. It was a cruel response to give a child, especially since she was the one who asked the question in the first place, and even though I no longer want to write novels, I think there's been a shadow of that attitude following me for half my life. Loving words is fine, but wanting to build a life around them is absurd and reckless and impractical. Believing in my own talent and ability to do something with it is naive. Investing in myself in this way is a waste of time and money.
And so what if it is. It's my absurd, reckless, impractical mistake to make. It's my time and money to waste. I get to have ownership over my life, even when that means steering it in the wrong direction. Even if it leads to a shipwreck on jagged rocks. It might. But it's also a waste of time to sit frozen with indecision, unwilling to attempt anything because I'm so afraid of getting it wrong, and I've been doing that for years. Maybe sometimes there's also good to be found in failure. And, more to the point, maybe something not working out isn't always the same as failure. Can't experience be the whole point sometimes?
I've been talking to a woman I met on Tinder, and she's dropped some pretty clear hints that she likes me in some capacity. The fact that we met on a dating app suggests at least a certain level of non-platonic interest. It makes me feel very tender and exposed and afraid, despite the fact that that's what I'm ostensibly there for, and it makes me want to retreat. Unfortunately, I'm self-aware enough to know that part of this is due to my unwillingness to accept that the friend I'm in love with isn't going to suddenly realize that he's actually in love with me too and alter the nature of our relationship. I know it on an intellectual level, but my heart yearns and insists on setting its compass to that direction just the same, and so I keep myself open just in case. But a bigger part of it is the unshakable belief that this is something else that isn't meant for me, and the equally unshakable fear of what might happen if I let myself believe it is. What if it isn't the great love of my life and doesn't last forever? What if I hurt someone or they hurt me? What if we don't fall in the same way, at the same speed? What if we don't fall at all? And who am I to assume anyone would ever see me in a romantic light and want to act on it?
Well, what if? I'll survive, and so will she. Life will keep going just as it always has. A better question is what if I don't take the risk? What if I shut it down right now and never let anything change? What if I do what I know how to do to keep myself safe, and, as a result, keep myself stuck? That's the future I should be afraid of, I think, and it's the future I don't deserve. I deserve to have good things, to want and to be wanted, to love and to be loved. I deserve to try things and see what happens. I deserve to be free, to take big swings and maybe have some misses but also have some hits. I deserve to live my life instead of treating it like something that happens to me.
What if we all did the thing that feels too big and scary to contemplate? What if we all trusted in ourselves enough to make the choice that we deserve the lives we dream about? What would happen if we took a collective leap into an existence where we become the protagonists in our own stories? I believe in you, and me, and our potential to be, if not great, then real, alive, brave. We can be brave. And now we have to be, so I'm not forced to look back on this post later and realize it was all for nothing.
Today I reread this poem from The Wild Iris by Louise Glück, one of my favorite poets of all time, and it feels like a part of all of this, so let's end with it.
Snowdrops
By Louise Glück
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring
afraid, yes, but among you again crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.