Letters from Meg— September

This isn't something I like to talk about, but I hate to fly. 

I know that I'm safe on an airplane. I know the odds and the statistics, the likelihood that I will have a car accident or some other very mundane death on the ground. I've done the breathing exercises, the visualizations, the drinks and drugs, the tips and tricks. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. It's just something that I will never come to enjoy.

I do it anyway. 

I face one of my worst fears (and the shame I feel for being afraid) so that I can do things like New York Comic Con. Like WisCon. Like NorWesCon. I do it anyway, because I love the job of being a writer, and one of the best parts of that job is speaking directly to readers and reader-to-be. This weekend in New York, I got to connect with a whole new group of people who like my work and see themselves in it. I got to be part of a panel with other science fiction writers like Hugh Howey, PJ Manney, Rysa Walker, and Sean Gandert. I got to shake hands with a kid who thanked me for writing genderqueer characters. I got to see N.K. Jemisin and Ann Leckie and Mark Hamill and Peter Capaldi and Michelle Yeoh and Ricky Whittle, plus hundreds of people in cosplay and hundreds more who were just excited to take it all in. 

Earlier this month, I got to watch the new movie version of Stephen King's IT, a book I have loved nearly my whole life long. I had complicated feelings about it. and I got to process that experience with some writers I respect deeply, who love that book like I do. I got to talk about it on a live podcast at Borderlands Books with the guys from Scary Thoughts. 
When I think about all the things that I get to do, I realize how lucky I am. I carry that luck with me, and it makes me a little less afraid of the terrible chaos in which we live. It makes the fear I have to face to get on a commercial airliner worth it to me. 

More than anything, the life that I'm privileged to lead is an endless reminder that I've already won. I am writing this, sitting awake in my hotel room and unable to sleep because my flight leaves in five hours and I can barely stand the thought of it. I am writing this to make peace with the fact that I have to trust myself to that chaos, not just tomorrow, but every day until my last. But having come from nothing like I did and getting to live this life means that even if tomorrow is all I get, I won. I got to do all of this. Every minute of it has been an honor. I am proud of my life and the way I have lived it. 

I got to be exactly the person I want to be. 

I was lying in bed until a few minutes ago, trying to lull myself to sleep with reruns and soft hotel sheets and nonsense and noise designed to deny the void. And I realized that the person I want to be, the person I have faced my fears and taken great risks to become, would and must recognize that these might be my last hours on earth. I couldn't stay in bed. I couldn't choose comfort. I had to get up and write.

If this is the only time I'll ever have, this is the only way I want to spend it. 

Depending on where you are in the world, this letter will either reach you too late or too early. Maybe it will be in your inbox tomorrow morning when I am safe on the ground again in my beloved San Francisco. Maybe you'll be awake, too, looking for a way to connect with someone and keep the chaos at bay. Either way, you will receive it at precisely the right moment. 

Because the only time that really exists is now. 

With fear and defiance and love, 

Meg