success stories
A thing about being in my mid-thirties and being single and also, you know, having a career without a clear path, and because of that periodically being broke, is that people tell me that it's all gonna work out really kind of a lot. And, look, they mean well, and they're probably right, if by it you mean my ongoing project of staying alive and housed and employed. I'm dripping in privilege and I'm decently smart and pathologically driven. Something will, in all likelihood, work out for me. I will be fine, okay, good, maybe even great.
What I might not ever be: Married, or at least in a long-term partnership. A mother. A successful writer. (What does successful mean: a topic for another Tinyletter, or possibly god.) Something will work out for me, but it might not be any of the specific things I'm pursuing, that I want very badly to have.
When I say that, people think I'm being down on myself, but I'm truly not. The fact of the matter is, most of those things are not up to me. I cannot make anyone fall in love with me. I certainly can't make anyone fall in love with my books. So I try to be willing to face the question: if none of that happens, will my life be enough for me anyway? If it all works out, and I get to live and work and all of that, but it all is not quite what I'd imagined-- is that okay with me? Is that okay with the people in my life? How can I tell myself, let alone anyone else, a story that doesn't end the way we think it should, with a big ol' happily ever after, with a success to redeem each of the failures and frustrations that preceded it? (This is not the first time I've written about this.)
It's the time of year that this kind of thinking is inescapable. My Twitter timeline is filled with people celebrating their accomplishments, toting up what they read and liked, or wrote and liked. I do it too, usually. This year, though, it feels irrelevant, maybe because this year was so warped and strange in every aspect. It was bookended by the dissolution of two important professional relationships. I didn't publish or sell or even draft a book. I published nothing of note, honestly. Instead, I mostly wrote 225,000 words under someone else's name.
But and also. I moved into a house that I like, where I am much happier than I was in my old apartment. We threw parties where people ate latkes and tamales, swapped clothes, watched movies, tried to remember how to socialize again. I spent some quiet afternoons with my friend's toddler, watching him testing whether one object fit inside of another, and learning how to walk in shoes. I cooked, baked, ate, drank. I swam in the ocean. I deadlifted 242.5 pounds this morning.
When I think of this year, really what I think is of this moment in my friend T's bathroom. She had broken her wrist skateboarding and had to have surgery to repair the break. After, they'd put a nerve block drug in a catheter that dripped directly into the arm, keeping it numb and immobile for those first few days.
They sent her home with instructions for how to remove the catheter herself, so one afternoon we went into her bathroom together. I peeled the tape that had held the catheter in place off of her skin, trying not to prolong the pain, trying not to jostle anything that wasn't ready to be jostled. Then I counted to three and pulled the tubing out from inside of her, the long clean line of it like a scarf from a magician's hat.
It was one of the most intimate things I've done for anyone. I felt in my marrow the way she trusted me, the way she placed her body in my hands. It felt more like adulthood than paying my taxes, than seeing my grays come in, than the day I went to the dealership and bought my car. Just the two of us, absolutely nothing but bodies in a room. Can I count on you to do what's necessary for me?
Yes, you can. Yes, I can.
I don't know what the story of my life looks like yet. Maybe it all adds up. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it just happens. I keep on trying to tell myself: the years really don't have to add up to anything in particular. The days, each one of them as they pass: they have to be the point.
-
And now, one ad: tomorrow is the last day to sign up for HEA WTF, a virtual romcom writing bootcamp I'm co-teaching, at our year-end discount price.
What I might not ever be: Married, or at least in a long-term partnership. A mother. A successful writer. (What does successful mean: a topic for another Tinyletter, or possibly god.) Something will work out for me, but it might not be any of the specific things I'm pursuing, that I want very badly to have.
When I say that, people think I'm being down on myself, but I'm truly not. The fact of the matter is, most of those things are not up to me. I cannot make anyone fall in love with me. I certainly can't make anyone fall in love with my books. So I try to be willing to face the question: if none of that happens, will my life be enough for me anyway? If it all works out, and I get to live and work and all of that, but it all is not quite what I'd imagined-- is that okay with me? Is that okay with the people in my life? How can I tell myself, let alone anyone else, a story that doesn't end the way we think it should, with a big ol' happily ever after, with a success to redeem each of the failures and frustrations that preceded it? (This is not the first time I've written about this.)
It's the time of year that this kind of thinking is inescapable. My Twitter timeline is filled with people celebrating their accomplishments, toting up what they read and liked, or wrote and liked. I do it too, usually. This year, though, it feels irrelevant, maybe because this year was so warped and strange in every aspect. It was bookended by the dissolution of two important professional relationships. I didn't publish or sell or even draft a book. I published nothing of note, honestly. Instead, I mostly wrote 225,000 words under someone else's name.
But and also. I moved into a house that I like, where I am much happier than I was in my old apartment. We threw parties where people ate latkes and tamales, swapped clothes, watched movies, tried to remember how to socialize again. I spent some quiet afternoons with my friend's toddler, watching him testing whether one object fit inside of another, and learning how to walk in shoes. I cooked, baked, ate, drank. I swam in the ocean. I deadlifted 242.5 pounds this morning.
When I think of this year, really what I think is of this moment in my friend T's bathroom. She had broken her wrist skateboarding and had to have surgery to repair the break. After, they'd put a nerve block drug in a catheter that dripped directly into the arm, keeping it numb and immobile for those first few days.
They sent her home with instructions for how to remove the catheter herself, so one afternoon we went into her bathroom together. I peeled the tape that had held the catheter in place off of her skin, trying not to prolong the pain, trying not to jostle anything that wasn't ready to be jostled. Then I counted to three and pulled the tubing out from inside of her, the long clean line of it like a scarf from a magician's hat.
It was one of the most intimate things I've done for anyone. I felt in my marrow the way she trusted me, the way she placed her body in my hands. It felt more like adulthood than paying my taxes, than seeing my grays come in, than the day I went to the dealership and bought my car. Just the two of us, absolutely nothing but bodies in a room. Can I count on you to do what's necessary for me?
Yes, you can. Yes, I can.
I don't know what the story of my life looks like yet. Maybe it all adds up. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it just happens. I keep on trying to tell myself: the years really don't have to add up to anything in particular. The days, each one of them as they pass: they have to be the point.
-
And now, one ad: tomorrow is the last day to sign up for HEA WTF, a virtual romcom writing bootcamp I'm co-teaching, at our year-end discount price.
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