Hello universe.
Man, I am *down* today. Oy. I was feeling pretty good this morning too. It is a gorgeous day outside, completely springy and warm and breezy. My pessimistic self hates warm weather because I can't cover my largeness with multiple layers as well as I do in the winter. Boo.
In fact, my large self should be working out right now but I feel so freaking blue I can't bring myself to do it. And, thanks to super UP IN YOU GRILLZ kidlets today, I haven't eaten. So I am blogging here whilst I wait for foods to cook. Yeah, that is totally better than hopping on a treadmill. Sitting on a couch blogging and stuffing ones face. Ugh.
You know how in everyones head there is a voice? A Jiminy Cricket for some. Mine is less Jiminy, and more Cruella De Vil... Truly, my voice is a huge bitch lately. She is mean and snarky. I assume that if she were a real being she would be tall, super thin, and wearing all the cool clothes in my closet that I am a good 50 pounds away from. Bitch needs to step away from muh shoe collection, yo.
Cruella likes to pick on my about writing a lot. She constantly reminds me that I can't call myself a writer because I have never been published. I am a wannabe. A stupid spectator drooling up at the ivory tower. She insists this to me so absolutely that the other day I actually argued with a New York Times best selling author about this. He insisted that if you write, you are a writer. That is fucking easy for him to say with his three book deal, yeah?
I get so down about writing. So effing down. I finally had one agent ask to see 30 whole pages. (Technically that is a good thing but holy shit does it feel lame.) Her associate agent had recently publicly humiliated me and my abysmal query skills on Twitter so it felt like a nice coup that mean agents boss had requested me. Yesterday she wrote back and turned me down. It sucks. The one little bite of interest in Isadora and it is gone now. I sat there staring at the email, reading it over and over thinking that maybe I was reading it wrong, that if I looked hard enough there would be a dash of hope in there.
No. No hope. Only a resolute NO in a form letter.
I follow a million agents and writers and editors and publishers on Twitter. I do this in part because you get nowhere without networking in publishing, and there isn't a lot to network in Indiana. The other reason is that part of the time it makes me feel like I am *home* when I watch them all talk with each other about books and publishing and writing. They are speaking words I understand, showing enthusiasm that I share, embracing ideas that I have embraced myself.
The underside to this is that it is an illusion. *They* are talking. I am spying. An unwelcome intruder most likely. Twitter is full of pathetic wannabes like myself who think that they will stumble onto a big break if they just beg hard enough. Maybe one of the agents will see our pathetic selves and take pity on us. Full of delusions of belonging in a world that has made it quite clear it wants less than nothing to do with us.
I ache when I see them all talking. I want to play! I want to talk books and stories and ideas!! I have them! I could fit in there. Which is a thrill of an idea as I have genuinely never fit in anywhere before. And yet, here is a world where I have the ability to hang, the natural ability to participate and be comfortable, but no matter how much I want it, no matter how hard I try, I will never be a part of.
Seeing this, I feel like I am *home*. That this is the place that has been waiting for me for thirty years. And I can't be there. I just watch it go by and cry myself to sleep listening to Cruella tell me that I am useless and a crap writer and I suck so hard that even with all the bizarre books being published every day, the world has deemed my crappy shit so poor that they don't even want to look at it before they turn it down. Yes, Cruella informs me, you are THAT pathetic. You are that bad. You are never going to be a part of anything special. YOU aren't special. You are going to spend your life wanting something that you will never deserve and when you finally die, your children will look back and say their mother did nothing with her life. They will be ashamed that their mother chased a stupid dream that she was fully unqualified for and failed miserably. That their mother was a failure.
Sometimes I wish I had never written anything. At least I wouldn't know what I was missing. It hurts more to see it all pass me by than it would to never know it was there. I am reminded of my days on the playground in elementary school, watching the kids play together happily, and when I would ask to play too they would laugh and list off all the reasons why I was a loser. Instead of playing, I would spend each recess sitting on the sidewalk waiting for the bell to ring, or even lamer, talking to the teachers on duty just to have the company.
I suppose that having been broken into this lifestyle so early on it shouldn't disappoint me now. I am always going to be sitting on that sidewalk, watching the cool kids saunter by.
The realization makes it very hard to breathe. The idea of having nothing in this world that is special and for me is sad. I don't want my children to pity me. But they will. Because I don't belong anywhere special.
Fuck you too, Cruella.
I hope you all are in better places than I am today.
Until next time,
Peace, Love and Jiminy's.
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