Does any other writer ever feel like this, or is it just me?
Normally, I make it a daily ritual to practice gratitude. Gratitude for the good things in my life, like my husband, our two sons (whom we adopted from foster care), my good job with a decent income and respect from my peers and superiors, my extended family, my friends, the fact that we have roofs over our heads and food on our tables—luxuries that many people in this world (shit, in this ostensibly wealthy country) don’t even have.
Today is not one of those days.
I woke up depressed. For the same reasons I’ve been depressed all of these years.
I started taking medications for depression because the medications made me accept my lot in life. I was able to live pragmatically and not in self-pity over not getting anywhere with my writing. Twenty years later and the pills don’t work anymore. I’m going through withdrawal symptoms trying to taper slowly off the lot of them. I probably deserve it—because I relied on pills to ease my depression over failing as a writer.
Shame on me for ever seeking sanctuary in a few fucking pills.
I’ve written eight screenplays and submitted all of them to agents, film companies, and screenwriting contests with no results. I’ve been working on a novel for which I have 180,000 words of crap direly needing pruning, but the novel still isn’t even close to being finished. I’ve written several short stories, which I’ve published on Kindle Direct, but big whoop. Self-published authors are a dime a dozen, to use a well-worn cliche.
The writers’ critique group in which I participate regularly calls me to the carpet for being a verbose writer—too wordy, needs forward movement, needs direction.
Maybe I’m not as good as a writer as I think I am. Maybe the “true calling” that’s motivated me for living for most of my life isn’t a true calling at all but a false siren. Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places for answers.
I feel like such a fucking failure. I build myself up in my mind—I envision myself—as being a successful writer who’s made her mark on the world in a positive way. Someone my family and friends can admire and hold in high esteem because I’ve done something. Now, when I’m around my family and friends, I feel like a nothing. Doing the same old job, the same old mundane chores, being in basically the same place as a writer that I was twenty-odd years ago, when I’d first graduated college and aspired to be a writer.
Maybe I have the luxury to feel sorry for myself because I’m a reasonably privileged white woman who hasn’t known the pain of prejudice, rejection, societal abuse, abandonment, murder. I should be grateful. And I should be working for a change so that these social injustices can be ended.
Some of my fellow writers in my critique group vent their ennui with being stay-at-home mothers through their writing. They write about haggard stay-at-home moms and all the responsibilities that role entails, and how they fantasize about killing their husbands or tricking them into getting pregnant so they can have a reason to live and love again. I want to scream at all of them: Try being a full-time working mom, with all of those responsibilities and then eight, nine, ten hours in front of a computer—and when I get home, I don’t even feel like looking at a computer because I’m too exhausted from work, and cooking meals, and finishing dinner at nine, and having zero energy to do anything else except crawl into bed and surf my phone for whatever’s going on in the political world or in Facebookland. At least as a stay-at-home mom, you don’t have those forty to fifty hours doing a job that’s not your true calling because losing that income would have you and your family up shit’s creek financially. At least as a stay-at-home mom, you have more time to write.
I used to think writing was my life’s true calling, what I was meant to do, what I was born to do. I don’t know what or who God is, really, but I often felt that God or the cosmos or the universe or whatnot was calling me to write. Perhaps I misinterpreted that message, and I’ve been missing the mark. (It’s interesting and ironic to me that the Hebrew words for “to sin” is “to miss the mark.”) I guess I’m just a common sinner then, eh?
A lot of my coworkers call me indispensable, a value to the company, an asset. I’m “key to our company’s success.” I feel flattered and valued and for that I should be grateful. And most of the times, I’m able to be so. But the only real satisfaction I get from my job is the camaraderie among my coworkers (which does count for a lot) and the paycheck. I’d rather be writing and not having to worry about where the money’s coming from.
A good friend, and my therapist, say that I’ve been basing my happiness as a writer around the results—gaining success and income as a writer—rather than the process itself. Why don’t I just enjoy writing for the thing itself, rather than whatever outcome it produces?
Then why even bother if I’m writing only for myself? It’s as good as putting my words on a shelf and letting dust collect on them till I hit the grave.
I just wonder if writing is really worth it. Maybe I’ve been following a dead dream for way too much longer than I should.
I want to talk with my husband, friends, and family about these pains, but I fear that they’ve heard it all before and they’re sick of me not going anywhere with my life as a writer. I’m afraid if I talk about it and cry on their shoulders, that they’ll tire of me and leave me, and I’ll be all alone. I’ve been alone before. It hurts. It sucks. I never want to go there again.
I don’t want to feel sorry for myself, and perhaps it is wrong to write this. But I need community. We all need each other. We need to support one another when we’re up, and reach for support when we’re down. I’m in one of those down states. I guess I just need a virtual e-hug.
Last night, my husband, sons, and I went to the Pride Parade in St. Pete as a family. Our boys rode on the float with the other youth, and we walked alongside the float in support of our youth and of the LGBTQ community. What began the parade (which we were able to witness due to our float not having taken off yet) was a moving procession of people each carrying placards with the name and age of each of the 49 killed in Orlando’s mass shooting. One of the victims was eighteen. Eighteen years old, just a year and three months older than my oldest son. He, as did all of the victims, must’ve had a true calling, a purpose, a meaning in life. All of his dreams, aspirations, and life’s work vanished on the day his life was cruelly taken away from him.
I’m almost four years of being fifty. Unlike the young victims of the Orlando shooting—unlike Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, and others whose lives were needlessly taken away because of the color of their skin—unlike so many millions of others around the world, I’ve had a good chance. I’ve tried my best, but I feel that I’ve failed at what I love most and what I do best. And I need the strength to somehow carry on and find a purpose like everyone else in this broken world.
I should be ashamed. I need to value this life instead of whine it and pity it away.
I should have a more grateful heart. I should meditate on what must be my true calling in life, if not writing. After all, as Johnny Cash and June Carter once sang in concise words of wisdom, time’s a-wastin’.