The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
- Dolly Parton
It isn’t easy to get up every morning and face this blank screen. It isn’t easy but every key stroke brings me, I hope, one step closer to freedom. Perhaps another woman reading this will find the courage she needs to tell her story. Perhaps that’s just what I tell myself in order to keep going. Either way, it works. I’m here. I make a pot of coffee, light a candle for hope and say a prayer for guidance or courage, whatever I need more of, usually courage. I can’t think too much or I’ll find something better to do with my time - check email, read the paper, go back to bed. I allow myself one quick edit to see if I made any sense the day before.
Yesterday was a good day, at least in the writing. The rest of the day was not quite so good. I quit my job waiting tables. Actually, I called in sick and the manager dragged the truth out of me. I couldn’t handle it. Me, fearless reporter who had interviewed killers and rapists, was horrified at the thought of going in another night and facing that damn public. It was humbling, as so many experiences have been recently. And, also like so many experiences recently, it needed to happen. I don’t know why. I never know these things until months later. Maybe that’s why it has taken five years to write five words. When I told the manager I just couldn’t hack it, he said something I will never forget and probably needed to hear: “You didn’t learn to write over night either, did you?’’ Ah. Touché. I quit anyway.
I have three places I go to when I need to think. I haven’t been to any of them in awhile and that explains a lot. Yesterday, I was so desperate for clarity I hit all of them, on the ruse that I was sharing them with a friend who might need his own place of solitude. Ha. I went for me, as I do most things.
The Lake House is where I first had the dream – a beautiful one, not a nightmare. It was the first thing I wanted in life that I could not make happen. Pretty cocky of me, I know, but that was my reality. It never seemed far-fetched to me, though plenty of others were more than happy to shoot holes in the plan. I wanted to create a place where kids could come to express themselves, through art, music, writing, whatever. I felt certain that, given some outlet, some encouragement, maybe, just maybe, a kid in trouble might not get into drugs, quit school, rob a liquor store or worse. How hard could it be?
I pulled out all the stops – applied for grants from the NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, even Oprah. She gave away $50,000 a week to worthy causes, why not this one? I lined up the support of the local sheriff, school superintendent, arts council and abuse shelters. I even signed up artists and musicians to volunteer their time and started scouting the area for space that might be donated. I wrote a business plan, convinced that showcasing the children’s work could generate income to keep the place alive. Not a bad dream, I thought. I spent nearly three years chasing it. I see now that the idea was fine, but I wasn’t. How could I possibly do for another what I was completely incapable of doing for myself? I wanted kids to tell their stories but I could not tell mine. It didn’t happen and that is why. It may one day but I’ve given up trying to predict the path of my future. I’m finally learning to just follow it. I seem to have better luck that way.
Obsessive, overachieving women will understand how hard it was for me to give up that dream, at least for now. Men, too, I suppose, though I know far more women who have struggled in that way. Failure is simply not an option. The only way to justify your existence, to have even a modicum of self worth, is to succeed. Even success in the normal sense is not really enough. Nothing ever is. You are seeking perfection, a human impossibility. It’s a sick cycle that only leads downward. Women cut themselves because they can’t reach perfection. I’m not one of them but I finally understand why they do it.
Another thing happened yesterday that is all part of this process, I imagine. The guy I’d been seeing for the past week ended things. I know I was supposed to have given up men for awhile but he was sweet, funny and liked me. He wrote me a song, for God sake. What could I do? It was one more pleasant diversion to keep me from doing stuff I didn’t want to do, like write. He told me he couldn’t handle everything I was going through, something I’ve heard a time or two. He was bipolar and an alcoholic in the early stages of recovery. And he couldn’t handle my stuff. Yep. That ought to tell me something.