Happy Endings

I haven't updated this blog in two years - two long, emotional, and altogether draining years. It's funny that the last time I reached out to post was when my life was falling apart. Because now that things have finally come together, I can reflect on that time with a bit more perspective.

This blog is probably finished, as it chronicled one chapter in my life (my college years) and that time is over. Woody and I have built a house, my horses live at home, and I have a job that I love. Actually, I am on the brink of giving up my amateur status at the end of the season to become a professional. It's crazy that just two and a half years ago, I was ready to walk away and give up horses forever - because they're the only thing in my life that has ever made sense, the one constant. I can look back at the posts I made during that time and understand what I was thinking - hell, I lived it - but I don't think I could have ever truly given it up.

The angst and guilt I felt over Patrick was real and horrible, but I'm stronger for it. You can read it yourself if you don't remember, there are several posts about Pat's injury and my subsequent breakdown. But Patrick is now one of the three horses I own. He lives in a barn attached directly to my house which is amazing. He is joined by Roanin, of course, who is the greatest animal I have ever known, and a new horse named Bowie. We've been at the farm for nearly two months now, and it is amazing. I love seeing the horses outside my window and taking care of them every day. Woody nearly always helps when I do the stalls, which is something I look forward to each evening.

If anything could summarize the last two years of my life, it would be that I've learned what I can live with and what I can live without. I deal with crippling anxiety every day,  but I've cut some incredibly toxic people out of my life and I couldn't be happier. Some of them were old friends, but to be free from their negativity is amazing. I wish I had done it years ago.

I finally finished that book I started, so very long ago. I work on the revision in my free time. I do intend to pursue publication, but it isn't ready yet. And that's okay, because I have time. Between working and riding every day, and horse shows nearly every weekend, I do have a little time left over for myself. Sometimes I read, or play a video game, and sometimes I just go hang out in the barn because I can. But occasionally I use that time to work on my story. I feel like a different person than I was when I started writing it.

I conquer things now that would have had me crying and useless a couple years ago. Not that it's always easy, and not that I don't suffer daily from mental health problems. I do. It's a lot to live with sometimes.

But I do live with it.

One horse. One man.

I haven't written in a long time. Not on my blog, not in my story. I miss that part of my life. But the reason I haven't been writing is a good one: I've been too busy living, and loving, life.

In my last post I discussed how terrible 2013 was and that I hoped 2014 would show me how good life can be, and how much I have to live for. I really had no idea how right I would be about that.

Shortly after the beginning of the year, I decided I was done with riding. I was ready to walk away from one of the only two passions I've had my entire life. I was done because it wasn't fun anymore, and I didn't realize how much that had to do with my state of mind. I never rode Patrick again, but I did give him to my trainer who is currently using him as a lesson horse. He's mostly ridden by a woman who adores him, and he seems happy.

Monty is gone. This was hard for me, as when I bought him, he'd had a rough life. I promised him a "Black Beauty" ending. But because I was no longer riding Patrick, Monty was all I had left to ride, and he became the main reason that riding became a chore instead of a hobby. When you're emotionally unstable and suffering from anxiety, you don't need a hard horse. You need something easy and fun. But Monty was hard, because it had been so long since he was ridden regularly, and he's always had a bit of an attitude. So after advertising him on the internet as a free (but hard to ride) horse, I found a great new home for him with someone who was familiar with difficult horses. We are facebook friends and she posts lots of updates about him and his training. He seems happy, which makes it all easier. I feel like I let him down, but maybe sometimes giving someone a happy ending means letting them move on to a better situation.

Enter Roanin.

In March, I told my trainer my plan to stop riding. She understood where I was coming from but encouraged me to take a couple lessons on a horse that belonged to one of her other boarders. She said that if I wasn't having fun on him, I could consider giving it up. I relunctantly agreed, thinking we were prolonging the inevitable, that I had fallen out of love with horses and that it was over.

Roanin completely proved me wrong. He's a really cool horse, very straightforward to ride, but not always easy. He's a Connemara (typically a pony breed), but a giant one, measuring 16.1hh. He's still very much a pony, though: grumpy old man personality, stubborn, but patient and tolerant with a heart of gold. I fell in love with him after the first ride, went to the barn every day for a week, and discovered that Roanin was actually for sale. A couple days later, I had him vetted and he was mine. I've been riding him nearly every day since the end of March.

Until then, any sort of pressure or responsibility made me crumble from stress, even 8 months after I had left my job in customer support. Because even though I had been released from the hospital, and even though I was "better," I still wasn't "me." Not yet.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again

They really got it right with that nursery rhyme. It's impossible for all the horses and all the men to help when you've been spiraling out of control for the better part of a year. But I think it's possible that maybe with the help of the right man and the right horse, he would have been able to put himself together.

Because once I started riding Roanin, things really turned around for me. He became my horse, my therapist, my beloved friend. He showed me what other people had been telling me for months: that it gets better, that there are things worth living for, that life isn't always as bad as it has been. Suddenly I had responsibility that I wasn't shying away from. Days when I couldn't ride, I found myself at the barn just to see my horse and spend time with my friends. I started working for my trainer as a groom and started to feel whole again.

A couple weeks after we bought Roanin, Woody told me that he was so thankful for Roanin every day, because Roanin brought me back to him. And it's true: the horse saved my life, in more ways than one.

It was just a little over a year ago when everything fell apart in my life. Even though I didn't hit rock bottom until December, Patrick's surgery was toward the end of May. But now I am happier than I've ever been, thanks to Roanin, and thanks to Woody with his endless love and support.

Just one horse, just one man. And I'm finally back together again.

Lost along the way

It's funny, the things you take with you and the things you lose along the way. 

For instance, the food in the hospital was so terrible that the only thing I would eat was the yogurt parfait. I'd pick out the fruit and just eat the yogurt and granola. Since I've gotten out of the hospital, two of my three meals a day have been vanilla Greek yogurt with granola. It's all I've ever wanted to eat since I've been out. I won't make anything else for myself, and even if offered other food, I usually turn it down. I have no idea if this diet will make me gain or lose weight or drop dead from malnutrition, but I don't care at this point. It's all I'll eat.

On the other hand, my favorite memories of my childhood were playing Uno with my dad's family, packed around my grandmoother's kitchen table, it was so much fun. When she died mad they divided her possessions, my only request was a deck of uno cards.

In the psych ward, we had about 70% of a deck of Uno. One of the first nights there, I taught the other patients. It didn't quite work perfectly, we were missing some cards, but it was something to do. And at every opportunity - between meetings with the doctor and group therapy - someone was begging me to teach or play Uno. All I wanted to do was read and write, but I obliged, because there wasn't much to do anyway. We played again and again, me and the other patients, a revolving door of bipolar and scichzohrenics, recovering alcoholics and patients going through drug detox. Sometimes it was 2 of us and sometimes it was 10. But we played a lot.

I tought I would forever have fond memories of Uno with my family, of my cousins sitting next to my dad to hit him with all the Draw 4 Wildcards. But the game has completely changed for me. It's no longer what we did for fun on those Kentucky holidays. Now it's what I did when I was at my craziest, surrounded by other crazy people, barely hanging on. Gone are the happy memories.Well, not gone, but tucked away deep in my mind, locked away where no one else can harm them. In their place, a feeling of dread, of fear, of anxiety and hopelessness. Because that's what I felt every time I played with these people.

Somehow, I doubt I will ever play Uno again. And yet even now, I want a yogurt with granola.

The mind is a funny thing. 

It gets worse before it gets better

You've heard that saying before, haven't you? It gets worse before it gets better?

At what point does it stop getting worse and start getting better?

I had another breakdown on Christmas Eve after W and I exchanged gifts with my parents. I was in bad shape. I survived Christmas morning but by the evening, I was a mess again. Woody took me home to rest and take meds. The next morning I attacked myself with an x-acto knife again. Woody called the cops on me and even though they didn't take me in handcuffs to the hospital, W told me that if I didn't go back and get admitted, he would quit his job because I couldn't be trusted to be alone during the day. Ironic, actually, because most of my problems happen at night. But either way, he made it clear: I was voluntarily admitting myself to the psych ward... Against my will.

And so began the worst few weeks of my life. 2013 really, really wanted to go out with a bang, I guess. I haven't been very open about my experiences in there- partially because they were so traumatic. Partially because I don't want to make Woody feel worse for taking me in. I do understand that it was my own actions that landed me there - what with the cutting and the suicidal thoughts - but I never would have gone in if it weren't for him. I don't blame him - he was scared and didn't know what else to do. He did what he had to do. That doesn't change the fact that it was the worst time of my life to date, and I think more than anything, he blames himself for that.

It's definitely effected our relationship. We're having trust issues. He doesn't trust me not to off myself and I think every time I cry or have a bad day, he's going to take me back there and leave me for good. When they say the first year of marriage is the hardest, I don't think they're taking into account those of us who are truly crazy. I feel very bad for Woody because even now, weeks after my release, I'm struggling. He came to visit me every day, he brought me clean clothes and Harry Potter books. He's a better husband than I deserve. Things are already getting better between us, but anyone knows broken trust is hard to rebuild. I have to prove to him that I'm recovering every day. And every day I spend at home, the less scared I am that he's going to take me back there. I've never once worried about our compatibility or our resilience or our love. But I'm scared to death of losing him. I believe that we will be a stronger couple because of this.

I am usually an open book about my life - But I can't bring myself to open up about the things that I witnessed in the hospital. I kept a journal, and wrote in it obsessively, because all I could think about was that I could use this as material for a story. I've already got it outlined, and I'll probably try to write it when I finish the first draft of my current manuscript.

But I don't know how it'll go. I don't know how to put into words the absolute dispair that hung from the walls. They strip search you when you're admitted to the psych ward, did you know that? It's absolutely humiliating. I don't know if I'll ever forget my first night there - I was inconsolable, until they gave me atavan, which made me stop crying but didn't make me sleep. Someone down the hall was getting dialysis and the machine beeped 310 times before it shut off. I know, because I counted. Later that week, I was in the room when a doctor told that patient -who was probably 20 years old- that he would need dialysis for the rest of his life and needed to be put on a transplant list. There is zero privacy in the psych ward: your naked body, your diagnosis, it's all fair game.

I don't sleep anymore. I have nightmares when I do, of being back there. Of never getting out. I told my mother I felt like I was in prison and she scoffed at me like I was being dramatic. What she didn't see was that I was pressured to give my food to the other patients in a way that I felt I couldn't refuse, because many of them scared me and had a tendency to get violent. My roommate would get in my face and yell at me and I was constantly worried about my safety. Two of the men in there with me affirmed my suspicion - having done actual prison time - by saying it was pretty much the same, except here they just pump you full of drugs.

If you read my journal from my stay in the hospital, you can actually witness me start to lose it. My writing becomes less lucid and more paranoid. The drugs they gave me didn't help and they were going to make me stay until they figured out my meds. After speaking to a young man who had been there over two months, I realized I had signed myself into the Hotel California. There's no getting out.

But I had a psychiatrist appointment already set up, and I have been seeing a psychologist weekly since July, so I did the only thing I could think of to do: I lied. I told them I was better. I'm an excellent actress, I was surprised how easy it was to convince the nurse practioner (I never once saw a real doctor) that she had cured me. She was a bitch and I hated her, but I smiled and said I was better. They let me go.

I won't talk about my experience in the hospital, not the worst of it. I told Woody to forbid anyone from asking. But maybe one day I'll write about it. Until then, I'm taking every dose of the medication my psychiatrist prescribed, trying to keep writing the novel that I feel I will one day describe as having saved my life, and learning to believe that I won't be taken back to the hospital every time I have a bad day. Oh, and I'm still not riding Patrick, but that's a story for a different day.

2013 showed me how bad things can get, in every way. Injury, guilt, death, hospitalization, barely scraping by from tiny paycheck to tiny paycheck. On top of that, the gradual realization that my lifelong dream of having a 10-15 acre horse farm is probably unreachable. Ever.

I believe, with all my heart, that 2014 will show me all of the good things life has to offer. I have to believe that things get better than this. I believe that Woody and I will be stronger for having weathered this storm. I believe that my story is good enough to be published. I believe that we will find a home for Patrick and I can have a new horse that won't break his leg, or my heart.

Mostly, I believe that I can get through this in one piece. It's time for things to start getting better.

"Go backwards? No good at all. Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do. On we go."

On we go.

The year that broke me

By all counts, 2013 should have been the best year of my life so far. And there were good moments. I got married, and all of the fun things that happen along with that - bridal shower and bachelorette party and the wedding day and the honeymoon - those were the few shining moments of a year that knocked me down again and again. 2013 was the year that broke me. It changed who I am at the very core of myself - and I'm not sure to what degree I will be able to fix it. To fix myself.

Around New Year's, Patrick was diagnosed with a torn suspensory. He got a little better, got a lot worse, and then had to have surgery to mend his broken leg and suspensory. And everything inside me fell apart. I lost my job. I have spent the rest of the year trying to pull myself together. Therapy, medication, doctors' visists. I've spent the greater part of 2013 just trying to get from one breath to the next, from today to tomorrow. It's an exhausting, stressful, and depressing way to live.

After breaking through my Xanax dosage - which had my anxiety mostly under control and my panic attacks gone for several months - I started going downhill, fast. I was prescribed Prozac to add in to the mix of medications I was already taking. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of some anti-depressants are that they can make your depression worse and make you suicidal. And that's what led me to last Wednesday, having a panic attack, unable to rouse Woody from sleep. It's why the solution I found for this problem was taking the Xacto knife I use for crafting and to slice my leg open in 7 places.

The whole night is sort of a blur to me - but I have a Facebook message I sent to a friend after it happened. 7 cuts, one for every horse I've owned and loved.

I was taken to the ER on Thursday but they didn't have an open bed in the psych ward, or else they would have admitted me. I could have missed Christmas. Instead I was sent home with Woody, who had to take three days off of work to baby sit me. The doctors agreed that it was likely the Prozac which caused my flirtation with self-harm and suicide.

My leg hurt for days after. My heart has hurt for even longer. There's been a deep ache inside me since I got the call about Patrick's original injury. And every moment since has torn away a bigger piece of me, replacing it with something damaged and broken and foreign. I don't even see myself when I look into the mirror anymore.

Therapy, doctors, medicine. This is what my life has become. I try to stay positive, but it isn't easy. I have to carry a panic attack first aid kit with me everywhere I go. Literally a little metal tin that clinks around in my purse to remind me at all times that I don't have myself together. I know why it's necessary - I've had to use it several times. This year, which has dragged on and on, with one setback replacing another, has been a nightmare. I keep waiting for someone to wake me up.

But this is all there is.

I wish with all my heart that I could say that this year was the best of my life. It's been the worst. It's tried me the hardest. It's pushed me over the edge and I'm clinging on to my sanity by the tips of my fingers. And everyday I slip a little further from the person I used to be. I worry that if this goes on much longer, I'll lose her forever.

This line from Grey's Anatomy keeps playing over and over in my head:
I believe. I believe in the good. I believe that it's been a hell of a year, and I believe that in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we'll all be okay.

And so I breathe, in and out, and try to hold on until tomorrow. One day, one step at a time.

Thoughts on Allegiant

Spoilers.

SPOILERS.

No, really, if you haven't read the book and want to avoid spoilers, stop reading this now.


To say that Veronica Roth's Divergent series has influenced my own writing cannot be stressed enough. I've had a rough, emotional year, and Tris's journey - Roth's grasp on suffering and loss, and what it means to be struggling to find yourself - resonated with me deeply, even at the age of 27. As I have started writing my second novel, I have read and re-read both Divergent and Insurgent more times than I can count.

Since I read Brave New World and 1984 by the time I was 14, I have always been a fan of dystopian fiction. I stumbled across the books on a list of things to read if you were sad about the end of the Hunger Games series - and of the books on the list, this story appealed to me the most.  In some ways, the two stories are similar: female lead, US society divided into different groups in the future, and revolution. I loved the Hunger Games, but after reading the first two stories in the Divergent series, I loved them even more.

Until I read Allegiant.

As a writer, there are certain things that I look for when reading other stories, things that stand out to me. The inner battle within Tris of selfishness vs selflessness would be obvious to anyone reading it, not just someone dissecting a story to break it down into what makes it work, the way that I do. And I think that was Roth's overall goal - to have Tris grow from a selfish person into a selfless person. I understand the motive here, I understand why certain decisions were made, and I support the idea. Characters need to grow, they need to learn.

If you check out the reviews for Allegiant on Amazon right now, this is what it looks like:

This is actually significantly better than it was when I checked it earlier this evening, when just under half of the reviews for this story were 1 star. Still, this has to hurt - both the author and the publishers. I know it's been all of two days since the story was released, and I hope the reviews even out, but you can't ignore the fact there are still twice as many 1 star reviews as there are 5 star reviews.

Most people, I believe, are going to have trouble with the plot of the story. Specifically, one very important part: the death of Tris, who narrated the first two stories, and half of this third story. I try to avoid spoilers -  so going into Allegiant, I had no idea that the POV would switch back and forth between Tris and Tobias. While I've enjoyed the short stories from Tobias's POV ("Free Four", etc), I knew as soon as I saw Chapter 2 from his perspective: Tris is going to die. Why else would Roth have made the choice to have two narrators when before she had only chosen one? So that someone else could carry on the story after her death.

I want to be clear about something: I'm very upset about this book. But I'm not upset about Tris's death. I've read a lot of those reviews on Amazon, both good and bad, because my friends don't plow through books the way I do and I've had no one to talk to about the story. There's a lot of "how could you?!" and "I wanted a happy ending!" in those one star reviews. Yeah, it sucks. Tris dies. She never gets her happy ending with Tobias. And for a lot of people - myself included, if I'm being honest - it is a huge disappointment. You are rooting for these two characters from the very beginning, it's impossible not to. There's no love triangle, just these two teenagers who fall in love in a world where bad things happen. They find comfort in each other, and you want that comfort to last. I don't know if she was going for realism or what - but this doesn't happen. There's no happily ever after here.

Instead, Tris sacrifices herself in order to save her brother's life. Her brother, who is a complete jerk, has volunteered for a dangerous mission and Tris decides that he has the wrong motives for doing so. She takes his place, and dies because of this decision. A lot of people are upset about that. As a writer - I can appreciate this decision. From the very beginning of the story Tris has been saying that she wasn't good enough, she wasn't selfless enough, for her Abnegation family. This is a full circle moment here. She honors her parents and her original faction, as well as her Dauntless faction, with her bravery and selflessness. I think this is what Veronica Roth wanted us to see, and feel, from this death.

But it was so poorly executed. She's in the room, she gets shot, she's marveling about how red and dark her blood is.  She manages to save the day. Then you get a few chapters narrated by Tobias as he is out on another mission at the time. When he gets back, another character is all "By the way, Tris died. Sorry dude." (I'm paraphrasing.)

All of it felt very wrong to me - it's like in early theater productions, when death always occurred off stage, because it was easier that way. It felt like the easy way out. It felt like a stupid way out. Tris didn't learn anything from her repeated attempts to risk her life in Insurgent, when she was careless and stupid pretty much the entire time. Roth tries to show us that she has changed, with her final message to Tobias - "tell him I didn't want to leave him" - but she does it anyway. Was it supposed to be sad? I didn't cry over her death. I was too confused and annoyed with how the scene was written to be sad about it.

If I had written this story, would I have done it differently? I'm not sure. Because I think character growth is so critical to all writing. I'm torn between "this was an honorable Abnegation death that her parents would have been proud of," and "god damn it, Tris, you idiot." I lean towards the latter. Clearly, because it's 2 AM and I've had two sleeping pills and I am still wide awake thinking about this stupid book.

And Tris's death is far from my only complaint about the book. I read quickly, so sometimes I miss small details, and I find myself going back a few chapters to read them again to make sure that I understand everything. The explanation for what is outside of the fence around Chicago - some US government genetic experiment - is one of the weirdest things I've ever read. To me, it changed the story significantly. I'm not happy with that answer, and no matter how many times I read the chapters about "GD" and "GP," I just couldn't make sense of it. Not to mention, every time I saw the word "GD" I read it as "God Damn" which was probably more fitting than Roth intended. It was weird to me that as soon as she heard it, Tris abandoned the title of Divergent, which had been part of her identity for the first two stories. Suddenly now she's "GP" which stands for genetically pure or something - like I said, this part of the book was a little too out there for me.

I'm good with suspension of belief. I'll accept anything you tell me if it makes the story work better. But this explanation for why Chicago, among other cities, were divided into factions for genetic research was just way too out there. You lost me with that, Roth. Even when they figured out in previous books that they were being held in by the fence - instead of the fence keeping something else out - I expected something more. Something better.

About halfway through the story, I wanted to put it down and stop reading it. This story lacks the charm of its predecessors. It feels rushed, clumsy, and not well-planned. One of the things that always impressed me about the Harry Potter series was how things from the early books that seemed insignificant were actually important by the conclusion of the story. I want so desperately to find that sort of connection in everything I read now - and I plan meticulously to include it in my own work. But reading this conclusion felt so disconnected from the previous stories. I don't know if it was the inclusion of Tobias's chapters that caused this (and this was not well done. I would frequently get distracted mid-chapter, and have no idea who was narrating, so I would have to go back several pages to check, or else find out mid-chapter that it was Tobias speaking when the whole time I thought I was reading Tris's thoughts) or if perhaps pressure from publishers to get the story published quickly caused an under-developed plot to become the version that was printed. Instead of flowing directly from the previous books - it just felt like a mess.

I've read a lot of tweets about people who are "heartbroken' over the end of the story. I think they are referring to the death of Tris. Rightly so, perhaps. It would have been like killing off Ron or Hermione right after they got their relationship sorted out. And I'm heartbroken, too, but because this story is so bad. This is not how you conclude a trilogy. I'm heartbroken because the first book was so amazing, and the second book set you up for one hell of a conclusion, and what the audience received was so much worse than the first two books. I'm not a fan of the plot of the story, but I can forgive that, because I know that as a writer when you start a big project like this, you have a vision. And I applaud Roth for following through with that vision, if that was what she intended. I have a feeling that it was supposed to be a big shock but - as I mentioned - the inclusion of Tobias as a narrator was a huge tip off from the get go.

My main problem, however, is with the execution of the plot. It was a mess to read. I mentioned before that I considered putting down the story about halfway through - which was long before the death of Tris. And after finishing, I wish that I had listened to my gut and just stopped reading. I kept telling myself that it would be worth it, that the writing would get better, that there would be an ending worth waiting for. I was wrong on all counts. I looked forward to this book for months, read each of the previous stories several times, waiting and anticipating what was to come.

After finishing the story, I know that I will never read Allegiant again. I am tempted to - I want so desperately to find redeeming qualities in this story, to make it feel like it was worth my time. But I know I will never let myself read it again. And, sadly, I do not think I will ever read Divergent or Insurgent again either. Knowing how the story ends - knowing why everything was happening - the poorly planned reasoning behind the factions and the initiations and what Divergent people really are - has completely ruined the first two books for me. Why should I waste my time re-reading these books when what was revealed in the third book will always be in my head?

Because that is exactly how Allegiant made me feel. I wasted a day on that book. And I wasted many days reading and re-reading the books that came before it. That's not the feeling you should have when a story comes to a close. It should leave you wanting more. Everyone who loves Harry Potter wants more stories to take place in that world. And everyone I know who loves those stories has read them over and over. My own copies are so worn that the bindings are held together with duct tape.

Even Mockingjay - which had a fair number of critics because it was so different from the first two Hunger Games stories - leaves you with characters to root for once the final pages end. You miss them. You want to come visit them again.

But Allegiant does not offer this comfort. Instead, it kills the characters you love in the same way that a Greek tragedy ends with everyone dying. When you finish the story, there's nothing left. There's no one left to root for - even Tobias is unrecognizable as he becomes a politician "two and a half years later." I have absolutely no reason, no desire to pick up these stories again. That is what is most heart-breaking about Allegiant, to me - that it effectively ruined two of my favorite books and that I will likely never touch them again.

And I'm sad, because I allowed Roth's writing to influence my own so deeply, because this year has been full of loss and grief and struggle in my real life. She really is capable of capturing those emotions. I felt like I learned a lot from reading her stories. The most important lesson she left me with, however, is how not to end your story. True classics are books that can be enjoyed again and again - with layers so deep that you discover something new when you pick them up a second, or third, or tenth time.

Allegiant has made me determined that my own stories will have conclusions fitting for their characters. I will not kill characters simply to "shock" the audience, I will only do so if it is necessary for the development of the plot. Characters will undergo gradual, important development as they grow as people. And - like the trilogy I am working on now - I will make sure that the books flow together as if they are all the same story. Small pieces of information from the first book will be important later on. And I will do my very best to ensure that when my readers finish my stories, they're left with something worth returning to.

Veronica Roth, thank you for two amazing stories that gave me characters to love and inspired me to take risks with my writing and push myself out of my comfort zone. The story I am working on now is my best work and I do believe that a lot of that is because I spent so much time studying your earlier books. The lessons I learned from reading Allegiant will also stick with me as a writer and I must thank you for that as well. There are plenty of people on the internet who are vowing to never read your work again because they are so upset with Allegiant - I believe that you are talented, I believe that you understand human emotion on a very deep level, and I believe that you have the ability to write captivating stories. I also believe in second chances. So while I may be done with the Divergent series forever, I'm not done with you as a writer. I just hope that your next work doesn't disappoint.

Terms

When I sat down to pen my entry in this year's 3 Day Novel Contest, I was only sure of two things:

1. It was going to be an uphill battle, especially compared to last year, when I knew exactly what story I wanted to tell and had a complete outline to work from.
2. I wanted to try to tell the story I had given up on during last year's NaNoWriMo. At the time, I just couldn't write the story I wanted to tell, so I set it aside. I blamed my failure at NaNo on a lot of things: my new job, an under-developed idea, and an under-developed world. So I kept it in the back of my mind for nearly a year and just let it sit there, waiting.

What I didn't understand at the time was that it was a combination of several factors holding me back. The three I described above were definitely a part of the problem, but the biggest problem was me. There wasn't enough of me in that story to make it feel real, to make it connect with my audience, or to even get it written. My heart wasn't in it yet.

And then this year happened. A lot changes in a year. While struggling with a job that made me miserable, I broke the story down until I was left with nothing but a disconnected skeleton. And as I watched what was happening in the world - from the Sandy Hook shooting and the Boston bombing, to taking note every time a stranger held open a door for me - I started to put the framework of my story back together.

I started working off of three assumptions:

1. The world is going to hell right in front of us
2. People are capable of doing truly terrible things
3. People are capable of doing truly wonderful things

I wasn't setting out to write a story about grief and loss. The things that have happened in my own life since the end of 2012 decided that for me, the minute the clock struck midnight and my fingers hit the keys. Because I opened with a girl who was dealing with the loss of her sister. Not a dying sister, but one who is dead before the story even begins. I don't want to make my readers sad, I don't want to make them cry - I want them to feel empowered. I want them to accept the terms I've laid out for this story, and I want them to walk away feeling like they can make a difference.

In order to get there, though, I had to have my heroine start off vulnerable and broken. And because the story is told in the first person, I had to let myself be vulnerable and broken in a way I haven't before. Because that's what I've been for the past few months, and it took writing this story to get me to come to terms with that. I don't have a sister, but somehow my pain became my character's pain, and it feels more real to me than anything else I've done. When I let myself get lost in writing it, I couldn't stop. I still can't stop.

There won't be a certificate to hang on my wall from this year's novel contest, because I didn't finish in 3 days. I wasn't even close to finished in 3 days. I didn't submit any portion of my story for judging. But I came away with something better: the knowledge that I survived. Not just the weekend, not just the past year, but everything. Everything that life has ever thrown at me, I have gotten through it, and I'm better because of it. Writing my way to this realization is so much more powerful than all of the doctor's appointments and prescription drugs and therapist meetings combined.

My grandmother died on Monday. At 97 years old, she was the strongest person I've ever known. As a historian I can look at her life and marvel at the things she lived through that will only ever be marks on a timeline for me. And she experienced real, tragic loss in her life: my grandfather and my mom's only sister died only a few years apart. As a frail old lady she survived breast cancer. She saw enough of the bad things in this world to turn anyone into a cynic. But she was the kindest, most generous person you could ever hope to meet. I see her strength and generosity in my mother and hope that, someday, I can show my own children what it means to be strong.

And so it's ironic that - although I stripped away much of the original story when I reimagined and rewrote it - I never changed the name of my main character. This character, who represents everything it means to be strong when your world comes crashing down around you, was named for the women in my family, long before even I realized what that really meant. She bears my grandmother's last name, my mother's maiden name, a name that I only inherited in spirit: Minter.

I tell you all of this so that you know, when I say that writing this story is the hardest thing I've ever done - that's it's the most rewarding, most difficult challenge I've ever faced - you know what that means. So that when you read this story, you understand. That not only do the pain and grief and doubt and terrible things come from somewhere within me, but so does the strength, so does the triumph. This is fiction, but to me, it so, so real.

Let yourself feel the grief and sadness of life. Just don't let that be all you feel. Let the hard times make you stronger, so that you can appreciate all the good in the world. Cry in the shower, but dance in the rain.

Rock Bottom

I stopped updating this blog last fall when I got a job - I started off as a temp and was then brought on as a Customer Care Rep at a company in Richmond. I loved the company and I loved the coworkers, but that was where this started. In a large gray cubicle, where I was blamed for everyone else's problems through both email and phone. Where I was yelled at by angry customers for 8 hours a day. Where I started on a downward spiral that led me to where I am today.

I always viewed my job at that company as temporary, as my first real world job experience. I mean, who wants to work in customer service forever, right? But I genuinely loved the company and I loved the people. I knew I'd never find that again. But the last thing I wanted to do at the end of the day was sit at a computer and write. I stopped writing in my blog, I stopped writing altogether. I stopped editing my manuscript that I really, truly believe has a chance of being published when I am done editing it.

So as the depression hit and it became harder and harder to make it out of bed and into work in the morning, I didn't give up. I told myself it would be worth it - that maybe if I could prove myself to the company, I could be transferred to another department. There didn't seem to be a lot of room in the small company for transferring from one department to another, but I was hopeful. They seemed to like me. But I heard they were on a hiring freeze. So then it became - "I just need to stay here for one year, to put this on my resume: one year of customer service."

And then, "I can't do this anymore."

*****

Of course, it wasn't just the job that got me here. I'm planning a wedding, which is stressful enough in itself, especially since everything from the dress to the invitations has been a battle with my mother. Thank god for my future sister in law Michele who was pretty much taken over and planned everything.

In December, my horse Patrick tore his suspensory which, in worst case scenarios, is a career ending injury. His wasn't that bad - yet. When we started doing his rehabilitation so that he could be ridden again, he bucked me off and sent me to the hospital. He was heavily sedated at the time.  After a few rides with this behavior we had no choice but to turn him out into his pasture until he could behave without being psychotic. Of course he broke his leg.

The week of Patrick's surgery was the real turning point. I struggled through the first few days of the week, sitting there like a zombie and not doing any work. I called in the day of his surgery and was a nervous wreck until I heard that he made it through. It was much more complicated than the vets were expecting because the suspensory had fused to the splint bone. But they were able to "fix it." At this point, we won't know what that means until he's recovered.

I went back to work the following day. And then the vet called - Patrick wasn't pooping, and he didn't for several more days. They may have to do colic surgery on him. They pumped him full of oil multiple times a day for several days and finally - miraculously - we got out of the situation without another surgery.

But then we got the bill for his vet care - and that's when I broke. His surgery should have cost around $2500 and the bill was for just under $7000 and I lost it. I had the first of many panic attacks that I've had since then. The only way I could describe it at the time was that it was just like the day my dad had a heart attack - I was on the floor, crying uncontrollably, and I couldn't breathe. Back in 2007 - while daddy was having heart surgery and I was convinced he was dying - it felt like the world was ending. And that is what it felt like when I got that bill.

I ended up taking the week off of work after visiting my doctor, I told her what happened and she gave me a note for work saying I needed the break for the rest of the week. I came back to work the following Monday and was promptly told that if my job performance didn't improve, drastic measures would be taken.

But a lot of people don't recognize mental illness as a real thing. They don't understand because they haven't ever been in your shoes. They think that you should just be able to "get over it," and be a functional person. I've never felt less functional in my life. But I kept going to work, I kept making a real effort to show that I was a dedicated employee and that I was a member of the team. I drove a coworker with car trouble to and from work - going an hour out of my way twice a day - for a whole week.

I gave everything I had into this job - what little was left of me. Right until the end. And then one day, whatever it was that was holding me together fell apart. I had three angry customers email me within the span of five minutes and I just lost it. I had done everything in my power to help these people, but I was bound to the policies of the company. People never seem to understand that, and they get pissed off, and it's all my fault. And I fell apart, right there at my desk. My coworkers came to check on me and gave me hugs, but my manager was in a meeting so I went to HR. HR sent me home for the day and I was scared to leave the office because I didn't want to lose my job.

I called my manager and told her my doctor wanted me to stay home to get myself together and that I would be back on Monday. Ultimately, however, I never went back. I had panic attacks all weekend about the amount of work I was going to have to catch up on, how mad my manager was going to be, and how I felt like the world was ending. I called HR in tears on Monday morning: "I can't do this anymore."

*****

That was about a month ago. I wish I could tell you that I am doing better, but if anything, it's worse. I haven't been to the barn since Patrick's surgery because every time I think about the horse, I have a panic attack. Every time I think about getting another job, I am full of this dread that I will never be able to have a real job. I certainly cannot work again in customer service, which is pretty much the only thing a degree in History qualifies me for. I feel like I can't do anything.

At the doctor last week, she said my goal was to get to the barn this last weekend. I couldn't do it.

I'm seeing my doctor regularly and I'm starting counseling, but I don't feel sane. I don't feel normal. I don't even feel calm without my medications. And any little thing sets me off. Last night, at about 1:00 in the morning, I got an email my dad had sent me earlier that night that had some bad news in it. Woody gets up really early for work in the morning so I don't like to wake him up when I am upset in the middle of the night. Instead I took a shower - and I sat in the tub until the water ran cold, crying my eyes out with Taylor Swift playing in the background. Huge, hysterical sobs and water so cold that I couldn't feel my legs.

And then I realized that this is it. This is rock bottom. It can't get any worse than it is right now. So I stood up and decided to make it better. I took my medicine and I woke up Woody because I couldn't figure out how to turn the AC off because I was freezing. And we talked and he held me and I watched a movie until I felt warm again. I don't know when I will be able to get to the barn and I don't know how long it will be until I am mentally stable enough to have another job. But I do know that I will get there eventually.

Little by little, piece by piece - that's how you put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Lies

We went to Newport News tonight to have dinner with some of our college friends. Among them was Crazy Dan who is one if my very favorite people and he had some great insight into education & our generation:

"Going to college, getting a degree and having a career was a lie sold to our generation."

And we bought it, we all bought it.

Three Day

I'm writing this at 6:00 in the morning, from bed, and I haven't even been to sleep yet. I've always had trouble sleeping, but my inner clock is messed up from the last few days of my life, which have been an amazing enough experience that I thought I'd update my essentially inactive blog.


A friend of mine told me about this crazy contest where you have 72 hours to write a novel. You can visit the website here: www.3daynovel.com (it'll give you more information about the rules, which I won't really get into.) the main idea is this: start a novel at midnight on Saturday, finish it by 11:59 Monday night. The judges pick a winner and it gets published.

Somehow I let this girl I hardly know talk me into entering.

It was an amazing experience. I wasn't really sure what to expect but I can tell you this: I know how I'm spending my Labor Day weekend from now on.

You're allowed to prepare an outline. After several days of going back and forth about a new idea, I finally caved in to writing a story that has been in my head since 2007. I began at exactly midnight, and finished sometime late Monday afternoon, with several hours left to edit.

I worked crazy hours, I made significant plot changes, I cried a little. But I learned a lot about writing and quite a bit about my capabilities as a writer. If I put my mind to it, I can totally write a novel in three days. I felt like Jack Kerouac.

Ultimately, I produced a story that I'm really proud of. I would like to think it keeps readers on the edge of their seats and that the plot twist is hard to see coming. It's a draft, you know, but it's the first real story of any substantial length that I've ever finished. There is something in that thought - that I finally brought those characters to life - that made the whole weekend worthwhile.

I don't expect my story to win the contest and get published - but I feel like it could. I don't know how many entries they get every year, I don't know the standards they use to pick the winners. But I feel like I wrote something worth reading, something worth sharing.

In a month I'll allow myself to pick it up again, to read it, edit, revise. I'm sure I'll find things to change. And hopefully I will find places to expand, because outside the world of this contest, it would make a very short novel indeed. But I wrote the first draft in three days, and it was an experience I will never forget.