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.
23 December 2013
24 October 2013
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.
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:
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.
11 September 2013
Terms
When I sat down to pen my entry in this year's 3 Day Novel Contest, I was only sure of two things:
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:
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.
- 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.
- 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.
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:
- The world is going to hell right in front of us
- People are capable of doing truly terrible things
- 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.
17 July 2013
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.
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.
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