So, for no other reason than because I don't have to be work until three tomorrow and Zack is already asleep, I find myself poking through my old hard drive and reading old AIM conversations. The folder I was in seems to house conversations from early to mid 2002; that is, the second half of my senior year, and a little bit of post-graduation stuff.

So, what was going on in my life?

Well, I wasn't reading them in any chronological order, just clicking the ones that had interesting titles, but here are some snapshots:

-I had just started at Burger King, and the job was not yet killing my soul.
-My key group of friends were the Auburn boys, minus Jeremey who was NOT speaking to me...
-I know this because one of the conversations I read was on a screenname I created to talk to him as someone named "May". He was nice to her, but extremely aware of the possibility that it was me.
-I was dating Jeff but falling in love with Chad. Or, in a later conversation, I was dating Jeff but getting my heart broken by Chad. Or, in a later conversation, I was no longer dating Jeff.
-Zack's only appearance in these conversations was at the end of one where I told Elorza I had a "date" with "the psycho who walks past my house every night."
-Mitch and I were in the midst of our extremely short-lived friendship, in which I e-mailed him everything in these incredibly long letters, and he would tell me how brilliant and fascinating they were. He was all kinds of charming and attractive, and even then, I had a penchant for guys who were younger than I.

A few things are striking about these conversations I've read. For one, so many of the people I had the conversations with are about are people who were incredibly important to me back then, but whom I probably haven't spoken at all (or, in certain cases, more than nominally) for years on end. Mitch, Nick, Jacquie, Aaron. Others are people that I like to credit myself with keeping in my life, but with whom I definitely can no longer claim to be as close: Chad, Jeff. I would say only two of the relationships mentioned have remained or strengthened (Elorza and Jeremey.)

I found it really saddening to read how freely and easily me and some of these people were trading "I Love You"'s-- I don't remember when those words got harder for me, and maybe they didn't overall, maybe just little by little, with each individual. When I look back on the history of my willingness to use those words, I have a sneaking suspicion that it was disproportionately influenced by one gentlemen whose presence in this folder of conversations was notably absent, probably because the crest of the wave that was our relationship came six months to a year after all of these. He is the one person that I tend to credit for changing the way I interact with the majority of people, the one person who made me more self-conscious than anyone else. I haven't lost complete contact with him, but I find myself waiting to have something worthwhile under my belt, so I can go back to him, as an equal. Back to him and show him I still am what I marketed myself to be in the first place.

When I think about the relationships that were strengthened over these intervening years, it occurs to me that they are the ones that have the least in common with that one. These are the relationships to which I bring no hint of pretension, no posturing, no real holding back. My relationships with Jeremey and Elorza have so much seniority over my relationship with this other person-- Yeah, it's Casey, okay, let's stop being vague-- that his effect on me couldn't change them. Elorza, in particular, I think about as being someone I can go to and say anything, be as pathetic as I need to be in that moment, and it's okay, in the long run. When I exercise this right, it quite frequently isn't pretty, and he is not, not, not the type to cater to my insecurities, to pander to me in anyway. Quite often, that leads to me being hurt my him, to me being incensed that he wouldn't just make a compromise, just once, (who am I kidding?), for me. When this happens, I'll generally stomp away for a while. But when I come back, it's never with a sense of shame...or, at least, it's never with a sense of shame that he, in any way, contributed to. And things are back to being pretty square.

With Jeremey, well, more often than not, he's the one with no pride. My relationship with him is more giving than my relationship with other people, and I like the way that makes me feel about myself. I want to be there for him, always, no matter what kind of bullshit either of us puts the other through, and the nearly fifteen-year-track record shows that that's really not all that unlikely. But the same thing goes-- dealing with all the insecurities he's had over the years-- all the "Does this make me a horrible person?"s, and the "Tell me what you really think"s, these have earned me the right to say what I need to, should there come a time when I have to be selfish. If I need to call someone and I'm balling my eyes out to the extent that they have no hope of understanding my words, well, it's probably going to be him.

I love these two men-- and how strange to call them that word just as we are on the cusp of it really, really being true-- as deeply as I can imagine loving anyone; yet, I still have a great deal of love for nearly every name mentioned in this post. The part of me that has been affected-- adversely or otherwise-- by Casey is reeling with discomfort that that word should appear so many times in one run-on sentence in my own writing. The part of me that's unaffected by him looks on to try and gather what's different about the way I express it with these two people than the way I do with those with whom my relationship has faded in it's luster. Do I tell these two I love them? Yes, maybe not as often as I would have been compelled to a few short years ago, but yes. Do they tell me? Well, they each have, but it's not an easy word for either of them. But when I think about them, well, as much as it has been sometimes, that's really not the point now.

The difference between these two and the rest is that, words or none, I believe they love me. I don't spend a lot of time questioning it. Wondering if it's out there, in the universe, unspoken.


On with it.

Let's go for a listy post. Don't worry, it will still be ridiculously self-interested.

What I used to like about myself better before than I do now:
-I used to be a better, more passionate writer.
-I used to have a better command of vocabulary.
-I used to be less ashamed and private. I tell my friends far less about my life than I used to.
-I used to be less afraid of failure, or, at least, I used to have no concept of the fact that I was afraid of failure.

What I like more about myself now than I used to:
-I'm slowly learning the value of learning-- to be patient for progress, to put time into what I want to achieve.
-I'm getting braver about going after what I want to learn and know and be.
-I'm getting better with money and financial decisions.
-My balance, posture, and flexibility are getting better. Flexibility is the important one on there.
-Not very long ago, it would have been like pulling fucking teeth to try and write this next list.

What I do like about myself, right now:
-I'm not afraid to sing karaoke.
-I'm one of the most non-judgmental people I know, and when I catch myself passing judgment, I work on it.
-I have really good, really varied taste in music.
-I'm ambitious about learning.
-I'm fairly self-aware. Even when I'm making idiot decisions based on low self-esteem or tiny chemicals firing off in my brain, I know that's why I'm making them.
-I really prefer giving to receiving, at least as far as gifts are concerned. Giving thoughtful gifts is one of my favorite things to do.
-I don't kill bugs. I tend to make an attempt to usher them outside if I think they're in danger of being killed by someone else.
-I like to dance, and I do it in my living room quite often, and, most of the time, I'm not too embarrassed to do it in front of other people.
-I see the good in people. The people I love, I love with a great deal of sincerity.

There are downfalls to that last list. I'm maybe, too ambitious about learning, and I have to pair that up with having a relatively poor attention span-- thusly, I invest time and money in all kinds of things I want to learn, and then drop them, most of the time, before making real progress. And I'm starting to rethink the killing bugs thing when it comes to mosquitoes. And the seeing the good in people thing, well, that ends up meaning that I'm attracted to a lot of people. Pair that up with poor self-esteem, something to prove, and a wedding ring, and you've got a really dangerous combination. And being self-aware, even when I'm making idiot decisions, leads to me calling myself an idiot a lot. A lot a lot.

And the gift thing doesn't always reconcile with the good financial decisions thing, but I'm getting closer. And the thing where I never could have written that last list, well, leave it up to me to have to write two paragraphs of qualifiers after a list of my strengths.

This whole post seemed like it had a whole lot more potential, seemed like it would be more satisfying to write when I conceived it about an hour ago. At the time, I was abuzz with exercise-induced endorphins, feeling uncharacteristically confident, uncharacteristically capable of living up to my ambitions, focusing on what I want and working through the slow progress. It doesn't feel as true anymore, but, then, one of the things I want is to start writing on this again, reconnect with my passion, get beyond the shame-- and hey, here's a post. That must mean something.

Unless it doesn't. I guess we'll see.

On with it.

I imagine the secret to writing a bestselling self-help book is just to keep notes of all the great advice you give yourself that you totally ignore. Let's go over some of these gems of wisdom-- free of charge, from me to you, because god knows I'm doing fucking nothing with them.

-When your feeling like you're not worth someone's attention, do something that gets you closer to being that totally kick-ass person that everyone wants to know. Learn an language. Exercise. Singing lessons. Dance.

Me? I have spent money on the Rosetta Stone software for French, Yoga Booty Ballet, Tae Bo, Richard Simmon's Sweatin' to the Oldies, Singing for Dummies, and a brand new pair of tap shoes. But, hell, wallowing is free, so why not?

-Text messaging is the devil. It really one of the all-time lowest forms of communication. "Hey, I don't feel comfortable enough with you, close friend of mine, to risk you answering the phone. But I wanted you to know I was thinking about you!" Over and over again. The dangers of text messaging are numerous: you never know what you're interrupting, and when somebody doesn't answer, you just know it's because they're in fucking Bali doing body shots off of the svelte natives, and my, what an exciting life they must have. And my, how pathetic you are. Furthermore, you never know when the conversation has ended, and if you're engaged in it-- and you are, namely because you aren't in Bali, you're home, and home sucks-- you're going to check your phone every five minutes for the rest of the day. Because they *could* get back to you any second.

I mean, they aren't going to, but they could.

Found yourself doing this? Take my advice right away-- delete that person's contact information. You'll still be able to respond to any texts sent directly to you, but you won't be able to initiate again and again and again. You'll hear from them eventually, when they realize how much the miss hearing from you twenty-six times a day. Really. Really.

Me? I edited the contact information so it reads "Don't." instead of the person's name. That's close, right?


-Keep in mind that however fantastic you are, there is nothing whatsoever compelling about someone who sits around waiting for someone else to make them feel fantastic. It's not sexy to prostrate yourself to the idea of someone else. The only thing that's going to stop you from being worth their time is sitting around, wondering whether or not you are.

...unless I'm not.

On with it.

In an all-too-rare burst of ambition tonight, I put on Aerosmith's Big Ones before resolving to put a load of dishes in the washer and clean up a bit before exercising. The idea is that by the time the third track, Rag Doll, comes on, I'll be just about done with cleaning and energized by the music, ready to conquer some cardio. It doesn't work out this way.

The state of my house-- and by house, I mean cheap-ass, soul suckingly unwelcoming trailor that I had hoped and prayed to be out of by now-- is such that I find myself exasperated and overwhelmed just trying to put it into words. The mess is no one's fault but my own, and, possibly, to a lesser extent, Zack's, but all the same, I feel victimized by it. And feeling victimized by and responsible for something awful is a very bad feeling. I'm not sure if you know.

Peter Walsh, the author of It's All Too Much, says that one of the major warning signs of a clutter problem is if you have trouble with "flat surfaces"-- that is, if every table, counter, desktop and shelf is constantly, and forever covered. Picturing this state will give you a very accurate foundation upon which to build the mental image of my household, if you so masochistically dare. In the kitchen, there is a kitchen table which we've literally never eaten a meal of any kind at, and an air hockey table, displaced from a spare room during a short stint when a friend inhabited it a very, very long time ago. Both are piled high with...jesus christ, what a hateful list it is. Coats, hats, scarfs, a banjo, unpaid bills, unused envelopes that have been sealed shut by the humidity in the air, and then boxes-- four or five different kinds of boxes, holding useless things that we have not had occasion to so much as glance at since they've been put into those boxes. Zack has...a great deal of boxes like these, containing knick-knacks that he is pathologically protective of. This fondess for odd little things, I think, would have the makings to be charming, if not for the fact that, as I said, these things are all in little plastic boxes that are never opened, but seem to have some sacred right to their places, scattered throughout the house: three on our kitchen table, one in the pantry, some buried in the closet in one corner of the spare room, others catalogued on a colorful rack in the other.

These boxes, let it be said, are not a topic of conversation, lest that conversation should become evidence of my attempt to finally and completely assimilate him, having, evidently, no respect whatsoever for his earlier way of life. As if, were I some mastermind manipulating everything to get my way, this is the way I would choose to live.

As it happens, though, the boxes that are entirely his are not the only ones around. It occurs to me, only now, that what I once respected as Zack's great ability to be focused and productive when cleaning and organizing is merely his tendency to put things into boxes, and then leave them somewhere out of the way. Another box which is just as much a permanent feature of our house as anything is the one that stores items we got for christmas several years ago-- things we never wanted, needed, or asked for, but they show up in stockings and in brightly-colored paper anyway. This is my fault, too-- isn't everything?-- because, at christmas, I've made such a big deal out of pacing myself as I open my gifts, so as not to run out of presents while everyone else has something left to open, that I must be sending the message very clearly that I value quantity just as much as quality. I imagine, though, that it would be impossible to avoid either way, to some extent-- everyone has some aunt who has no idea what they like but makes a losing effort every year. The one that gets Zack sports paraphinilia. The many that get me candles or talking clocks or something of equally broad unappeal. This christmas box appears every year-- a new one, I mean. I wonder where Zack has put them all. Found one under the sink the other day.


There's a lot to say. Closets filled with ripped sheets and boxes of notebooks and cans of paint. The bookcase with just as many books piled on top as there are on the four shelves. The fact that we've never had a permanent place to keep clean socks or underwear. The joke of a filing cabinet. And all the stuff-- so much stuff-- that should have been taken out of here years ago. But let's skip to "the trouble with the situation." The trouble with the situation is this: the place is not only incredibly disorganized, it's also incredibly dirty. And this puts me at an almost philosophical standoff-- which to conquer first? It's very difficult to just clean up if there isn't anywhere to put anything-- if almost everything that is on the stained counter, on the dirty stovetop, has no place else to be. But you have to put it somewhere first, before you decide where it finally goes. And that place is likely to be a box. And then we are likely to run out of energy, and leave it there, into perpetuity. At the very least, you need some space in which to gather all the homeless objects before finding homes for them, and that space just isn't something we have.

I feel like this has become more of a rant than anything else, and I'd probably be suspicious of anyone who showed interest in reading it. Still, there was a point, a moment of inspiration that caused me to start writing this, and wouldn't it be a shame if that got lost in the clutter, too? Oh, did I mention that? The losing things? How something you just fucking saw is all at once gone, absorbed by the doom around you, and there's this feeling that you get...sometimes it's rage, sometimes it's nausea, sometimes it's despair. That was one part of my point.

What you really need to understand is that while it may seem that I live in a very dirty, cluttered house, what I really live in is a metaphor. A perfect microcosm of the larger life which it contains, the larger life which the house is only one part of. What better representation of the hopeless-feeling confusion of my finances, the sisyphusian pursuit of my sex life, the infinite rubik's cube that is my health and happiness. Though, honestly, if I could ever conquer those first three-- the house, the finances, the sex-- health and happiness might just fall into place on their own.

It goes without saying that by the time Big Ones played through, I hadn't begun exercising, and, drained by the disorder around me and my fruitless attempts to make some iota of progress with it, no longer had any intention to. (On a related note, Peter Walsh's second book is called Does this Clutter Make my Butt Look Fat?) I was, at this point, on the couch, writing checks for some unpaid bills simply because I had no where to put them, as the final track, Livin' on the Edge, was playing. I never thought very much of this song before. I assumed, without listening very hard to the lyrics, that living on the edge referred to living a dangerous way, a throw-caution-to-the-wind, devil-may-care, rockstar way, the way a Steven Tyler might.

In that moment-- and I don't know if it was when I was shaking and sucking the end of my dying pen so that I could finish writing my return adrress, lest I have to somehow find another one, or when I was putting two thirty-nine cent stamps on the envelope because all my stamps are old, and even if they weren't, I have no idea what the price of a stamp is nowadays, and it's worth mentioning that it was a miracle I could find the stamps after all-- I don't know which of those moments it was, but I heard these lyrics:

"Tell me what you think about your situation.
Complication, aggravation is getting to you."

And I knew. That song isn't about his way of life, it's about mine.

I notice the bill says I should detach a stub and include it with my payment, but it's not perforated. I turn for the pair of scissors that, characteristically out of place, was sitting on table in front of me moments ago. They aren't there now, and I feel nausea well up inside of me.

"You can't help yourself from falling.
You can't help yourself at all."


On with it.

You tell me: did this one slip through the cracks, or have you heard about it? Because I've yet to hear anyone gossip, horrified, around the watercooler about it, and it's that kind of news.

In a small town in Belgium on Friday, a man in black and white face paint breaks into a daycare center and, unprovoked, starts stabbing babies with an 8-inch knife. Kills a nine-month old, a six-month old, and one caregiving employee, and wounds (I hate how vague that word can be-- stabs) ten more children and two more adults. When they found him later, he had the addresses of two other day care centers in his backpack.

This is doing with news what movies like Saw and Hostel did with entertainment (and I use that term loosely)-- ripping a jaded generation harshly out of its comfort level of "shit happens". I don't consider myself a particularly sensitive or maternal person, but, walking into a daycare center and stabbing babies? What the fuck?

Obviously, an outpouring of support and condolences have manifested themselves in every form, and apparently there is a facebook group you can join if you'd like to take a stand-- that is to say, if you'd like to boldly make that controversial political statement, "I don't support baby stabbing." I have to wonder if these kinds of measures really bring any solace to the victim's families, or if it is simply the kind of reaction that happens an overstimulated, internet-bound generation finds itself, for the first time, shocked.

Perhaps I'd be more inclined to offer my cyber-regret if not for how quickly my sorrow turned to annoyance: the end of the first article I read about this truly heinous crime ended with this sentiment from a local bakeshop owner: "It's something you here about in America, not here."

As a jaded, young, American national, we have now seen how it takes baby stabbings to shock me, and, evidently, the accusation of a free-wheeling, baby-stabbing morale climate to offend my ailing sense of patriotism. You expect this to happen in America, Belgium? Really? I guess our ignorant, benevolent attitude towards you isn't a two-way street: all we every expected out of you were waffles. I tried to put this quote behind me, reminding myself that this was the attitude of but one, traumatized baker; then I realized that a similar quote I read in a seperate article wasn't a second translation of the words of the original man, but a second expressing the exact same idea. "We thought that things like this only happened in the United States and now we see that in Belgium, in a small village like this ... that such a thing could happen, it is very, very bad,"


There's a lot to mourn for here. The loss of two young children, the injury of ten more, the hurt and killed caregivers, the traumatized community. The loss, perhaps, of the entire Belgian nation's innocence. And, not insignificantly, the realization that this is how bad things have gotten: we all knew that America's standing in the eyes of the world took a beating during the Bush Administration. I guess we just didn't know it was such a bloody, wailing massacre.


Good luck turning it around for us, Obama. If the rest of the world is to be believed, you better hope you don't let us down.

On with it.

My iPod is playing alphabetically by song; moving from Simon and Garfunkel's "America" to Damien Rice's "Amie", it confirms that feeling I suspected I was having. Late night, Zack asleep, only the light from the monitor in the room, the sound of casually beautiful music playing, and me, wanting to write. This is a feeling I once had often.

I can't tell you the source of my silence, whether it's complacancy or shame, a new sense of purpose or udder confusion. I suspect I've past that adolescent need to leave myself open and vulnerable, that need to be loved wholly, and to the core, or not at all. I've grown pragmatic, I suppose, and it's not a particularly inspiring place to be.

The alphabet isn't as generous at the end of "Amie", and I skip past "Amish Paradise" by Weird Al and Aerosmith's "Angel", finally deciding to switch it to shuffle-- it was made for moments like these afterall. "Kill Ya Momz" by Sage Francis. Nope. I let it play Brandi Carlisle's "Wasted" as I struggle to formulate that last sentence, and now it's onto Paranoid Social Club's "In My Headphones". It's clear some iGod is toying with me. He knows this isn't coming easy to me, not anymore, and he's not gonna make it any easier. Let's see what happens when I press next.

"Crazy old Maurice, hmmm?
Crazy old Maurice, hmmmm?
Lefou, I'm afraid I've been thinking."

"A dangerous pastime."

"I know."

You can say that again, Lefou.

And now Christina Aguileira's Dirty. And now The Clash, Guns Of Brixton. Maybe I'll let this one play. My mood has changed. After all, it's a song about putting up a fight.

Of course, it's a fight your almost guaranteed to lose. But aren't they all?

On with it.

FieryGwenivere: Karl.
Karl: what?
FieryGwenivere: I was touched and saddened by your (away message) that no one cares. So much so that I began writing a Karl-dedicated blog posting about how much people do care, for all the wonderful intricacies of Karl, even if they are unbeknownst to me, even if I cannot think of your last name
FieryGwenivere: but the computer ate it
FieryGwenivere: It went away
FieryGwenivere: and that is very frustrating for a writer who is trying to write again for the first time in a very long time
FieryGwenivere: Anyway, I was going to end it by doing some random act of charity on your behalf
FieryGwenivere: And my post is gone. It is dead
FieryGwenivere: But I don't want to waste the act I had intended
FieryGwenivere: what would you have me do?
Karl: give a stranger a compliment
FieryGwenivere: Okay. Is that all?
Karl: yep


Okay. Let's all do that, for Karl.

F&^%ing computer.

On with it.

There's a feeling I get when I try to insert something into myself. It's taken me five years to outgrow this feeling, not so much that it's gone, but so that's in no longer towering over me. It's taken me five years to make it something that I don't need to instantly run from. Now it's something undeniably present, lying their with me, subdued and aching. Maybe "outgrow" is the wrong word-- now, this feeling and I are just about the same size. She and I, we're in the same weight class, and we look oddly similar.

Laying on the bed, I am trying to triumph over it. The part of me that consents is trying to calm the part of me that is being raped. It's an unfortunate thought I have now, in the aftermath, that this is probably true of any woman forced, repeatedly, into a situation where she must give what she so wishes to protect. Important, I suppose, to cling to the key difference here: I am doing this for my wellbeing, for my husband, for my life. I am not giving in to inevitability.

Tonight, I am thinking of the way must look. I've come to recognize the feeling of my muscles laying just so on my bones. It's a face that correlates with the sad determination of my begrudging strength. I am thinking of how I must look, and I am thinking of which of my friends would know what exactly this face means. Which of my friends would be here, with me, if they could.

There are the people who would be there for you in the most familiar cases of struggle and defeat. A true scenario where in one, brilliant moment, you have obvious and unmistakable need for the people you love to be cheering you on. How often are these hero's trials so neatly wrapped up? How often do we really get to stand as David, dwarfed at the feet of a single, looming goliath, one epic pebble in hand? And who wouldn't show up for spectacle like that, anyway?

What I've learned about heroism is far more often a weak and weeping persistence against and endless force. The refusal to run away to the tempting land of anywhere-but-here. The middle-class man who works faithfully every day to provide for his family, putting his dreams on hold, resisting fantasies of all sorts. The would-be pedophile who weeps and scratches and wails in the shame of his unconsummated desires. And me, night after night, for five years, stabbing into my most delicate flesh with soul-dulling resolution, that one,certain face looking up at the ceiling.

I imagine what my friends what would say if they could see my face, what they would feel. I think about the people who I've come to accept as people who love and some specific faces come to mind, accompanied by an unspecific voice saying the one thing I want most to hear. The voice is small and tinny; I think it's one of mine.

Not much later, I'm on my feet again, bringing the dilators to the bathroom to be washed before they're put away. I catch my face in the mirror. Whatever is true about my self-esteem or lack thereof, whatever is true about whether I love or hate myself in the long run, there's always been a part of me inside that sees it all, and responds to it with a very, deep, maternal sympathy. It's not too far off from the part of me that longs to be seen for everything I am and loved, despite. I've been thinking a lot lately about where this feeling came from-- a man I believe has led his whole life with a shame so deep and private, he could never trust in the love that anyone expressed for him. And my husband; how differently he reacts to the same fear, it would seem. He spends his whole life hiding things so that he does not lose the love of others; I spend my whole life revealing things so that one day I might feel I truly have it.

But this is all the fodder of another post, when and if the mood strikes me to put pen to paper, so to say. It's been happening less and less lately, you might have noticed. Could this indicate a steadily decreasing shame? A slowly-building confidence in the love I've earned? Or is it what I've suspected, that I'm just starting to lose my debilitating self-interest?


The voice said, "I still think you're beautiful."


On with it.

Without checking, I think it was in the last entry that I mentioned a conversation I had with Elorza about whether or not I thought of myself as a writer, and what it meant to me to be one. Tonight, I had another conversation with Dan in which I informed him of one of the little secrets I am less and less compelled to share with the world: that I recently wrote took the time to commit one of my many story ideas to paper, went so far as to hire an editor to work on it with me with aspirations of publishing it, and then, just as I was putting the finishing touches on it and quite by coincidence, found out about a contest that seemed so custom-tailored to my story that I sent it off without a doubt in the world it would win.

It didn't, of course, but that's old story. The one we're talking about, the one I wrote, well, that's still fairly new. And so life, inevitably, goes on.

I'm finding I do very poorly with failure-- so poorly, in fact, that it's beginning to make me question if it was fear of failure, all along, that kept me from going out and accomplishing all that it was so evident I could. This isn't something I ever suspected of myself. (I am taking a moment to imagine, at this point, my loyal readers-- the ones that are a thing of my fantasy, who have read every word of this blog since it's wailing, bloody birth and have grown to know me better than I know myself-- scoffing. "Linda!" They laugh, shocked but in a good-natured tone, "How could you not have seen this, all of these years? Poor, sweet girl.") Indeed, I have thought of those quotes by all the great minds, too many to name-- that failures are merely steps on a path to success, that there are no mistakes-- as gospel, never did I question the wisdom. I guess this kind of weakness is the worst, the kind you have no concept of. I suppose, then, that by the same logic as "failures are successes", I should think of this revelation as nothing more than opportunity. I, Linda H., am a not a coward, but one who has been presented with the opportunity to overcome cowardice!

Is it me, or is it getting a little hot in here?

The conversation with Dan culminated, of course, in his insistance that I continue to seek to get the story-- a picture book manuscript-- published. I assured him that I never had any intention of giving up, that never had even a wisp of the idea crossed my mind, and it was true, of course.

Unless you count the sound of my heart as it beats out "give up, give up, give up." with a growing, Poe-like intensity.

The first time I submitted a picture book manuscript to a publisher, officially, was in elementary school. I had written a story-- a horrendous story about sledding down the wrong side of a hill-- with absolutely no concept that it was utter crap. No one had told me it was bad-- no one had any reason to, hell, I was....seven? Eight? They all told me it was good, and it was, for something written for someone in my age. I was a smart girl, and a good writer, and that much I was always confident of. Sure, I was vastly unpopular. I was wearing hand-me-down clothes and my hair was unkempt, and yeah, I probably smelled funny. But I was smart, and I knew that, they couldn't take that away from me. I guess they all assumed, though, I was smart enough to realize that, realistically, it was unpublishable. I wasn't.

I waited and waited for my claim to come in the mail. I spent the time doodling pictures of my literary agent-- he had tacky, hollywood personality and a red convertible that he referred to as "Beaut." Among other things I didn't understand, I thought that writers got the same sort of glamorous treatment that movie stars got. The future always holds so much when you have no clue.

My response came, quite unexpectly, two full years later. In the letter, a sweet woman praised my talent and suggested that I try submitting my story to a magazine featuring work written by children. I never did. By the time I received the letter, my age was in the double-digits, and I knew already that the story had been crap.

I may have been dejected for a while, I don't remember. What I remember was my mother telling me "You've gotten your first rejection from a real publishing company! You're an official writer now!" And we celebrated.

I bragged about that rejection for months, about my status. Never did I think of it as a failure-- I was too smart, too golden, too young for that. Honestly, at that point in my life, I never thought failure was an option for me. No one mentioned it; no one was worried. Never had even a wisp of the idea crossed my mind. When my heart beat, it said "You will, you will, you will."

I think about the progress I've made, the way I've struggled away from that smelly girl in the hand-me-downs. Maybe I've traded one brand of confidence for another. Maybe I've just lost it all around. It feels, though, like I could stand to get a little bit of her back. I could handle the unpopularity, I think, if only to get some spark of that sureness, that bright-eyed naivety in the face of tomorrow. Sometimes it seems I have nothing in common with that little girl at all.

I shouldn't be so hard on myself, though. I still smell pretty bad.

On with it.

Two responses to my call for writing prompts, questions and requests have come in so far: The first is from the young Dan B., who submitted the following last week:

"I find myself, nowadays, defining myself by myself more and more, even as I believe it is the groups that I am and am not a part of that define me. I've yet to figure this one out, but what do you think defines a person in the grand scheme of things? Is it their actions, their beliefs, or is it what groups they're a part of, like I'm thinking? While we're on it, how do you define yourself?"


Oh, Dan.


In all of the thought that I've given to this question since I've read it, I've been finding myself unable to really commit to a message. I'm reminded of a conversation I had, a few months ago, wherein Elorza, in an bit of an ornery mood, I thought, was challenging my own definitions of myself in the context of being a writer. He asked if I thought of myself as a writer, then was somewhat angrily incredulous when I answered with a simple "yes." He pushed for more definition-- if I was so brazen as to call myself a writer (when he did not dare to call himself one), then what was a writer to me, and what was it about myself that qualified myself as one? What accomplishments did I have, what passion?

I found the whole conversation annoying, really, but not nearly so maddening as he seemed to find it when each of my answers refused to give in to his demands for specificity and reasoning. I tried to explain my preference towards not clinging to a set definition for concepts that mean many things to many different people, but this was seen as a cop out. His definition of a writer, it seemed as he went on, must have been one who is unafraid to define things in the world in which they live, making me seem, somehow, the hypocrite of the conversation.

Had I been willing to give in to what he wanted, I might have told him that it was my willingness to put myself out there, to commit my thoughts and feelings to words and then submit them to the judgment of whoever should care to read that makes me a writer. But that, then, would invalidate all those who write purely for themselves, as part of an inner dialogue or self-exploration, or for whatever other reasons a person chooses to write privately. And while I've never had any particular respect for that kind of writer, I've never had any particular disdain for them, either.

But that doesn't answer Dan's question.

I'm reminded, also, of a friend I had who thought herself a virgin who was particularly incensed when I told her I didn't think of her as one. My explanation --that while she thought of a virgin as someone who had never engaged in coitus or broken their hymen, I thought of is as someone who had never had sex in any form-- did little to comfort her; neither did my insistance that she ignore my definition. I told her that I wasn't judging her, that I had always known the facts as they had happened and simply because those facts translated, in my mind, to a different status, that status was basically irrelevant to who she really was, to her true definition, if you will. She then enlisted the help of others to help win me over, so sure she was of her own virginity. Everyone else involved felt the same way: a virgin was someone who had never had vaginal sex. I tried to agree to disagree. It wasn't enough for them.

Thinking that their definition was the most popular, and therefor convenient, when I was asked many years later if I was a virgin (after my first encounters with oral sex), I said "yes". The person who was asking me, not the brightest needle in the haystack, then responded with "You've never even kissed a guy??" I didn't really get the relation, but I moved past it and told him "No, I've kissed people, and I've had oral sex. I've just never had vaginal sex." "Oh," He said. "Then you're not a virgin." "Okay." I said. Because it was.

My definition of what a virgin was didn't change who I was. I knew what I'd done and what I hadn't.

But that doesn't answer Dan's question, either.


Dan, there are a lot of things I could say about this. What you've asked is what defines a person "in the grand scheme of things" so I guess that's easier to answer: The grand scheme of things, as I would define it, refers to the universe, existence, and on that level, I guess one person doesn't matter that much. On that level, an individual person gets no more definition than any other individual person. To the universe, person equals person, just the way that, to us, no one grain of sand has any defining characteristics to tell it apart from any other grain of sand.

But that's all philosophical B.S., so let's narrow "the grain scheme of things" to a level where it's most practical in this context: the world, the people in it. To the vast majority of the people in the world, Dan, you are defined by a the groups that you are in, from a somewhat statistical view: You are male, you are young, you are white, you are from North America. But that's not very interesting either.

So let's get a little closer: what defines you to the people you will meet, or who will know you in one way or another. In fact, let's start with what defines a person to themselves.

What I find most interesting is this: a person generally defines themselves by their thoughts, or their beliefs, as you mentioned. Within yourself, there is this whole world of self-interest. Every thing that runs through your head is part of you, as you see yourself. Every feeling, every question, every moment of consciousness contributes to your own definition of yourself, and in that way, you can see yourself a million ways: A philosopher, a poet. A person of great compassion, a person of endless depth.

But to everyone else who will ever know you, you are only defined by your actions. No one hears your thoughts or feels your feelings, they can only see what you do with your time. True, the action can be as simple as speaking your thoughts or writing them down, but don't forget how much is lost in translation, and, with that in mind, consider devoting some of your energies to something less self-serving.

Dan has asked a question, in his questioning way-- I've always defined him as a person of curiousity, a person who looks for answers. And I've answered it with my opinions, and I've always assumed people thought of me as someone with numerous and complicated opinions. What other actions are people defining us with? Good or bad? Or, as is most likely, totally mediocre? We should all remember, perhaps, to tread lightly in this, or, more aptly, to choose carefully when to really stomp and march. Ultimately, that tender knowledge of ourselves that makes us endlessly sympathetic of our actions and inactions, that's all us.


I honestly have so much more I could say about this, Dan, but how much is saying it really worth? Originally, I was going to go with a diatribe about how there is one of two groups a person can fit into that will truly define his life: the happy people, and the sad people. But I'm not sure if I believe it or not, if that's a group that you're in, or just another set of actions. Anyway, as a writer-- and I am one-- that's not the thought I wanted to commit myself to today. Too much of that to get lost in translation.


On with it.