To Quit or Not to Quit

I took the title of “writer” off of my profile today. It seemed like the right thing, after months of not being able to make progress and after some of the critiques I’ve had.  It was easier than it should have been.

After my last round of pills for  anxiety and depression, anything remotely like creativity dried up. I had nothing stirring around in this big, empty, wooden head of mine. Reading became a painful reminder of tasks undone and dreams not pursued. The more I read, the more I realized that maybe my trusted friend was right, maybe I should look at some of the other things I’m good at.  I’ll never forget that comment as long as I live. It felt like a curved sacrificial blade was slicing and pulling out my heart.

That became my reason for stopping, that I was no bloody good. My writing is not polished, it’s overly complicated, it’s amateurish. There was one nagging thing though, and like all things that are pushed down, it eventually resurfaced. The pull started again, the ideas.

I need to do it.  Good or awful.

There are a lot of reasons to quit something. It may come to nothing, it may be received with harsh criticism, it may have been done before (everything has)…but the drive, the need can’t be extinguished and so, to silence that inner demon, I’ll write. I’m not sure what yet. I’m not sure my manuscript is worthy of revisiting, but I’m going to do it for the satisfaction of having done it. I’m going to take the next steps to get the novice mistakes out of the way and even if the final product is bad, it’s mine. It’s work I’ve done, it’s sweat, tears, and emotions that needed exorcising.

What spurred me on tonight was an essay by another writer about the ten years she spent on a book that came to nothing but that everything had been worth it. Looking from the outside, it made so much more sense. Perseverance is a hard thing to practice when you’ve beaten yourself down and had no cheerleader in your corner,  but it’s the cornerstone of success. Even if I’m the Ed Wood of authors, I will have at least done what my inner self called me to do in order to be happy.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to reinstate my title of writer. I know that no matter what, I’m going to be writing in the quiet. I need to flex the muscles a bit more, but I intend on never quitting again, especially if it’s based on someone else’s opinions.

Day 12: Family Dynamics *

What’s your relationship with your family?

Like everyone, my relationship with my immediate family is complicated. I’m focusing on the family that’s local since I have family in another state who are really quite different, but I don’t get to see them often, unfortunately. Locally, there is a lot of criticism running through everything like blood through a major artery. There’s non-stop negativity and some high drama, though, also like most people, things look nice and normal from the outside.

My parents were a bit of a mess and honestly, I find it difficult to write about still. Things were not happy growing up. My dad is an unhappy person and particularly self-involved. My mother was extremely caring but had her co-dependence issues. My mother is now ill and in care. My dad remains as he always has, though now that he’s all alone in the house, I believe he understands what he’s lost. He’s a bit nicer but still remains up to his drinking shenanigans and doesn’t take proper care of himself.

The rest of the family is, like I said, critical. There’s a lot of it disguised as lighthearted jabbing, but really, no one has anything nice or supportive to say. If there’s a flaw, it gets pointed out. If there isn’t one, something is found. It’s easier to deal with now that I can see what’s going on, but as a kid, it was difficult to gain any kind of positive reinforcement.

Now that I’m older, I go out of my way to make sure my son gets that from me, since I don’t want him to think that there’s no safe place to be himself. He’s fully accepted for who he is in our tiny corner. Elsewhere, he knows to take everything with a grain of salt, or if he’s upset, I make sure to talk to him about it. Nothing is fun when you feel like you’re picked on 24/7. I know. That’s how I grew up and look at what a ball of positive confidence I am! Bahahahahaha!

These days, in my older age, I’m learning to identify other people’s crap, to distance my values from theirs, and accept my views and identity as ok, even if no one else agrees.  That’s a hard thing to do in that dynamic. I’ve tried to help another member of my family get there, but she’s a mini me if I ever saw it. I keep hacking away.

Coming upon the holidays, I’m starting to fortify myself for the dynamic of everyone being together. It’s its own kind of dysfunction like every family. All the same stories get rehashed, the insults fly, laughter erupts, I have to try to set new boundaries so that I don’t get triggered and hope for the best. Some things still set me off but I’m finally starting to get better at seeing what they are and to diffuse myself. I still get to be the acting babysitter of the drunkards, and that’s stressful for a number of reasons and sets off all manner of bad memories, but all we can do is take it a day at a time. I just got hosed with the hard stuff.

I just remember that everyone has their particular family issues. Everyone has the holiday battle to fight. Most of us make it through relatively unscathed. My job now is making sure my kid comes out less damaged than I did. If I can manage that, I will truly have a happy holiday season.

** You know, I was looking at this this morning and realized something that further shows me how skewed my thinking can be, not that any of it is untrue. It all is. It’s just the view from the family from when I was a kid. What it doesn’t show is just how lucky I’ve been in the family lottery. While I realized that I tend to see only the dark side of things, (I’m learning that’s a big part of this) I realized that my family has been there for me when no one else was. My uncle’s family took me in when I had nowhere to go. He just found me a car and fixed it up when my last car tanked it. Despite my differences in some values and beliefs, I really like them, a lot. They’ve put up with my neuroses as well, regardless of the cause and have, I believe, always wanted the best for me and my son. So, that makes things a bit more even and equal and shows that every family, and every person, is made up of the good and not so good; of what works and elements of things broken. Somehow all the pieces come together to form the intricate emotional experiences of our lives. I just needed to remember that mine aren’t all black. There have been bright colors too.