Tiny Beautiful Things (8 page)

But I was wrong. The second heart inside me beat ever stronger, but nothing miraculously became a book. As my thirtieth birthday approached, I realized that if I truly wanted to write the story I had to tell, I would have to gather everything within me to make it happen. I would have to sit and think of only one thing longer and harder than I thought possible. I would have to suffer. By which I mean
work
.

At the time, I believed that I’d wasted my twenties by not having come out of them with a finished book, and I bitterly lambasted myself for that. I thought a lot of the same things about myself that you do, Elissa Bassist. That I was lazy and lame. That even though I had the story in me, I didn’t have it in me to see it to fruition, to actually get it out of my body and onto the page, to write, as you say, with “intelligence and heart and lengthiness.” But I’d finally reached a point where the prospect of not writing a book was more awful than the one of writing a book that sucked. And so at last, I got to serious work on the book.

When I was done writing it, I understood that things happened just as they were meant to. That I couldn’t have written my book before I did. I simply wasn’t capable of doing so, either as a writer or a person. To get to the point I had to get to to write my first book, I had to do everything I did in my twenties. I had to write a lot of sentences that never turned into anything and stories that never miraculously formed a novel. I had to read voraciously and compose exhaustive entries in my journals. I had to waste time and grieve my mother and come
to terms with my childhood and have stupid and sweet and scandalous sexual relationships and grow up. In short, I had to gain the self-knowledge that Flannery O’Connor mentions in that quote I wrote on my chalkboard. And once I got there I had to make a hard stop at self-knowledge’s first product: humility.

Do you know what that is, sweat pea? To be humble? The word comes from the Latin words
humilis
and
humus
. To be
down low
. To be
of the earth
. To be
on the ground
. That’s where I went when I wrote the last word of my first book. Straight onto the cool tile floor to weep. I sobbed and I wailed and I laughed through my tears. I didn’t get up for half an hour. I was too happy and grateful to stand. I had turned thirty-five a few weeks before. I was two months pregnant with my first child. I didn’t know if people would think my book was good or bad or horrible or beautiful and I didn’t care. I only knew I no longer had two hearts beating in my chest. I’d pulled one out with my own bare hands. I’d suffered. I’d given it everything I had.

I’d finally been able to give it because I’d let go of all the grandiose ideas I’d once had about myself and my writing—
so talented! so young!
I’d stopped being grandiose. I’d lowered myself to the notion that the absolute only thing that mattered was getting that extra beating heart out of my chest. Which meant I had to write my book. My very possibly mediocre book. My very possibly never-going-to-be-published book. My absolutely nowhere-in-league-with-the-writers-I’d-admired-so-much-that-I-practically-memorized-their-sentences book. It was only then, when I humbly surrendered, that I was able to do the work I needed to do.

I hope you’ll think hard about that, honey bun. If you had
a two-sided chalkboard in your living room I’d write
humility
on one side and
surrender
on the other for you. That’s what I think you need to find and do to get yourself out of the funk you’re in. The most fascinating thing to me about your letter is that buried beneath all the anxiety and sorrow and fear and self-loathing, there’s arrogance at its core. It presumes you
should
be successful at twenty-six, when really it takes most writers so much longer to get there. It laments that you’ll never be as good as David Foster Wallace—a genius, a master of the craft—while at the same time describing how little you write. You loathe yourself, and yet you’re consumed by the grandiose ideas you have about your own importance. You’re up too high and down too low. Neither is the place where we get any work done.

We get the work done on the ground level. And the kindest thing I can do for you is to tell you to get your ass on the floor. I know it’s hard to write, darling. But it’s harder not to. The only way you’ll find out if you “have it in you” is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your “limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude” is to produce. You have limitations. You are in some ways inept. This is true of every writer, and it’s especially true of writers who are twenty-six. You will feel insecure and jealous. How much power you give those feelings is entirely up to you.

That you struggle with major depressive disorder certainly adds a layer to your difficulties. I’ve not focused on it in my answer because I believe—and it seems you believe—that it’s only a layer. It goes without saying that your life is more important than your writing and that you should consult your doctor about how your depression may contribute to the despair you’re feeling about your work. I’m not a doctor, so I
cannot advise you about that. But I can tell you that you’re not alone in your insecurities and fears; they’re typical of writers, even those who don’t have depression. Artists of all sorts reading this will understand your struggles. Including me.

Another layer of your anxiety seems rooted in your concern that as a woman your writing, which features “unfiltered emotion, unrequited love,” and discussion of your “vagina as metaphor” will be taken less seriously than that of men. Yes, it probably will. Our culture has made significant progress when it comes to sexism and racism and homophobia, but we’re not all the way there. It’s still true that literary works by women, gays, and writers of color are often framed as specific rather than universal, small rather than big, personal or particular rather than socially significant. There are things you can do to shed light on and challenge those biases and bullshit moves.

But the best possible thing you can do is get your ass down onto the floor. Write so blazingly good that you can’t be framed. Nobody is going to ask you to write about your vagina, hon. Nobody is going to give you a thing. You have to give it to yourself. You have to tell us what you have to say.

That’s what women writers throughout time have done and it’s what we’ll continue to do. It’s not true that to be “a woman writer means to suffer mercilessly and eventually collapse in a heap of ‘I could have been better than
this
,’ ” nor is it true that a “unifying theme is that so many of their careers ended in suicide,” and I strongly encourage you to let go of these beliefs. They are inaccurate and melodramatic and they do not serve you. People of all professions suffer and kill themselves. In spite of various mythologies regarding artists and how psychologically fragile we are, the fact is that occupation is not a top predictor for suicide. Yes, we can rattle off a list of women
writers who’ve killed themselves and yes, we may conjecture that their status as women in the societies in which they lived contributed to the depressive and desperate state that caused them to do so. But it isn’t the unifying theme.

You know what is?

How many women wrote beautiful novels and stories and poems and essays and plays and scripts and songs in spite of all the crap they endured. How many of them didn’t collapse in a heap of “I could have been better than
this
” and instead went right ahead and became better than anyone would have predicted or allowed them to be. The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And “if your Nerve, deny you—,” as Emily Dickinson wrote, “go above your Nerve.” Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.

You need to do the same, dear sweet arrogant beautiful crazy talented tortured rising star glowbug. That you’re so bound up about writing tells me that writing is what you’re here to do. And when people are here to do that, they almost always tell us something we need to hear. I want to know what you have inside you. I want to see the contours of your second beating heart.

So write, Elissa Bassist. Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker.

Yours,
Sugar

Dear Sugar
,

My parents recently decided to get a divorce. To be more accurate, my father left my mother for a younger woman. A cliché story, except when it happened to my family I was shattered, as if it was the first time it had ever happened. I’m an adult. I’ve always been close with my father. I looked up to him as a role model. To find out he’d been seeing someone else without telling my mom and that he’d been lying to all of us about it was very painful. Suddenly I can’t trust this man I’ve always counted on and loved
.

I’m trying to be understanding. I imagine my father struggled and this wasn’t easy for him. I’m also angry and hurt that he’s moved on so quickly and that he lied to us. I want our old relationship back and at the same time, I feel I can’t have it back because of the way I feel now. There’s also the reality that he’s with someone new and that he’s approaching his role of being my dad differently. How do I reconnect with him in a genuine way?

Signed,
Dealing with Divorce

Dear Dealing with Divorce,

There’s nothing good about one’s father leaving one’s mother for anyone, but especially for a younger woman, and especially after a period of having lied about it. I’m sorry for your pain.

I think you reconnect with your dad in a genuine way by being genuine. To be genuine means to be actual, to be true, to be sincere and honest. You need to tell your father how you feel about his actions and choices. You need to share your hurt and anger with him, as well as your desire to rebuild the relationship that was damaged by his dishonesty. You also need to do your best to listen to what he has to say.

I can’t know this for certain, but I’ll guess your father didn’t want to hurt you. He probably didn’t want to hurt your mother either, though it sounds as if he very much did. Good people do all sorts of idiotic stuff when it comes to sex and love. Though your father’s deceit feels like a personal betrayal, what happened is between him and your mom. He couldn’t reveal his affair to you until he was ready to reveal it to your mother. He wasn’t trying to lie to you. It’s only that you got tangled up in his lies. You had an up-close view of an intimacy that ultimately did not include you. You mustn’t interpret this betrayal as if it did. Just because your father proved to be undeserving of your mother’s trust doesn’t mean he’s unworthy of yours.

I know it sounds as if I’m defending your father’s actions, but please let me assure you I’m not. I understand entirely why you feel the way you do. I’d be furious and hurt too. But transformation often demands that we separate our emotional responses from our rational minds. Your rational mind knows that men leave their wives for younger women all the time. Your emotional response is you can’t believe your father did.
Your rational mind knows that it’s hard for even strong, ethical people to sustain a long-term monogamy. Your emotional response is you’re shocked your own parents failed to do so. I think it would help you to lean rather hard into the rational right now. Not to deny your grief, but rather to put into perspective what seems to be most true: your father didn’t manage to be a good husband to your mother in the end, but that doesn’t mean he won’t manage to be a good father to you.

I encourage you to give him the opportunity. I don’t think you should let him off the hook, but you should not keep him on it either. Find a way to weave your father’s failing into the tapestry of your lifelong bond. Bravely explore what his new relationship means to him and ask where you fit into it.

It’s going to be difficult, but that’s no surprise. The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.

Yours,
Sugar