Schrodinger’s Blog
I spent well over 30 years being told by the person who presented themselves as “the only person who truly knew me” that I wasn’t skilled at anything. Being raised by that person, I had no choice but to accept it as truth. Even still, as I’ve found my freedom from that influence, I slip easily into that understanding of myself. Although I now know that it is her voice that whispers these thoughts, my self-doubt more than makes up the balance. I am always searching for the clues that reveal my secret truth: that I am bad at everything. To obscure this truth, more so when I was younger, I developed a bravado and obsessive need to be exceptional. When I was younger, this manifested as being a rude, judgy asshole. I was the shitty clique type without even realizing it and jealously guarded my position and status. Although I was never a social person at heart, I saw that you didn’t have to be socially capable to be in charge — you just needed to be callous. So, I tried to be. However, command through callousness tend to lead to loneliness; the person who taught me these lessons is now very ill in a hospital and both of her children refuse to see her. Her concept of me is fading into a dementia fever-dream where I am still precisely who she fashioned. Meanwhile, I am trying to be anything but.
Despite trying to distance myself from anything relating to her version of me, at genuine terror of ending up where she is, the deepest parts of me say “you know, maybe she was right about you.” When I was rejected for publications or awards, when all of my applications to grad programs were rejected, or when the only program that took me turned out to be nothing I wanted or needed as a writer, I cry then accept my failure as the expected outcome. I don’t think I’ve often considered what it would mean to me if something went well, worked out. Even successes are tempered with other failure examples. Sure, I graduated cum laude — NOT magna cum laude. Sure, I got the school award for best thesis, but so did 2 others in my group of 12 students. Sure, I got into Phi Beta Kappa, but so did 5% of the school (about 1,800 students of 36,000). Sure, I got on a highly desirable waitlist for grad school, which being on represents roughly the top 15 applications of hundreds, but I didn’t get off that list. These are not wins, they are almosts. In this sense, I really must wonder if anything would EVER qualify as a win for me.
When I recently decided that I was going to leave the graduate program I am in, I initially felt confident in this decision. To be clear, I am not second guessing this decision, but it is making me second guess myself. The bravado I built to decide my worth was shattered when I got 0 acceptances. So, I decided I would just do anything to get my graduate degree. That was where I made the mistake; that desperate decision led to a program I was very hesitant about from the get-go. I basically know of two ways of being: 1) false sense of worth based solely upon provable accomplishments of the highest caliber 2) I am not skilled or capable of anything. This blog is really the only challenge to that concept I’ve attempted. In the past, I’ve created a half-dozen writing blogs. Then, I realize that no one reads them and I abandon or delete them entirely. Which, I must admit, was a terrible idea because some of the work I did in those was really cool. I am the great eraser. I’ve deleted Instagram/Facebook posts, comments, and profiles. If I am not achieving provable accomplishments of the highest caliber, I can always lean back into being a complete idiot and drain on the world. I’ll tell ya, buddy, that is a hard self-image to keep while being a writer. I might estimate 90% of writing is about learning to cope with failure. Being that my way of self-appreciation is based entirely upon success, I have to do the impossible every single time things don’t work out.
Stepping back to the meta, this blog is the only challenge to my distorted self-conception that I’ve ever maintained. I’ve attempted many things looking for what I’m actually good at. My posts range from 0 to 148 actual reads, and 1 to 202 views. There are pieces in here that I believe would turn Mary Karr’s head a bit if she were ever to stumble upon them. I have done the agonizing work of spilling my greatest secrets and facing my greatest fears, as any celebrated memoirist might do, all in the span of this blog. Sure, there’s some truly groanable things as well, but no one ever writes entirely wonderful work. I’ve deleted almost nothing that I’ve posted here, with the exception of my post about a recent former employer for the sake of expelling that negativity swiftly from my memory. I haven’t deleted the post that no one has read, nor paywalled my most successful post to date. There is no proof of my excellence (like thousands of reads) nor have I gotten around to deleting the entire thing as proof of my failure. This makes my blog a liminal space, where change is possible. It is both and neither successful nor unsuccessful, it exists in a digital way that can suddenly stop existing at any moment, but doesn’t. I neither believe in myself, nor find myself lacking in this space. I just exist, and tell what truth I know as I come to understand it. What a curious challenge to all that I know about myself. But, I do think that being alone doesn’t necessarily mean being singular. This binary thinking of success and failure doesn’t serve.
