It's okay to be Human

Today I said three words to my husband that I never should have said. I said, "I hate myself." That was very, very bad.

Do I really hate myself? No. Do I think that saying that I hate myself might hurt my husband to hear? Yes. Did I say it because it was what I honestly, truly, wholly believe? No. Did I say it because I was emotional, and at twenty-six haven't yet learned how to deal with my bad emotions? Yes. I don't know how to deal with bad emotions. I shut down. I become a masochist.


Vince asked me, "Don't you think that's a problem? To hate yourself?" He's asked me that before, when I've told him that I don't like who I am. But something about the conversation today struck deep down inside me. It is a problem to feel this way. It's a big, big problem.

I think I write about how I feel so much, about my insecurities, because I think if I just pour it out enough it'll go away. It won't. This type of thing takes work. Vince has worked, and worked, and worked to help me, but it takes work from me. It takes a conscious effort on my part to say, "If any other person in the world came to me and told me they hated themselves, what would I say? How is that different than the way I feel about me?" (I can't take credit for that advice. It's all Vince. Vince tells me this a lot. Like I said, he has worked for me. And I haven't given him enough thanks, enough credit, for all that he does.)

I don't write this blog to get sympathy. Far from it. Sympathy will feed the beast that lives inside my head. I'm writing this because I want to see how ridiculous it is, in black and white, to say those words. I want to see the beast for what it truly is, nothing by paper and strings, so that I can start to get rid of it for good.

I am a human, and as such I have problems. But as a human, I have good things about me too.

It's okay to be wrong in a disagreement. It's also okay to be right. It's okay to say the wrong thing sometimes, or do the wrong thing, and it's okay to want to fix it, and to work on fixing it next time. It's okay to be imperfect, and it's okay to realize that your husband, or wife, or boyfriend, or girlfriend, or mom, or dad, or sister, or brother, or friend, loves you. It's okay to be loved, and to fully accept that love. It's okay to be human.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

In early November, I wrote a blog about loving myself. I won't rehash the rambling (it's just a few posts down), but it was me trying to talk myself into loving myself, despite the fact that I had all these insecurities, and self-doubt, and self-loathing built up inside of me. I thought, Maybe if I write this, confess it to the world (or, at least the people who read my blog), all of this negativity in my life will go away. Turns out, life doesn't work that way.

I've been on a kick lately, if you haven't noticed, of confessing things. I confessed that I was jealous, that I had been in evil-writer mode, that I didn't love myself the way I should, among so many other things that have been confessed verbally, or to my journal, or to Vince. Those confessions were written with multiple planned-purposes.

1. To hopefully uplift someone who may struggle with the same issues that I do. I know I can't be the only one, and maybe by ripping open these (self-inflicted) wounds, I might help someone else deal with their pain, or their issues, without having to suffer quite as much as me. 
2. By confessing, by laying it all out there for everyone to see, maybe those issues would start to heal, since they had been acknowledged publicly, and resolution had been found on the page.
3. To practice my craft (writing) in a public forum, where that craft might actually do something, other than sit stagnant in my laptop and journals.

I think I have helped a person or two with my rambles. So, check on one. And my blogs are a great place for me to practice my nonfiction, work on voice and tone. All that good nerdy stuff. So check on three. But, the confessions themselves didn't work the magic I thought they might. I still struggle. I still hurt. I still want to go on and on and on about my problems, in the hope that, by going on and on and on, they'll go away.

I realize now, that's not the way this works.

As most of these blog ideas begin, I was talking to Vince in the car. I'm a very sensitive person, and I had (yet again) overreacted to the way he had said something, which resulted in fifteen minutes of us trying to get back to normal, because I was upset, so he was upset, so we were both upset...When things leveled out (because Vince was willing to not sit there and sulk, like I was, but instead tried to find a solution for us), he told me things he thought he should work on to make our relationship stronger. In turn, I asked him what he thought I should work on.

He said, "I think you need to work on loving yourself more, so that you realize that when I say I love you, I mean. You need to understand that you deserve love just as much as anybody else."

Simple, right? So simple that I had been ignoring the truth of this statement for a long, long time. Have I always known this in my head? Of course. I was raised knowing, thanks to my loving and wonderful parents, that I was loved. They taught me that they loved me, and that God loved me. He loved me enough to send his son to die for me, and for everyone else on the planet. He loved US so much that he died for us...shouldn't that be enough to make me feel loved? This was more than enough to make me feel loved in my head. Logically, I knew that I was loved. But in my heart, in my emotional core, I don't think I've ever really believed it.

This doesn't make sense.

I asked Vince, "How do I start loving myself?" I don't know how to love myself. And he reminded me of the basic truth of my life, the truth I have known logically, and emotionally, for as long as I can remember. Every time I try to do things on my own, try to fix my life along, I mess it up. But every time I turn to God, things turn around. Now, I don't want you to think that I mean, every time I turn to God for help, everything is fixed. Far from it. I mean, every time I turn to God, things are put in perspective for me, and that starts to turn them around.

We have each been fearfully and wonderfully made.

Whenever I start to doubt that I'm worth loving, whenever I find that I can't love myself, I can continuously go back to this truth. God made me who I am, the unique individual that I am. I am not a mistake. I am not broken beyond repair (we're all broken in some way, it's part of that uniqueness). I am not wrong. God made me, and I am worth loving. If I look at my husband, my parents, my brother, my friends, I can see that I am worth loving. And hopefully, if I keep looking without, instead of relying on my brain, it'll eventually sink in and become true emotionally, instead of just intellectually. I need to turn to God, instead of myself, and trust in his love, and the love from the people around me.

The Evil-Writer: A Confession

Writers think they know everything.
Whether it's about the craft of writing, or how a story, or book, or poem impacts the world, or how someone else's writing should be. They know it all.


I say "they," even though I should say, "we," or more specifically, "I."
I'm a writer. I've been a writer since I could write, and I've wanted to be a writer since I knew what a story was. (I wrote and illustrated a book, The Golden Pony, when I was five. Should have been a best-seller, but I'm sure one of our cats ate it or used it as a mini-litter box.) I love writing. I love being a writer. I love words, and what they can do, and mean, and how they can impact or interact with the world.

And yet...

We writers are pompous.

We are pretentious.

We know everything there is to know about writing,

specifically, other people's writing.

Today I was marking-up my last two nonfiction manuscripts of my graduate career. After this class, I have a two week residency (during which I will hopefully be studying poetry), and I'm done...As I was marking things on these two manuscripts, I found myself sitting at the very tippity-top of my high-horse, looking down, and saying, "Oh, no no no. You can't use an adjective there. It needs to go here." Let me say that I really enjoyed both manuscripts I read today. They were interesting, and had great voice. I could hear their authors talking to me. And yet, the evil-writer in me was ready to tell those writers, via those essays, that I knew freaking best. 

"Don't use adverbs."

"Is this supposed to be funny?"

"This doesn't make any sense. Cut!"

"I don't get it."

"...Huh?"

Along with numerous deletions, 

double strike throughs, 

and questions that are meant to make the writer

question that sentence so much that they cut it

Why do I think my opinion about their work is more valid than their own? 

Do I think we all need constructive criticism, advice, guidance, opinions, etc, to become better artists? Of course. I love when someone reads my work and says, "This part is working, but this part needs work, and here's how I think you could do that." In those instances, I see my writing skills improving. Even if I choose to go against their advice, my work is growing, alive, changing. What I hate is when I give my work to someone, and they give it back, essentially rewritten, because their ideas are "better" than mine. Their voice is "better" than mine. Their words are "better" than mine.

This is incorrect.

As I was editing today, I found myself slipping into evil-writer mode. Self-righteous writer. Pompous-writer. Pretentious-writer. Know-it-All-writer. 

I hate that writer in other people. It makes me feel bad, makes me not want to write as much, and here I am, dishing that out to other people, instead of giving the criticism (which is only my opinion) that I think needs to be given, and also giving the encouragement that I think needs to be given. 

When did I turn into the writer that I hate?

Let's backpedal a few (or seven or eight) years...In my first creative writing class ever (at the University of Louisville), I walked into a class with high hopes, and then summarily blown into a trillion bloody bits. 

I had never been workshopped before. My parents were the only people who had ever read my work. They encouraged me to read, even when it was genre sci-fi and fantasy (my favorites forever and ever), and would fix my grammar and spelling, but they encouraged me to write whatever. 

So, when I, an ambitious baby eighteen-year-old with all my hopes and dreams riding on this class, went to the teacher (a graduate student who shall remain nameless) and asked, "Is it okay if I write sci-fi?"and she said, "Of course! Whatever you want. Be creative." I assumed that meant I could write whatever I wanted, and that I could be creative. Makes sense to me, anyway. I was so excited that I volunteered to go first. I was shaking. I remember I used a purple Uni-ball liquid pen, and I couldn't wait to start writing down everyone's ideas for my work.

And the teachers begins class by saying... 

"Well, I don't think of science fiction as literature, 

so I got nothing from this piece. 

But, if the class wants to talk about it, you guys can go ahead."

Needless to say, I was crushed. I spent the next 45 minutes trying to hold in tears, while my face turned red and my shaking grew worse. I stared at the page, took notes, and bolted as soon as class ended.

Why do I tell this story of pathetic self-woe? So you'll all pity me and understand and forgive my faults? No...Rather, to show that despite how badly that hurt me, despite how strongly it effected me (in a bad, bad way), despite my best efforts to lift people up... I have become just like her. The evil-grad-student-who-feels-justified-in-making-others-feel-bad-because-she-knows-best-writer. Ew.

This blog is my attempt at realigning myself with the values I want to have. It is a written confession of my evil-writer ways, and a promise to work hard to become the good-writer, the true-writer, the honest-writer, the I-know-I-don't-know-everything-but-here's-my-opinion-writer that I want to be. Give me your work to read, and I'll give my opinion, but I'll also value the heart you put into it, and the good, good stuff that's undoubtedly in there. I want to be the kind of person who can help other writers be better (because we can all always be better), while also encouraging them. I want to teach in a way that pushes students to stretch themselves, without pushing them over a cliff. 

Writing is beautiful. No one should be discouraged from that, especially not by the evil-writer that pops its ugly little head up when that head gets too swollen for the brain to fit alongside the ego.