When you get older, you come to terms, or at least some sort of détente, with the you you thought you’d be and the you you’ve ended up being or are becoming.
(I’m 36, heading into my midlife crisis, no doubt, so just bear with me.)
The younger me – the one who was 19 – would generally like what my life looks like, though she wouldn’t believe it was so responsible and filled with 401ks and cleaning products. She’d like the funny, sweet husband and funny, sweet baby, though she’d be perplexed as to why it took Older Erin so long to have her while simultaneously wondering why Older Erin had her in the first place since Younger Erin is not A Baby Person.
But more than anything I think she’d sincerely grapple with the mediocrity of all of this. I never assumed I was anything special – I am, after all, a daughter of the Midwest – but I knew enough to know I was better than average. And yet here I am, delightfully average and making no splashes, no potholes in the pavement. I travel this path for the most part quietly and unassuming, and it is OK.
This morning I was reading this piece by Sarah Hepola published in yesterday’s New York Times. My friend, Claire, posted it on Facebook and it gave me serious pause for a couple of reasons:
- The subject matter is a woman I have no knowledge of, and, despite details that should intrigue me, I remain unmoved (maybe not the right word) by what I think is a deeply troubled, very sad soul who will end up dead one day soon from the many drugs she’s pumping into her body.
- I knew of Sarah Hepola years and years ago when everyone first started blogging. She was “one of us,” just in that she was an online journal-er and writer and was very good and interesting, though she had the good sense to stay out of all of the locked, gossipy forums we created and spent hours in together, talking about things that did not matter and things that did.
- It’s highly likely that I will never be as known of a writer as any of these people.
I think it was at the time around my divorce when the switch hit, when I stopped being A Writer. I was very broke, and very miserable, and despite several attempts at writing – and interest from professionals at publishing me again – I took my shingle down. I couldn’t get my shit together enough to care about making any of it good. I also suspected (and now believe without hesitation that I was correct) that I had nothing of interest to say.
Moreover, yeah, I was broke. I was very tired of being broke, having been experiencing “broke” as a very real, tangible thing the majority of my life, and so it was easy to funnel all of my energy into work that capitalized on my skills, but also made it so I didn’t worry about making rent or buying Glin dog food or smoking what amounted to a filter and a smidgen of tobacco from the cigarette butts left in my ashtray.
(I know. Ew.)
On top of now being employed in professions that paid the bills, it also took me away from the navel-gazing and self-involvement that comes from being A Writer. I think if you write in any capacity, you never lose the ability to observe and deduce, as I think that’s something with which writers are gifted at birth, but when stop writing you do stop being so wrapped up in your own head space.
You also indulge in less addictive behaviors. I swear on all that’s good and holy, I don’t know a writer who isn’t burdened with addiction on some level, whether its food, smokes, booze, drugs, sex or shopping or whatever. I credit my weight loss, quitting smoking for good, all of it, on the fact that my life choices are intolerant of tomfoolery.
But in reading this piece, and subsequently Hepola’s blog, I can’t help but remember with longing the days in which I would camp out in the back room of my old apartment on Berwyn and smoke many cigarettes and drink a lot of gin and write stuff like this piece in Bust in 2003.
I think in addition to wanting make more money, the same, aforementioned Midwestern practicality in me also knew that despite a genetic predisposition that would say otherwise, I wasn’t built for that life. Of course you don’t have to be a lush (or just a generally unhealthy human being) to write, and that’s not what I’m suggesting, but it was what my life looked like as a writer. And though it begat some quality things, and there is a book on my shelf with a spine bearing my name on it, being that sort of person was too hard.
Being a good writer was too hard.
And that’s what so much of the discussion of addiction and writing seems to get at – it’s hard to write, it makes those of us who feel called to write to churn up ugly shit and beautiful shit simultaneously and writing it down isn’t enough to cope with it all. In fact, writing just exacerbates and pours salt on the wound because someone is better than you at all of it. So we eat or smoke or do drugs or just act like total assholes until one day we decide to 1) become a drug-addled writer, such as Cat Marnell or we 2) clean up our shit and get to the business of becoming a real writer and do the hard work of writing, like Sarah Hepola, or 3) give it up, more or less, completely.
I chose No. 3.
When I chose the path more traveled, I knew I was giving up time and years spent becoming a better writer. I watched it happen as friends published again and new writers emerged. I could tell you that I gave it up to preserve my health, but that would be a lie. I gave it up because writing is hard work, and rather than do the hard work of becoming better, and the sacrifices that come with that work, I chickened out.
Funny thing, though, is that I don’t have regrets about this. The thing about age and time is that you figure out that while nothing is promised, none of us are beholden to every decision we made before we turned 30. Plus, I’m healthy now. I’ve had years of therapy to help me deal with the issues that once I salved by turning to cigarettes, french fries and gin.
I mean, if I die today, at least I’ve gotten my shit together enough so that my family won’t worry about bills or college or any of that nonsense, releasing them of the fate my sister and I experienced as kids when my mom died. Despite all thoughts to the contrary, the only way to exorcise those particular demons is to just buy better life insurance. It’s not algebra.
I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing this. I’m on vacation this week, and I have the luxury at the moment in indulging in this fashion in a manner in which I’m not afforded early on a Monday morning when the dog needs to go for a walk, I’m just home from spinning and I need to be out of the house by 7:30 a.m. to make my train.
Certainly it won’t be tomorrow or next week or even next year when I start doing the hard work of being a better writer, but for right now I can put it on my to-do list along with getting the car tuned up and making Abigail’s 18-month doctor’s appointment.
