Like me

Visits with my past self

Oh, Maria. It’s always Maria who gets me thinking.

This time, it was after I’d submitted a very personal piece to a fellowship program she had sent my way. When trying my luck at the two-thousand-dollar prize, I was met with the worst artistic paralysis known to man—because I love blocking my blessings. Sure, I could write ad infinitum about horrible past experiences or my celebrity crush, but I suddenly couldn't form a sentence when tasked with penning something compelling.

Despite a brutal four-day window and a blank mind, I miraculously finalized and submitted the piece hours before the deadline. Ironically, it turned out to be my best work yet.

A week later, Maria and I were at a coffee bar, and I recounted the thrill and terror of what I had done.

She beamed, “How do you feel?!”

Ooh, how did I feel? It’s always Maria who gets me thinking.

Before I answered, my memory drifted to a similar circumstance in my youth. I was sixteen, slogging through the endless, numbered days of being a high school student. At the time, I was in love with Bob Dylan, who had me convinced I could also become a poet.

So, poet-things, I did.

I spent most of that summer churning out the worst prose in history, then painstakingly researching literary magazines using a shoddy dial-up connection (a glacial 56 kbps), hoping to find someone who’d accept sappy teenage drivel.

My terrible boyfriend chose kindness for an afternoon or two by helping me address and affix postage to the envelopes of literally 50 god-awful poetry submissions. I’ll never forget how it felt to be working as a team—printing and folding, writing and sorting—with the goal of ✨getting me published.✨ Every single one of those poems carried a wish; my heart soared with purpose as I dropped them in the mailbox.

It didn’t matter how bad the work was or that none got printed. What mattered was that I believed. It was the fact that I was still young enough to have hope, to dream of my place in the world, and to trust that if I “put myself out there,” I would be recognized one day. I was going to be a poet.

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At that moment at the coffee shop, I also thought of other times I’d felt invigorated by my destiny, by my very existence. Honestly, it was most—if not all—of my young adulthood. The feeling I got from proffering shitty limericks with a heart full of hope was the same sensation I got from doing pretty much anything in those days. I felt connected to my life and wanted more and more of it.

I remember my first journalism class, feeling plump and sated by the sheer college-ness of it all. I was enchanted by the clean, minimalist building that housed the blinking, efficient newsroom. As the only freshman hired that year (who got their own opinion column!), I attended editorial meetings led by Johnny Eberle, with his curly hair and pretty blue eyes. During those brainstorming sessions, I’d stare out of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, thinking: I’m living. I’m finally a poet.

Those days, I slept until midnight, then got up and wrote until four in the morning. If I wanted to submit an idea, I wouldn’t think twice (RE: Johnny, I have the best topic ready to go). I combed through books and magazines that inspired me, reading until my eyes burned. I walked everywhere by myself, searching for light, sound, revelation, and inertia.

As I got older, things became less about articles and coursework and more about the night™. It was all about going out, being seen and seeing—sipping, tasting, photographing. There were so many parking garages, validations, validation, front-row seats, and cups of vodka and tonic water for $12 a pop.

I loved being in my twenties and wished I could have stayed that way forever. The sensation then was the same as that of the little girl mailing poems or the freshman attending class with a backpack full of crisp composition books.

There was hope, excitement, and possibility. Things seemed doable.

And then, sadly, something happened. I know this in retrospect (you never witness your decay—you only notice it when it’s too late). And not to blame the aging process, my 9-to-5, or my daily routine, but little by little, I’ve become the thing I never thought I’d be: the shell of the person who did her fucking thing and never took no for an answer.

I’ve turned into a tired, insecure version of the girl who spent a summer mailing off badly written stories because Bobby D. told her to. I’m so, so far from thinking I could be like Bobby D. I got the good old suburban shock treatment—they swathed my head in electrodes and pushed the big red button.

And besides the fact that I’ve stopped submitting my art to publications or pitching stories in the middle of the night, I don’t do any of the things I used to. I seldom go to bars; restaurants feel like too much of a hassle after a long day at work, and I’m even too lazy to cook. I don’t laugh with friends unless it’s via text, as we promise to meet up but never do. I wear what’s clean, not what’s cute, and I gorge myself on celebrity happenings (YouTube, Spotify, streaming services) instead of worrying about my own adventures.

Now, I’m apathetic and unmotivated. I go to bed early. I get up early. I commute. I don’t have contacts at the local newspaper anymore. Everything that is anything—whether it’s my habits or will to live—has fallen by the wayside because of the trappings I signed up for: an HOA, health insurance, a bi-weekly income. I’ve all but stopped living.

This problem has been at the back of my mind, but it came rushing to the forefront that night in the coffee shop. Because, tragically, that, too, was a relic of the past. I explained to Maria that it used to be my favorite coffee shop where I’d spent entire afternoons writing, and the spot where I used to know so-and-so baristas.

used to.

I took a deep breath before answering her question about how I felt about submitting to the fellowship. “You know what? I worked really hard on it. It’s a great story, and I hope they pick it up. I’m proud of myself—but that’s not really how I feel about the whole thing.”

She waited patiently. It’s always Maria who gets me thinking.

“Writing that piece, pouring my heart out, and hitting submit even though I was scared? It made me feel like the person I used to be. It made me feel like myself again. Yeah. It made me feel like me.”

—M