I'm Happy Being Me. I Hope You're Happy Being You.

These days, I am attempting to create an alternate reality with my mind.  For example, I am writing a resume that consists of all the things I've ever done of which I am proud.  Things such as holding a Muscular Dystrophy carnival when I was a kid.  (That was a thing back in the day.  It was a means of making money to fight Muscular Dystrophy.) And once, one of my paintings was accepted into a juried art show.  These sorts of accomplishments won't help me land a job, but will define who I am when compiled with all the other accomplishments of which I am proud.  In so doing, I can adjust my focus and feel a sense of pride and accomplishment rather than a sense of defeat, shame, and remorse.

Similarly, I am writing a scenario based upon the premise that I have lived a charmed life.  What would that look like, exactly?  If everything had flowed ever so smoothly in an evolutionary manner, what would my life's highlights be?

I experienced a bit of an existential crisis earlier this year when the following occurred to me: between the ages of twelve to sixteen, I was committed to the goal of moving to New York once I finished High School and becoming a writer.  Preferably for the New Yorker.  I had made up my mind to never have a boyfriend, never get married and never ever have children.  I was so driven to accomplish this task that anytime a boy expressed any interest in me, I gave him the harshest go-to-Hell look I could muster. I never bought it when any guy ever told me I was pretty or had nice boobs.  I figured he was trying to prevent me from doing what I truly needed to do for myself.

At some point, I lost my vision enough to get involved with a boy who lived across the street.  This boy eventually became my husband.  With this boy, I had two children. This boy is now exhusbandguy.

I have an aunt who lives in New York.  We recently visited with each other and during this visit, we reminisced about what an asshole I was during the time that I was with exhusbandguy.  "You were a totally different person," she said. "I really didn't like you."

I would go so far as to say that during the time I was with exhusbandguy, I was not a person at all.  I completely ceased any independent thought process.  I regurgitated opinions of exhusbandguy and paid him lip service in all arenas - politics, music, movies and so on.  Words cannot convey what a non-entity I became.  One's tendency might be to blame exhusbandguy.  But I was to blame.  I annihilated my Self.  And I lived this way for sixteen years.

During this time, I would occasionally attempt to allow my voice to manifest.  This usually happened in an argumentative way with exhusbandguy.  He, probably not recognizing this person that was trying to manifest in the world, grew increasingly hostile whenever this person spoke out. I grew increasingly depressed.  I fantasized about running my car into a tree at high speeds.  Or somehow driving my car off an overpass onto a highway below and exploding in a fiery crash. Exhusbandguy became increasingly violent-tempered, physically lashing out at me as well as verbally.  I would lock myself in a bathroom and allow my deepest grief to unleash itself completely.  Exhusbandguy told me that it was abusive to the kids for me to do this - to  cry hysterically.  

I reached a point in which I grabbed myself by the scruff of the neck and said, "What's it gonna be, Kathy?  Are you going to live or are you going to die?  If you're going to die, then you better fucking off yourself.  Just do it.  But if you're going to live, then you better fucking start living."

It took me eight years too long, but I finally left exhusbandguy.

I wonder about the point of it all: of losing hold of my burning desire to move to New York to become a writer, to reverse my decision to never marry and never have children.  I ponder the irony in this: exhusbandguy has published a book of short stories.  He is closer to accomplishing that which I will never accomplish for myself.  Why do I say I will never accomplish this?  Because it doesn't seem to matter any more.  I write, and always have, because I have to.  I like the fact that people read my writings and that my writings sometimes touch something in them.  But at the end of the day, I write for no one but my Self: this sweet, fragile being that came so close to dying over a decade ago.  I write to keep her alive.

Dr. Edith Wallace, a woman who graciously adopted me as her Granddaughter when I had no Grandmother, once told me that she, at first, was confused by my decision to leave exhusbandguy. But she grew to understand.  In one conversation she told me that just by talking about him, I began to disappear.  She said, "You had no choice.  You had to leave in order to be." 

There's more to it than that.

My aunt from New York and my Great Aunt Minnie Lee have told me stories about the various men on my mother's side of the family who had been lousy to their wives.  They were drunks and they were abusive.  I come from a long line of women who have lived the sort of oppressive existence I created for myself.  And I think that part of the motivation to leave exhusbandguy came from the desire to break from the past, to interrupt this pattern, to teach my daughter that this is not the way relationships should be.  And that above all else, one must be true to one's Self.

I feel I have successfully conveyed this message to my daughter.  She has never taken crap from anybody.  She is in a lovely relationship with a gentle soul.  But most of all, she is pursuing her passion with great discipline and determination. I believe it was completely necessary for me to make a conscious break from the family history.  And I chose to do this in a very particular manner.  I had to put myself through Hell in order to prevent future generations from similarly wasting their time on this planet.

So back to this business of creating an alternate reality. 

Like I said, exhusband guy recently published a book of short stories. There's an article about him in one of the local rags this week along with a brief interview.  I read the article and the interview.  On so many levels, this book, this article, this interview, do not belong in my alternate reality.  So, I decided to answer the interview questions myself, as if I were a newly published author.

Here are the questions that were directed to Ex-husband guy with his responses:

Q: Why do you write?
A: I write to try to understand the world around me and myself. To advocate for humanity, in a way. And because I don't have much of a choice, really.
Q: Tell me about "The Naming of Ghosts."
A: It's a short-story collection, written over the course of a number of years. Most of the stories have been published previously in journals and magazines. Three are Pushcart Prize nominees. There are some interesting folks in the book: a terrorist, pairs of lovers, a drunk beating his car to death.
I write primarily in the first person. I want to be inside the characters. I want them to tell their own stories in their own way. I see this as the creation of an inner landscape. The book is sort of a travelogue of inner landscapes.
Q: What is most challenging about writing short stories?
A: Trying to condense, to pack as much into a story as possible; to make it as elegant and concise as I can while maintaining the mood, the state of being that I'm aiming for.
Q: How is writing your novel different?
A: A novel is a long-term relationship. Sometimes we hate each other; sometimes we're deeply in love. But we stick it out because we believe in the relationship.
Q: Describe your writing schedule.
A: I don't have a real writing schedule. I walk. I stare out windows. I hang out in coffee shops and on street corners. I write, and edit and edit and edit....
Q: What advice do you have for other writers who want to be published?
A: Read everything. Write, then write again. Find people whose criticism you might not like but you trust. Read it aloud.
Q: What do you hope your writing does for the reader?
A: I hope it activates empathy, hits some aquifer of universal feeling. I'm working toward a sense of something so intimate I hope it might be a little scary.

Here are my responses to the same questions:

Q: Why do you write?
kathyclark: I've always written.
Q: Tell me about  "Worker's Playtime With kathyclark."
kathyclark: It was a blog.  Now it's a book. 
Q: What is most challenging about writing short stories?
kathyclark: Fighting sleep long enough to do it. 
Q: How is writing your novel different?
kathyclark: It's longer.  It requires me to miss more sleep. 
Q: Describe your writing schedule.
kathyclark: Describe your sleeping schedule.  There you have it. 
Q: What advice do you have for other writers who want to be published?
kathyclark: Publish yourself.  Don't wait around for someone else to do it for you. 
Q: What do you hope your writing does for the reader?
kathyclark: I hope it makes them smile.

It seems fairly obvious that I will never make it to the inner circle of the intelligentsia in this world.  The good news is, I don't care.