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Why Beginnings are Hard

Posted in Life, Writing, tagged , , , , on February 19, 2013| 2 Comments »

Today I started writing another novel.

It took a long time. In addition to actually typing some words, I did the following activities:

– I ate a Japanese cinnamon flavored mini Kit Kat, an extra peanut butter cup, and way too much cranberry sauce.
– I pet the dog. More than once.
– I spent time on Craigslist.
– I spent a little time emailing before throwing up my hands in despair at how far behind I am.
– I did laundry.
– I played Minesweeper.
– I emptied the trash can in my study.
– I took the dog to the park.
– I worried about the novel.
– I worried about things having nothing to do with the novel.
-I worried about other things having nothing to do with the novel.
– I practiced music.
– I played Solitaire.
– I thought about texting people and then didn’t get around to it because if they texted back, that would be the end to any pretense of productivity.
– I wandered around the house.
– I rinsed out a glass jar of jelly.
– I looked at the clock a lot.

Really, it’s a miracle I squeezed a thousand words out of my brain somewhere in the middle of all that activity, the majority of which was based around me not wanting to start the new novel.

It’s not that the actual writing is so unpleasant. I like writing. Even when it’s difficult, it’s still generally very satisfying. But even so, there’s a certain amount of resistance that I have to push through at the start of any new project. And I expect that resistance to continue for at least another week or two.

I’ve become very good at Solitaire, let me tell you.

Photo Credit: Pink Sherbet Photography via Compfight cc

The beginning is hard because I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know my characters very well, and my outline is full of vague comments like “They come up with a plan” (Fabulous! Now if only I knew what the plan was) and “She does something awesome” (if only I knew what awesome thing she could do) and “She’s given an important assignment” (but who knows what that might be). I don’t feel comfortable in my world. I can’t remember everything I’ve thought about it, and as soon as I commit sentences, I realize all the things I haven’t figured out yet. And then I realize all the things I know that I have to make sure the reader knows too, even though it would be so much easier to just breeze past those bits.

Beginnings are like that in general, aren’t they? We don’t know what to expect when we start something new. There’s no routine to fall back on, fewer tested assumptions to use as mental shortcuts. It’s scary because we don’t know if we’ll be any good, or if we’ll like whatever new thing we’re starting, or if we’ll be somehow screw things up because we don’t know any better yet. They’re uncomfortable and uncertain.

But beginnings are also a time of great promise. We don’t know what to expect so maybe amazing things will happen. It’s exciting to strike out and start something new. It lets us learn more about ourselves and more about the world around us.

So tomorrow when I sit down and begin the whole lengthy push-a-thousand-words-out-of-my-head process again, that’s what I’m going to try to think about. That even though I’m uncomfortable, maybe amazing things will happen.

I hope they happen for you too.

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Being a Princess

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , on February 12, 2013| 3 Comments »

“There’s always been a bit of the Princess archetype in you,” she said. (And she’s totally right; there always has.) “And I thought you had manifested that for yourself, that your life was settled and you had gotten your happily ever after. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but I didn’t see you.”

In her talk on vulnerability, Brene Brown says that the word courage comes from the word coeur, French for heart. What is courage? She says it is telling the story of who you are with your whole heart: in other words, allowing yourself to be seen, choosing the authentic. It takes courage to tell our stories. It takes courage to be honest and open. And it takes courage to infuse our artistic work with truth.

Coeur.
Photo Credit: Miriam Cardoso de Souza via Compfight cc

She also mentions the importance of having the courage to be imperfect. And let me tell you something about the Princess archetype. It’s not all bad: it includes a healthy dose of positivity, some chirping birds, romance and adventure. But it also contains no space for imperfection. The Princess in the fairy tales is perfection in essence: she is beautiful and charming, she is talented, she can sing and play music and dance and speak twenty languages, she always knows what to say, she has a sweet disposition, and she never ever feels angry or tired or upset. She can only feel fear when she is in danger as a plot device to allow the prince/knight/fool to rescue her, self-actualize, and win her as a prize. And she is always brave and smiling.

Being the Princess means not being seen for yourself.

I have been the Princess. I have tried to be perfect in every possible way. I have worked to be attractive and charming and to always set people at ease and know the right thing to say.  Whenever I have made a mistake, it has meant falling short of impossible standards. I have tried to please everyone and hate admitting that I need anything at all.

And yet, it has only been through surrendering the Princess archetype that I could begin creating the life that I want. It has only been through searching for people who don’t need me to be that Princess that I could finally be me, with everything that encompasses. It has only been through finding my coeur to begin to tell my story that I could create authentic connections with other people. Being able to see other people and being seen yourself, as it turns out, go hand in hand.

When I think of all those years I was trapped in the tower of Princess-hood, I feel very sad. Now that I’ve rescued myself, I try not to be perfect with appropriate imperfection. I don’t always smile. I am not always brave. I sometimes put my own needs first, and I am allowed to ask for things. There is space for me to have emotions. The world doesn’t end when I can’t always be strong.

It feels very strange to not be a Princess. But also very right.

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I Don’t Care If You Understand Me

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , on February 7, 2013| 6 Comments »

I’ll let you in on a little secret. We who carry with us the legacy of a troubled childhood sometimes talk about the people who don’t. You know, the ones who had fairly normal childhoods with just a sprinkling of trauma and have gone on to become well-adjusted adults without years of therapy or going on a spiritual quest in India or having a near-death experience.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I think we attract and are attracted by people who have similar world views to our own. And we are also heavily influenced by the five people we spend the most time with (or three, or ten, but you get the idea). So I have a lot of investment in the idea of spending time with emotionally healthy people, including those who had pretty happy childhoods.

But I’ve noticed a theme in recent conversations about these people. Words like “boring” and “not very deep” tend to come up. And when I pushed a little harder, a friend said, “What I really want is someone who will understand. And people who are happy and healthy won’t be able to understand.”

We get so excited when we find someone who “understands,” and we look with eagerness for our commonalities. “Wow, you’re a Disneyland person? I’m a Disneyland person too!” or “Your favorite book is my favorite book!” or “We both know this obscure fact about this obscure interest!” And abracadabra, instant bonding. We do the same thing with tragedy. There is no time when people will be more likely to share stories of everyone they’ve known who has ever died than when you are grieving yourself.

But I question the whole idea of understanding. Can anyone else ever truly understand what it is to be me, and what it means to have my experiences? We can build up models of each other, sure, and keep adding details for ever-increasing accuracy, but even then we are not understanding so much as empathizing. We can use our imaginations to put ourselves into someone else’s shoes, but we can never truly know what those shoes feel like.

We see this in good writing. It’s why choosing the point of view character(s) is so critical. The story completely changes based on who is telling it, even if most of the events and even scenes are the same. I see this when I talk to my sister. We both lived through many of the same formative events, and yet today when we talk about it, it’s vividly clear that we had completely different experiences. The details we remember are different, and our impressions of each other from that time are often inaccurate. We think we understand, and yet sometimes that false impression has actually kept us farther apart.

Photo Credit: Ma Gali via Compfight cc

Understanding is overrated. What I’m interested in and what I want for myself is empathy. And empathy, and the personal depth and wisdom that having empathy requires, can be given regardless of childhood experience. The whole point of empathy is the cognizance that you can’t completely understand, even if you’ve had similar experiences; that you aren’t the other person and the whole sum of past and present, personality and passions, fears and flaws that makes them who they are. And in spite of that, in spite of the impossibility of understanding, you’re willing to sit with them and listen to them and try to hold as much as them as possible in your mind so you can see who they are, even though it’s sometimes so hard to leave yourself out of that picture. And yet somehow, even though it sounds hard and complicated, many of us are surprisingly good at being empathetic.

I don’t understand you, not really. And you don’t understand me. We come from different places, and we live in different worlds. But we can still find a way to know each other.

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When Forgiveness is Hard

Posted in Life, tagged , on February 5, 2013| 13 Comments »

Sometimes when I don’t know what to do, I succumb to weakness and I type my problem into the magical box on the internet otherwise known as Google.

I have found some of the worst possible advice in this way. Because as it turns out, most of the results that turn up are written by people who also don’t know what to do, or alternately by people for whom life is quite simple, black and white and absolute. And because I don’t believe life is simple (I mean, yes, I can spout out aphorisms like “really all anyone wants is to be loved” and even mean them, but that doesn’t automatically cancel out all nuance), this advice is really really terrible for me. Which makes it quite mysterious that I still type my questions into the Google box, but apparently not only am I not simple, I’m also not always rational.

One of the topics I can reliably find bad advice about is forgiveness. I’ve been meaning to write about it for some time, actually, but it seemed like such a can of worms that I procrastinated instead. Until now.

To get this out of the way, yes, forgiveness is freaking fantastic. Letting go of old grudges, old hurts, etc. is healthy and good and takes a huge weight from the shoulders. I am less a fan of the moral weight that forgiveness has acquired in our culture (ie you have to forgive people to be a good person, more on this later), but from a purely practical perspective, forgiveness can be quite empowering and allow us to move forward and free ourselves from old, harmful stories.

Photo Credit: D.Munoz-Santos via Compfight cc

Where I disagree with a lot of conventional wisdom is when we begin to talk about the process of forgiveness. Because there seems to be this idea out there that forgiveness is simple and quick, that we can decide just like that to forgive a person and then it’s done and everything is rainbows and ice cream cones. This belief reinforces the idea of forgiveness as virtue and putting pressure on the person who for whatever reason is in a position to forgive, because why can’t they just get over it already?

But emotional and psychological processes aren’t cookie cutters. We have such a desire to believe that everyone works the way we work, but in fact, we all have our own ways of dealing with things and processing things and thinking about things. And different situations call for different responses that might need to go along with the forgiveness and therefore need to be worked out at the same time. And sometimes forgiveness isn’t instant, isn’t fast and easy. Sometimes difficulty with forgiveness is not a sign of a resentful personality or a desire to make things unpleasant for everyone else. Sometimes forgiveness is messy and complicated, because human relationships are sometimes messy and complicated.

Forgiveness doesn’t look the same every time either. Sometimes we verbalize forgiveness and sometimes we don’t (or can’t). Sometimes forgiveness causes a renewed closeness in a friendship, and sometimes forgiveness happens after a friendship has already ended. Sometimes forgiveness teaches us that a friendship can’t keep going on the way it has; it teaches us the need for change. Sometimes we can’t forgive until we find a way to be safe and respected with a person, and sometimes we forgive at the same time that we say goodbye. Sometimes forgiveness is surprisingly easy and sometimes it takes years. There’s no one blueprint and no one timeline.

Forgiveness is not owed; it is given. And it is something that happens in our own hearts, not because we’re supposed to and not because someone else pressures us into it. Forgiveness is born not from judgment but from compassion, and not only compassion towards the person being forgiven but also towards the one doing the forgiving.

Forgiveness isn’t always simple. When it isn’t, it’s hard but it’s also okay. It’s part of life, this process of feeling and grieving and holding on too tight and learning how to let go and figuring out what you want your next steps to look like. It doesn’t have to hold a value judgment; it is just the work you are doing at the moment.

 

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What’s in a Smile?

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , on January 31, 2013| 7 Comments »

I didn’t write a blog post earlier this week because I have the flu, and I spent most of Monday sleeping, and most of the rest of Monday having such a high fever that all I could do was sit around and think strange thoughts. I haven’t been this sick for quite some time. But I am going to do my best to write something for you today.

I’m going to tell you a story. Sometimes now when I write I hear James Altucher in my head saying “Bleed on the page.” And I see the photo of Penelope Trunk’s bruise after she had a fight with her husband. And I say to myself, I could never do that. But today I have the flu, which means I can do things I sometimes think I can’t, so this is that kind of story, only Amy-style.

I was sixteen or seventeen, in drama class. My drama teacher was big on improvisation and on giving us assignments that required improv. I wanted to be handed a script and learn my lines and figure out blocking, but that’s not the way things were done in drama most of the time.

My group was doing a skit that showed a teenage girl finding out she was pregnant in the middle of a family dinner. I was supposed to play the girl’s big sister who offered sage advice in a touching sisterly scene later on in the skit. But my classmate who was supposed to play the pregnant teen had been out sick for a long time, and eventually we had to perform the skit without her for our grade. So at the last minute, I had to step in to play the part.

Afterwards, I thought it had gone about as well as could be expected, given the lack of rehearsal time. I sat with the rest of my class in the seats facing the stage, glad it was over, until the drama teacher began really tearing into my performance.

Was I aware, she said, that I had been smiling the entire time? How horrible and awkward it had been, and how amazing my fellow group members were for somehow managing to continue on in the face of such a poor performance. And then she came right up to me, in front of the entire class, and said, “Do you always smile when you’re sad? Do you?” She was insisting on an answer I couldn’t give her, and it was all the worse because the answer was yes. And I hadn’t even known it until that very moment.

To this day, when I think of this story, my heart hurts.

I can even smile when I have the flu. Now there's talent for you. :)

I can even smile when I have the flu. Now there’s talent for you. 

Sometimes conditioning runs so deep that we don’t realize what we’re doing, even when we’re working very hard to be mindful. I write in this blog about a lot of things I still struggle with. I’m still a perfectionist. I’m still sometimes a people pleaser. I tell you that your emotions are okay, but I don’t always believe that for myself. When something happens that is upsetting for me, my first instinct is to pretend everything is okay.

Once upon a time, it was extremely important that I be good at acting in a very specific way. One that didn’t go over well in drama class.

That story is over now. But I still smile sometimes when I’m sad.

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The Rule of Awesome

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , , on January 24, 2013| 7 Comments »

I think a lot about how to live life and how to be happy. And the more I think about it, the more I realize how often the Rule of Awesome applies.

What is the Rule of Awesome? It’s the idea that when you’re dissatisfied with yourself or your circumstances, you do something awesome. You make the choice to take an action that is positive and exciting and cool. You focus on yourself and how you can be a more fulfilled person instead of focusing on those things that you cannot change.

Following the Rule of Awesome might not fix your problems, but what it will do is put you back into a place of empowerment. And it makes life a lot more fun.

Of course, cultivating the awesome and noticing it when it presents itself can be difficult. But it’s just another mental muscle; with attention and practice, finding awesomeness gets easier over time. And as you make awesome, the opportunities for more awesome tend to multiply.

There’s also our old friend, the fear of failure, trying to discourage us from pursuing the awesome. After all, what if the awesome turns out to be merely mediocre, or even flat-out bad? Which is why I think the more awesome things you’re doing or planning to do, the better. That way when some of them don’t pan out, it doesn’t matter as much since there are more awesome things on the horizon. And when we focus more on the process than the result, we have more time to enjoy the awesome even if everything doesn’t work out perfectly in the end.

Taking a stroll in Central Park the day before a hurricane? Definitely awesome.

Taking a stroll in Central Park the day before a hurricane? Definitely awesome.

Most of the time, though, the Rule of Awesome tends to work out pretty well for me. So to inspire you, I’m going to cook up some ideas for more awesome in the months to come. (Yes, this does mean I get to make a list. And yes, lists are very obviously made of awesome.)

– Try vanilla ice cream with the following toppings: chocolate syrup, strawberry jam, maple syrup, and M&Ms. Really I think maybe having both jam and maple syrup is too much, but I think I’m going to try it anyway. Why? Because it’s awesome.

– Drive down to Santa Cruz with someone who thinks the following is as awesome as I do: mini-golf, air hockey, crepes, and ice cream. Oh, and freezing cold beach time, when the wind is ripping through your hair and your cheeks are getting numb and you taste salt on your lips.

– Battlestar Galactica the Board Game. Enough said.

– Dye my hair red to see what it looks like.

– Go see this guy perform live.

– Write a novel set in space. Even though it’s freaking terrifying. Why? Because its awesomeness factor makes it totally worth it.

– Throw a big party and convince everyone to dress up in fabulous costumes.

– Buy lots and lots of dominoes and make a huge standing domino pattern until I can’t wait any longer and have to topple them all.

– Go to Iceland and attempt to see the Northern Lights in October before heading down to Brighton and World Fantasy con. Seriously, I can’t think of anything much more awesome than this. Obviously this is a thing that all of you who are SF/F writers should do with me.

Most fun list-making game ever. Help make my list longer. What’s something awesome you might do in the next year?

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Photo Shoots and Practical Jokes

Posted in Life, Science fiction and fantasy, tagged , , , , , on January 22, 2013| 2 Comments »

This weekend I was in Detroit attending the Immortal ConFusion convention. While I was there, this happened:

Photo by Al Bogdan

You can read all about it here and here. But what you won’t read about in those places is how I ended up attending the private shooting session for this photo.

I knew my good friend Al Bogdan was going to be doing the shoot, and I asked him if he needed an assistant. I was kind of joking…but only kind of. Happily for me, no one objected to Al having some extra help, which led to one of the more memorable hours of the weekend. I helped unload, set up the backdrop, run messages, and compare the authors posing in front of me to the cover we were trying to imitate. And I take all credit for Charlie Stross’s silver modesty drape in the above photo.

Also, this happened:

Photo by Al Bogdan

Photo by Al Bogdan

I believe this is the only currently extant photo of me with a Hugo rocket.

I also had my first practical joke pulled on me. I know, I can’t really believe it’s my first either, but I’ve spent some time wracking my brains, and nothing else has come to mind. So this is my official first. It involved the personal delivery of pastries (yum, pastries) to my hotel room at an ungodly hour of the morning. Well, ungodly for night owl, jet-lagged me, in any case. I used Twitter to coin the term “pastry bomb,” as in “My friends totally pastry bombed me this morning.” I can’t think of a more Amy-appropriate first practical joke. Also, I had pastries to eat for the rest of the con, which was a definite win for me.

Maybe I should have taken photos of the pastries or something, but instead I have a photo of me a little later that day. I think this illustrates my mood post-prank pretty well, and if you look closely, you can see my Ferrett-inspired pretty princess nails.

Photo by Al Bogdan

Photo by Al Bogdan

And now I’m home and sleepy and happily working on the query for Academy of Forgetting (I might throw it up here at some point, since you heard me talking about that book all last year) and the brainstorming for my next novel, which takes place in space and is therefore inherently exciting.

Since I am new to the world of practical jokes, leave me a comment if you have any stories about ones you’ve pulled (or had pulled on you). I obviously have a lot to learn.

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Thanks, Love, and a Ferrett

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , , on January 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »

This weekend, one of my closest friends had a heart attack. He spent most of the day Tuesday in surgery. On Wednesday, soon before I sat down to type this, he started breathing on his own again. The surgery went well, I think.

I am so relieved and grateful.

My "pretty princess" nails in support of Ferrett.

My “pretty princess” nails in support of Ferrett.

I originally became friends with Ferrett because of this blog, and in fact, he is the single person who has had the most influence on it. I came up with the idea of the Backbone Project because of his blogging advice, and in characteristic Ferrett fashion, he threw himself behind my idea with enthusiasm and support. And so we became friends.

Over time, we became better friends. And he was the first one who was there when life began to crumble apart. He was the one I could show the cracks and imperfections, the confusion and the doubt. He understood what I was trying to do, and he believed in my ability to do it, even when I couldn’t believe in it myself.

We were talking about what to do when we falter on Tuesday. If you’re lucky enough, having a friend who believes in you with all his heart can be a powerful thing indeed. And Ferrett has one of the biggest and most generous hearts of anyone I’ve met.

He’s also taught me what it means to be a friend. In a healthy, supportive, and non-people pleaser kind of way.

Through these last few days, when I’ve been mentally in a hospital in Cleveland even though I couldn’t be there physically, I’ve been reminded quite strongly of what’s important to me. I’m always big on priorities, of course, but there’s nothing like a life-or-death kind of event to give you a little extra kick and provide some perspective.

I’m in a liminal space right now, and I don’t like it. I mean, it has its advantages and interesting parts, and it is completely necessary, but it’s a hard place for me to stay for an extended period of time. But I realize that even in this space, I can and am focusing on the things that matter to me: the people I care about (and one very adorable little dog); my writing and creative work; maintaining and improving myself (physically, mentally, and emotionally); experiencing joy and wonder in the world around me.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t know what I want. But that is not actually true at all. I know exactly what I want. I just don’t always know the form it will take or the balance it will require.

Ferrett wrote a post for his blog the day before his surgery. He said: “There is a small chance that these will be the last words I ever write on this blog.  And if they are… let them be thanks and love.”

It doesn’t look like those will be his last words on the blog, thank goodness. But if they had been, they would have been very fine last words indeed.

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How to Stay Strong in the Face of Judgment

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 15, 2013| 3 Comments »

This weekend I got a question on an old post of mine that I thought deserved a longer response. The post is on the topic of the difficulties of being a free spirit, and the commenter asked: “”What do you do when you falter? How do you stay strong in the face of judgement?” Both excellent questions.

What do I do when I falter? And oh wow, do I falter. Most of us do. It’s hard to make unconventional choices, and it takes a fair amount of courage, and sometimes my supply of courage feels like it’s running short. What to do about this indeed?

One answer is to pay attention as much as we can, so at least we have a chance of noticing when we’re faltering. And once we’ve noticed, we can allow ourselves to be gentle about it. It’s fine to feel the fear, the discomfort, the wish that the choices that seem so much easier would be the right choices for us. But we also need to remember the why’s. Why do we like being free-spirited? Why do we prefer considering options instead of making the default choice? Why is this better?

When I falter, I remind myself of my experiences of doing what others expected or wanted rather than what I wanted, and how that usually turned out poorly. I give myself my own personalized pep talk. And because I’m a planner, I develop a plan for getting myself back on track, which might include getting additional support.

Photo Credit: bogenfreund via Compfight cc

Far more difficult in my own experience is staying strong in the face of judgment. Being judged is such a creepy-crawly, uncomfortable experience. And even though it so often is all about the person doing the judging rather than the person being judged, it still feels very personal.

The first place to look is to ourselves. If we encourage our own minds to be judgmental and critical of ourselves, then we’ll feel that same sensation of judgment coming from the outside as well…even if it doesn’t actually exist outside at all. So we need to be kind to ourselves while developing our own sense of worth. The more we believe in ourselves, the more confident we become. And the more confident we become, the less it matters what other people think, and the easier it becomes to remember that their judgments are more about them than about us.

It’s harder when the judgments are coming from people whom we care about: our family and friends. Sometimes their voices become so loud that we internalize them and can hear them criticizing us even when they aren’t present. And because we value their opinions, it can be harder to tell the difference between genuine concern and viewpoints respectfully expressed and more manipulative and painful judgments.

For this, I am a big fan of setting boundaries. When we’re not used to having boundaries, it takes a lot of practice. Really a lot. And not only that, but people can become quite judgmental about the fact that you have boundaries in the first place. But it’s psychologically healthy to have boundaries, and over time they become super effective. You’re allowed to decide what you’re going to do with your life, and you’re allowed to take care of yourself. (I could write entire books about boundaries. In fact, people have, and here’s my favorite.)

So, in summary, here’s what I do when I falter and when I’m having trouble with the judgments of others:

1. Be mindful so I notice what’s going on.
2. Self pep talk, reminder of why what I’m doing is awesome.
3. Get support, make a plan if necessary.
4. Work on increasing self esteem and minimizing my own critical judgments.
5. Set boundaries with other people and take those boundaries really seriously.

What do you think? How do you stay strong in the face of judgment?

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Insomnia, Thief of Sleep

Posted in Grief, Life, tagged , , , , , on January 10, 2013| 7 Comments »

I started having insomnia a few months after my mom was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer.

I had moved away to college in late September and she was diagnosed, I believe, in November. By springtime, I was having trouble sleeping. A high school classmate of mine had died in a motorcycle accident that winter. A fellow student in my Romantic Literature class was hit by a car and killed while jogging. The news from home wasn’t good. I felt surrounded by death.

I shared a bedroom at the time, and even though I lived in an apartment, one of my other housemates always slept on the fold-out couch in the living room with her boyfriend. When I was awake in the middle of the night, there was nowhere to go where I could cry or turn on the lights and read. So instead I’d go outside and sit in the dark on the front stoop or on top of the picnic table, a box of tissues by my feet.

There is a special kind of hush that happens at three or four in the morning. The stillness of the night while I sat on that stoop spoke of shutters being closed over the normal world while everyone slept. Everyone but me. I couldn’t sleep, so instead I sat. I thought about my mom and I wondered why people have to die and I wondered if I hoped hard enough maybe she would be okay after all and I wished I could sleep so I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.

In the daylight hours, it’s not quite so difficult to keep the dark and grief-stained thoughts at bay. But in the shadows and the quiet, there’s no longer anything blocking them from view.

I was eighteen.

Photo by Elina Linina.

Ever since that time, there have been nights when I can’t sleep. Sometimes I can’t sleep because I’m too excited about the day I’ve had or the trip I’m taking in the morning or I’m worried about tomorrow or I haven’t allowed enough downtime before going to bed. Sleeping at conventions can be tricky for these sorts of reasons. Sometimes I can’t sleep because I’m sick or in physical pain.

And sometimes I can’t sleep because my heart hurts. These are always the worst nights. They remind me of those nights on the stoop, sobbing quietly for an incomprehensible loss I could do nothing to stop. I used to hope that if I cried enough, I’d create enough space for the sleep to come.

There are times when insomnia visits for a reason. Sleep stays away so that I pay attention. Often it’s something I don’t want to pay attention to, but my body has its own ideas of what’s good for me. Sometimes it’s even right.

What is insomnia like for you?

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