Confidence

The longer I was sick, the harder it was to imagine being well. Remembering healthy Jenn was more imagination than memory because I was so far from it, in both time and space.

As I began to resign to a life of understanding simple ideas only after a replay, I pulled away from my family and friends. Only one person believed that my brain symptoms were caused by my heart: my family doctor. Dr. Heart thought it had more to do with Fibro than anything.

So I thought that even if my heart was fixable, I would still be stupid.

I couldn’t write when I couldn’t connect one simple idea to another. The skill I had was gone; and my dream was out of reach. I was heartbroken.

At a certain point, after being lost in a story for a long time and finding no way to get my thoughts across, I realised that it was out of my control. I couldn’t write well enough to fake it with good editing. My brain just didn’t work the way it had before I was sick.

Unintentional-existential-crisis-mode kicked in. Who is a writer who can’t write? Useless.

Okay, if a wordless writer is useless, I reasoned, then I have to become someone else. My parents always told me that I could be whatever I want to be. Who did I want to be?

I didn’t want to be sick, but my world was defined by cardiomyopathy and Fibro. They were part of the new Jenn. I wasn’t sure if I could be more. And as I was trying to figure out my new life and my new mind, I couldn’t connect with the world.

Never mind the fact that I felt like I was living under water while my friends and family were living on land; change is hard for relationships. Ambiguity is worse. When there is nothing to confide in people, it’s hard to connect.

Phoebe: Want to go to a rock concert tonight?

Jenn: I don’t know.

Phoebe: Are you interested in rock climbing?

Jenn: I don’t know.

I was so focused on making a new life for myself, I never imagined that I would wake up in the hospital one day pretty much back to normal. My mind couldn’t dream up a story with an ending like that.

Face It, Kiddo

Can you give up on anything if you’re still alive?

That girl who sang in the shower couldn’t sleep at night unless the ideas that had filled her head all day were on paper. That woman who woke up in the hospital hadn’t written more than a grocery list in years.

I had given up on my dream; my way of understanding the universe. Partly because writing had become really hard for me and mostly because I lost confidence.

There comes a point, at least I thought so for a few years, when you have to face reality. I finished a novel when I was sick, dressed it up and sent it out into the world. Not surprisingly, it was rejected. The feedback I got was disheartening.

“I just don’t love it enough.”

Vague and brutal. Obviously I missed the mark. Unfortunately, I was too stupid to figure out what the mark was, and after a few more rejections, I gave up. I knew the novel had to be re-written, but I didn’t think I could do it. I said to myself:

It’s gone.

You’re not that person anymore.

You might never be well enough to get it again.

And I started to believe those things. Really, I could barely think straight most days, so it made sense. I thought I had reached ‘face time’. As in, time to face the facts, kiddo. Grow up, start a career, get serious. Time to stop dreaming.

But life isn’t linear like many novels. Life is marvelous and unexpected and beautiful.

My life zig-zags and loops back, and at one point it was a series of random dashes. Writing was a myth when I didn’t have the brain power to create a clear sentence.

I’m slowly gathering the courage that I need to face the myth, because I won’t truly give up until I’m dead.