A Reasonably Reticent Representative of the Less than Lucrative's Late but Lengthy and Lucid Resolution.

I've come to doubt my own self worth over the last year. I have a college degree. I'm a reasonably intelligent human being. I have several goals I hope to but have still yet to attain. Yet I have lost the ability to communicate. More than half the time, I don't even try, not when more than 50 times a day my how are you's are answered with "I'll take a footlong on white" or "Give me a number four." When I say have a good day, I'm answered with "Okay." And if and when I make a mistake and have to start over, I'm told, "Seriously? I NEED that pizza!" I make less money than many jobs in this country start out paying and I've worked here almost two years. I get passed over for promotions based on my gender. I go to church, and I feel as though no one cares to talk to me, not based on their reactions, but based on my own opinions of myself. Why would anyone want to talk to me? I don't know what to say anymore because despite the fact that I talk to fifty to a hundred different people in a day, there is no connection. I'm not one of those people who wants to chat with you like we're friends when really I'm just making your sandwich. I don't want the connection of a friendship. I merely want a connection on a human level, acknowledgement that not only do I exist, but that I'm just as worthy of being greeted as you are, just as worthy of eating a pizza as you are. I'm embarrassed of where I work, not because it's unworthy or lowly. There are all kinds of jobs, and a person's worth is not based on how they pay their bills. I'm embarrassed because I'm not fulfilling my goals. I'm not working toward my dreams. I can't pay off my student loans because I make nine dollars an hour. I never see the people I care about because I work every evening. Well this is my New Year's resolution, a late one, albeit. This year I will pursue those dreams. I will meet those goals. Maybe not all at once. Probably not even until after my wedding. But I will edit my book. I will copyright my photos. I will send my book to a publisher. I will start my etsy store. My life will change this year. Not because I shouldn't work where I do. Not because no one I come in contact with sees my worth. Not because other people are judging me. But because I don't want to work there anymore. Because I can't see my own worth. Because I'm so busy judging myself that I can't even tell when other people aren't, that I can't step out of my comfort zone long enough to make any lasting connections, that I can't put any effort into what I really want from my life. When I'm consistently in contact with strangers who don't care to see my worth, I fail to see it myself. And when I fail to see my own worth, no one who cares to see it is able to.

Challenge

I can see myself doing so many things. Becoming an editor. Getting published. Becoming a college professor, even. But it’s really not me that I see doing those things. It’s some future version of myself, some far off future me who eventually gets to do everything she wants to do and who has the courage and confidence to do them without question. But the truth of the matter is, that person doesn’t exist. Sure, people change. But all that bullshit about being different people throughout our lives, I don’t believe that. Yes, I am different than who I was five years ago. But I’m not so fundamentally different that I’m a different person entirely. I may not have quite as many quirky attributes, and I don’t post as many selfies or stupid posts on social media as I used to, but deep down, I’m the same girl who nearly had a panic attack every first class in college all the way up until her senior year. I have the same fears, the same insecurities, the same anxieties, and to be honest, some of them have only gotten worse with time. Maybe I wasn’t nervous about first classes anymore by the time I got to my senior year, but look how many classes it took me to get to that point. The characteristic behind that scenario is my fear of new situations, and that fear is still alive and kicking. I don’t see me doing the things I want because I lack the courage to do them. All I can see the present me doing is working at a dead end job that takes the happiness out of my life, detracts enormously from my social and family life by forcing me to work evenings, and adds stress to the most important relationship in my life, the relationship with my fiancée, because I feel like I’m never around and never have time to even plan our wedding. That’s the only place I can see myself as I am now. So instead, I picture myself fulfilling my dreams somewhere down the road in the future when I have the courage to fulfill them. But in reality, I will never have the courage. I will never have the courage to walk into my first real job interview with the confidence that I can get that job no problem. I will never have the courage to spend my first day at my first editing job self-assured that I made the right choice, that my new employer made the right choice, and that I can absolutely do the job I have just begun. I will never have the courage to walk into a classroom of college students, of any students, for the first time and know that I am in the right place and that I can get through the day, let alone the semester or school year, without screwing things up. That’s not who I am. That’s not who I ever will be as far as I know. I still have my anxiety, and I still am wary of new situations; in fact, I’m terrified of them. Which is why I have to just do it anyway. I have to apply to that job. I have to go to that interview. I have to suffer through my first day or week or month of that  job, whatever it takes for me to become comfortable. I have to get the education I need to be that professor, if that’s what I decide I want. And I have to walk into that classroom despite the part of me that wants to run away screaming in terror merely at the thought of having to talk to more than one person at a time. I can’t wait around for me to become someone who can do what I want to do with my life, because I will never be that person in the future if I’m not her right now. I may not have the ability to not be nervous or scared of change, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have the ability to pursue my goals. It just makes it more of a challenge along the way.

[An Imagination Growing Cold]

An imagination growing cold,

Possessing no dream or lasting hope.

I have fallen for a deeper trope:

New words proclaiming meanings old.

Imagination believed the claim,

Embellishing where falling short,

Yet never dreaming it of the sort

Of which to say, "It came

And went; no lasting dreams,

A fading hope already spent."

A feeling borrowed, or rather, lent:

The price, my heart torn at the seams.

Destroyed by words designed to rend;

The power of syllables deeply felt:

To lock a heart or defenses melt.

Some phrases spoken are hard to mend.

I search still deeper in my heart

And find I still cannot believe

The words that pierce my heart and cleave

That beating organ part from part.

I will not say, "It came and went;

No lasting dream, a fading hope,

No meaning beyond a simple trope."

I will not say, "Already spent."

Dreams growing cold: a dying ember

Ignites my soul; it lights my mind;

It forces me to look behind.

It tells me softly to remember.

1/14

[I had a dream that you were dead]

I had a dream that you were dead

There lying still upon your bed

And in this dream I shed no tears

Though it culminated all my fears

I looked upon your pallid face

And saw in it not the slightest trace

Of the life that once had filled your eyes

Yet still from me issued forth no cries

I left with much dissatisfaction

As though disturbed by our transaction

The knowledge had not yet reached my soul

Your death had yet to take its toll

Days passed by, weeks, months, and years

I lived my life without thought of tears

For thus affected was my heart

Through tears of loss did not fall apart

On thoughts of you it did subsist

Though felt as though should not exist

My soul, my being, died that day

With your body was taken away

I shed no tears at your departure

Nor did my heart feel any torture

For when the life had left your heart

Mine felt it wise to soon depart

For though I lived, was not alive

Your heart had died and with it mine

I woke to find it all a dream

As real as life though it had seemed

And even though I realized

I rent the air with many cries

For should my nightmare e’er come true

I knew my heart would die with you

Imaginings

I am reminded once more

Of the adverse effects of imagination.

My mind and heart are torn

By these dreams of my creation.

Better and worse worlds than mine

Present themselves in turn,

But each renders reality over time

A place I more frequently spurn.

Published

     "Today, which is Sunday, April 1, 2012, I received an email from MVNU's Penmarks, the literary journal, that read this way: 'We would like to publish your works "Incomplete," "The Confession" and "Understanding" in the 2012 edition of Penmarks. Thank you for your interest in the journal. Penamarks will be available the first week of May.'
     "I'm going to be published. I am a published author. This was my dream. It took so long to sink in that my dream came true - and it will be before my nineteenth birthday.  Something I wrote will be PUBLISHED. Do you have any idea what this means to me? I...I don't even know what to say.  When I first read the email, I screamed...a few times. Then I sat in shock for a while. I got up and danced and jumped up and down from sheer excitement. I cried. I danced some more. I returned to sitting in shock.  My emotions are in a whirl.  Is this the way all writers feel when they find out they're published for the first time? It's so hard to explain precisely how I feel in this moment. This may have been one of the best days of my life. This...this means so much to me. It gives me hope. It makes me think that maybe I'm not crazy for thinking I should spend my life writing. It makes me think that I may actually be good at it and that maybe my other dreams will come true some day - that I will publish my book and I don't know what else. Oh God. Thank you so much. I just keep telling Him that. Oh, you have no idea what this means to me...how happy it has made me feel...how excited I feel inside at times, and how numb I feel right now as I sit in utter shock writing this. I may be making a big deal out of nothing. Maybe what has happened is trivial to all others, meaningless and ordinary. But I don't care. Because to me - to me this is everything. This is what I've always wanted. My heart feels so different. I'm not sure I've ever been so happy in my entire life. My dream...one of my dreams has been realized this day. And oh how I will feel when I see it printed in ink! When I hold those papers in my hand - the magazine which will contain my words; yes, words composed by myself. How can I even begin to imagine how that will feel? One of my dreams came true tonight. It gives me hope that maybe other dreams will coem true as well. It is impossible to describe this feeling - it is one of accomplishment, of happiness, excitement, surprise and wonder. I can't describe it, but I know I want to hold on to it. This night is one I always want ot remember. I don't know how I could possibly forget. This is the night on which I learned that three things I wrote (three!) are to be published - the night I learned I was to be published for the very first time. It's not exactly something that will easily fade from memory. In fact, I'm certain that it never will."

4-2-12 12:40am