Eat the Damn Cake

First I go on Facebook. I always look at the same three people’s profiles. I disagree with their life choices. I shake my head and sigh and roll my eyes and feel superior. Seriously? You call that a status update? Are you insane? But I can’t stop checking. I know the inner working of these people’s lives better than I know anything about the way my own country’s government functions. Better than I know how to bake cookies. Better than I understand basic biology. Not as well as I know New York real estate, or grilled cheeses, or the game SET, but pretty close.

(they may call it a “family game,” but there’s nothing familial about the way I play it. I am ruthless. I take no prisoners. source)

Then I check Twitter. Two more people have followed me. That’s good. I think I have a reasonable number of followers. I’m not sure it’s the right amount. I check to see how many followers The Bloggess has. Holy shit. 215,301. I click over to her blog. She is being funny, in this sort of complicated, dry, extremely clever way. How does she keep doing it, all the time? Who else is a famous blogger? I locate a few. Damn, here’s a post with three-hundred comments under it. THREE-HUNDRED.

Who else is famous in general? There’s always some really young writer whose book just got an incredibly favorable review in the Times. I check out the review. Really? “Frolicking, phantasmic prose”? Can that be a thing? God. I am so lazy. My prose almost never frolics. I don’t have a chance, do I? Probably not.

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This post was inspired by this comment, from Erin. 

Grilled cheese. This is how I impress people and make friends. It’s also, apparently, the centerpiece of the most boring scene ever written.

A couple years ago, a family friend mentioned that she lived next door to this big-shot book agent. He specialized in fantasy and sci fi. He had four other houses. The books he represented got turned into movies starring Tom Cruise.

(I’d be OK with this being a character from a book I wrote. source)

“You’re writing a book– right, Kate?” the family friend asked.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” I said. Or something to that effect.

She put me in touch with him. He offered to read my manuscript. I died of fear and joy and then fear again. And then joy. This is it, I thought. This is my big break. Kate, girl, this is the best thing that will ever happen to you.

I was not exactly putting all of my eggs in one basket. I had just started grad school. Just moved to NYC. And it was more about offering up my entire soul than anything to do with eggs, I think.

I sent him the book I’d worked on in college. It was the story of a dangerously powerful young woman named Sanla who is attending an all-girls boarding school at the edge of an enormous jungle, when suddenly she is selected by the Master Mage– the most powerful man in the world– a mysteriously blind, surprisingly young man with long curly black hair, to become his apprentice. But Sanla has the wrong kind of magic. She is a dark mage. And dark magic has long ago been outlawed. It is the magic of dirt and instinct and poverty. The ruling class practices a magic based on memorization, and words, and levels. Could it be that the Master Mage is experimenting with the dark? Could it be that the world is about to change, because of one little orphan girl?

Well, yeah.

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This post is for Cate, who commented here. 

I am a dreamer.

I want big things. I want gorgeous settings. I am idealistic. I am impractical.

I am old enough to know better, so I don’t think I will ever know better.

I am fragile. I want to be famous. God, that’s embarrassing. At least there’s this: I don’t want to be famous and get invited to all the best penthouse parties and know all the names of the owners of the sexiest clubs. I don’t want fame to follow me outside, into the street. I want to be a famous writer. I want people to read my words and disappear briefly inside them. That’s what happened to me, as a kid, reading fantasy novels. I slipped inside another world. I want to do that for people.

I am a failure. I tried being practical. I tried growing up right. At fifteen, I got my first serious job. I worked through college. For a while, I was making more money than all of my friends. I was a little smug about it, when a guy who liked me bragged about how much he made at his job, repairing computers, and I made more. Don’t say anything, I thought. Don’t you dare say anything. I really wanted to say something. I only let myself get A’s, and I only considered Ivy League grad schools-- I got into the one my professors wanted for me. There was this straight, groomed path, and I was on it, and I was going to take my degrees out into the world and knock on a bunch of impressive doors with them (they make a more important sound than just my bare hand), and things would fall into place.

And then I couldn’t.

(that’s my backpack. And my chocolate milk. This is where I was writing yesterday)

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We go around the room, introducing ourselves and sharing how long we have “practiced.”

“Nine years.”

“Five years.”

“Twenty.”

“Four days.”

That’s me.

And that is one of the reasons I am not good at yoga. Also, I am not flexible (does this make me less sexy? I’m pretty sure it does). Also, I have scoliosis. Not in a serious way. Just in a “Your spine is a little too curved” way. It makes my lower back look especially cute, the doctor said I looked like a dancer (a dancer! I must be pretty!). It makes my upper back and shoulders look not cute at all– more like a turtle (a dancing turtle!). It’s hard for me to put my shoulders back. Which means it’s hard for me to look like a queen. Which is a major disappointment.

So the hardest pose for me is the one where you sit with your legs straight in front of you and then bend over them, from the waist. My back won’t let me bend. I’m sitting straight up, and everyone is touching their toes. Even the pregnant woman in the back. How is that even possible? Even the seventy-year-old dude in the very tight pants.

I am also bad at downward facing dog, which feels shameful. Downward facing dog is clearly the most important pose. They keep coming back to it. Everything ends in it. No matter what you do, you end up in downward facing dog, contemplating the fickle, meandering course of your life.

(have you noticed that the mats are always in soothing colors? source)

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I did it! I did it! I asked for more money!

Remember when I wrote this post about how women almost never ask for more money? Apparently we don’t. Apparently we often keep quiet instead. And I understand why. I mentioned that the thought of asking for a raise is really scary for me. That usually when someone pays me for work I’ve done, I am thinking, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you so much!” as opposed to “Seriously? I am worth more than that!” Even if I’m worth more than that. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, how much I’m worth in money. I mean, maybe I think I’m worth a million dollars, but I’m a writer. No one is going to give me a million dollars. No one is going to give me very much at all. So it’s more a “every little bit counts” type thing than a “I can’t believe they don’t value me more” type thing.

That is no excuse not to ask for more money.

But even after I wrote that post, I didn’t notice that I had an opportunity to ask for a raise, in my own life, right then. I was thinking more abstractly– like, women, out there in the world– other people– you guys should think about this…I should probably think about it too, later…

And then something funny happened. I found out that someone I know who does work for one of the same companies I do was being paid more than me. She mentioned it casually, and suddenly I was furious. And embarrassed. Here I was, writing about raises instead of asking for them. I felt like I was falling behind. I felt like I’d been sleeping and oblivious and possibly still wearing suspenders that had gone out of style five years ago (what? Are people not wearing suspenders these days? No one?).

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Feeling bad the way I do sometimes– the bad egg kind of bad- it doesn’t go away completely. It just lies dormant under the surface for a while. And then suddenly, it’s back. It can come back ferocious, hungry, clawing, like it just broke out of prison, where it had plenty of time to think about how to destroy me.

And then I feel sorry for Bear.

I feel apologetic. I feel sorry about marriage not solving all of my problems, as though if only I could just calm down and let it, it would. I feel like I’ve let marriage down.

Sometimes I think that marriage actually makes it worse. I mean, being safe and secure and loved and sexed and having my man dream come true makes it clearer that this is not all there is. Before I had Bear, when I was in a relationship with a guy who was being tormented by what seemed like an army of his own personal demons, I could feel bad about that. It was obvious what I was supposed to feel bad about. I also felt like I really needed to get good grades in college or my life might be terrible, but that feeling was secondary to the emotional trauma of my romantic relationship.

In a way, that’s what relationships were for. To distract me from the things I was really worried about. To distract me from the fact that I might feel bad, anyway, even if they were gone or great.

After being tormented by the tormented guy, I was in a relationship with a guy I wasn’t in love with, and I felt conflicted and anxious and stubborn and frustrated and helpless about that.

And later, whenever I felt bad during the time I was single, I felt scared and tiny and hopeless, because there was a chance I would never find someone.

There was always such an easy reason. Such a plain target.

And now, I have checked so many boxes. I have things I never thought I would get a chance at. I stare at my own reality in dumbstruck wonderment. I pinch myself. I stare some more.

But then, when I feel bad, it isn’t as easy to find a place to put it. So the badness rushes to my career. You’re failing! You haven’t accomplished anything in the past year! Everyone in the world is more successful than you! And they have better hair! And your teeth look a little yellow! And you’re not making enough money because you are a failure!

I feel sorry for Bear because I want to be happy for him. I feel like that was part of the arrangement. We were going to make each other happy ALL THE TIME. That was going to be marriage. When I’m unhappy, it makes him unhappy, and sometimes this feels like pressure to be happy.

(we should always look like this. especially the red hat)

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