I've told you all already that I'm writing a book. I don't mean to go on about it, but it takes up so much head space I can't help it. Plus, somehow, in admitting it here, I am taking those first baby steps towards hoping that in writing a book I may one day be able to call myself a writer. Like in the boxes where I currently write 'unemployed' or, recently, 'homemaker' (which is a bit of a joke but they didn't have unemployed as an option), I might one day be able to honestly and unpretentiously put 'writer. Maybe.
I'm scared. Of rejection, yes, but right now I'm scared of what must come before rejection. I'm scared to believe in myself, to allow myself to hope. I'm scared to let other people see me hoping, in case they see me as some poor delusional reject like the ones they exploit on American idol.
Let me take you back fourteen years or so. Which makes me approximately thirteen. I had bushy short hair, acne and braces. I had to wear a blazer and tie to school. By this point I'd figured out that wearing my tie short and my shirt untucked just made me look more ridiculous than I already did so instead I wore them properly and, in doing so, conformed myself nicely to the geek stereotype. I hated school. I wasn't bullied, not really, but I felt stifled there. The uniform, the compulsory maths lessons, the unavoidable social cliques.
I wanted desperately to stand out and be different, to be exceptional in something. In my eyes, my only real talent was playing the piano. So I practiced. Three - four hours a night of playing. Obsessive playing so that one wrong note would send me back to the beginning again. Even today my little sister can't hear those pieces without crying out in despair. I decided I wanted to be a concert pianist. Never mind that I had acute performance anxiety - that my entire body shook when I played in front of anyone - I wanted to be brilliant. So I came up with a plan to audition at England's best music school, which conveniently happened to be a few miles down the road.
My parents took me to look around. The school is old and rich. Parts of Harry Potter were filmed at it. It smells of stone and had long corridors with doors behind which budding musicians played. I spoke to the headmaster and let my eyes sparkle when I talked about playing piano. We scheduled an audition.
My piano teacher came first thing every morning for a fortnight and I practiced before school. Finally the day came and I went and played my pieces. I played well, with feeling, a few wrong notes but that's not surprising given how nervous I was.
I wasn't good enough.
I had chosen the wrong pieces, I had poor technique, did I not realise that only the top 1% of musicians are good enough for this school?
To this day I cannot remember crying more bitter tears, cannot remember ever again feeling quite so crushed. I still played after that but less and less. My performance anxiety got worse so I stopped accompanying the school choir, stopped practicing as hard or as often, stopped learning new pieces.
It is this that I think of when I start to tell people I want to be a writer. It is that feeling that I remember and that fear I have to overcome.
That line between independence and loneliness
The past month or so Jeremy has been MIA. Well, that's not entirely true, I know where he is but he's not here and when he is here, he's working in a language I don't understand so he may as well not be here.
The language is 'Java', which brings to mind coffee and a far off land, but in Jeremy's reality means writing in 'code' and something about algorithms. Had to spell check that one.
The reason is that he's taken on an evening course in addition to his normal job. The course is through Harvard, which means it's difficult and he seems to be doing more work on this one module than I can ever recall doing in an entire year of modules when studying English Lit.
When he started out working late, it was a novelty. I quite enjoyed being the cool wife who was ever-so understanding and supportive. It helped that he wasn't having fun and that he took time to apologise for working late. What also helped was that for the first time in a year I was cooking for myself alone. Cue instantaneous return to Dr Oetker's frozen pizza, fish-fingers chips and beans, jacket potatoes and a not small amount of red wine from a box. After a year of eating like an adult and cooking proper meals (or being cooked them - I'm not the model of traditional housewifery, never fear), the sudden freedom to just eat what I wanted and not having to worry about whether Jeremy would want to eat it was quite liberating.
Equally liberating was my having a car and being brave enough to drive it. I was going out and doing things without Jeremy, coming home and cooking a satisfyingly un-nutritious meal and settling down to watch medical dramas. Bliss.
Until now when the novelty has totally worn off. I'm back to cooking proper meals (because there's only so much Dr Oetker one can eat before realising one's skin is turning grey from lack of vitimins), Greys Anatomy is doing that weird break-in-series thing that American TV does annoyingly often and the only places I can think of to drive to involve shopping, and I've already done a fair amount of that in the past month. Yes I could drive to art galleries and be all cultured, but... yea.
I miss Jeremy. And J, I'm not writing this to make you feel guilty - like I said, the fact that you're not having any fun makes it all much easier. I'm writing this because, well, because I'm sat here thinking about driving to the library (essentially just somewhere else to sit and mess about online) and pondering what to do with myself for another evening spent alone after another day spent alone and I'm willing May to hurry up and get here so that Jeremy's course can be over and we can get back to eating nutritious meals together.
On the bright side, it's pancake day tomorrow (I moved it). Which, if you don't know what it is, is essentially the singular greatest contribution England has given to the world and I have appointed myself as a pancake-day evangelist. So tomorrow, nutrition be damned, I'm cooking a thousand pancakes in ingenious ways and feeding them to friends.
Maybe I'll go buy eggs.
(I should insert a don't-worry-about-me disclaimer. I babysat on monday, went to a women's day event on tuesday and had an interview on wednesday. Life is not as dull as I'm making it out to be. Except for right now this minute and maybe a few minutes yesterday. But I do miss Jeremy)
The language is 'Java', which brings to mind coffee and a far off land, but in Jeremy's reality means writing in 'code' and something about algorithms. Had to spell check that one.
The reason is that he's taken on an evening course in addition to his normal job. The course is through Harvard, which means it's difficult and he seems to be doing more work on this one module than I can ever recall doing in an entire year of modules when studying English Lit.
When he started out working late, it was a novelty. I quite enjoyed being the cool wife who was ever-so understanding and supportive. It helped that he wasn't having fun and that he took time to apologise for working late. What also helped was that for the first time in a year I was cooking for myself alone. Cue instantaneous return to Dr Oetker's frozen pizza, fish-fingers chips and beans, jacket potatoes and a not small amount of red wine from a box. After a year of eating like an adult and cooking proper meals (or being cooked them - I'm not the model of traditional housewifery, never fear), the sudden freedom to just eat what I wanted and not having to worry about whether Jeremy would want to eat it was quite liberating.
Equally liberating was my having a car and being brave enough to drive it. I was going out and doing things without Jeremy, coming home and cooking a satisfyingly un-nutritious meal and settling down to watch medical dramas. Bliss.
Until now when the novelty has totally worn off. I'm back to cooking proper meals (because there's only so much Dr Oetker one can eat before realising one's skin is turning grey from lack of vitimins), Greys Anatomy is doing that weird break-in-series thing that American TV does annoyingly often and the only places I can think of to drive to involve shopping, and I've already done a fair amount of that in the past month. Yes I could drive to art galleries and be all cultured, but... yea.
I miss Jeremy. And J, I'm not writing this to make you feel guilty - like I said, the fact that you're not having any fun makes it all much easier. I'm writing this because, well, because I'm sat here thinking about driving to the library (essentially just somewhere else to sit and mess about online) and pondering what to do with myself for another evening spent alone after another day spent alone and I'm willing May to hurry up and get here so that Jeremy's course can be over and we can get back to eating nutritious meals together.
On the bright side, it's pancake day tomorrow (I moved it). Which, if you don't know what it is, is essentially the singular greatest contribution England has given to the world and I have appointed myself as a pancake-day evangelist. So tomorrow, nutrition be damned, I'm cooking a thousand pancakes in ingenious ways and feeding them to friends.
Maybe I'll go buy eggs.
(I should insert a don't-worry-about-me disclaimer. I babysat on monday, went to a women's day event on tuesday and had an interview on wednesday. Life is not as dull as I'm making it out to be. Except for right now this minute and maybe a few minutes yesterday. But I do miss Jeremy)
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