Art Can't Save You

Things I learned in 2023

You have to accept change or it will destroy you

There are parents that love their life, and those that resent their children. What seems to be the fundamental difference?

It’s the acceptance of change.

Once you have a child there is no “returning to normal.” Your life has been irrevocably altered. You will never go back to the days when you don’t carry with you the responsibility for another human being’s life. Resisting that change, wishing that things were different, will mean that your life becomes a constant source of suffering.

I used to put high value on not “being changed” by a child. I didn’t want to become those mothers that made being a parent their whole identity. I didn't want to be swallowed by the angry mouth

Now I can see how silly that worry was. A child is not something that slots neatly into your life, between work and afternoon Pilates and drinks with your friends at night.

It obliterates your conception of self. It’s supposed to.

If you’re in the right frame of mind, this should make you happy. It adds a new dimensionality and texture to life. It brings new parts of your being to the surface. You’ll realize you don’t miss your old self at all, because she was fundamentally missing something that’s now crucial to you.

Its okay to unplug.

I’m one of those people that always have to be “doing something.” If I fold the laundry I need to be listening to a podcast or an audiobook so I can maximize the time. I can’t just take a bath. I need to have a book with me. If there’s a spare second I find myself doing a bit of research, logging onto Twitter, or figuring out what the next thing is I should put on my to-do list.

I had to stop and asking myself if this was enriching my life, or distracting from it. I often had the distinct sense that life '“Wasn't enough,” and it needed to be enriched with fantasy. But it turned out trying to constantly distract myself was a big contributor to my boredom.

One thing I focused more on this year was being present. I allowed myself to put my phone away for hours and play with my child. I let emails go unanswered for half a day. I responded to texts when I had the time. My child and I would go for walks or play in the grass outside and I'd leave my phone inside.

What I discovered was that the idea of “missing out” was a lie. I’d mistaken a dopamine fix for doing something important.

Information and data streams exist in reality outside the screens. I could learn more just by being present and observing than putting on a podcast. Reality is an infinite joy to be experienced.

A lot of evil comes from wanting to take the easy way out

When we think of evil we often think of serial killers, genocidal monsters, and rapists. It’s evil that announces itself in obvious, blackened corruption. It screams when it destroys, leaving behind devastating holes, and doesn’t allow itself to be denied.

But many people are leading lives of quiet evil. They’re okay with letting their spouse be unhappy as long as it means they don’t have to do more work. They yell at their kids because they don’t want to dedicate the time and effort to properly parent. They buy dogs and then neglect them. They take shortcuts at work that mean other people get hurt, or inconvenienced.

People don’t often choose to be evil. They choose to be lazy.

They choose to avoid responsibility to make the pain go away.

They lash out and blame others because it’s easier than dealing with the internal strife or putting in the work to deal with the issue themselves.

They justify their non-action by telling themselves that what they do doesn’t matter.

All the while they leave devastation in their wake, the ugly thumbprint of a person who refuses to try to make the world better.

It's okay to ask for help

I find it difficult to ask for help. I find it even more difficult to be precise in the ways that I ask for help. I want a savior to come to me, on folded wings and a black card in their wallet, and give me everything I never knew how to ask for.

Once I had a child I realized that it was too much for me to do by myself. I needed help or I was going to collapse under the weight of everything that needed to get done.

You can realistically know that “asking for help doesn’t make you weak,” and yet inside still feel the despair and pain that comes from being vulnerable. It’s easier to ask for help when you realize the alternative is oftentimes resentment and bitterness.

We are a communal species. It's easy to pretend that you're going it alone when you can swaddle yourself in comfortable modern life. But you've done nothing in this life by yourself, and you are fed and clothed and comforted by the invisible work of millions of other human beings. We all work to help each other every day.

Accept Imperfect Working Conditions

On the writing side of life: this year I managed to finish a draft of my novel, write and publish a short story, write several newsletters, acquire an agent, and finish the edits for the second edition of Girl Like a Bomb.

I could have done more if I’d accepted earlier on in the year that I’d never return to the leisurely pre-baby days of having hours upon hours to write and meander around the recesses of my brain. Being a writer was so much of my identity. It felt cosmically unfair that most days I couldn’t get to the computer and work on my novel.

I've let go of a lot of my precious rituals, my delicate pretensions. I learned how to write on my phone. I learned how to write in ten minute increments. I learned how to write in my car or in the closet. I take notes during stroller rides and naps. (My baby is sleeping on me right now as I write this.) I learned how to write when I didn't feel my best, when I was exhausted or had a headache. I learned to write when I knew I wasn't writing at my peak performance, and just add notes to go back to it later.

For a couple weeks my only goal was to write a single sentence a day. Sometimes even that was a struggle. But over time I found my writing muscles strengthening, my stamina increasing. I started to write more and more.

Having a child has strengthened me and made me into a better writer. It's honed my discipline. It's made me more adaptable. It's taught me what's important and what I can let go of.

it can seem frustrating to only get half an hour some days to write, if at all. But inch by inch you move forward to your goal, as long as you don't give in to the easy despair of not being able to work like you used to or the excuse of “baby brain.”

You don't always have to react to your emotions

Sometimes negative emotions announce themselves with a blistery urgency.

Oftentimes there's no concrete reason why you're feeling bad, but there must be some reason, and it's demanding that you find it and extricate it from your life.

Now.

I've discovered that many of those emotions simply disappeared if I didn't react to them.

That's how you know they weren't real. They became vapor once you stopped looking at them. 

Real emotions, like grief over a loved one, don't disappear. They sit inside of you with finality. They cannot be altered with breathing meditation or a change of perspective.

Art Can't Save You

I became a writer because I wanted to disappear.

I wanted to create an inner world vast enough that I'd be able to cover my wounds with it, escape into it, turn my bones jnto fertilizer for a healing garden.

Most of my earlier stories are about escape. My characters feel oppressed and suffocated by circumstances they believe to be outside of their control, so they find ways to leave. They die. They cease to become human. They're lured into fantasy worlds by demons with sparkling teeth where they don't have to worry about overbearing mothers or unsympathetic husband's.

No matter how much I wrote I couldn't make myself disappear like my characters. I tried to twist myself into an abstract shape so the pain of being human couldn't affect me. Yet the more I wrote, the more pain I felt. I couldn't transmute my blood into gold.

The only way to address your pain is by living.

Art can’t save you. At least, not like that. It's a part of reality and not an escape from it. Use it to enrich your life. If your life outside of art is terrible, it won't be enough to fix you.

We can take our pain to art to try to understand it, but we can't destroy it. Characters who disappear into fantasy worlds to escape their problems are as good as dead. They've committed a beautiful, literary suicide.

It's Okay To Be Consumed By Love

I haven't had a break for longer than four hours since September 25, 2022. For the first ten months my daughter barely wanted to be held by anyone else.

My child is almost always with me and requires constant care and attention. Her needs are ever present, dynamic, and changing. It's required a total lifestyle overhaul and a need for resilience. I've had to completely change how I think about life, because it's not just me and my husband anymore.

The other day she saw me come into the room and when she said “Momma!” and giggled, tears started to pour from my eyes. I couldn't understand why something loved me so much.

For the longest time I thought I didn't want kids, because I didn't want the responsibility.

I didn't want to be consumed by love. I didn't want to know what it felt to have something more important to take care of than your own ego. I saw how that kind of happiness annoyed people, like loving your child was a direct affront to them. Like love itself was some mechanical manipulation, a dead end, a thing that served no purpose.

But without the spirit of love you live in a hollow world. A place where you can gorge yourself and never feel satisfied, a palace that’s not even worth the rocks it was built with.

That’s what it means when someone like Bukowski said “Find what you love and let it kill you.” The alternative is to be killed by the empty place where a spirit should’ve been.