The letter came. I’d been waiting
months for it. I tried to predict what my reaction would be when the moment of
truth became real. Would I burst out into tears and slobber sloppily onto my
pillow, or jump up and down like Bob Barker just called my name on The Price is Right?
When the letter finally arrived, it
almost seemed surreal. I was trying to be polite but I snatched the envelope
out of the mailman’s hands (who knew I’d been waiting for it), and dashed
inside. My blustering energy had left the cats curious enough to stir awake from
their naps. I looked at the envelope for one whole second before tearing it
open, although carefully enough not to rip the letter itself. My throat had
dried up like I’d just swallowed a stick of chalk. My hands were shaking like
Momma needed a drink. I felt as if my entire destiny lay in the words before
me.
I read the letter.
The words ‘unfortunately,’ ‘we
encourage you next time’ and ‘thank you’ (for nothing) jumped out at the page.
I’d been rejected. I didn’t get into the MFA in Creative Writing program I’d
applied to.
As you can guess, dear reader, my
reaction was not one of Bob Barker’s fans ecstatic to the point of a seizure.
My go-to self-soothing words of, “it wasn’t meant to be,” and “it’s not that
your work wasn’t good, you just have to keep trying,” failed me. What if I wanted something to be—really, really
badly? And furthermore, if my work really is
good, then why wasn’t it good enough?
Although my ego felt like it’d been
run over by a dump truck, I looked at the time. I had to go to work.
My co-worker, another bartender
who’s been bartending longer than I’ve been alive (seriously—37 years) noticed
something was wrong as soon as I clocked in. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I shrugged.
“C’mon, you can tell the old man,”
he prodded.
I sang like a canary: the letter,
waiting months for it, the rejection and feeling like a world-class loser.
“Toughen up, kid. You don’t want to
go to some stupid school that won’t take you anyway! What would cheer you up?
How ‘bout a slice of carrot cake?”
“I don’t want carrot cake.”
“Too bad, I know it’s your
favorite. Listen, you can’t give up; you have to keep applying for as many
things as possible. And above all—you have to keep writing! You don’t want to
end up an old and cranky bartender like me, do you?”
I looked at him. He was pointing
his muddler at me.
The ruca picked me up from work and
surprised me with a box of chocolates, and besitos all over my face. I stayed
home that weekend and watched back-to-back episodes of The Office on Netflix and emotionally ate myself into an oblivion.
It was great.
On my next writing day, I stared at
my computer long and hard without turning it on. For days, all my emotions had
been fluttering inside my chest, like butterflies rapping their wings inside me
to escape. I recalled an old Ernest Hemingway quote: “There is nothing to
writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Finally, I sat down
with my computer. The cats cuddled up all around me. I began to write, my
emotions bleeding out onto pages and pages.
It was beautiful. It was savage. And
going forward, it was my only choice.
