Where I’ve Been and Where I’m Going

I’m 11. I’m in detention, tracing Middle-earth over and over again. Printed off maps of Tolkien’s created world sit beneath the paper, giving me the lines to trace over and over again. Every day, I think of books, stories, ideas. Escapes, over and over again. I’m in detention and I put the map of Middle-earth to the side. The repetition has worn the sheen off of discovery. And there are things I cannot change. It’s not my world, just one I can visit. What if I didn’t just have to visit? What if I could make my own, and live there, for me? There is nothing to trace anymore. The lines come from me. I’m in detention and I learn who I am.

I’m 15. I’m taking a freshman in high school taking his proficiencies or his OATs or whatever the fuck they call those soul-crushing tests now. I finish quickly because I have more important things to do. I’ve completed The Portal, the novel based on that map I wrote all those years ago. Four years and the onset of clinical depression later, it is finally accomplished. A little over 77,000 words, and countless thousands more in background, detail, and worldbuilding. And all it took was the most intense loneliness and anxiety I think I ever experienced. So much easier was it to bury my face in a book, to crawl into a nook and write, than it was to talk, to be open, to be present. I spend the entire week going through it and the week after, and the week after that, and the months after until the binder is marked, torn, and covered in notes. And I realize, despite my achievement, that it is not good enough. My parents drove me to print it out, the enthusiasm entirely my own, and never read it. There are only two people that ever do. My life doesn’t change, as I desperately wanted it to. What had been the keys to my cell were now the bars behind which I viewed the world. Four years and the onset of clinical depression later, now a crutch preventing me from experiencing reality, in turn, from growing as a writer and, more importantly, a person. As I finally grow up, the book sits on my shelf at home, a reminder eventually forgotten.

I’m 18, and off to college. I pack my tattered novel, loosely bound after years of neglect. I’m going to be a journalist, I guess. Looking back, I think the part of me that was hurt by my perceived failure with my first novel made that decision, though in hindsight it was part and parcel of many decisions I made at the time. When I was younger, before I even conceived of being a writer, I thought college was stupid. Countless dollars, a lifetime of debt, even more school? That’s not how I feel at 18. I’m no longer scared of my anxiety. And if college is something I’m being led into by expectant parents and the ravenous maw of corporatized education, then I’m going to enjoy myself, damnit. Unfortunately, I thought depression and anxiety were enemies conquered. I wasn’t prepared for when they fought back and the insidious way they turn your own thoughts against you, sometimes without your awareness or control.

Perhaps that’s why, as loneliness and anxiety took hold of yet another of my freshman years, I opened The Portal again. But looking at the pages pockmarked like a pox survivor, I realize I need something else, something I’m not getting. A new story, one for the present Sam. I reach instead for my notebooks and flip through. They all follow the same pattern. Carefully categorized notes from the start of the semester devolve, or perhaps evolve, into character sheets, maps, and worldbuilding, of either my own devising or other fictional works I obsess over. The Portal is closed to me, accepted as a necessary step along my path. I’m at college for a different reason . . . yet I still yearn, consciously and unconsciously, to return. And, again, perhaps because my wounds were guiding my actions, I put all the years of work on The Portal – the languages, the characters, the world and story I funneled all my feeling into since I was 11 – to the side and open one of the notebooks. I circle a word I created, one to describe the new world I’d be going to: ELMAYA. A world free from the baggage of the last. Or so I thought.

I still don’t realize the denial that I’m in, manufactured from childhood trauma now repeated ad infinitum as an adult. If I had, I would have taken the title I chose as a sign: Tears of Elmaya.

I’m 23. College is finally over. And I struggle to care. My apathy is endemic particularly because I walked when I was 22, but had to spend a fifth year completing my language credit, the biggest academic victim of my self-destruction. Multiple teachers told me to drop out. Most of my extracurricular activities ended poorly, with my participation and management. I work as a delivery driver to make ends meet. And, worst of all, when I sit down to write my novel, free at last from schooling, to fulfill the dream I delayed over and over again, to shine a light on a precious part of me hidden by darkness, translucent and vulnerable. Waiting for me to do it, to really do it, and for it matter. When I sit down to write my novel, I can’t write a word. Whatever I had when I started this journey is gone. The tank is empty. And I don’t who I am anymore. I start to feel like maybe, just maybe, college wasn’t the right fit.

Slowly, for two years, I whittle at a giant misshapen stone, hoping the Statue of David will emerge. Or at least some someone who can write a fucking book. If Dorian Gray had a picture that prevented his aging, I have a rock that gives me gray hairs, and my only hope is not to get rid of the rock, but turn it into something beautiful – before it kills me. Slowly, after two years of numbness, I feel two ways. First, I cannot and do not want to wallow forever. If I don’t live, life will happen to me, instead of with me. And second, if I finally let go of the toxic cycle of failure, believe in my own talent, and do something I used to enjoy before falling into this pit of despair, then perhaps I will experience enjoyment again. This is my chance. I may never get another. The maxim of “Let your actions control your feelings, and not vice versa,” always true, rarely in practice, finally snaps into place. I open the drawer full of my old notes, rewritten, overwritten, scratched out and encircled, mixed and matched, and upside down . . .

I take it slow. Rome wasn’t built in a day. But unlike so many activities over my life thrust upon me, I pick this one up with gusto because this is what I’m good at. I remember all the times I should have been doing homework in grade school, I was writing, drawing, putting together K’Nex. Legos. Action figures. Stories formed, the same way they formed in place of notes in college. I went to different places, where different people lived. Where life itself was different. I saw the connections. I knew what would make me feel something, what would make it not just wasted time, but would bring me comfort. Happiness. Purpose. Illuminate my fears and give meaning to my misery. Putting together the mess of notes is the child’s playtime I missed. The space where I can work out my problems. Fill in the missing pieces. And it was comforting to start in a low-stakes place. I wasn’t giving myself deadlines or word counts by compiling notes. All that mattered, all that ever matters, is the story. The part of me that knew I couldn’t sit and be depressed forever knows this comfortable place of low-stakes work would end and I would have to either progress or get stuck again. Fear bubbles at the edges of that thought. I work hard to balance my need for progress with the realities of the work and a sympathetic understanding of myself.

2018 rolls around . . . and somehow, I do it.

Today, I’m 26. As the world has gotten crazier, I’ve fought to get sane. Fear over meeting word counts and deadlines? I now work with word counts and deadlines. Inability to enjoy a book? I finish twelve in three months. Impulse to procrastinate? I delete social media apps off my phone and turn myself to a blank page or an open book. In some ways, it feels like going home. If you classify this as bragging, it’s me bragging to myself, because ultimately we are both audience and performer. These are the activities I care most about and I’m only now getting better at accepting that part of me again. Sometimes it feels as though we are seeing our actions played out rather than taking charge of our own choices. When that happens, and is followed by an assertion of your will, by whatever manner deemed healthy and expressive, it feels liberating.

There will always be struggles and obstacles. The path is never straight, nor should it be. Regression can occur in an instant and entropy never truly disappears. We just get better at handling their occurrences. Creating meaning out of our experiences takes endurance, dedication, and forgiveness. To err is to be human. We must move past them if we are to escape an endless standoff and change our fates. The answer is whispered within, if you listen closely enough. Slow the faucet of thoughts. Stop staring at the water circling the drain. Focus on the flow. Control it, channel it, use it. To take care of yourself. To give yourself and others love. To reward your passion. To dream a better world.

Happy New Year 2019,

Sam Flynn