Self-Pitying Piece

Posted on July 9, 2005 in Disappointment Writing

I told a woman over a lunch we shared with others that I was a poet. She’d been interested in my writing life until then. To say in America that you write poetry is the kiss of death.

It’s largely assumed in local poetry circles that I am not a good poet. I beg to differ but there’s nothing I can do to gainsay that. I just keep plugging away, writing whatever I can, believing that I have done work of credit. But if things keep up as they are — what with my fear of submitting and my impasses with local poetry circles — whatever I write now will end up in an incinerator rather than a book.

I’m not able to write much lately. I feel exhausted. Some say that I need to get out more. The trouble with getting out more is that I have no place to go other than libraries. And who meets anyone in a library other than the librarians who begin to look upon regulars like me as exotic pets to be put out when we start to smell. It’s all so easy when you read the self-help books, but can’t we allow that some of us just will never make it?

I’ve been told that I should go back and take a menial job. The trouble was that I never got to have a decent job working on a passion. Getting such a job is to roll myself into one of Dante’s bolgias not quite understanding what sin I have committed to earn that treatment.

If you believe in a God, you may find that the belief begins to eat at you, particularly if you suffer from a mood disorder. Therese of Lisseux a surefire bulemic, talked about having “lovers’ quarrels” with Jesus. While that does sound erotic to me, I must state that I can understand the sentiment. Visualizing a God causes me to feel that my hardships come from a malevolent spirit. Seeing a random universe lifts that: the things other people do belong entirely to them.

Still, I remain keenly aware of my aloneness, of all the friends who won’t call me, who don’t want anything to do with me when I am down or I am high. I can live blissfully in the latter situation. The former is hard. And while this sounds like the stuff of poetry, I can’t find the voice in me to write any. Maybe now that I have dumped it will be possible.

---

Another sad thought: my best friends live at a distance from me. I suspect that there is something about me in person which is off-putting. And I have never been able to get anyone to tell me what.