For a long time she’d been grappling with the question of why she bothered to write. She knew it wasn’t to connect with potential readers because nothing could be more impossible than predicting their predilections. (Did they like cats? Waffles? Sleeping in tees and checkered boxers?) This meant, truthfully, she was doing it for herself. The joy of self-expression.
Hands down, the best part was the spilling of guts. The catharsis. But she also knew, deep inside, writing was a way to prove to herself - and to the world - that she wasn’t as stupid as she and everyone believed. And this couldn’t be accomplished without seeing her name in print or online.
Why did the validation of publishing matter so much? She could put her finger on the genesis. After IQ test results came from school, her mother crinkled her forehead and looked at the paper again, then said, “Well, you’re smart enough to do anything you set your mind to.”
Smart enough, smart enough. What this actually meant was there were others who were smarter. Others for whom writing - her chosen obsession - would be a snap, blessing them with the recognition garnered by publishing a beloved novel. And because of this verdict in the mail, her destiny would be to struggle. To work hard at writing, hoping to publish but knowing she was doomed - because she simply wasn’t a member of the genius club. Predictably, she had little success.
And then, at a certain point, many years later, her mother - perusing the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list - discovered a book. It was about a recent discovery - something called Emotional Intelligence. After, Mom came for a visit, and entered through the side door, holding up, waving, this very book, announcing that the experts had gotten it wrong. There was more to Intelligence than anyone ever thought; something that was as important as the usual stuff measured by IQ tests.
“You had everything!” Mom declared before quickly correcting herself by putting her pronouncement in the present tense. She added, “So, no more excuses!”
Hearing Mom’s words, all she wanted to do was send her back out the door. How dare Mom change the rules mid-game! Now what was she supposed to do? Her entire self-image was built on knowing for a fact she was inadequate. But now this new thinking said all along she had been enough. Or rather, she had been everything. (Because “enough” meant she was still being measured by a bar calibrated by the wrong standard.)
And who was it who did the calibrating back then, and, later, when Emotional Intelligence came into vogue? These folks were flesh and bone like the rest of us, and no doubt theories would continue to evolve.
Now, all these years later, when it was too late for anything to matter - Mom long buried, taking with her any potential validation for a piece of writing that did manage to get published - she understood retroactively that, all along, she did have everything. So all was okay, she hadn’t ever actually been the loser she felt she was. But sometimes she remembered the pent-up anger she once felt, so fabulously released by putting pen to paper. Self-expression. The greatest antidote to pain. For, if nothing else, wasn’t the page a place to settle old scores?
She was reminded of this not long ago, by a fellow writer’s example. It was during the pandemic when, like so many, she joined a writers’ group in an attempt to feel less alone. When the zoom floor opened to self-introductions, she kept her hand down - a recovering introvert, perspiring as she marveled at everyone’s perfect delivery - then she unmuted herself, speaking the words she had just rehearsed to herself, the mumbling graduating to greater clarity, until ultimately she felt she had, more or less, managed to fit in. Nevertheless, the dominant feeling, so familiar, was failure.
With introductions complete, the floor was given to those who wanted to share current projects. The moderator prefaced this by reminding all of her personal philosophy for the group, the tagline on her website: This is a place of radical empathy.
Hearing the moderator’s words, she adjusted the lighting in her room to look less neon blue on the computer screen, and wriggled in her desk chair, deciding whether to speak or be her usual self. She had no project in mind, she was blocked or - simply in-between works - depending on how she might spin it. But before she could decide on taking a turn, others did. Trauma was the big theme. Nothing surprising about that, she thought.
And then one relatively young woman, framed in her zoom square, fixed her black-rimmed glasses before tucking her pageboy ink-black hair behind one ear, and what she confided was so horrifying it would reverberate even months later. Fixing herself toast, or in the shower, the comment - especially the emotion behind it - would come back to her, though unable to touch her because she was on the other side of it. The woman said she wanted to write something that would kill her mother.
The End
Karen Regen Tuero's writing can be found lately at Gargoyle, The Summerset Review, New World Writing, Lunch Ticket, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
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