Why am I writing a book?

Ego, jealousy and unmet needs.

It is the confounding question that I face every day, sometimes multiple times a day.

It is in the pause before giving up and keeping going.

In my first Substack I explained how I wanted to tell a story that I felt had been holding me hostage. I hoped that by freeing the story from within me, I too would be free.

So I wrote that book.

I had a first draft which I felt good about not this time last year, but this time the year before that.

And then came the realization: just writing it did not free me. In fact, I was collecting a pretty solid amount of evidence from memoirists that this would NOT fix my life. Also a whiff of memoir regret.

I had hit a wall. I spent all these years trying to “get this out of my system” only to find that there it is still lodged in my system.

But I also wasn’t surprised. I have been here before.

When I first got sober and was in recovery there was a saying that was drilled into me at rehab and meetings. “Wherever you go, there you are.” The sans serif white words on a shiny blue background flash in my mind whenever I realize that I tried to escape myself again, but could not. You can switch schools, groups of friends, move to different countries, fall so in love with someone until you lose yourself, take up a diet or exercise or cleanse or whatever and none of that is going to FIX it.

The IT is being alive.

The IT is ways of finding relief from our suffering that aren’t self-destructive.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I started every new kick of mine with a sense of renewed hope. “Once I finish this book, I will feel much better, I’m sure of it.” I say to myself in full delulu gusto, every damn time.

When I started writing the book, the WHY behind it was a plea for relief.

“If I take this pain and grief and suffering and turn it into an equal amount of art and human connection that will fix it. Avoiding it didn’t work, so I’ll just go for it all the way instead!”

I expected some symmetry as to what I put in versus what I got out.

But my story, my past, was not something to be bottled up and contained and easily transformed into a healing elixir.

Enter stage right: Ego Death #1

I use the term ego-death lightly here, definitely inspired by Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party by Hayley Williams.

I think of ego in this sense as the story I tell myself about myself. There is a me, a whole ass person, who exists no matter what the story I yell you or me about myself is. It helps me clear my mind when I feel confused, and center myself and find that space where I am a body, or even better a creature, seeking some sort of comfort and can then access my self-compassion.

So two years ago, book finished, life not fixed, I interrogated my motivations: if it’s not enough to just write the book and share it with friends and family, what is the outcome I am chasing? And why?

Over the years, I have created multiple tricks to try to get myself out of these existential pickles. Some years it was a simple mantra I may have seen on Pinterest “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” Or “Are you afraid of what will happen if you fail or afraid of what will happen if you succeed?” Sometimes something as petty as “If that person can lead the free world I can do anything I fucking want.”

For this situation, I used a prompt I must have learned in a self-help book or art-class, and I’m sorry I can’t remember where. I have gone back to it time and time again as an artist and a writer, and is kind of my secret sauce in getting a project over the finish line just as I’m wondering what the point of it all is.

It is not very self-helpy at all.

It kind of takes my biggest fears, and insecurities and blows them up crystal clear for me to see.

The Prompt: But that’s MY thing! They stole MY thing!

So, imagine you subscribe to a print edition of your favorite newspaper.

It’s Sunday afternoon, and you start to get a bunch of messages and emails with a link to a story. “OMG this reminds me of you so much!” And “Have you seen this?” and “Big eyes emojis”.

Then you open the newspaper and on the front page is a rave review praising someone for doing exactly the thing that you desire most. Like deep in your core you want to be acknowledged for this.

What does that page look like?

What is the photograph and what is the honor received?

How does it feel as you furiously scan the text and cannot believe that someone copy pasted YOUR deepest dreams and desires? Does it bring it into focus? The thing that you want and why you want it?

I have felt glimmers of this before, and I used to be ashamed of it and shut it the fuck down. I’d try to assuage my simmering anger as I read an article that reminded me of what I was doing, but really it reminded me of what I was doing wrong. Why didn’t I think of saying it this way? Why am I not on this page?

That feeling of anger, and jealousy and desperately wanting to be seen; exposes a very tender and true thing. I have a need for me and this story to be seen. Which maybe would be obvious to a person writing a book about themselves. I can explain to myself why it doesn’t matter and I shouldn’t need other people’s validation to feel fulfilled. But my ambition rolls her eyes. Be for real, she says to me, You really want this.

And when I pay attention to that burn in my chest, to the clench in the jaw, I can follow the line to something I have denied myself. It’s an indication of the parts of me that I don’t feel confident about, the ways that I am afraid I don’t measure up. I don’t even want to admit that I care.

But I care so much that I have begun to get in my own way. Not a good enough writer. Not a healed enough person. Not a good representation of Polish people. Not a good representation of American people. Not a good enough story of addiction or trauma or resilience.

But I know what I want people to see.

And I’ll share that in my next post.