When Is The Best Time To Write?

Not like during the day, but during your entire life

It’s been a while since I’ve written from “The Middle of It.”

Once, in grad school, I was due to give everyone in my small memoir class ten pages of writing to critique and I turned in what I thought was a pretty brilliant, risqué story about going to a DTLA Planned Parenthood to get my first IUD. People laughed at the right moments and two different women whispered to me during the bathroom break that they had friends get pregnant despite an IUD, so I felt like I hit a bullseye.

When my professor asked how long ago this story happened, I was excited to tell the truth. “This afternoon,” I said. It was 9pm.

“See, that’s the problem,” she said, looking around the table meaningfully. “I can tell you haven’t had any time to reflect on what happened. You’re still in the middle of it.”

Well, I took that class a little over ten years ago, and I’m sorry to say I think I have even less insight than I did then. At least I remembered the receptionist’s nail color when I wrote those pages. If I wrote about that experience from my point-of-view now, the story would go like this: “Wow, I was so young and I had literally a whole day where all I did was get free birth control and joyfully write ten pages about getting free birth control and then go to a class I loved. Oh, and the IUD worked … huge fan!”

The end.

Writing from “The Middle of It” requires a certain level on nonchalance that came easily to me when I was 23. It was cute and funny to write about my problems before they were solved because having problems was a sign that I was out there living, taking chances, figuring stuff out.

Now, even admitting I’m in the middle of anything feels like pulling teeth — no, worse! Like making the APPOINTMENT for a professional to pull my teeth!

Because over the last ten years, despite logically understanding that it is 100% impossible, I’ve internalized an insane belief that if I don’t have my shit together — not even regular together, but sparkly together — I’m a failure.

It started as kind of a vague notion, a nagging that bothered me from time to time, but was easy to ignore because my shit was, in fact, together. And often sparkly. In fact, in some cases I think that nagging was the reason my shit was together; a fear of failure meant that I could avoid it. Plus, the weird pressure to be perfect was often the foundation for some of my best jokes!

THAT FEELING WHEN YOU ARE NOT PERFECT BUT ONLY IN SUPER RELATABLE AND ULTIMATELY IMPERMANENT WAYS

But I’m in the middle of a whole lot these days. It’s hard to share (because perceived failure) but hard not to share (because for some reason I NEED you to know that the man at the impound lot who took my beloved car didn’t know the movie The Brave Little Toaster, and also wasn’t interested in the plot synopsis I offered). If I don’t document it now, I think these memories might get filed under “let’s forget this happened,” and ultimately won’t be useful to either of us.

So I’m going to experiment with sharing — LIVE! From “The Middle of It.”

This might mean more future posts are going to be behind the subscriber paywall. I can’t guarantee any stories as juicy as my first IUD, but … I’m trying my best.

Love,
Christina