On Saying No to the Prom King
My dream school said yes but my dreams have expanded
I’m still reeling from shock. The MFA program that, as far as collective literary consciousness and Big Names are concerned, is the Platonic ideal of MFA programs, just took me off their Waitlist and offered me a coveted spot. In my Personal Statement for this place, I gush about a personal literary hero who teaches there and I put my entire being into making a case for why we should work together. I feel a little dizzy knowing that I actually convinced them. My cockiness always finds its threshold when something like this actually happens. (What am I even talking about, NOTHING LIKE THIS HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME!)
But the financial aid they’re offering me, while a large objective sum, is pennies in an Estimated Cost fountain that is truly unfathomable. The choice I’ve made is the right one, and not just because of full-funding and a stipend in a town with a low cost of living: I’m already thigh-deep in projects that bear no resemblence to the writing samples that got their attention. And, hilariously enough, I’m feeling less egotistical than ever before, though I was convinced that if this place said yes to me I would become an insufferable person. I’ve been humbled by words themselves in the last 48 hours — the limits of what they can do even in the most adept hands — and my own are hardly superlative. I’ve got such a long way to go before I become the writer I envision eventually being, the one I hope I’m strong enough to become.
I’m also more aware than I’ve ever been that turning a damn good phrase doesn’t matter, not really. The people I’ve been close to who can do it the best are also the people who’ve hurt me the most. Words don’t protect you and they can definitely put you in danger. They’re as inherently meaningful as is jewelry or dumbells or combat boots, which is to say, they can be entirely superficial or they can be utilized for a purpose.
While on the subject of strength, though, here’s a selfie I didn’t want to take on principle (I beg you to ignore the facial expression that shows how deeply this is the case, I’ve just worked out like crazy for the second day in a row and I’m exhausted) but I’ve never actually shown my gains like gym-types are supposed to do and today I felt like doing it — funnily enough, before I got that yes I spent so many months wishing for every day at 11:11:
Only fitting that I turned down the prom king when I don’t even know if that dude with all the wealth and the shimmering reputation could beat me in a wrestling match. And here I thought I was the bookish little freak he wouldn’t look twice at. I suppose the metaphor falters there, MFA-types are supposed to be bookish and theoretically freakish too, but I’m not convinced that Renowned Institution is ready for my unconfined self. My mentors at Georgia have already heard my outbursts. And I’ve never felt so Gotten before.
There are a million reasons I feel like crying (though I’m not). One is the bittersweet truth that I cannot call the person who is directly responsible for why I wrote one of the stories I wrote that only this place recieved. That story would never have existed if I hadn’t mentioned late one night that when I was 17 I had an erotic dream about a dragon and spent the rest of high school and my first year of college making it the best it could be. I would have lost faith or interest in it if not for a British editor who, years later, when I was getting my MA in Children’s Lit, called it a “cracking read” and told me she could see Neil Gaiman’s influence on my work. I related the surprise of this literary episode to this formerly dedicated reader of my work and, either idly or with great interest, no way to know over text, he said, “I’d like to see you revisit this story as the writer you are now.”
In the intervening year between that moment and this one, the “writer I am now” has become entirely undefinable.
I feel a little sad about shrugging off my former certainties, maybe that’s another reason for the dry tears in my chest. But I spent a long time certain about a lot of things and it never did me one bit of good.
So here’s to the unknown in all its…its…well, that’s to be revealed, isn’t it?