Letting Go of Self-Sabotage
When I was in fourth grade, my elementary school invited an exchange teacher from England to shadow my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. M. I don’t remember this lady’s name, I only remember her face and the color of her hair. I’m not even sure if she was even a teacher, she could have been a graduate student, the accuracy of my childhood memory is not to be trusted. I had a tendency to discard anything that wasn’t relevant to me at the time, which means that there’s a lot I don’t remember, unfortunately.
What I do remember with incredible accuracy is that she catalyzed my love and obsession with British history and my interest in Vikings with the different history lessons and English class activities that she taught us. This TA (for lack of a better title) initiated a pen pal program with a sister grammar school in England. It blew my mind to have a tether to a girl living in a country I had not been to (at the time) but felt a deep connection with.
It was a formative experience. So much so, that I cry over my collection of stationery that rarely sees the light of day because my circle of friends doesn’t do the pen-and-paper thing. There is something unsatisfying about a one-sided letter exchange.
However, as life-changing as the pen pal experience was, it did not leave nearly as strong a mark as the in-class assignment she gave us that involved Vikings.
I got so into it that I exceeded the requirements of the assignment and filled almost six or seven of those blue exam books (we were supposed to write 2-3 pages). I don’t remember finishing the story, it had just ramped up to the point where Vikings were about to invade a village, but I had to turn it in because her time (the TA) at the school was coming to a close. I really wanted her to read my story, I valued her feedback as a subject matter expert but the next thing I know, she’s gone and so is my story, taken with her I presume.
That theft has stayed with me for decades. I’m still smarting over the loss and wondered if she had taken it because it was so good, and if so, what did she do with it? Thirty years ago I was too young to think to make an electronic copy (on my Apple IIc) and too young to think to haul my papers downtown to the Kinkos by Yale. So I had no other copy. It was just gone.
With it went my sense of creativity. I haven’t regained the fervor, the overwhelming need to continue the story and tell the tale. Not since that time in fourth grade when I started to write an epic adventure and had it snatched away before I could finish. I remember waiting for her to send it back too. I brought it up to Ms M, but she was no help and actually seemed to doubt that I had written quite so much or had given anything for the TA to read. In the end, false promises and empty assurances left me bitter and jaded before my time.
I have never forgiven that TA for taking my dream with her. I have yet to let go of the idea that the block that keeps me from finishing a story is just continued self-sabotage, an homage to the first hijacked story in my life.
True or not, NaNoWriMo looms on the horizon. I enter every year, as I have for the last seven, but I never make it to the 50k finish line. If I can figure out how to get me out of my own way, I could possibly discover I had it in me to finish all along. It would be even better and more significant to make that discovery by powering through my obstacles and reaching the finish line in spite of the things that hold me back.
