I’m a LOSER. Someone Tell Me Why.
I am not your fucking clickbait.
My writing work is only monetized because society places value on saleable content. My content is saleable only to the somewhat like minded. I find few like minded. So that leaves me where, exactly? Waiting for someone who is not logophobic to come validate my efforts. Pop culture nauseates me. How shallow, common, easily digested content gets top ratings, and it’s got the creatively grim “Grammarly” sanitization. No thank you- I’d rather read a piece where the “right word” is one of my choosing- not the “fix” of some empty program that doesn’t even register my vernaculous choices sometimes..
I entered a writing contest. I spent nights on end possessed by punctuation, paragraphs, and an absolute need- a hunger- a mild obsession- to craft a winning tapestry of syntax and sentence- each word lovingly fretted over before it inked the final draft. It took me a few days to work my magic and weave it together, into what I considered a story worthy of submitting to the contest. After around the 17th proofreading- I entered it, formatted and edited to perfection. It’s content couldn’t have been more relevant to the contest prompt. It’s not my best- but it still out-qualities the “winners.”
Now…here’s where it gets sticky- and I get a bit toothy, indignantly angered by the lack of appreciation for my slightly above average endeavors. Even slightly above average, (yet engaging) content should’ve trumped the uber-familiar superfluous vanilla angst theme.
Time elapses. Winners are posted. Essentially the first piece posted below was valued at $10k- second and 3d place entries were of equal “substance” and comparably worded. They received large cash prizes as well- I didn’t even earn so much as an honorable mention. That in itself is fine- definitely not my first literary rejection. Not winning the contest isn’t what punched me in the gut. It was losing to a filler piece. I am going to post the story that was chosen as the winner. Then, I will post my entry. Do people just not value texturally cadenced, heartspoken storytelling anymore? Congratulations to the winner- the entry isn’t bad at all, I don’t mean to imply it was. What it is, is emotionally relatable, sticky sappy, and of what I’d call average composition. It’s a sweet story, just not TEN THOUSAND dollars sweet.
I feel like I got titslapped and hardshafted by my peers…present readers excluded. Please, take the time to compare the 2 stories below. My entry will be second. Not saying it should’ve won- I just know my piece is more sensorily vivid, gripping and better structured. It’s insulting to serious creators as a community, to marginalize actual work, because it takes an apparently rare and discerning palate to savor it’s offerings.
If you have a moment, give both stories below a skim-over. After you’ve formed your opinions, your educated input would be heartily appreciated. I’d really love to hear your thoughts and opinions, Consider the comment section open- I’m intrigued to see the feedback and engagement on this post. I now feel disturbingly disheartened- that all we value is fucking fluff and fodder.…We seek it, and reward it, as a society, as a culture. This folly at the expense of dictionary diamonds, knowledge-heavy thought pieces, and the coyly nuanced poem. It pained me as a writer, that the winning content was so overly simplistic (with all due respect to author).
I fact check, word stockpile (like a hypergraphic serial killer- just illegibly scrawling notebooks full of interesting words…that’s me- sapiophile to the core) and I frequently dive into my trusty Thesaurus. Point being- I feel that writing quality wasn’t a primary factor in judging said writing contest, as it should’ve been. Any comments/views you have to offer are well appreciated. Keep it kind (but honest).
Choosing My Own Mirror
by TARU ANNIINA LIIKANEN 18 days ago in RECOVERY
First Place in The Remarkably Real Challenge
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The me I choose to see is authentically, remarkably me.
Image by the author. It will make sense in a little while, I swear.
I step out of the shower and grab the towel hanging right next to me. My reflex is to cover my body immediately, so he doesn’t see it so clearly in this bright LED light.
I start applying moisturizer on my legs while he grabs his toothbrush and applies paste on it. He stops.
“What does this mean?” I look up from my lotion-covered legs and see him pointing at the pink post-it pasted on the wall, just above the sink, where the mirror would normally go.
“I’ve wondered about this for a while,” he explains.
The smile arises naturally from within, and I allow my grab on the towel to loosen a little.
Where should I begin?
Other People’s Mirrors
When I’m a kid, I love the mirror, and I tell my mother I’m going to be a model or a princess when I grow up. It still takes a couple years for me to develop an interest in the written word, and even more for feminism to make its way into my life.
Those couple of years between about 3 and 5, I firmly believe I am the prettiest girl in the world. Both my parents are photographers, so it’s easy to grow up thinking life will be all about people taking pictures of my beautiful face.
I realize my body is too big when I’m about 10 years old.
I’m a happy, but round kid, cute but on the larger side, and I don’t have a habit of doing sports. One of the boys in my class starts putting us girls into categories: hot, not hot, fat. There’s only me and two more girls in the last category, but one of them already has breasts so she’s deemed hot. The rest of the boys, including my crush, agree with this categorization, and my illusion about being pretty begins to erode. Is that really true, am I ugly? Fat?
I don’t understand I’m seeing myself in a mirror built by other people’s insecurities.
It’s the mid-90’s, heroin chic is the most fashionable look in all the world, and nobody has yet heard of JLo, let alone body positivity, the revolutionary idea that we should love our physical beings as they are. All us girls do our best to fit into the super-skinny mold. The result in my case is, of course, an eating disorder.
Through my adolescent years I alternate between anorexic and bulimic tendencies, always mad at myself for my binges.
“If you’re going to have an eating disorder, at least be skinny,” I tell myself. It feels like such a failure, to feel this bad about myself but not have enough willpower to really look like a skeleton. I’m old enough to understand I have an eating disorder, but I want to be better at it.
I spend my days in front of a mirror, judging my body in the same way the boys in my class do. Fat or skinny, pretty or ugly, there’s no in-between. What I see is always wrong, although I’m never even close to being overweight. I stop having lunch at school because I’m so afraid of the comments I might get from boys.
Fake It ’Til You Make It
It gets pretty bad when I’m around 14 or 15. Bad enough for people to get worried but not enough to get medical attention. The boys in my class never stop telling me I’m too much, though. It’s probably because I let them have it, too. Where I’m from, nobody willingly steps down from a fight.
At 16, I go to a different high school across town. It’s just my two best friends and me, and a whole new start. I’m not as skinny as I wanted to be, but enough to not be qualified ‘fat’ in this new school.
And then, somehow, I start the long road to recovery.
It’s hard to say exactly how or why I come to the conclusion that I need to get better. Maybe this is the first time I can do it, now that I’m not surrounded by the same people. Maybe I just got hungry enough. But it’s not easy to let go of the fear of gaining weight and to start loving myself again.
Then one day, I grab a magazine and read a confidence-boosting tip that changes everything.
“Say something nice to yourself every day.”
Even at that age it feels dumb, but I remember the tip and come back to it several times in the next couple of days.
One day, I look in the mirror and try it.
“Hey girl, you’re looking good today,” I say to my reflection. I say it out loud, but at a low volume so that nobody else hears me. It doesn’t feel like much.
The next day, I try to go for something more specific. I tell myself I have pretty eyes, nice legs, and my hair is looking amazing. It’s a lie, my thin Finnish strands never look amazing. Nevertheless, soon this new habit becomes second nature.
After a while, I don’t have to force myself to find something nice to say about myself. I might have a bad hair day, but I convince myself my skin must be luminous. I’m not as skinny as I wanted, but I’m tall, and proud of it. I don’t want to disappear anymore. I can begin reclaiming my space.
Even though it takes me years more to fully overcome my eating disorders and learn how to eat intuitively, this is the moment something changes. I’m now starting to believe it. I don’t hate myself anymore. I’m starting to see myself in my mirror, on my own terms.
At 17, I go to a restaurant and eat, in public and with other people watching, for the first time since I was 10. I’m 19 when I wear a short-sleeve T-shirt in public for the first time in about 7 years. I’m 20 when I put on a bikini and go to the beach. Not only that, but I move to Barcelona and head to the beach every single day in the summer. In a bikini, showing the body I had spent all my energy despising for such a long time.
I start understanding how much I’ve missed because of trying to hate my body into disappearing.
A New Mirror
Over fifteen years later, I’ve come far from where I was back then.
I’ve left my early bullies behind in my small hometown in Finland and moved to Argentina, where men consider me beautiful. I love seeing myself in this mirror, one in which I’m exotic and desirable.
At 31, I move to my current apartment. It’s the first time I’m living alone after sharing with boyfriends or roommates for all of my adult life, and that means it’s just me paying for all the furnishings. A couch, a bed, a bookshelf, a desk and an innumerable amount of smaller decorative items. Over the first year, I sew my curtains, paint some pictures for the walls, even put together some cushions.
The one part that remains is a bathroom mirror. I just can’t find one I’d like, so I put off this purchase for weeks, months, years. There’s a mirror in my bedroom to take a look at my outfits before heading out, and a smaller one at the entrance, at eye level, to check my makeup (applied with the help of a small hand mirror). But no large mirror to examine myself after a shower or every time I go wash my hands.
One day I realize it’s been three and a half years since I’ve had a mirror in the bathroom. Should I finally just buy one and get it over with?
The problem is, I don’t really want a mirror in this room.
I don’t want to see myself naked in the harsh lighting of my bathroom every day, because I know I’ll again focus on everything that’s not right about me. The cellulite on my belly, the skin on my neck that’s showing new signs of aging every month, the lack of symmetry in my face that grows more noticeable as time goes by. And are my teeth growing crooked now, too?
I’m not sure whether it’s a good thing or not, to stop looking at oneself so closely. I may have quit judging every minuscule part of my body, but I’ve also stopped giving myself my morning pep talk that gave me so much confidence and made me start off the day feeling strong.
What do I want to see?
I grab some pink post-its and a pen, and write down the only thing I need to know.
“YOU LOOK HOT.”
I glue it on the wall, thinking it will fall off as soon as the humidity gets to it. It doesn’t. For some reason, this is the one thing in my apartment that doesn’t fall apart after a couple of months.
There it is, every morning and night, looking at me as I apply the ever-growing number of beauty products my skin now requires, or when I brush my teeth. I read it, sometimes aloud. On some days I pay attention to it, on others I don’t notice it at all.
It is my mirror now, the one I choose to see. It is me, no less real than a physical glass object. These three words, while they might seem superficial, carry the entire journey and everything I’ve learned. The pain, and my victory over it.
Doing the Work
He stays quiet as I tell him the story behind the post-it.
“Why are you smiling?” I ask him when I’ve finished. We’re lying in bed, covered with a blanket.
“Because you’re so beautiful, especially like this. Fresh out of the shower, just as you are,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s so strange that you couldn’t see it.”
That smile takes over my lips, too. He’s right. I am, I just didn’t see it.
I still need to make a conscious effort every day to convince myself I’m beautiful, smart, capable. That I’m a good writer, a good friend, a good person, worthy of love. But I choose to do it because I know my insecurities aren’t the real me.
The me I choose to see is the real me. Authentically, remarkably me.
***********************************************
Savior Self
Saving You…Saves Me.
Since childhood, I’ve been imbued with this inexorable urge to help those in distress or danger. The crazy lady stopping traffic in both directions to carry an angry snapping turtle across the road?
Me.
Emergency triage on a broken-legged feral guinea hen? Right on my kitchen counter.
That seagull with an injured wing? I Chased it, threw a towel over it, and kept it safe in my laundry basket until the Wildlife Rehab folks picked it up.
The latter earned me a nice little scar. I just HAD to pick up the towel to check on that damned bird. Apparently, gulls display gratitude by snapping at your face with their sharp yellow beak. That one must have been extra thankful…
Don’t mention it, little guy. Anytime.
Though there have been too many similar situations to recall them all, one particular instance stands apart in my mind.
At the time, I was live-in manager of a small horse farm up in the Catskill Mountains. Late fall brought notoriously changeable weather to upstate New York. Sun to snow, back to sun, followed by the promise of a frigid, often blustery night.
Early one morning, wearing fuzzy pajamas and rubber boots, I began my regular routine of checking on and feeding horses.
The snow crunched noisily underfoot as I approached the pasture. Squinting through the brilliance of early sunlight, a large, dark lump caught my eye. Instinctively, I knew something was awry. Snowy slush slowed my gait, but halfway to that mysterious mass, I broke into an awkward run. My heart sank.
It was Amir.
Amir had spent most of his life as the farm’s prized stud. A strong, regal, impeccably bred Arabian stallion. Black Beauty in the flesh. His glory days as a sought after sire were years behind him by the time our paths crossed. By then, he’d reached his early 30’s…ripe old age for a horse. His arthritic legs eventually betrayed him, but he never lost his dignified air.
Upon reaching his eerily still body, I knelt down, fearing the worst. Cupping my hand gently over his velveteen muzzle, I was relieved to feel wisps of breath. Weak, fading fast, and in shock…but- he was alive.
During the night prior, Amir must have slipped and fallen on the frozen mud; thrashing himself into a state of frothy exhaustion while trying to regain his legs.
The early sunlight began to thaw the frozen dirt, causing the horse’s body to slowly sink itself into the slurry.
Unresponsive to my initial efforts to rouse him, it became woefully apparent that I was going to need more hands.
Departing from him with a soothing word and caress, I rushed up to the house. Gathering a towel, the blanket off of my bed, a bottle filled with hot water, and a turkey baster, I hurriedly called the property manager- no answer. Called the vet, no answer. I left messages describing the emergency, and bade them, please come quickly. I cursed my cell phone, as it was useless outside the house’s Wi-Fi range.
Hands heavy with provisions, I practically flew back to Amir.
Covering his chilled body first, then gingerly positioning his monarchal head to lay atop the towel, I availed him as much comfort as possible in that moment.
I’ve never been a quitter, even when my goal seemed unattainable. I was determined to fight for the survival of this old man, until either life, or death, claimed victory.
Amir’s eyes, once so deep and clear, were half-lidded and unfocused. I knew I had to separate his body from the icy ground, if he was going to have any chance at all. Painstakingly, I burrowed my boots underneath his back, wriggling between him and the unforgiving, frosted ground. Now I half-sat, half-laid, submerged to my hips in icy mud.
I never felt the cold. Nor did the horse feel too heavy a weight for me to bear, though of course, he was. Thank you, adrenaline.
Knowing he must be dehydrated from his unseen exertions, I twisted my body, propping his head. With kid gloves, I dripped warm water onto his pallid tongue, hopeful it would help.
The sky occluded itself with pregnant snow clouds. The sun, simultaneously saving and sinking us, had now abandoned us altogether. The flurries began to fall.
A preternatural hush pressed weightily against us. Glimmering white fractals, unique as those they fell upon, contrasted the blackness of Amir’s soft coat.
Skirting the precipice of reason, we sat there together for what seemed an eternity.
“Hey!”
A loud voice shook me out of my hypothermic haze. It was early afternoon. The property manager, groundskeeper in tow, rushed to our corporeal clump.
My teeth chattered as I spat instructions into the snow. They must’ve been somewhat understandable, as the two men ran back the way they came, and quickly returned to me with what I’d asked them to retrieve.
Two winch cables from my truck.
I told my 2 samaritans where to slide the cables, equidistant, underneath Amir.
They heaved. The horse let out a ragged breath, but did not budge.
On the count of 3, they gave another mighty pull.
To my shock and delight, Amir raised his own head.
1,2,3- Heave!
Miraculous and seemingly impossible, they rolled the old horse up onto his belly. He wavered there for a moment, getting his bearings.
It must’ve taken all the strength left in him to re-equilibrate on 4 legs. But he did it. He actually did it.
My coworkers managed to lead him into a warmly bedded stall, just as the vet arrived on scene.
I barely remember being plucked from the icy ground and brought inside. Consciousness brought about by tea and a warm fire unfroze my panic, and I achingly rushed back outside to check on Amir.
