Long ago, in a small apartment in the north east Bronx, lived a girl (and a writer). Every night she looked forward to writing a new entry in her diary, wrote volumes of poetry in heart-covered notebooks, and even wrote plays about her friends and latest crushes in her spare time. When she went off to college, naturally she majored in English and loved her creative writing classes most of all. She thought someday she'd earn a living as a writer.
But after graduation, her mother persuaded her to become a teacher. So she went back to school and hung the writer up in the closet, next to her size 8 wardrobe. Every summer she thought about taking the writer out, dusting her off. But before she knew it, summer was over again and she was back to school.
She was good at teaching, and she spent all of her extra time trying to be better at it.
When the girl was 24 her mother died unexpectedly of leukemia. The crevice in her soul was insatiable. She pushed the writer to the back of the closet as larger clothes took over. She tried to numb her loss with food and cigarettes. She traded carrots for cheesecake, and long daily walks for quick jaunts the car. The melancholy gained further momentum during a 4 year fight with infertility. Her premature baby received an early diagnosis of cerebral palsy. She knew she wouldn't have another shot at pregnancy. She cried a lot, she smoked too many cigarettes, and she found a comfortable place in the fridge. Her sadness consumed her, and she consumed everything with no remorse.
She just turned 40. She's spent almost half her life resenting the happiness of others, feeling sorry for herself, missing her mother, blaming the hospital, and forgetting to live, really live, not just get through the day.
She watched Oprah. She wanted to live her best life. She started yet another diet. She read Eckhart Tolle and Geneen Roth. Their words comforted her for a short time. But then she was sad again, and she ate more ice cream.
And then something changed. She read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and she realized she needed her own happiness project. She realized she should, by all means, be happy. She had a nice life - a nice husband who made a nice living, a nice house filled with nice things. She had to stop dwelling on the past, stop reliving her misery day after day, put the sadness in the closet, and let the writer out.
Month 1 - April resolution
Start writing.
