Happy Writers Society: Free Therapy

Remember that one time blogger went down and everyone freaked out? Good times. Though eating posts? NOT cool. Especially posts that are for a good cause.

Hope everyone is having a good day. I know at least one of you out there is having a VERY good one. I'm quite the fan of Friday the 13th.

I think this calls for cheesecake, don't you?

Also, I swear this post is happy, even if it doesn't look like it at first.

So I have issues. Everyone has issues. It's just part of being human—we go through hard things and they leave a mark on us.

For example, I have an irrational fear of losing people I care about. Not just from death, but from moving or losing friends or growing apart. Really, anyway you can lose someone, I worry about it. When I think about why, it's obvious. I lost my grandmother at 8. I moved twice, both at very transitional points in my adolescence. I couldn't keep friends; they always left for someone cooler who didn't want me around.

I still struggle with not being enough. Friends leaving and people bullying me? It always left me wondering what was wrong with me. I would try so hard to be kind to my friends, to really be there for them. That never was enough for them to stick around. Nothing was. It seemed like I was ultimately flawed, and I could never quite pin down why. This led to a lot of self-isolation and distrust of kindness, viewing it as pity or possibly even a malicious trick. (Which, of course, perpetuated my inability to hold on to friends.)

And then there's the whole bottom-of-the-over-achievers thing. I've always been smart, but not smart enough, you know? Smart enough to get A's, but never smart enough for the teacher to fawn over me. Just good enough to be on a team, but not to start. Capable enough to be in a play, but only as an extra. I even made it into the top 30 of my high school class—as #29. Me and #30 spent all of graduation joking about how stupid it was for us to even be on the stand, since we were way back in the dark and couldn't even see all the sappy graduation movies. It was fitting, since when you're good-but-not-best you often end up being overlooked anyway.

Dude, trying to be smart messed me up, lol. Though there's worse things, right?

But here's where this turns into the happy post:

All this stuff? I totally use it in my writing, even when I'm not trying! These themes show up in a lot of my work, and it's the best therapy ever. As I write characters who face loss and isolation and sidekick syndrome, I am able to grow and understand myself better. It helps me come to terms with this messy thing called life. Stories are my way of making sense of the world.

I am very grateful for this. I've learned so much not only about myself but others. I feel less alone and more able to face the things I struggle with. When I am feeling sorry for myself, I can pull out of it much quicker than I used to. I know this is because I've explored my feelings through stories. Writing has given me so much peace in regards to these things, and that, of course, makes me happy.