This year broke me. Heaven knows I’m not the only one. Coming out of 2015 felt impossible having lost my grandmother, who was one of a tiny number of people I trusted implicitly. You never get over loss like this. The person who defines comfort for you. Then, 2016 rolled in and torched what was left of my spirit. I held sick and dying dogs—dogs I’d loved more than most people. I lost two within a week of each other, sobbing on the floor at the vet, pleading for mercy. For them. For me. For us all. I snot cried for Bowie and Rickman and Prince. I stopped taking my antidepressants. Again. Right before the horror U.S. election, I learned someone I love dearly is sick. I’ve become a caretaker, trying my best to foster peace and hope. I have drunk my weight in wine again and again because frankly, sometimes being awake too much to bear. To pretend otherwise would be false. To pretend that my tribe—writers, artists, musicians, and scholars—aren’t collectively wailing on the floor would also be false. At this moment, we are all, as Ann Patchett described in her book This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, “in the ditch.” In the ditch with grief, with fear, with rage. So, cheers to closing the book on this year and welcoming 2017 as a time for self-care, healing, and resistance whenever possible. Cheers to climbing out of the ditch, but also knowing we can’t leave grief, fear, and rage behind. We must wrap ourselves with it like armor. This is how and why art gets made. For make art we must. For each other. For our world.
So, in the spirit of finding joy where we can, I bring you my top ten things (in no particular order) that kept me going in this dumpster fire year. I encourage you to reflect on your own and use them as fuel. Thank you for a wonderful Little Fiction | Big Truths publishing year. We are proud of each of our contributors and readers for we are part of the solution.
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1.Holding my chapbook, No Man’s Wild Laura (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2016) in my hands. Seeing a book you wrote for the first time is always a high point of this whole writer gig. I’ll be forever grateful to Margaret Bashaar and Sarah Reck for the thoughtful editing, design, and beautiful craftsmanship of these little books. I nerded so hard over the different endpapers. Knowing that a press gets you and your work is invaluable.
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2.Every time Ben walked up behind me when I was lost in music and cooking something complicated (one of the many things I do when I can’t deal with reality) and wrapped his arms around me. Though on some level it feels like being interrupted writing, I am always happy he brings me back to earth, back to him.
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3.A January visit with Georgia Bellas in Boston. One thing I’m finding the longer I’m active in this writing community is how I wish I’d met the people I’m meeting and becoming close with now years earlier. It seems like such a waste, but by God walking around frigid streets in search of pasta and limoncello and even just wine or pour over coffees in the kitchen of a kindred misfit is worth the wait.
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4.AWP Los Angeles. Not the convention itself. Not the crowds or the stress of talking to strangers, but spending time with people you share a connection with. Trekking to Hollywood to record stores & vintage shops. Thinking about the storied streets. The light. Sharing actual physical space with people you mostly know through the written word is magic. I took note of the way he held his fork, the timbre of her voice, how shiny her hair was, how small her frame, how they walked through the crowd, what drinks he ordered, how fast we drank them, how loudly we laughed, the thirty seconds of courtyard karaoke we happened upon, what the room looked like when we were all crowded around a table under neon lights, and how the words each person had written echoed in my head. If it’s possible to be in love with a room full of people, I was. What can I say? I’m a sap.
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5.Bonnie. In April, Ben and I drove three hours to meet a puppy. We were looking for a border collie mix and found a rescue group with a litter who’d been saved from a parking lot. She was eight weeks old, crawled in my lap, and I immediately cried in this stranger’s living room. The mixed expression of consolation and joy on her face will stick with me. She knew what had happened to our two dogs. She knew that pain from experience. I haven’t slept much since, but every day Bonnie makes me laugh. Every day she gets me up and out and on long walks. Every time I glimpse her massive under bite, I swoon. Who rescued who? Indeed.
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6.Books. Stories. Poems. Essays. Always. The day I started Michael Schmeltzer’s Blood Song and knew from the first poem I would love it. The thousand tears shed while reading Ada Limón’s Bright Dead Things. The rage and motivation to do more and better while reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists. All the poems by Maggie Smith, Julie Brooks Barbour, Ariel Francisco, Rosebud Ben-Oni (as well as her Kenyon Review essays), and Ruben Quesada. Tabitha Blankenbiller’s essays. The two days I finished Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Home, closing both books a few months apart, and having that how am I supposed to walk around with this feeling reaction. The necessity of Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air. The pure love for Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs of Children; these two books inspired my wildness all the more.
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7.A trip to Portland to visit friends and read from my chapbook. When someone goes out of their way to plan not only a reading for you, but a picnic at a vineyard, you cannot help but be overwhelmed. I thank you for your kinship, your amazing roasted vegetable sandwich, and how you put such care and art into everything you do, Tabitha. It is a joy to call you my friend and colleague. And the same goes for Alvin and Michael.
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8.Citizen Lit Podcast. For me to write my feelings about Aubrie Cox and Jim Warner, it would take twenty pages at least. These two are magnetic. If you ever have the chance, sit back and watch how they engage their podcast guests, how they look out for each other, how they support everyone in this community with the work they’re doing at Citizen Lit. On my worst days of feeling like a failure, of wanting to quit writing and editing altogether, listening to their show always brings me back from the brink.
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9.Editing for Little Fiction. It’s not always an easy job. Saying no to people wears on you. The rampant misogyny and racism in more stories than anyone outside of the editorial side of things would ever believe, wears on you. The response to a woman editor even from other women sometimes wears on you. But in the end, being part of a team you love and ultimately, finding a story you love and helping bring it into the world is worth all the headaches and heartache.
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10.Mr. Bear’s Violet Hour Saloon. I didn’t get to listen live every week, but every time I did, I went to bed feeling like part of a community again, feeling inspired and hopeful. I love everything about the show, from the adorable Mr. Bear’s voice to guest readers such as Ross Gay, to the themes and everything in between. Mr. Bear kept me going more than he knows and yes, he actually does “make the lonely a little more bearable.”
Beth is the fiction editor at Little Fiction | Big Truths and she is a big part of what kept us going this year. She’s got a heart as big as the world and talent that knows no bounds. Want proof? Check out her chapbook No Man’s Wild Laura and her story collection I Am Barbarella. Buy them. Read them. Fall in love with them.
