The Crying Game
I write this now, after the waiting ended, but not that long ago I was on tenterhooks (@ Dictionary.com).
I'd applied to a coveted MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program in creative writing. At Vanderbilt. One of the hardest to enter programs in the U.S. Fully-funded, it's in the top 50 writing programs, and they take three - THREE - fiction writers each year. This year 615 applied.
The odds were against me, but at the time, hope sprang eternal. And as the deadline to apply came and went, as the responding silence to my application grew heavy like the gray-green air before an ugly summer storm, I tried to make that silence be something it ultimately wasn't -- approval. Acceptance. Validation. I began to daydream about what it would be like to devote every day to writing. To interact with English professors who revered the language and story-telling the way I do, which is with something similar to incandescent religious fervour. I thought about the community I'd join there in Nashville, of the fellow writers I'd meet and influence, and who would also influence me. Of the English classes I could go on and teach with my Masters degree ... it seemed easily within reach. All could commence as soon as that letter of acceptance arrived.
The echoing wait grew oppressive, and I searched the web with fear and longing, seeing posts from others about receiving phone calls already, acceptance calls that were so personal and intimate. It made my hand-wringing treks to the post office for an acceptance letter all the more sad. And still I waited, for some kind of notice that I was in. Or I was out.
Getting the rejection email was a bit like having a door shut quietly but firmly at the end of a heated argument with someone you love. They stop talking and leave the room, and you sit there staring at the door, white noise between your ears where your brain ought to be. It seems strangely final; the emotion behind it is worrisome. Was that closing click of door latch and wood the end of something you can't retrieve? Was this exchange something ruinous and forever hurtful? It felt like existing for the briefest whisper in time inside a vacuum, with all of the oxygen sucked -- easy-peasy -- from the lungs, without as much as a whimper or a jostle. It just -- wasn't going to happen. And that was that.
I could start breathing again. Sooner would be better than later.
My inner critic already knew I'd never make it in, so my exterior reaction was pretty placid. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained," I blustered, as I turned my face to the rainy window, its damp sketch of raindrops like the tears on my face. I couldn't dash them away fast enough, couldn't put the futility of such a silly pipe dream away quickly enough to pretend I'd never done it. Never tried.
How does one wear this kind of failure? It's not a failure to dream; for that I give myself some credit. But to long for it? To allow myself to truly wish on the star? It seems childlike and foolish now -- a crying game for the naive.