Do I Love It?

A few weekends ago, several friends and I were socializing at Northern Michigan University’s Student Nurses Association Charity Ball held in The Landmark Inn. We’d spent a very classy evening drinking gin and tonics, martinis and one delicious dark and stormy—totally classy, except for when my tight red dress split ass-side open while I was crunking on the dance floor, but that’s a story for another day.

Kathryn VanderWoude, fellow author and editor in blue, and I, in red, just before the ball.

As the evening wound down, our group of ten or so retreated to the cozy mezzanine above the Northland Pub. One of the group members was a nursing student friend of mine whom I secretly want to corner and force her to discuss writing with me—on top of being a student nurse she is also a graduate of St. Mary’s with a degree in Literature an Women's Studies. I normally refrain from totally cornering her because I am not quite that crazy—as of yet.

But, having drunk a few beverages, I was all over chatting with her and her fiancé, who also attends Northern in pursuit of his Master’s degree in English.

“I love criticism,” I blathered on, sometime during drink number four five of the evening. This was my response to the fiancé, after he’d discussed giving criticism to his introductory English students.

Oh, fuck, did I really say that? I have a nagging habit of wanting to articulate my feelings in a way that they always ring one-hundred percent true. It sounds simple enough, but I dare you try a day without exaggerating a single emotion or event in the slightest. Try to spend the day picking out the perfect word or phrase to describe how you felt when that asshole driving the black Silverado cut you off in traffic. Did you really want to kill him or did you just want to follow him to his next stop and slash his tires?

There’s a big difference.

Numb from inebriation, I didn’t worry much that night about this pattern of mine, but when I awoke in the morning, it was the very first thing that popped into my head. Do I really love criticism?

Probably?

I’m not saying I haven’t wanted to smoke till I passed out or eat myself into a coma so that I didn’t have to deal with the stress of re-writes or so that I could escape from the tenacious shaking doubt that plagues every creative person alive. I have. Often, after working on the same piece for so long, the task of going on seems too mountainous to accomplish alone. After an extended time in front of the same project, all the words start blurring together, they—I swear—dance off the page and jump into the trash, committing hara-kiri because the author who penned them is simply a failure.

These are the moments when I just need another person’s eye. Sometimes, I think that without a little direction, by way of another writer, is the only push I’ll ever need. And, of course, I don’t always agree with the criticism I receive, but I need it.

But, do I love it? Perhaps, but if I do it’s only in the way I love antibiotics. In the end I feel better, but meanwhile my insides are being torn apart and I’m spending a socially unacceptable amount of time in the bathroom. Usually crying.

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