July 25, 2001
Good Girl
I'm such a bad journaler. I know. And here I go, about to start making excuses (i.e., catching y'all up). July, for the heretofore uninformed, has been a royal pain in my ass. In some ways. In some ways it's turning into a life-changing month. My 29th birthday was on the 7th, and it was a lot of fun. I got to hang out with my friends and their babies, eat good food and be silly. Lots of silly, in fact. Next year I plan to be even sillier, if I can help it.
My grandma, who broke her hip on June 28th, came home from the hospital on my birthday. She's 93 years old and has always lived alone, until she broke her hip. Rather than put her in a rehabilitation center for several weeks, we decided to bring her home so she could rehabilitate there. To do that, someone would need to stay with her 24/7. Grandma has four daughters still alive and living nearby (and one son, but I don't want to go into that particular situation), including my mom. My mom's sisters are all retired or semi-retired. My mom isn't retired, but she can telecommute. I'm not retired, but I was already essentially working an afternoon shift this summer because of school. So I dropped out of school for the summer session and my mom made arrangements to telecommute.
Here's how it works. My aunts Helen and Hazel, who for all practical purposes live together (they're in different apartments down the hall from each other) come out on Sunday or Monday, and stay until Wednesday or Thursday. My mom and my aunt Vera are there Wednesday through Sunday, or whichever days are left. I fill in where someone else is unavailable (like if my mom has weekend plans), and I go over several nights a week (since I can sleep late the next day) to give whoever's taking care of grandma a rest. For the first couple weeks, Grandma was pretty restless and confused at night, and needed someone to stay awake with her. Lately, I end up sleeping on the couch in the living room, where her hospital bed is.
It's really hard. Grandma has never been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and she's not precisely senile, she just has almost no short-term memory at all. If something hurts (like her hip, when she was first healing), she'll tell you, and then five minutes later forget that she told you, and tell you again. If she needs to go to the bathroom, she would ask for the bedpan, and then five minutes later ask, "Did I pee?" I know it's hard for her to ask me for help, even more than asking her daughters, because I'm the baby. I'm one of her youngest grandchildren, if not the youngest.
I've thought about this a lot, probably too much. This is bringing up some old memories of my dad. There are similarities, both tangible and emotional. In some ways, by willingly giving up part of my life and doing something others see as self-sacrificing (I don't think it is at all, more on that in a minute), I feel almost like I'm doing penance for not doing the same things with my dad. I know he didn't want me to. Like my grandma, he hated asking me for anything, because I was the baby. I found out after he died that he didn't want me to go visit him in the hospital -- something I felt horribly guilty for -- because he didn't want me to see him and remember him sick. At the same time, though, a part of me has always felt like I should have given him more, or done more for him. I feel bad because I resented him and his illness keeping me from being 'normal'.
I know. This was twelve years ago. For the most part I've worked through it, but occasionally things still crop up. So I get uncomfortable when people tell me I'm doing something noble or self-sacrificing. For one, I'm just doing what family should do for family. I had one friend astounded that I would drop out of school for my grandma, like that was barely a relation at all. I mean, my grandma helped raise me. To be honest, dropping out wasn't a huge burden. I was ready for a break, and I'd given myself more of a schedule this semester than I could really handle. Also, in a big way, it feels like I'm doing this more for myself than for her. And part of my brain says I'm really not doing that much at all, particularly compared to my aunts and mom who are there constantly. I'm totally divided on this because while all of the above is truly how I feel, at the same time, when someone praises me for helping out the martyr-ish part of me that craves attention crawls out from her cave and basks and preens, "Yes, aren't I doing so much? Aren't I being so selfless and perfect?" The Good Girl compulsion runs deep in me. This is no surprise to anyone who's been reading for a while.
I can't stand knowing that someone doesn't like me or think I'm wonderful -- particularly if I can't do anything to change that opinion. There's been some flack online lately, some very vocal former T8 writers (and their friends), speaking out publicly against Wicked Ink, coming up with all sorts of inaccurate information about us. We got started writing for Tribe 8 because we're college friends of the editor. (We've actually never met her.) We stole someone's book. (We didn't. The original author blew every deadline they were assigned, turned in a partially completed, substandard manuscript, and left us with ten days to completely rewrite a 75,000-word book.) We're frustrated novel writers. (Okay, that might be true, but it's also irrelevant.) I knew to expect some criticism of my writing when I started getting published. I knew there would be people who didn't like what I wrote, or didn't like my ideas about Tribe 8. I didn't expect the politics and the personal backlash.
Hindsight being what it is, I should've expected it. Some of the former writers were immensely popular with the online fan base and were very vocal in public forums about the game. Unfortunately, some of them weren't very good writers, and got an overinflated sense of their own importance. Also unfortunately, the editor had no one with which to replace them. Then one day last summer, within about two weeks, she received five letters of introduction and writing samples from five writers who all apparently knew each other, including one book proposal (for Harvest of Thorns). We were absolutely literally in the right place at the right time. Hilary liked us, we liked her. When we did start writing books, we never missed a deadline, and we turned in work that rarely needed more than just a superficial edit or two. Yeah, I'm very proud of this. As a result, she kept working with us. Individually or collectively, Wicked Ink has put in eight book proposals to Tribe 8 over the past year. We've gotten seven of them. What I didn't foresee is how much that might piss off some of the older writers.
There's nothing I can do about it. And that makes me crazy. I've been insulted and condescended to in public forums (although not as bad as Laura, who's been drawing the most heat of any of us for her stuff in Word of the Dancers) by people who tell me to "go write some decent books for a change". And there's no answer for that. This is not someone who is interested in listening to the other side, is not open to changing his or her mind. This is someone, to quote Brand, who has an axe to grind, and is going to grind it in as loud and public a manner as he or she possibly can. So we're all being professional, and after a few polite responses, we dropped it. Hell, it's probably not professional for me to talk about it here, but oh well. Still, it's tough. I keep resisting the urge to email some of the loudest folks and say, "Hey! Quit hating me! I'm a nice girl, I swear!"
The absolutely worst thing you can do to me, I think, is to not like me. And if you like me, the worst thing you can do is to disapprove of me.
Posted by Lisa at July 25, 2001 10:35 AM
