I polish a story. I send it to my bff, and she writes back that it's good. She likes it.

I submit it for an anthology. A real anthology for real money.

My first ever.

~

"Hey, hey Rosie. You're a girl, yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Tell me really...do women dig scars?"

"Oh yeah! I mean, check out this one, it's huge--" I pull up my shirt and yank down my belt. "--that's a surgery scar. And I have one down here--" I poke my inner knee, where I cut myself last job. "--that one was a doozy. And here--"

"THIS IS NOT GOING THE WAY I PLANNED."

~

I get a polite, slightly formulaic rejection letter.

I am a little surprised, I have to admit.

~

I'm walking through the tube station when hopelessness slams me in the chest.

It drives all the air from my lungs, and I am sinking, so slowly. Like a corpse. The water closes over my head.

I can feel it. I can feel it filling my nose, my mouth. I can feel the slow drift downwards, the swallowing, the blackness.

What are you doing, the water says. You know you're not talented. You don't belong here.

You never belonged here.

Your work is shit.

Your art is shit.

You are shit.

Just give up

up

up

up.

If you sink far enough, everyone else looks like they're treading water just fine.

No. No.

I pull myself out, forcefully, and then I'm walking through the tube station again, and nobody's noticed a thing.

The experience shakes me. I reminds me of when I first moved west, the five months without work. The ego, the self worth, worn away like crumbling sand as each day passed without employment.

There was that point, standing in front of my front door, eating an apple. Feeling my molars crush the sweet pulpy flesh. Knowing everything I do, every move I make, I am destroying something. I am destruction. I am death.

The only way to keep from destroying things would be to die myself.

Standing there, with that apple, was the lowest point of those five months.

Walking through the tube station I feel the pull of the water, dragging at my ankles, dragging me back down into that hole with the apple.

Instead I jam my earbuds in and turn up Paul Simon's Graceland. It always makes me feel better.

Always. Always.

~

I get very sick. I stay home from work. I wear the same clothes for two days until I am sticky with sick-sweat.

I write another story. A weird, extra short story. I make a cave of my pink paisley duvet and I hide in it.

If they didn't like the feel of the first one, here would be something different.

I send it off without sleeping on it, and hide in my cave again.

I have a bath to get rid of the sick-sweats.

~

Since that moment in the tube station, I can feel the water dragging at me.

I go under from time to time, like a tired swimmer, bobbing for air, but I surface quickly.

It scares me. I know I should get on medication, or talk to someone, or something.

I worry about medication dulling the fire in me.

If the fire goes out, what happens to the rest of me?

~

I get another email back. I skim it quickly, as if glancing off the words will make the rejection sting less.

"It certainly is a different feel--"

"--don't feel it's right--"

"--sex, transvestitism--

I avoid looking in my inbox.

~

I book a ticket home to Canada.

I don't tell anyone.

.

Rosie

Before&After