My life has been one of ever-constant challenges, attempts to overcome them, abysmal failures, discouragement, bouts of giving up...but I've always tried again.
That is one of my greatest strengths, I've been reminded recently. I don't ever give up. I'm like a Jack Pine thriving when the forest has burnt down.
Setbacks have become something that I rather expect at this point. Even though I'm now in my fourth decade of being alive, I'm still working to come to terms with and understand the parameters of just how my damaged brain limits me, to come to a point of acceptance regarding the best I can ever expect things to be and stop pushing myself to do and be something that isn't possible.
But falling down only makes me get up stronger.
I've shared how in 2014 I wrote an entire manuscript for my first Master's thesis and I got an agent within ten queries. By 2016, that agent got the manuscript into the hands of four Big Five imprints. I was going all the way, I was sure, all the way to the top. But I didn't. I was rejected by all. Then my agent dropped me.
That was a major setback, a great example of falling down. It didn't even have anything to do with my neurodivergence. But because of my experience in living with neurodivergence and having grown stronger as a result, of having become positively indefatigable, I had the skills to overcome this, too. I certainly had to step back for several years from writing, because that was a major blow, a devastating one, to recover from.
But I did recover. And I made a comeback. I tore down and rebuilt the whole concept thrice as strong and better than before.
So now are more setbacks. Finding an agent is impossible because what I've got simply isn't what is selling right now.
Okay, so you know what? After a significant period of discouragement and being quite down, I'm standing back up again. Because this time is also a gift, just like the time I was handed back in my earlier attempt was a gift in disguise, too.
The moment I give this story to an agent, a publisher, well... that's that. It has been born and it has died. I can never go back and improve it ever again.
So all my energy right now is focused on working this first draft over and making it the best it can be, because I'm not done yet. Not if I don't need to be. And each time I pass through it, the more improved and the best version of itself it becomes.
I know that God knows what's happening with me, my neurodivergence, my aspirations to see my works published. He's got this.
And in the meantime, I'm just going to get and stay busy. Because I'm the Setback Queen. The Comeback Queen. I don't ever give up. Against the odds, as it were.
Just as my protagonist had to overcome insurmountable odds as the result of tragedy in her early childhood, how she learned to live and affirm, "I'm not helpless."
I hope to become more like Paulina, someone who is two parts Katniss and three parts Ayla from Clan of the Cave Bear, and everything I hope I'll always consistently be.
Not helpless. A Jack Pine. A dandelion growing up to thrive out of a crack in the sidewalk.
Me. Just the way I am.
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