Back in the high life again. It's the champagne of rambling.

I used to write all the time. It was my refuge, my salvation, the best part of everything I ever did. It was what I was good at, what I was known for, what I was envied for, what made me happy. I doubted everything else I did, everything else I tried, everything else I was, but writing was the only thing I was sure about.

My father was a science and math whiz. He was an expert at things people will pay for. I was not good at either of these things.

My mother was a great singer, and very popular in high school. I was none of those things. She was the head of our church's youth choir, which I was forced to join, but not because I could sing--it was expected because she was the director. She was a majorette, popular, well-known, much beloved. She couldn't understand why I wasn't like her. Why I had so much trouble making friends. Why I cried from the sheer loneliness. Why I wasn't just . . . happy. The friends I had were popular . . . and I was just this person who hung out with them.

I fortunately didn't have brothers or sisters with whom I was forced to compete.

My extended family was, and is, athletic. My cousins were tennis champions, basketball stars, quarterbacks, runners, cheerleaders. I was none of these things. I was uncoordinated, sickly, not very athletic, a terrible runner. I briefly excelled at soccer in the eighth grade, but it was not even an intramural sport in my school. I never played it again. I was a strangely, surprisingly good skier, but skiing was hard to keep up with, especially once I moved to South Carolina.

My family was, and is, attractive. My cousin married two consecutive Miss West Virginias. People talked about how pretty, how stylish, how this, how that they were. I didn't get that. I was not attractive. I was short, and dumpy, and pale. I wasn't terribly slender. I dressed badly. I had bad hair. Boys didn't pay a lot of attention to me.

I was intelligent and I made good grades, but that was less a point of pride, more an albatross. I didn't want to be The Smart One. I didn't want my teachers to notice me. It just made me more of an outsider. I just wanted to be left alone.

So there I was. I was dumpy, unattractive, unpopular, not athletic. I was intelligent, but mostly it garnered me the derision of my peers--it never seemed to pay off.

Throughout my childhood and in high school, I thought I was a talented artist. I realized in college, however, in the one art class I took, that that was not the case. And I was actually okay with that--I was in a writing class at the same time, and learning that I was not the next Odilon Redon was okay with me.

Because I could write. God, I could write.

I never doubted it, not for one second. I knew I was good. Other people knew I was good. And unlike my mad classroom skillz, people admired this ability in me. The fact that I made straight A's didn't help me . . . but my writing did.

I believed it all through high school, all through undergrad. And other people believed it, too. I had professors tell me I should get my MFA. But I told myself an MA would be better for me--more marketable. Yes. I'd get my MA, then my PhD, and then I'd teach college English. What a grand plan.

So I went to graduate school at the University of South Carolina, and I quickly found how silly my plan had been.

Every day I was there, getting my MA in English, I felt a little bit worse. A little less confident in my abilities. A little dumber. A little less talented. My classes, my professors, the people around me, everything seemed to say "You don't belong here. You're not good enough. You're not smart enough. You don't have any abilities." Everything felt like constant oneupmanship. If you said you liked Derrida, someone sniffed and said he liked Foucault, but Derrida was certainly . . . serviceable. If you said you liked Foucault, someone else sniffed and said she found Foucault pedantic and had switched to Irigaray. If you said you were attending a conference, someone was quick to say "I attended that two years ago. I presented a paper." If you said you presented a paper at a conference, someone else said "That's nice. I just published in a journal." If you said you published in a journal, there was always someone to tell you your journal was perfectly fine . . . but the journal they'd published in was far superior.

In short, I was miserable. I don't know if other schools are as cutthroat, nasty, and unpleasant as USC. I hope not. Maybe they're worse. Maybe they're not. I'm just glad I finished. I hunkered down and staggered through, wondering what on Earth I'd do when I came out the other side.

I took one creative writing class the last semester I was there, and I was so happy. It was one of the few classes I'd actually enjoyed. I regretted not being in the MFA program, but it was too late. Instead, I was a few months away from receiving a degree I didn't want, from a school and a program I hated. The creative writing class was too late. I already believed I was unsalvageable, untalented, unworthy.

I am a great believer in personal responsibility, and I hate it when people find ways to blame others for their shortcomings. But I believe that USC wrung the love for literature and writing, and my belief in my abilities, right out of me. I came out thinking I couldn't write, and I shouldn't even try. Even though I did well in the creative writing class, that wasn't enough. I knew I wouldn't do well in real life . . . wouldn't be published . . . shouldn't even try. In fact, when I attempted to get jobs in writing, I couldn't. Rarely even got interviews for these positions. So . . . there you go. USC was right.

So for a long time, I just stopped. I would occasionally post a blog on MySpace or Facebook . . . would occasionally write articles for a friend's web site . . . but I knew people were reading it and thinking how terrible my writing was, how simpleminded I was.

And as time went by, it just became easier not to do it. I didn't have to think about how I wasn't as good as I thought I was . . . wasn't as talented as everyone had always said. I could just tell myself I had been all right at one point . . . but I was nothing special. And it was best if I just let this little trifle go. When I saw people I'd known in high school or college, and they told me they'd always thought I'd write the great American novel, or be famous because of my writing, there was a sharp sting, a hollowness inside me, as I thought of everything I could have been, should have been, was . . . but I brushed it away, told myself I was never that good, or talented. That I was good enough for my tiny hometown, good enough for undergrad . . . not good enough for anyone anywhere else. I always smiled and said "Nah, I did other things!" And I'd turn the topic away from me.

And that was my comfortable, warm cocoon: you're not special. You're just like everyone else. You're probably not even as special as everyone else is. Go back to not writing. You'll be happier. Stop thinking you're anything good. You aren't. You never were.

But yesterday, everything changed.

A friend came by when I was in the midst of a real crisis of confidence.

I've been unemployed since February. I can't find a job, and I've been applying. A lot. I'm unemployed because I left a job that, after almost 9 years, was becoming increasingly uninspiring. A job that left me thinking I was even more hopeless and talent-free than ever.

So, five months of unemployment later, I found myself getting up every day, applying for jobs for hours, receiving one refusal after another, not working out, and sometimes not even leaving the house. I got up every day and thought about how I was failing at cleaning my house. I got up every day and thought about how I was failing at getting a job. I got up every day and thought about how I was failing at working out. I got up every day and thought about how I'd failed at my past job. I got up every day and thought about how I'd failed at school. I got up every day and thought about how I was failing at life.

It just became so much easier to lie on the couch and cry. I was proud of myself for getting out of bed. That seemed like a huge accomplishment.

And over the past few days, I felt as if I was imploding.

A friend came by last night, a very very dear friend, someone who, in another life, would be my sister. This friend came by under the guise of Bringer of Soup, and proceeded to bring about an intervention.

She asked me what would make me happy, and at first I couldn't think of anything. Shopping used to make me happy, but I couldn't do that anymore. (I'll cover that in a future post.) I didn't want to drink my troubles away (not that it hadn't occurred to me). I was terrified of gaining weight, so eating my pain wasn't an option. Working out just made me sad and sick and miserable--but I liked yoga. Watching TV was fine, but I felt lazy. I enjoyed playing this one game online.

And then she asked: "What makes you happier than anything else? Doesn't anything make you really happy?"

And I burst into tears.

The only thing that had ever made me truly happy was writing. It was what picked me up and hugged me when I was crying on the floor. It was what told me I was good, and worthy, and right. It was what told me I mattered. It was my retreat when everyone around me was yelling at me and everything around me was wrong.

But I'd decided to stop it. I'd let it go and didn't even know if I could get it back. I'd tried recently to write, but the words wouldn't come out.

So I promised her I'd do the following:

Leave the house. Every day. Even if it's to go to the post office and come back.

Do some yoga. Every day.

And, finally, and most importantly, write. Every day.

I don't know what I'm going to write. I don't know that what I'll write will be valuable, or interesting. I don't know if anyone will read anything I have to say.

But none of that matters.

It only matters that I'm doing it.