Taking it easy on the page—like coasting in the final thirty feet of a roller coaster track—when writing is no longer a behavior I want. To reach higher, to push myself, I need to turn the shock device up a notch, to deliberately produce spasms and twitches that zap away the comfort that was. To the quiet, ribbony-pigtail girl, I say step aside, as I present to society a woman of power—the Rosie the Riveter type with a swig of Jane Goodall—student and master, stalking, laser-focused on the task at hand.
I used to infrequently play in high-stakes situations at the poker table, where if I lasted in a tournament to the final three, or was heads-up in a higher-limit game, the capacity to step nose to nose—as if I were a boxer in the pre-match photo op—was a skill of its own.
I’m such a fucking pleaser. Humility, downplaying, and roundaboutsies are my go-to moves in negotiations. Which puts me in a pickle—somewhere between home and third, my cleats unmoving, stalled out like a skunk at the sight of oncoming headlights. Is it a fear of the bold line and the unwavering sonic boom it sends? Like, what if the strength of my waves capsizes a schooner trying to bob home with stocking stuffers for Christmas?
Don’t do dumb stuff, or a Darwin Award will be pinned to your six-feet-down chest. Morbidity and our darkness—the depths and cracks in your psyche—shoot out geysers, like it or not. It’s that realness we smell, like bloodhounds to the bloodiest steak. If you hide behind the crowd’s ambiguity and set up mazes without exit, please do not keep my name on your dry, cracked lips.
I am better. I am stronger. And that’s not from tying to coattails or shoving my junk onto my neighbor’s porch. It’s mine—this beating, pulsing, gushing center—and its power will capsize you if I let it.
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 