Failure and Obscurity

I was watching "Wilde" tonight (movie with Stephen Frye) and I realized that had Oscar Wilde not been a genius, his truly tragic story would have been forgotten.  He would not be thought of as a literary revolutionary and a hero for homosexual, indeed human,  rights.  If it weren't for his circumstances of birth, opportunity to attend Magdalen College, Oxford and his late discovery of his talent for writing with wit and truth, which many say came in tandem with, or as a result of, his late discovery of his homosexuality, he would still have written with passion, loved his wife and children, made a remarkable discovery about his sexuality, fallen in love with a damaged young man with an abusive and sadistic father, gone to jail and survived 2 years at hard labor for that love, gotten out, reunited with the damaged young man for a short time, and not long after died, but no one would know and no one would care.

It wouldn't be a lesson, it wouldn't be an example, it wouldn't be an inspiration.  It would be nothing.  One of the millions of stories of people who are born, live and die leaving no legacy whatsoever.

I thought about the "Diary of Anne Frank"  and "Go Ask Alice", and the many other journals, diaries, letters and papers of people which have given us an insight into something extraordinary as it happened to an ordinary person.  And I thought of all of the billions of diaries, journals, letters and papers which are thrown out every day. 

Why keep a diary if not for the future?  So that someone can look back on your life and see that it had meaning? 

All of these blogs on the internet, whether here, or at LiveJournal, MySpace or one of the thousands of other places, will all be purged one day.  Maybe, possibly, one or two which were written by people either famous or infamous, might be kept somehow for later generations.  But look at how many are typing away, as if they have something to say.  Or rather, as if anyone cares that they have something to say.

Why?

When I was younger, I kept everything that I wrote, and I tried several times to keep a journal.  It was, as vain as it sounds, because I thought someone would read it someday.  Either I'd be an actress or a writer, and some biographer would want to know all about my life and how witty I was when writing notes to my friends in sixth grade. 

I threw all of that out years ago now, during the move from the trailer in Leo where Casey and I lived with My Dad during his last days to the apartment where we lived next. Huge box full to the brim with papers, letters, and tiny notes.  All went into the giant trash bin in the parking lot.  In fact I think everything from elementary school and high school went in there, except possibly my yearbooks.

I was in college then, and I believe I thought that once I had graduated, and hopefully gotten a job, I would become a writer on the side, and then if I was ever published, people would know me for my book, or if i was very lucky, books.  Not people throughout history, but at least a few of my contemporaries.

But of course that never happened.  I made a good start on a piece of original fiction, but then I got caught up in school, and the disappointment of my degree being nothing more than a piece of paper in the drawer of a retail bookseller.  Then I became sick and my long, long, chess game with my crazy brain began.

I say chess game because I've always wanted to, but never been able to, learn chess.  And chess is a game of war.  So it's a game I'm constantly losing. 

I've tried to overturn the board and instead turn the process into a chemistry experiment, but I never took chemistry either.   And so I have to rely on others for the chemicals and amounts.  I simply swallow them down and see what happens.

Once in a while, I think I have the formula figured out.  If I take certain pills, eat certain things, do certain things, it will keep my brain happy and I can think and be productive.

But it always breaks down again in the end.  And then on top of being unhappy and useless I have the guilt that I must have done something wrong.  Sometimes I did.  I slept through my alarm, didn't get my pills at exactly the right time, didn't feel like fixing myself something to eat, or was stricken with completely unfounded terror and hid all day. 

That's when I know it's back to the chess game, and I don't even know how the pieces move. 

A lot of geniuses were crazy, but not all crazy people are geniuses.  All crazy people think they're geniuses though, and that's where I come in.  I'm not a genius, in fact I have no talent at all, but my brain wants to think it's genius, so it tells me these idiot things.

I do not have multiple personalities, though I realize it sounds that way from my description. My brain doesn't 'talk' to me.  I do not hear 'voices'.  I simply have my own thoughts and sometimes I can look at my thought process and see how completely ridiculous it is.  Sometimes I look into my thoughts and see how wrong they are. How utterly ordinary I am.  Sub-standard actually. And my telling myself that I am something special is just as wrong as me telling myself that I am nothing but a burden on the world and I should die.

Again, I think it's my own vanity.  I want to be one extreme or another.  I can't stand that I am mediocre as a person and less than that as a part of society.

I always knew that I was sub-standard in many things as a child, but I always thought that when I grew up I could be special in some way. I hope all children think that, otherwise what it childhood for?

But now I'm fourty-four.  Middle-aged.  Actually elderly in terms of my immediate family in which my mother died at age fourty-five and my father died at age fifty-eight.   All this time has slipped by and I still haven't won the chess game with my brain, much less made any sort of an impact on the world.

I did narrow my scope of possibilities as I aged, becoming more practical and realistic as I matured.  By the time I graduated high school I realized that I couldn't be an actress or a singer because I'm overweight and  I didn't want to be Mama Cass. (Yes, I know she hated being known as Mama Cass, but you see what happened to her?  Even now, that's how she's known.  And the rumors about her dying by choking on a ham sandwich?  That will never go away.  When you are fat, all the rest of society sees is fat.  You're not a person.  You have no other identity.  Even Camryn Mannheim, bless her, is still nothing but the champion for fat women.  She'll never be seen as just a woman.  Or just an actresss.  It's not possible.  And I didn't want to be that.)

By the time I entered college for the second time, I realized that writing was not something I was going to make a living at.  The odds of even having a manuscript seen by an editor at a publishing house are astronomical.  So I wanted to be a college professor.  History or theology.  At least that way, I would have a career.  "What do you do?"  "Oh, I teach at the university."   And, within the walls of academia, which I loved, I could sort of BE someone, because I was going to get a doctorate.  I was going to be "Doctor Thomas".  Possibly the head of the theology or history department.

I would have been an excellent professor before my illness progressed to where it is now.  I know that just sounds like more vanity from me, but I really think I would have.  I was good at giving speeches and presentations to a class.  And when I did, the other students found them entertaining or at least interesting.  My own professors commented on it.  I took excellent notes, and I already had a working understanding of the 'office politics' of a university.

But then I graduated and fell into immediate debt and depression over the worthlessness of a BA.  Getting a Master's was out of the question as I was horrified by the loans I'd already taken out.  It's all fine and good to run up thousands of dollars in debt when one is going to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer, and the pay grade will be commensurate to the price it cost to get there, but when your goal is to be a university professor, and not one at Harvard or Yale, then you know that you're just hanging a heavier and heavier sword over your head.

So there went "Doctor Thomas" and a career in books and study.  Then I just wanted to be able to hold down a steady full-time job, pay off my debts and save money to travel with Casey. 

But the holding down of the job, and saving of the money were talents I seemed to be lacking in as well.

So now what?  I know that I am, and always will be, an obscure and unknown person to the world at large.  All I have left is to try to please those around me.  Be a good spouse, pet owner, sister, aunt, friend, neighbor. 

And I am failing at that as well. And that is as small, realistically, as my scope can possibly go.  If I can't even keep a clean house, when I have no job and nothing else to do all day, then really, am I of any use to anyone at all?

Indeed, as Thoreau never said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."   It's too bad that we cannot track down who first did either misquote Thoreau in this way, or who may have actually said this, because it is a sentiment that many, including myself, identify with.