"You Were Not Built to Play It Safe, Darlings" — Ali Trotta and "The Other Side of a River"

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Today, I'm delighted to introduce writer, dreamer, and coffee aficionado Ali Trotta. I was introduced to Ali and her work by novelist Deanna Raybourn (A Curious Beginning, et al.) and I love palling around with both of them on Twitter. (We're all friendly! Come say hi!) Recently, Ali wrote a blog post that resonated deeply with me — about change, fear, boogeymen who try to steal your dreams, and the never-ending battle against cynicism and defeatism.

And here she is — 

ALI TROTTA: If there’s one thing I know, it’s the power of choice. The power of looking at a situation, with all its flaws and potential disasters and difficulties, and choosing it anyway. Sometimes, it’s so easy to look at a situation and get scared, because of how difficult it is or how much might go wrong. It’s incredibly daunting.

Sometimes, too, the idea of actually getting what you want is terrifying too. Because it almost always involves an upheaval. No decision, no fight, is devoid of change. It’s impossible to think otherwise. And let’s face it: change can be the adult version of the Boogeyman. Because there are so many variables that can’t be accounted for, so many unknowns.

And that’s why there are times when we allow ourselves to stay where we are, doing what we’ve always done, even when we’re miserable. Even when we know that it isn’t healthy, that it doesn’t make us happy.

Fear is a strange monster. Sometimes, it is as subtle as a whisper. Other times, it’s a shout—someone or something hitting a nerve in you that’s always raw. An old wound never quite healed, always so close to breaking open, a piece of yourself you’re forever struggling to protect. This old hurt can be aggravated by so many things, seemingly reaffirmed by circumstances. Because, honestly, there are times in life where it feels like nothing is going right and everything is impossible. And it’s so much easier to retreat than fight, because we are emotionally exhausted. Beat down. Disheartened.

So, the fear creeps in just at the right time to make you feel…hopeless. To play on your insecurities in such a way that you start to believe that torrent of bad things in front of you, the heaps of mistakes, all the ways things haven’t worked out before. But history is not how we measure the future—it’s what we learn from.

The saddest thing in the world, to me, is someone who has given up. The look in a friend’s eyes that says, “It doesn’t get better than this. This is how things are always going to be.” Don’t get me wrong: I both hate fighting and change. And it’s always a gamble to gear up for a battle, to take steps toward something knew. You look ahead and see a million what-ifs, and it can be suffocating.

But that’s what your fear wants you to see and feel. The truth is that, sometimes, people like to keep us still, doing whatever they can to root us to a place. Because it’s easier for them. Because can’t bear to entertain the idea of something more. And, well, I don’t ever want that to be you—I don’t ever want you to find yourself entrenched in a situation and think it can’t change, that it can’t get better.

Rest assured, it can. As long as you don’t give up. It can be scary as all hell to stand up for what you want, what you believe in. Standing up for yourself is hard. There’s always going to be someone who wants to keep you small, keep you hurting, keep you guilty. They’re going to use that power over you to get what they want.

That person deserves a house dropped on their heads and their shoes stolen. Because that person isn’t nice. And sometimes, it is hard to recognize that kind of manipulation. It’s hard to recognize that kind of villain for a million reasons. But don’t allow yourself to be gaslit into thinking a situation is all your fault. Or that you’ll never be able to accomplish [insert dream here]. Take your power back, and remember how to fight, remember who you are.

You are made of stars. You cannot be contained.

I’ve said this before, but: life is full of battles. You decide what you’re going to fight for, but here’s the kicker: you’ve always got to fight for yourself. It isn’t easy. It’s like hopping over crocodiles to get to the other side of a river. And maaaaaybe there’s a lion waiting there. But maybe your hope for this life is waiting there too.

And it helps to have someone in your corner. Someone who looks at you when you’re being an idiot and tells you the truth, even though it’s not pretty. Even when it is through tears. Someone who sees you for who you are, especially on the days when you cannot see yourself.

Life is finite. There’s no way to guess when the sand’s going to run out. I have been reminded of this so fiercely, lately. Time is short. Life is short. Spend it loving. But more so? Allow yourself to be loved. Don’t close yourself off, because in an off-the-wall distortion you’re justifying it as “easier.” Don’t let your past get in the way of this moment, right now.

Fight for what you want. And, if it’s applicable, allow yourself to be fought for. You can put up as many walls as you like, you can put as much distance as possible between yourself and something/someone else. But all the walls and all the distance in the world doesn’t change facts—and it certainly doesn’t change feelings.

You were not built to play it safe, darlings.


SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Lovely Reds and readers, do you ever find yourself playing it safe? If so, why do you think that is? What do you do to (in the words of Winston Churchill) "Keep buggering on"? Please tell us in the comments.


Ali Trotta is a poet, editor, dreamer, word-nerd, and unapologetic coffee addict. She is always scribbling on napkins, closing her eyes while crossing the street, and singing along to songs at the grocery store. When she isn’t word-wrangling, you can find her cooking, baking, taking photographs, or hanging out in parking lots. Her work has been featured in Uncanny magazine, and she’s on Twitter as @alwayscoffee. You can also read her blog at http://alwayscoffee.wordpress.com.

Would you trade your sanity?

JAN BROGAN: After something like my sixth trip back to Provence, I realize that I've probably seen just about everywhere Vincent Van Gogh was treated for mental illness. This has less to do with a fascination for Van Gogh, or mental illness, and is more a testament to the fact that the French tourist industry has learned to market the crap out of pretty much everything to do with the impressionists.

Nonetheless, the last mental health institution I found myself in -- in St. Remy - was worth every euro. (That's me with Vincent on the road to St. Remy left now and below, that's Vincent's painting of the road to St. Remy then) And the most fascinating part was that you could actually see the exact scenes Van Gogh was painting from the windows.

Poor Vincent. Treatment for bipolar disorder was pretty lame. Warm baths. That was pretty much it. Six months after he was released, he committed suicide. Still, as I looked from the actual skyline he painted, to a copy of the painting itself, I couldn't help thinking of his genius, of the creative perspective that produced such a unique rendering. Could someone sane have seen the wheat field or the sunflowers or the starry night that way? And what would we have all lost without Vincent's bipolar disorder.

I am boringly sane. I don't really even have minor mood swings. I could drink six cups of coffee and still not be manic (which I think is a big disadvantage for a writer.) I found myself wondering, would I trade my sanity to see the world from such a unique perspective. Might I sell my sanity to the devil to create such world-altering and enduring art?

Would you?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: No.

Okay, fine, thinking about this. Still no.

I have asked, however, at dinner parties, whether you would give up your life if someone told you that you would first be able to see the first real creature or being from another planet. That, as a result, you would KNOW there was intelligent life on other planets.

Most people, okay, everyone, says no. I'm still on the fence.

JAN: Now see, life from other planets doesn't tempt me at all. But creating Starry, Starry Night?And actually seeing the sky that way in one mind-blowing artistic moment.....hmmmm.

LUCY BURDETTE: Now my other self, Roberta, is going to make sure I answer this with a resounding NO! Because as a clinical psychologist, I saw plenty of people suffering from mental illness. Nothing fun about it. Except maybe at the peak of a manic phase when you don't know how crazy you are--but the people around you are paying dearly for your condition. and you will too, once you're back to baseline.

Besides all that, I'm not convinced that insanity correlates well with amazing art. And Hank, no to the other planets too. I'm just too much of a chicken. Though I would like to take the Jungle Red trip to Provence and have Jan show us around....

RHYS BOWEN: I have little interest in other planets, would never pay a million dollars to go to the moon. Give up my sanity to become a genius? Also no, much as I would like to write the great defining novel once in my lifetime. But I've been close enough to two people with bi-polar disorder to know that there are no circumstances that would make me accept this for myself.

Selling my soul,on the other hand? Would any of you do that to become the most gifted writer/painter/tennis player? I guess I'll settle for being sane and ordinary.

JAN: Rhys, I hadn't even thought of selling my soul to become a more gifted tennis player, but now that you mention it.....

HALLIE EPHRON: Vincent Van Gogh. Alexander McQueen. Virginia Woolf. Ernest Hemingway. Moss Hart. Sylvia Plath. F. Scott Fitzgerald. David Foster Wallace. Some say Agatha Christie. As someone who comes from a family of "crazy creative geniuses," I can tell you that it's not fun to live with. Particularly for the kids. Manic is scary. Depressed is terrifying. Having lived through both, I'm with Rhys. I'll take sane and ordinary every day of the week.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: You know, in some ways, I think the writer's imagination is a bit like mental illness already. I mean, I can recall different times in my life when I shared the fact that I had a constant running cast of imaginary characters in my head. My confidants looked at me like I was... crazy. When I was young, I would lie, not to get out of trouble, but because the lie was more interesting than the truth. I knew other people weren't always making up stories. (Excepting Hallie - I'm guessing that when you grow up in a family of writers, the creative imagination is the norm and everyone else's mental process seems rather flat.)

So I don't know if you have to go whole hog into manic-depressive or obsessive-compulsive disorders to be great. That kind of Van Gogh talent seems to strike like a comet fall, and whether you're mentally or physically ill or whole seems to have little to do with it.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've never bought into the "genius requires insanity" thing. Most of the best writers I know are extremely disciplined, hard-working, and not the least bit dysfunctional. I did have a friend once who was brilliant but suffered from bi-polar disorder and later committed suicide. She could never have finished a novel, as talented as she was.

But, like Julia, it often occurs to me that all writers are crazy on a MINOR level. Non-writers don't walk around with a completely imaginary cast of characters carrying on lives in their heads. (I don't think.) My family doesn't blink when I say, "Oh, Charlotte needs one of those." Or, "Duncan would cook that."

But back to Jan's question. Would I trade my ordinariness for a moment of blinding genius, if insanity WAS required? Nope. I like my ordinary life just fine, thanks very much.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I mentioned this question to my husband and his response suggested that he thought I already HAD traded my sanity for my "art."

But seriously...no, of course not. I like my life far too much and I don't think writing a bestseller or painting a masterpiece would change things for me that much. Now, if you threw in unlimited amounts of time and the ability to reverse the aging process then we might have a deal.

JAN: If I'm not mistaken, Ro, you are talking about immortality, and I think those deals are brokered strictly by you know who in the infernal fire beneath us. I'll give him your card.

But back to creative genius, while I don't think you have to be crazy to be genius, I think an awful lot of artistic geniuses had some serious mental disorders. The first time I read David Foster Wallace, I said to my son, he has to suffer from mania, right? And my son asked how I knew and I said, you just can't write like that without being manic. There's a certain....well, brilliant mania to it that just doesn't come out of an evenly paced mind.

Would any of us voluntarily make the exchange of inner peace for artistic genius, probably not. But is anyone else out there tempted?

Tune in tomorrow for true crime tuesday, the irony and possibilities in the yoga shop murder.