Issue #23 Ordering vegetables at a restaurant makes me sad

I've been obsessing over a girl and not in the "wow, I want to fuck her" sense but in an "wow, I want to be her and have her life" sense. I want to tell you it's complex and complicated but it's really quite simple. I want to tell you for how long but even I am not sure. I want to tell you how it began and that is also vague. So what do I want to tell you then?

I was having anxiety the other day; I felt like I was not pulling myself up by my bootstraps and if that were truly so, I am falling between the cracks. Am I relevant anymore, I asked myself? Do/did I make a difference in the world? The overwhelming sense of worthlessness and tears came and went. TEH asks, "Are you okay? Do you need to talk?" and I say yes, I do, I am in so much emotional pain.

I tell him.

He yells at me. (Not in the SCREAMING way but in a very "jesus fuck, you do this all the time and are you kidding me get over yourself" way.)

It goes down like this: I sabotage myself. Every single time I either get to the quick on something that hasn't happened and kill it or find a way to kill it when I'm in the middle of something. I am perpetually unhappy and outside of my disease, it is entirely of my own making. This is unconscious. Waiting for this epiphany, it will all change if I just wait and do nothing, means I will not get what I want and I'll not have a life for something that will never come. If I want it, I need to grab it. This is conscious.

I want it. I don't want to work for it.

My obsession tho'. We were/are on each other's periphery. We followed each other on LiveJournal all those years ago when being on LiveJournal was cool. I watched her go from being just a person online with a few hundred followers to winning literary awards and tens of thousands of followers. She's fabulous at what she does, she has a mind that is both terrifying and sexy. If her mentions she retweets are any indication, she's beloved (like she's going to retweet the negatives but you get the point). I have yet to find a bad review of her work on any book review site.

She's a writer, of course.

Recently, I told a therapist and a close friend about these feelings. Was I adding more stress because was I (I think? Thought?) becoming a Single White Female? Both of them said no. I was obviously inspired, influenced, and admired by her. There is a difference between being interested in someone and stalking them. Sometimes I feel like I'm bordering on both. There are months and years where I don't pay her any mind and there are others when I am going specifically to her Twitter feed and poring over each tweet like an anthropologist, stalk her blog, do a google search on her. The obsession is recent. My obsessing about the obsessing is even newer. I've created a hell I need to get out of because it's sabotaging me and I know it.

(I should probably stop calling her my obsession.)

(I had a dream the other night I went to her at a panel at a con and said, "You probably don't remember me..." and she said, "You're right. I don't." During one of my obsessive binges, I noted our hair cut and color are similar, but having long dark hair isn't exactly stalker material. I also noted we shared a love of chunky necklaces and mine stems back before she even existed in my world but in my head, I could obviously never meet her because it would seem like I was copying her. AGAIN, WHY DOES THIS SHIT BOTHER ME SO MUCH AND WHY DO I CARE?)

(Our lives in the old days were so parallel I once thought she was stealing my life to fuel her writing. I was legitimately angry because having "known" her for so long, I know she's created a mythology for her own life and some of what she says of her past is fiction so it wouldn't be surprising if she was liberating mine for hers. But I know now the liberation is not a truth which leads to, why do I even care about this?)

I said to my therapist (and friend) there are other people I know, personally and from afar, who have shared similar success as my obsession. I admire and I am influenced by these people. They have also worked as hard as my obsession to get where they want to be and they keep working even harder to make something of themselves. But I do not think of them in the way I think of my obsession.

I do no work. I want all the glory.

I remember my obsession talking about her rejections when she was at the beginning of her career. Her bitterness towards publishers who wanted someone like her but rejected her work. I get a rejection, I stop writing for months. She got a rejection, she was determined not to give up.

I've submitted 22 pieces since the beginning of the year; six of them a few days ago. Out of the first 16, I've had three acceptances which gives me a ratio of 1 in 6. Out of every six submissions, I get an acceptance. The average is 1 in 10. I'm beating the odds, I should be happy, but still, I act like a child when a rejection comes my way and give up. Part of my frustration comes from the topics that tend to be accepted are on mental health which I don't want to make my forte yet it's a topic I'm heavily invested in and know quite well. My prose, weird as it may be at times, is wanted but the stuff I submit is rarely accepted. I grumped when a site with 50% acceptance rejected a piece.

I came up with a plan.

I am arrogant enough (I presume) to think people are googling me even for writing gigs. My professional life, as it is, is in shambles but I can fix all of this by changing my name.

I sourced Facebook, who knows me intimately, and several non-related people suggested Zoë as a first name and it happens to also be one of my favorite names. While Franny and Zooey (which is one of my favorite books) is pronounced "Zoo-ey," I found the use of Zoë  (pronounced zoh-e) was a nice homage to Salinger. When in conversation with my MIL about the new name, and my trouble finding the last name, she came up with "Reid" as it is short and the spelling is different than most would assume. The Q. comes from my tattoo artist with the meaning of "questionable." Those in the know know I have questionable taste about many things so this seems perfect.

This is how Q. Zoë Reid came to be. Nice to meet you.

(If you google "Q. Zoë Reid," a writer of terrible purple prose and an actress come up. I am
nowhere to be found, which is exactly what I want.)

Zoë has a website, a Twitter account, and an email address.

Outside the original, now long buried, post on Facebook, this will be the only public announcement about her. After today she will simply be known as AlterEgo.

Zoë's bio is mine just worded differently and with different aspects. The prose work I've been submitting in the last few days has been under her name. Other than the bio on the landing page of the site, only her published work will be listed. No blog, no other social media presence, nothing. Zoë is srs bizness. 

Wrapping this back to the obsession, if they can create a world of their own making, there was nothing stopping me from doing the same. I am only limiting myself. Choosing to write as Zoë has been freeing. I'm not relegated to just writing about mental health or non-fiction topics. I combed through previous unpubbed prose and found that some, with tweaking, could be doable to submit and publish. I found a series of interconnected pieces I wanted to continue working on. Writing these as Lisa Rabey seemed false and disingenuous but writing them as Zoë seems right. The plan is to create the world that is me but through Zoë's eyes and create the kind of world I've always wanted to work and live in.

Changing one's name legally is incredibly difficult so for now, Lisa Rabey will remain my legal name and will remain as "Lisa" through my private life.

I touched upon some of this with TEH when we had our talk and he said, "this is all external — you need more introspection!" so I imagine he thinks this way now when he reads this but for me I have to identify what the problem is (obsessing over a life I do not have) and the solution (create the life I want to live). I write to fish out the steps and how to approach them. I'm not entirely useless, I know I've done some work in the past, but I've let the case wear me down over the last few years and his talk with me was the start of the wake-up call I need to have.
 
iI am in a ship chartered by fear and it's time to set it on fire.