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| I think I have always been, and only
ever been, a writer. Born shy, I was doomed to eternal wallflowerdom.
But with my books, I could soar and be anything and be everything.
My childhood chums were Emily Dickenson, Henry David Thoreau,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Mark Twain,
Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling and so many more. I was considered
too frail as a child to play on the schoolyard with the other
children but my true friends created for me all manner of playgrounds.
And I surely loved to explore. So it was a natural progression that I should seek to put my own words to paper. I wrote hundreds of poems and gave them away. I wrote short stories. I loved the challenge of writing a formal essay. My parents were both professional educators and my Mother taught me to read long before the advent of kindergarten. I so looked forward to my first day of official school. And promptly ended up standing in the corner. Teacher had explained how to write the capital letter, "A." We were instructed to copy her. I wrote out the entire alphabet, upper and lower-case, and then wrote a few sentences explaining that there were some exceptions to the rule of "capitalization." I believe the poet e.e. cummings was my current rage. And so went my first encounter with formal education. I've been ordered to many "corners" since, but when you are in possession of the power of your own mind, corners cease to have much significance. I always, always knew I was a writer. I just never could see through the clouds quite clearly enough to know where the dream would lead. I never knew the path I took. There were no signs alongside the road. I just wrote. And wrote. And wrote. I believe that God does not give a gift without also giving it purpose. He intends for you to use what He has given. I just wish Life came with an instruction booklet. It would help. And so I drifted, not really picking out any particular career, going to college in the 1960's only at my Mother's insistence (I did sneak away for the Summer of Love '67 in Haight-Ashbury). When my generation was protesting a war and a political Establishment that regarded us as the enemy, I struggled to find Social Consciousness. It was the thing to do. And it all came to a quite literal crashing halt New Year's Eve, 1970. Courtesy of the drunk driver who mistook the Ventura Freeway as a parking lot and a cozy place to go to sleep. My boyfriend's car hit him at 68 miles per hour. And the car in back of us hit us at about the same speed. The car I was in was turned into an accordian, squished on both ends right up to where we were sitting. Thank you, God, for putting me in a very long and very sturdy Pontiac that night. The doctors said I would never walk again. I had been blazing my own trails for so many years by then that I never once considered they might be right. I forced my feet and ankles and legs to do my will. It took years, but I walked. But my dream, that of making my living with words, had been put off a bit further into those clouds that I had never been able to penetrate. I put such things aside. I concentrated on "buckling down," getting a job, paying bills. I was a grown-up now and supposed to do things the grown-up way. It was a kind of mind-death. To be sitting in a warehouse putting price stickers on merchandise, or in a laboratory wiping asthma inhalers with alcohol or standing still with absolutely nothing to do as a sales clerk in a department store -- those were some of the "challenges" I had to overcome as a member of the working class. The challenge of not falling asleep or simply screaming out loud from the agony was very real. I just couldn't bear it. It was excrutiating. The final straw (forgive the cliche, but what else do you call it?) happened when the supervisor of security guards at a local mall (I had the really awful jobs, didn't I?) told me as I was reading on my lunch break to put down my book - Albert Camus - and not to bring "that sort of thing" to work ever again. It made the other guards "feel bad" if I chose to read such material on my own time. And so I was not to be allowed even that much respite out of the day's drudgery. My work report for that day was only three words..."F*ck this sh*t." And I never looked back. I went straight to university and enrolled in the courses that I had always wanted to take -- Writing for Television and Film. It only occured to me later to consider that I was starting college (for the second time) when I was nearly 30 years old. And again my Mother would be my biggest booster with her own stories of how it took her 23 years to get her own college degree. She, too, had certain distractions -- a couple of wars, being a military wife, full-time Mother of three, and working full-time as a teacher. If she could do it, so could I. I don't know that I would have tried if I had not her example to follow. And that dream that I had sent away came tantalizingly close one more time in my life. I really believed I was going to do it this time. My professors surely believed it and told me so many times. I name just a few but wish there was space to thank them all: Alan Armer, Jud Kinberg, John Herman Shaner, Donald Wood, Ben Brady, Michael Hauge, Steve Kandel, and so many more. You put the dream back into my hands to do with as I would. And I'm ashamed to say I didn't do much. The cycle had turned back one more time and the dream started to slip. It was the old grindstone thing again. Groceries and bills took precedence. The game was Survival and there is no room for dreams in that game. It ate away at me. You know the old saying, "tied up in knots?" That is what actually happened to me. Now, I know I can offer no medical proof, but I do truly believe that my insides twisted themselves up the way they did just because I had put the dream away one time too many. And now it seemed I was to pay for it with my life. I started getting repeat bouts of what I poo-pooed as "a touch of flu." I would seem to get a bit better then get sick all over again. And each time would be a bit worse than the time before. This went on for two months. I finally became so dehydrated that I was too weak to turn my head as I lay on the living room floor. It was as close as I got to the front door. Somehow, in my delirium, I thought I was going to drive myself to the Emergency Room. I'd finally broken down and gone to see a doctor earlier that day. I am the opposite of a hypochondriac. Call me The Queen of Denial. The doctor said I belonged in the hospital. I'd tried to hold out. So. I had peritonitis and was suffering from septic shock and very, very close to being dead before I went to the Emergency Room, courtesy of my Mother and Sister. The doctors told my family, "Prepare yourselves. We're losing her." I never felt my Life's "spark" leave my physical being. Does that make any kind of sense? I always knew I wasn't going to die. But laying in a hospital bed for three weeks gives you plenty of time for thinking. I sized up my life and was pleased to have but two major regrets. I was relieved to recognize that I had never been a mean-spirited person who took pleasure in another's pain. I thought if I was going to meet God, He'd at least give me a C+. Maybe even a B-. But those two regrets were sore ones. If only.... One, I've never had the chance to go back thirty years in time to thank my first love and best friend, Hal Barnett, for all that he turned out to be in my life. In my darkest times, even there in the hospital, it was his words, his voice, his counsel, his spirit that guided me toward the light. I wish with all my heart to thank this friend for who he has been to me. And I've never had the chance. I know I told him then. But who I am now is someone with thirty more years' worth of Life experience. The thank you would have a richer meaning. And Two, as much as I loved writing and good books and plays, I'd never once really tried to make that old dream come true. To make my living with words. I never even tried. Even trying and failing would have been a trumph. Because at least I would have tried. I'd spent a lifetime, perhaps wasted much of it, for not having tried. God, if you let me out of this hospital, if you let me live, I swear I'll do....something. I...will...try. Somehow. Just give me one more chance. And He gave me that chance. So here I am, a former Greenlighter, a contestant in a screenplay contest. It was my first test. And I succeeded. Just because I tried. And that's only the beginning. And the writing goes on. And I will keep on trying. And trying. I don't give up now. Not ever again. So that's some of what writing means to me. I hope you could relate. And if you would like to join your dream to a community of dreams here at The Greenlight Zone, or if you have the means to make mine or someone else's dream come true, please do stay awhile. And do be a frequent visitor. Let us get to know you. That sense of "family," of community, was the very best of Project Greenlight. If you are a Greenlighter, too, you will know exactly what I mean. We need each other. Writers helping writers. That's what I'm all about. ~Patricia Holtby Agoura Hills, CA. December 17, 2000 |
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