May 2

here be dragons

April 2021

I read this lovely thing, once. I was drunk in a bathroom stall, desperate for a focal point to distract from the sticky, piss-finished tiles and the rate at which the room was spinning. Steadying myself on the door, I was resigned to fixate on the colorful latrinalia that marked the walls. It was a gallery of low-brow humor and clever drawings, unanswered love notes and cautionary tales. It seemed as if I had stumbled upon a lonely shriving pew, where confessions go to die.

I have stepped on my own feet, wrote one rogue columnist. Unbeknownst to their literary agent, this person, gender unknown, had just addressed the most sympathetic audience in lavatory history. I was a well-intentioned lightweight with a television writing degree and a penchant for unnecessary subtext. To any good narrator, this bathroom sample had the makings of a Campbell-esque monomyth. To a drunk romantic, it was the admission of a hero.

Heroes, dear reader, are made from simple stuff. They are unrefined coils of nerves and steel, raw material in want of a craftsman. They are usually deeply flawed, and face a number of internal obstacles. Sometimes, they are wasted in a public bathroom on a Thursday, ordinary and uninspired.

With the grace of a pink razor, I, too, was busy cutting corners: all curves and pretty words. Awkwardly perched above a dirty toilet seat, I thought about the screenplay I abandoned for a more traditional occupation. I thought about the job, that, for reasons well within my control, had scaled magnificently into a dead end. I thought about my one-bedroom apartment, with the holes in the walls and the wine stains in the carpet. The profound sense of acknowledgement I was experiencing was interrupted by the impatient rattle of the door. Hell hath no fury like a woman over-served.

Reader, this is the part of the story in which our hero is encouraged to leave everything they had once known and to turn their pony westward. I think I had every intention of washing up, and leaving that dingy room, paying off my tab and exiting that bar as someone extraordinary; however, you should know enough about folktales to remember that progress will always be stalled by a hero’s aversion to uncomfortable spaces. In this case, I was far too distracted by the toilet paper stuck to my shoe to begin thinking about self-improvement. Thoroughly flustered, I ordered two shots of tequila and texted my father.

My dad is a stonemason with a well-rehearsed bedtime routine, and a cell phone that he keeps downstairs, in the kitchen. He loves to share nutty aphorisms, and is fascinated by Alaskan fishing boats. The man is heroic in every sense of the word: self-made, habitual, charming, brave. His daughter, on the other hand, flosses her teeth no more than three times a week.

He would not respond to my message until the morning, but I am a daughter who reflexively calls her parents for advice. Somehow, I am also an adult woman who refuses to accept anyone’s help.

That’s not to say I never allowed for a mentor. They were there — softball coaches, professors of philosophy, handsome associates, bartenders. They were usually men, with qualifications that were hard to follow, and who were suspiciously overconfident in my abilities. I desperately searched for pairs of eyes that could fairly judge my shortcomings and pour into me equal parts criticism and praise. According to various personality tests, I am motivated by the approval of others, and respond most positively to words of affirmation, sexual pandering, and dry red wines.

No amount of liquor or coaching, however, can make me stop the cycle of edits that interrupt how often I share my work. I write notes that I hold on to for months until they feel too irrelevant to share. I catch myself in absentminded patterns, writing sentences that read like switchbacks. I’m afraid that I’ll make the wrong decisions, that I’ve somehow set out on a misguided course. I spin, and spin, and spin— and stop.

This is what imposter syndrome feels like. Never mind your cleverness, your unusual portfolio, or your specialized fields of interest. It is an enormous shadow, looming over one’s potential and discrediting former accolades. It’s a suffocating departure from the classic American Dream, in which anyone can achieve success. It’s a navel orange stuck in your throat, with no experience in how to remove it.

Because, well, they’re one of the larger oranges.

Here be dragons, reader. And, often, our dragons become physical. My reading tells me that it’s a combination of heightened cortisol—the stress hormone—and lower levels of serotonin and dopamine: neurotransmitters that play a huge role in metabolic and cognitive regulation. Without the necessary balances, our emotional output is a chemical shitshow, a drunken mess of the systems responsible for one’s confidence. It was funny, thinking that studying the concept of fear could help cure it.

I’m cute when I’m wrong.

And for the academics and their allegories: imposter syndrome is the cave that those with writing degrees like to discuss over whiskey cocktails. It’s the most dangerous place in the realm. And according to most books I’ve read, the only way to scale this obstacle is to have guts, and time, and a job that will help finance your weekly appointments with a holistic therapist. In my experience, it’s unlikely that one’s art will pay for any of these things.

Now, if this were an indie film, I would have pulled out an annoyingly convenient Sharpie and written my response to the call. Let’s lie and assume I would have published this entire manuscript on that bathroom mirror. Let’s lie and assume that weekend readership left me an overnight success. Spinning this much yarn usually gets me through the winter. False confidence gets us through a life.

The tricky thing about heroes, is that they are inherently tragic. However well-intentioned, they are doomed by hubris, unless life or a hike can set them straight. Despite a fleeting moment of mid-piss risk, I knew that it was unlikely the poor bastard on the wall had corrected their mistakes. And I was adamant in avoiding the same fate. It was time to break the wheel.

If my life was anything close to redeemable, I needed to do as my father once told me, and live a busy, borrowed life. I was only now realizing that my original interpretation might have been misguided. Moving to a city kept me busy, and life: indebted; however, a hero must eventually make a grand return—triumphant and transformed.

Except, like this metaphor, I am painfully stubborn. And, like this metaphor, I am already so tired.

Before I leave you, dear reader, I’ll ask for one simple favor: close your eyes, and think of the last time you wanted more for your life. Remember how it felt to worship at the altar of somebody else’s success, praying with the taste of salt and resentment in your mouth. Humor me, please. Recall the disappointment you felt toward yourself, the wasted hours, and talent you left to gather dust in the crawl space under the stairs. Remember promising your father that you would work hard enough to one day make him proud.

Every street corner in Chicago has seen some kind of violence. As I walked home that night, the violence took the form of an internal bone collector, making anxious piles out of what remained of my twenties. Too proud to fail, I found myself cataloging every professional gaffe, every opportunity I failed to chase. I tripped, and I cursed, and stepped on my own damn feet.

Just then, my phone buzzed. I had stayed out long enough to meet my father on the other side of sleep. In fewer words, he recommended that I, well, “burn it down, and come home.” They always wanted me to come home. Cities, dear reader, are for weighty ambitions. Without them, they’re just places to live, far away from your family and the rest of your life.

It was almost two o’clock in the morning, as I walked north up Milwaukee Avenue. Unfazed by the possibility of trouble, I turned up my music and saluted any character stupid enough to fuck with an arsonist.

Stephanie Burda