Why I’m Going the Indie Route
TW/Content Warning: This blog post talks about suicide. Living with endometriosis. And far too much information about myself in general. Please do not feel compelled to read this.
My first iteration of Finding Gene Kelly was penned, oh gosh, in what 2016? Probably? Yeah, that sounds right. Pre-diagnosis, Evie didn’t have a problem in the world except that a handsome man loved her and she was a bit of a mess. I tried my hand at writing after I finished my Master’s and immediately found my health which had been slowly declining over the past ten years or so, completely unbearable. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t be dependable when I had days that all I could do was literally lay on the couch blanketed in a thick fog of fatigue. My periods were always heavy but something was getting so much worse than it ever had been.
So I wrote.
And I escaped.
And I went to countless Doctor’s appointments that ended in injections and/or dismissals and just kept on keeping on.
And then I gave my document to some of my now dearest friends. And they beta read, and helped me grow, and I queried and tried my hands at PitchWars. I was done!
Hah.
Few full requests but all came back with the same advice “Great voice and writing, laughed out loud at parts, but you need more than romance. Keep going. You’re going to be on bookshelves someday I can tell.”
One agent even recommended I read a book—that shall not be named—to see how to write a Romance Novel with something more going on.
Oh. I thought. This book is about a woman with fibroids. I have fibroids, maybe I’ll understand more about my condition in the process. Neat!
Hah.
Hah.
Hah.
Book that shall not be named—well, let’s say the OwnVoices rep was severely missed here. I ended up finishing the book with more of a complex about things I’ve long since learned, are actually typical of people with endometriosis and fibroids, they just didn’t include them in the story. And yeah, I scratched my head at the magic baby at the end for sure. But every day life with the disease was not represented. And at this point, I had met the doctor who would diagnose me so I knew something was A MISS.
New goal: write a RomCom with endo rep but do it right—make it permeate everything, because it does.
Pause for Excision Surgery & Myomectomy Number 1. Not done by a specialist.
Post Surgery 1 I started a redraft and Beta’d and again. I queried and tried my hands at PitchWars.
I found a book How to Endo by Bridget Hustwaite and I learned the importance of finding community and shared experience battling the disease.
Few full requests. A Revise and Resubmit. What the hell is stabbing me in my abdomen.
Enter Covid.
Enter repeated stabbing.
Enter ER visits.
Enter the drug from hell that made me terribly depressed.
Enter a pause on querying — hi, could you wait for me please, this isn’t right. That turned into a full withdrawal. Sanity non-existent. Not the time.
I went a year and a half with a uterus about to rupture, and endometriosis under my ribs, all the way down through the rectal area, before Surgery Number 2 (this time a specialist).
Pause for two month mandatory couch rest. Neat.
In that year of waiting for surgery, a few things happened. The drug I was on that was supposed to help me with my endo pain dropped me to the deepest low I’ve ever experience. I didn’t want to exist anymore and if it wasn’t for the strong friend connection I have, the friends who answered my calls and just kept me with it until my husband came home, and my husband himself, well I don’t know what would have happened. Around this time, a friend with endo committed suicide because she couldn’t handle the pain and that was my wake up call. I couldn’t do this anymore. This wasn’t a life. This was existing. Barely.
I asked to get off the medicine—which was an immediate pick-me-up—but then I just focused on joy the rest of the year, as much as I could, even though the pain was unbearable. I watched a lot of Gene Kelly and Audrey Hepburn because they’ve always been instant Serotonin for me, and a lot of GBBO.
Now, post-surgery. I’m still exhausted. Like I used all my mental reserves to get through to surgery, and now the reserves are decimated. But I know I’m not alone here, I’ve seen the Instagram posts of the people with endometriosis, and I know this is it—this is the experience. And I thought about the woman that took her life at the beginning of the year. I didn’t want to wait to be traditionally published. Not when so many people need word hugs.
Here’s where the reason is two parts.
I didn’t want to rely on gatekeepers saying yes, when I literally live with a gatekeeper inside my body, that generally says no. No to my life in Higher Education. No to endless social events and trips. No sometimes to just trying to survive. I’m saying yes. For myself.
And I’m also saying “yes” for the people who are in the same or similar boats as me. We deserve our dreams. We deserve a life worth living. We deserve a quality of life beyond “just surviving somehow.”
I’m not pretending my book will change things. The medical world owes us a lot better than what they’re giving us now. But I hope it helps someone feel hopeful—not that phony, toxic societal hope that can’t handle the fact that this is life for us, but the kind that says you know what, this really sucks, I see you. I’m with you. But we’ve got this. We’re going to be alright. Life is still there—and it’s still worth pursuing. Your dreams are still worth pursuing. And YOU’RE still worth pursuing.
So I want the book out—now. Yesterday, really. But one day at a time (unless you’re trying to Indie Publish a book and then it’s like all the days in a year all in one day, and good luck planning this—but that’s a blog post for another day.)
ANYWAY TL:DR. Probably. But if you’re here—I don’t know.
I’ve never shared this poem. I wrote it when that woman’s story was shared on Instagram. “We lost another one.” That’s what the post said underneath it. I don’t know that I’ll ever forget that one. She’s the reason why I’m here. Why I’m Indie Publishing.
Sorry this got heavy. I’ll have other posts that are lighter. But this is life with endometriosis. It’s full of heavy moments mixed in with the absolutely beautiful, magical ones. Like having friends that tag team dinners, craft with you, take slow walks with you, and yell about all the books you’ve read. Or publishing a book, you never thought you would, never would have written if other doors weren’t shut on you, and finding a wave of support lifting you up. Those are pretty stellar. Even if my ovaries aren’t.
Too Tired for a Title
By Torie Jean
I saw your name on a square, and the image took my limited breaths away.
I know your story. I survive it, everyday, somehow.
I was you on the park bench, tired of it all.
Of staying alive but never living.
A life measured in Ibuprofen pills and heating pad settings.
You were me if I didn’t pick up the phone.
No longer staring into the abyss but in it, deep, staring out.
Looking for a hand.
We were one in the same, but we never knew it.
We self-isolated, masking with an “I’m fine.”
Burying and muting our actual realities.
That’s the problem, isn’t it?
Why I’m ignoring my coffee and penning a poorly written poem in the early hours of the morning.
Why your story is hitting me like it is.
Is this a poem? Or a collection of prose. I don’t know.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it?
That I’ll contemplate the validity of this poem over facing reality.
The truth is.
I have no clue what a poem is.
No.
The truth is.
The problem is.
I get it.
I get why you thought this was best.
I’ve been there in the sleeping hours of the night where all that finds me is pain and fear.
I’ve been there crying in the parking garage of the hospital when they tell you there’s nothing they can do and you just have to find a way to get tougher—and you feel like there’s nothing left to draw from.
I’ve been there through the spasms, the ones fetal positioning me even now. The ones I give my mental energy to function. To mute. To hide.
I was you. But you are gone. And I am here.
I’m sorry.
It should never have gotten this bad.
I should have written a better poem.
Is this a poem?
I don’t know.
Probably not.
But that’s not the problem.
The problem is—well, I wonder if my coffee is still hot.
Maybe I should drink a cup.
Or two.
Finish this later.
Finish feeling this later.
Because the reserves are low, and I want to mourn you, but I’m still mourning my old life.
And maybe that’s the problem.
Oh, dang it. I’m out of creamer.
