Thank you all for your warm encouragement and your mutual distaste for the whole gosh darn grad application process, which often leads to rejection. Not just my rejection either, lots of really brilliant people have been rejected by grad programs. This makes me feel better. So thank you also for being rejectees and sharing your rejection so I can commiserate.
I have been bombarded with comments, e-mails and facebook messages to convince me of my non-dumbness and I think it may be working. I'm on the mend. I've thought very little about the scathing forward I would write in my first book citing institutions of higher learning with elitism, condescension and general demoralization. Much progress, really.
James brought the mail in yesterday afternoon and handed me a suspiciously skinny envelope with the return address of the MFA program I applied to at Seattle Pacific. I opened it quickly with a sinking sensation, like I already knew what it said, that they had a number of very talented writers apply this year and unfortunately they were not recommending me for admission to the program and that they hope I continue to pursue my writing and that I am actually an atrocious writer who they all referred to as the amateur but good luck waiting tables for the rest of your life with that English degree anyways. Ok not that last part but you get the idea.
Obviously the first overwhelming emotion I found was anger-that they could take such a subjective process and actually claim to have the authority to judge one manuscript over another, not in its actual merit but its potential, that I spent hours and many dollars at Kinkos copying versions of both personal writing and published pieces and agonizing over the order and cover page to send it off and be rejected, never seen again, that I actually spent those hours the week Henry was born making copies and doing last minute editing instead of staring at my new baby and soaking in my enormous good fortune.
But mostly I just feel dumb. Dumb that we moved to the northwest in no small part so that I could go to this program, dumb that I quit my stupid job and made James go back to work so that I could "pursue my passions", dumb that I have been cultivating a sneaking suspicion that I am a brilliant writer and will be discovered, published and heralded in the New Yorker as the "voice of our time" and just dumb that I made plans and told people and now its all not true. Now I have no plan. I am a stay at home mom in the suburbs, not an MFA student raising her children while interacting in a creative academic community, which sounds infinitely less boring. And the idea that I would take this time while going to school to figure out what I want to be when I grow up now just seems arbitrary, like I just needed some noble reason to quit my job.
After an initial freak out, we went to Applebees because advertising works inexplicably well on me and citrus teriakey boneless wings, mini bacon cheeseburgers and a margarita were just the things I wanted at that moment. Hoards of greasy food later, I'm fine really. Actually surprisingly fine. Lying in bed last night I told James that with him my base seems broader, like I'm less easily bolled over and while things still affect me, they affect me less potently. My edges are a little smoother because of him. This is a little cheesy in the manner of Jerry Maguire "you complete me" proportions, I realize. But I'm not devastated and I think I would have been before I met him.
So to sum up: I didn't get in to grad school, I was angry, I fealt dumb, I had some hot wings and I'm fine. I still feel really dumb for a lot of reasons and this week has really been awful in more ways than just this one but (and again not to sound cheesy or tie this up too neatly) I'm lucky and things are not all bad. Finn and Henry are getting over their colds, it's supposed to get into the 60's this week and not rain. And yesterday as usual when I woke Finn up from his nap, he had stripped his socks off during the time he spent in his crib. But this time he looked up at me and exclaimed in perfect imitation of me, "why are your socks off!!?" and grinned.