Maybe I’m a little angry. I lost three writing competitions and I’m not exactly enjoying my real life right now.

What gets me isn’t the fact that I lost. It’s the fact that I didn’t get any feedback. “Hey, you’re story sucked because of this and that.” Nothing. Just a copy-and-paste message, “There were so many participants, but we chose only # winners.” Jeez, thanks for the lukewarm message, but let’s not waste each other’s time, shall we? Just say, “You didn’t win.” Don’t lift my expectations with a beat-around-the-bush line.

And you know what frustrates me most? Is that I’m writing at the best of my ability, and it’s like they’re saying, “You’re just not good enough.” I’ll admit, I have an inferiority complex. Can’t help it; it’s just the way nurture vs. nature has treated me. Even my husband said, “Van Gogh didn’t sell one painting when he was alive. Charles Bukowski was rejected so many times before he was published.” All these examples, but none of them are me.

What writing has given to me is a realization that life–real life, not school life–is really not about idealism or principles or even love and feelings like the movies. Life is just a sad existence for man. Good times don’t outweigh the bad times. Life won’t give you money or a clear method in parenting or grant you a magic load in the bank or in your pants. Life is just life. Writing just records it all–the dreary, the blind, the molested, the raped, the stabbed, the deaf, the murdered, the insane, everything. And no matter how good things are, bad will always win out.

Death is bad, so bad always wins out. We’re all living to die. And writing records the life and makes up the dead.

I can’t even write positively right now. It’s like a whole heap of what is writing just landed on my shoulders and entered my head. There is nothing positive about recording reality. There is nothing positive about realizing what writing does. And there’s nothing positive about losing.