Writer's Block: Lesson learned
May. 19th, 2010 07:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annissamazing[Error: unknown template qotd]
I actually had a conversation about this with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gement the other day.
After I'd lived in Ohio for about two months, I moved into a little apartment in the slums of Akron. It would have been difficult to find a worse neighborhood. The place was tiny. It consisted of only 3 rooms, a bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen. There was a tiny water closet off to the side of the kitchen that contained a toilet and a small sink. To give you an idea of how small it was, when I sat on the toilet, my knees hit the wall (so, maybe 3'x4' square?). My bathtub was next to the refridgerator in the kitchen.
I quickly made friends with Angie, the woman who lived across the hall. She was a former prostitute turned pot dealer. Half of her face had been paralyzed when someone stabbed her. She took a liking to me probably because she thought I was funny. I didn't belong in that place and she knew it. Hell, all of my neighbors knew it! And they all worked to keep me safe and to help me get out. But it was from Angie that I learned the most important lesson in my transition to adulthood.
She said to me, "You gotta get your shit together."
I've had some pretty awful lows in my life and that phrase has always come back to me. For all the pretty words people have fed to me my whole life to give me wisdom and strength to do what I needed to do, it's these ugly ones that have given me the most strength. There's a beautiful simplicity to them. When things get bad, it really comes down to this: Do what you've got to do to fix the problem. Get your shit together and move on.
I actually had a conversation about this with
gement the other day. After I'd lived in Ohio for about two months, I moved into a little apartment in the slums of Akron. It would have been difficult to find a worse neighborhood. The place was tiny. It consisted of only 3 rooms, a bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen. There was a tiny water closet off to the side of the kitchen that contained a toilet and a small sink. To give you an idea of how small it was, when I sat on the toilet, my knees hit the wall (so, maybe 3'x4' square?). My bathtub was next to the refridgerator in the kitchen.
I quickly made friends with Angie, the woman who lived across the hall. She was a former prostitute turned pot dealer. Half of her face had been paralyzed when someone stabbed her. She took a liking to me probably because she thought I was funny. I didn't belong in that place and she knew it. Hell, all of my neighbors knew it! And they all worked to keep me safe and to help me get out. But it was from Angie that I learned the most important lesson in my transition to adulthood.
She said to me, "You gotta get your shit together."
I've had some pretty awful lows in my life and that phrase has always come back to me. For all the pretty words people have fed to me my whole life to give me wisdom and strength to do what I needed to do, it's these ugly ones that have given me the most strength. There's a beautiful simplicity to them. When things get bad, it really comes down to this: Do what you've got to do to fix the problem. Get your shit together and move on.