When you’re looking forward to
something, you see signs everywhere that the thing you want will happen. A
little extra foam on your dry cappuccino? That barista you’ve been admiring
finally loves you back. Your stoic boss sends you an email with an exclamation
point in it? You’re getting a raise! You’ve been having an insatiable craving
for wild mushrooms and lo and behold, the place you choose for lunch has wild
mushroom ravioli as an appetizer. Obviously, within the next four days you are
going to have mind-blowing sex.
Wishful thinking is something we do
in order to navigate the ups and downs of daily life. Certainly, for those of
us with horrendous jobs, unmanageable family members, bipolar managers or
unpredictable roommates, it’s imperative to allow ourselves to interpret mere
coincidences as momentous signifiers of pleasant things to come, following them
like magical bread crumbs to a land where dreams come true.
The opposite of wishful thinking is
denial. Defined by Google as “the refusal of something requested or desired,”
denial also has a medical definition, such as this one by the American Heritage Medical Dictionary:
“An unconscious defense mechanism characterized by refusal to acknowledge
painful realities, thoughts, or feelings.” Mosby’s
Medical Dictionary explains denial from another angle, one that takes into
account the feelings or expectations of another person: “The refusal or
restriction of something requested, claimed, or needed, often causing physical
or emotional deficiency.”
I am a writer. I hold platinum
distinctions in denial. Since the age of seven, I have relied on
phantasmagorical levels of rationalization to convince myself that someone, somewhere cares about the
stories, poems and essays that no one has asked me to write. When a story of
mine is rejected from a literary magazine, it’s not because it wasn’t polished
enough, it’s because it’s too original.
When my latest novel is turned down by editor after editor, it has nothing to
do with the fact that I write one thousand words when two hundred would
suffice, nor with my tendency to forget that even fictional characters
sometimes need to leave the house, it’s because we no longer live in a world of
risk-takers. It’s because they’re scared
of my Bold Voice.
Because I work from home as a
copywriter in a rural area, I’m not exposed to the kind of reality-checks that
would keep my delusions in line. I don’t have to show up at an office at any
particular time, and I don’t have to dress in any particular way for any
particular person. In fact, a consequential portion of my morning is dedicated
to convincing myself that it matters
if I shower. But matters to whom? It certainly doesn’t matter to the seven
hundred ascetics who inhabit the fifty-three square miles of woods around the
town in which I live, nor does it matter to my filmmaker husband, who also
works from home, and is French, and has been wearing the same sweater for five
years. The aforementioned “painful reality” is that it doesn’t really matter
whether I put on underwear in the morning, or foundation, or whether I finish
my eight-thousand word short story about a sadomasochistic carpenter or not.
The denial comes in when I decide to do these things anyway. Because someone
out there cares. Right? They must.
