Dear Mom,

For much of my life, I have been truly successful at being mediocre without taking full responsibility. If you could respond right now, you’d probably say I’m not mediocre. I’m wonderful. But really, I could have been much more successful in life if I hadn’t single handedly created my own roadblocks. 

Let me explain.

When I was fourteen, I began on my journey to maintain a buzzed state. For the next four years, and to be totally honest the better part of a decade, I was never sober for long. There were periods when I would take breaks from drinking, but I don’t believe I was ever a hundred percent sober. If alcohol wasn’t present, some sort of drug certainly was. And sometimes it would just be Adderall, or something prescribed by a doctor. Not to me, of course. I never had ADD or ADHD. But I had cold hard cash and a lot of friends who were given more pills than they needed. 

Being in a ‘buzzed state’ allowed me to point my finger at a very concrete reason to why I wasn’t at my best. Why my writing was shit. Why my work ethic had slipped. Why I needed to be driven home from work by my boss in the middle of the day after uncontrollably puking. That last one was actually later, when I was already in Los Angeles, and I had been out the night before celebrating my engagement. My boss didn’t hold it against me. But that particular day was a wake-up call for sure.

Did you know that I drank before, during, and after school pretty much every day during high school? If I had a Diet Pepsi can in my hand or a Raspberry Tea Snapple bottle, it was most likely mixed with Bacardi. I don’t think you knew about it. My teachers never seemed to know either. My peers did. That’s for sure. But back then most just laughed it off. I was hardly the only drunk teenager in a school with around 4000 students. 

I wonder, was I the only one taking Tylenol Cold and Robitussin before school? Did the school nurse ever think it was strange that I had an extremely low temperature? I’d stop by her office often in my sophomore year since the cold medicine almost always made me nauseated.

I very much doubt I was the only student who snorted Vicodin before school. No one knew about that one. My nose bleeds were usually dried up before I left the house in the morning.

All of this, the drinking, the Adderall, the cold medicine, the Vicodin, and later the cigarettes, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms, and whatever other fun things I could find at a Phish concert all gave me the same benefit. All of it had one effect in common. My main reason for starting these habits in the first place was that with each one I didn’t need to eat food. I could drink my meals, smoke my meals, snort my meals. I’m proud to say I never injected my meals. But I also rarely ate my meals. And these habits kept me skinny. That was my goal at first. And that I can trace back to the diet culture, your body image issues which became mine, and the societal norms of heroin chic and all that.

Early on in high school I realized I could easily ace my tests and get great participation points in class while I was anything but sober. The more buzzed I was, not sloppy and drunk, but buzzed, the more outgoing I was. The more likely I was to answer questions in class. To not shrink and hide but to be heard. 

As I think back to all my years on this rollercoaster of substance use as it relates to my performance, I’m reminded that my tactics actually worked. My grades were good. I never missed classes. I rarely got in trouble at school. Of course, I got pulled over and got an underage drinking ticket when I was sixteen followed by a full-on DUI when I was seventeen, but I had really solid excuses for those. That reminds me, did you accompany me to the peer jury I had to go to after the first drinking ticket? Those ‘peers’ of mine were so hard on me. I got more community service from them than from the actual judge in my DUI case. 

Anyway, for many years, like most of my educational experiences in high school and college, I was excelling on paper. Same with work. I was juggling two jobs for most of undergrad. I was getting promotions and opportunities. 

And for most subjects that were objective, like math and science, I was getting perfect grades.

Ironically, it was the writing that suffered most. 

I don’t know how much of it was subconscious. Like, did I know deep down back then that I had no business majoring in English? That maybe I wasn’t meant to study writing? That I was in actuality much stronger in math and science? Was it because literally no one advised me to pursue an education in math and science? That every adult in my life with a say advised me to go into liberal arts? And why? Why did my high school guidance counselor tell me to apply to University of Nevada Las Vegas with no back up schools? Why was that the only school she thought I could get into?

I always loved writing. But it was never my strength. I was in advanced math and science in high school, not English. Maybe it was all the doubt around me that further fed the idea that I was mediocre. That I wasn’t going to amount to much. Maybe you knew about the quantity of alcohol and drugs I was consuming. Is that why you thought I’d never go to college? That I wasn’t worthy of university tours or any serious conversations about my future?

I’m not sure why the adults in my life didn’t believe in me, but it sure had a lasting effect. 

I worked hard to survive in undergrad. I never drank during the school day or at work. Of course, I started out at Tallahassee Community College, which was easier than Stevenson High School, but I used that fact to my advantage. I got my Associative of Arts degree in under two years. I took an entire year off from school and worked two jobs, usually around eighty hours a week, in order to get residency in the state of Florida so I could go to university for practically free. I got into Florida State and later into the Film School.

And for all that time, when it came to my writing, I wasn’t sober. When it was time to sit down and write, I’d make a drink. And when I’d wake up the next day to read over the absolute crap I had written the night before, I’d blame it on the alcohol. Eh, it was good enough for having been drunk when I wrote it.

My resume was ‘good enough’. My application was ‘good enough’. My writing sample was ‘good enough’. And usually, I got by. Because ultimately, I’d get wait listed and someone would decline their offer and I’d get in on a technicality. But I wasn’t taking it seriously. I wasn’t proofreading. I wasn’t being honest. I was simply getting by. Because after all, I wasn’t good enough for anything more.

I will write more soon about the other ups and downs of my alcohol and substance use. The deeper implications of choosing this life to numb my issues. But looking back I’m starting to realize that this idea of not being good enough is a throughline for most of my shortcomings. I rarely felt like I could truly succeed, so slipping deeper into the depths of mediocrity allowed me to not face my truth. That I actually needed to work harder. To try. To believe in myself. How was I supposed to write well if I started each assignment with the assumption that I’d underperform?

So, for years and years I’d turn in pure shit. My writing was garbage. Honestly. My grad school peers can attest to that. My screenplays and TV pilots and stage plays reeked of alcohol. My characters slurred their words. 

Eventually, my lack of self-esteem evolved into a serious case of imposter syndrome. I believed so fully that I wasn’t good enough. That I hadn’t earned my spot. That I was simply skating by. Doing my bare minimum. Because, again, if I did anything more. If I got any deeper and tried any harder and still failed, then what would that say about me? Instead of blaming my failure on not giving my all I’d have confirmation that I never belonged. That I never had a right to be there in the first place. 

What’s worse is that imposter syndrome spreads. It was there when I moved to LA and got an internship at a production company. Suddenly I had no voice when answering the phones. It was there when I went back to working at restaurants years after throwing away my nonslip shoes. It was very much there when I began to work in fitness, a field that I had negative qualifications for in the beginning. And I’m reminded lately that it’s still here. It’s here with my writing to you, as I second guess each word. It’s here with my parenting as I question most of the choices I make. It’s here in more ways than I’d like to admit. That feeling within me that I don’t belong. That I have no business pretending that I matter. And it’s a hard pill to swallow. Especially sober. Because now, when I don’t get invited somewhere, or when I get rejected from yet another literary agency, or I lose a client, or even when my kids don’t get a birthday invite, I turn to my old belief that I’m not good enough.

I think, ultimately, what helps is that I now have people depending on me. I can’t sit in my sorrow. I can’t let my embarrassment or shame or rejection dictate how I parent. And I can’t numb those feelings with a glass of wine or a whiskey or any other substance. I don’t have the luxury to give in and give up. And it makes it all so much scarier. I’m more vulnerable. More exposed. And when I fail, I fail bigger.

Sorry, this has been such a long letter. There I go second guessing my word count too. 

What I do know, is that I’m not cured. My imposter syndrome lingers. It isn’t always present. But I feel it. Overcoming it will likely take real effort.

The self-sabotage? That I can control. That I can say fuck off to. I know now, at this moment in time, that it doesn’t serve me to tie my hands behind my back while I write. Plus, I don’t even know how that would look. It’s always been socially acceptable throughout all of time for successful writers to be alcoholics. That was almost easy. I don’t have that crutch anymore. I don’t have a cute reason to be mediocre. I just have to try harder. I have to show up. I have to actually do the work and put in the time. 

So, as I feel like this letter is still too long, it’s time for me to end it. And with the end of this letter, I am vowing to you and to myself that I am going to stop second guessing. I am going to start telling myself that I am a good writer. That I did have reason to study writing in school. That I do have potential. And I fully accept that saying those things is just the first step. Now I need to walk the walk. 

And in an effort to stay true to myself, I’m not going to simply walk, I’m going to run.

I love you, Mom.

Love, 

Rachel

P.S. Scratch that last line. I fully recognize that choosing to run instead of walking is a big form of self-sabotage for me. Because, let’s face it, I won’t train. I’ll bite off more than I can chew. And I’ll in turn screw up my chances of getting to the finish line. So, going forward, I’ll walk. I’ll pace myself. I’ll do what I need to get to my destination without cutting any corners.