It is official: my creative writing thesis has been ACCEPTED by the faculty and the head of M.F.A. program!

I just…am honesty really stunned and grateful and humbled by this entire experience. Firstly, I shifted my focus into an entirely new genre after my first year of grad school was over, which means I still have pages of material that I haven’t touched in over a year. It also meant that I had to work that much harder to compile enough new material to use for my thesis. Which, ultimately, wasn’t a huge issue because I write a lot and very consistently (hazzah for having a consistent writing practice!), but it still required an enormous amount of work outside of my other school assignments. That I actually did that, and did it well enough to compile a polished thesis of poetry, and that the faculty have approved this thesis, is simply beyond my capacity to believe.

I have never worked so hard in my entire life. I have always taken my education seriously. I care about grades. I care about getting assignments in on time. I care about the quality of my work and whether or not I’m improving, or staying in one place. I care about how my teachers and fellow students see me. And while I was a A student in undergrad and graduated with honors, it wasn’t really until this M.F.A. that I learned how much I can push myself, how much I can rise to the challenges.

To say this program has been easy, would be a lie. I started this program only a few weeks after leaving my ex, and I don’t think I have ever given myself enough credit for managing to get all of my assignments in on time while also working two jobs and going through a divorce. No one really knows how horrible all of that was because I generally kept the reality of it to myself. I might have told people if I was struggling (and I really only did this half of the time), but I didn’t say how much I was struggling. I didn’t want to be a burden anymore than I already felt like one, and I didn’t want to admit to others how much I was struggling because then I’d have to admit it to myself. I knew I wasn’t okay, and looking back I can see how badly I really needed to be on medication for my anxiety and depression because it hit so damn hard that first semester.

This is why I’m choosing to learn how to love myself, how to be kind to myself, no matter how horrible other people try to make me feel. The total, absolute truth: I am always so much less okay than I let on. Just because I can manage to keep the realities of my struggles hidden doesn’t mean those struggles aren’t real or invalid. I have survived some truly horrendous nightmares. Most of it, I’m still healing from. And I usually have played them down, acted like they weren’t as big of a deal as they were, because I have been gaslighted most of my adult life.

So today, I’m acknowledging my own successes, my own accomplishments, my own strengths, and my own struggles. I worked my damn ass off in this grad program, despite everything that was going on around me and inside of me. I faced so many struggles with anxiety and depression. I faced the complete and utter breakdown of what had been my entire life for ten fucking years. Divorce is one of the most stressful things someone can go through. Then I started a grad program. Then I got a second job to earn more money because I was paying my own rent for the first time in my life. I was saving money, setting myself and keeping to a budget so that I could cover all of my bills. I was handling enormous amounts of stress in relation to money those first six months after my separation.

And despite it all, I have come out of this program an almost entirely new person. I’ve paid off huge amounts of debt. I’ve been working full time. I’ve been saving money. I’m in a relationship with the most amazing partner. And I have come such a long way as a writer. So today I’m giving myself credit for all of these things because yeah, I went through a shit storm of hard times, and I am a bad ass for doing so. Fuck anyone who says otherwise.

Give yourself credit today. And don’t listen to the haters. Listen to the people who want to see you succeed. Not the ones who tear you down because they’re miserable.