Susan Cherie Beam

“If you haven’t died by an age thought predetermined through the timing of your abuses and excesses, then what else is left but to begin another diary?” – Jim Carroll, Forced Entries, The Downtown Diaries

I’ve always loved this line from Carroll’s lesser-known Downtown Diaries – sequel to The Basketball Diaries. Reading it for the first time, the drama appealed to my angsty teenage heart, but even now, there’s something about that question. “Magical” sounds too cheap. It resonates – deep down inside: standing up after everything happened, looking around, shaking off the dust, and saying, “Well, I’m still here. What now?”

This blog is part of my answer to “what now?” June 2024 was arguably one of the worst months of my life – and that’s a tall order when you factor in past experiences of losing my mom, getting addicted to opiates, going to jail, etc. How do you categorize and rank terribleness when different parts of your life are being blown apart? Do you do it with the worst tragedies first or chronologically?

I’m going for chronologically:

On Thursday, I had a phone meeting with the university provost – at the university where I was currently one semester into a three semester contract as a Visiting Professor. I knew it was bad when she set up the meeting…and it was only confirmed when she began with, “I’m sorry to be delivering this unfortunate news…”

And just like that, my full-time contract was over – one of nearly 80 casualties lost to the war of poor budgeting and low enrollment. I can be an adjunct again, she said. Thanks.

Friday, I got a call: my dad had had a stroke. Already panicking and fighting tears, I spend the next four days sobbing on and off at his bedside as he slowly stopped waking up, slowly stopped answering, and slowly stopped sipping at the iced French Vanilla coffee I would bring him from Dunkin (as soon as we determined that was one of the food products he found appetizing).

Tuesday, I missed a 4:58 AM call from my sister. I woke up, saw it, and knew. My father was gone.

That afternoon, while sitting on the couch at my sister’s, talking over memories, my email dinged. It was from a publisher who had expressed interest in my book. Amid kind words of encouragement was the truth: it simply didn’t make their final list for publication.

So what is left to do but begin another diary?

It’s not a bad question, but  maybe a more productive one is: what do I want to do with this diary? What should this chapter look like?

I don’t think I know yet, at least not, totally – but do I know that I want to be radically fearless. I’m tired of letting fear stop me. For so long, I listened to the voices in my head telling me that my writing was not worth sharing, that no one was interested, and my life not that interesting. Maybe (likely) that voice was lying. Maybe I do have something to say. Maybe it no longer matters if everyone is listening.

Maybe I need to do it for myself. Because the truth is – I don’t want to be on my deathbed saying, “I wish I had done that.” Because I want to stand for something. Because maybe the dignity in possible failure is the fact that you were still willing to take the risk….and what if you had a good time in doing it?

One of the reasons it’s easier to dream the dreams than do the things is – in dreams, you can always succeed. So maybe that’s a poor metric – success. Maybe the success is starting to walk, and is in taking the next step, not arriving at the destination.

I think it’s time to find out – time to begin another diary.