This Is Joy

I told everyone last night I had only one goal for the evening: to not cry.

More or less, the goal was met. I choked up for a moment at the beginning, but it quickly subsided, laughed off in jocular self-awareness. This evening, however, as I lay on my couch and stared across the long length of my apartment, I began to weep.

Last night was the celebration I feel like I've been waiting my whole life to have. I published The War Master's Daughter in December 2011, right before my 30th birthday. In the whirlwind of getting the book out, then celebrating my birthday, getting through the holidays, and everything else that life throws one's way, I never got around to having a book release party. It is one of the milestones on every aspiring author's mental wish list: holding the first copy in your hands, getting your first royalty check, getting reviewed, signing copies . . . sipping wine and eating stinky cheese at your release party. Last night, I finally threw the party, pinning my tardiness conveniently on the release of the second edition of the book and the debut of the book trailer, on which my friends and I have been working for over a year.

The party was slated to start at 7pm. At 6:30, my chores complete, I stood aimless in the middle of my apartment, fully dressed, fully made-up, full of anxiety. Would there be enough chairs? Were people going to buy books; would there be enough? Baltimore has been facing a brutal heat wave; would my tiny A/C unit be able to keep 35 people cool in my old, drafty apartment? Was the excerpt I chose too long? Could these people--even though they are my friends and family--stand 17 minutes of my voice, of my own crazy ideas writ down in my own crazy vernacular? I wondered if I was being self-indulgent, grandiose, throwing myself another party. I worried my dress was too tight, my lipstick the wrong color. I worried I hadn't written a proper thank you speech. Oddly, I didn't really worry about fucking up the reading, because that's the kind of thing I'm pretty good at.

But I did worry I would cry.

Last night, I was surrounded by my family and the best of my best friends. These are the people I love the absolute most in this world. They were here with me, in the home I had built for myself after my life was unexpectedly flipped upside down last autumn, and they were giving me the opportunity to thank them for things I can barely put into words. I thanked everyone for being there, of course. I thanked them for the wine and hors d'oeuvres they brought, asked them if they had any trouble parking. I thanked my friends who made the book trailer by reading from the Acknowledgments of the new edition because I didn't trust my emotions to an off-the-cuff speech. I thanked the intimidatingly talented Laura Bogart and Matthew Kabik for sharing their incredible work with my audience. However--and I'm sure no one knows this, because I hardly knew it myself, as full as I was of anxiety and adrenaline and wine--but what I was really thanking them for was for loving me, for allowing me to be a part of their lives, for being my safety net when I thought I would fall forever, for being proud and never jealous, for being there at that moment instead of somewhere else, and for being there at all moments when I needed them. For letting me love them back.

Tonight, I lay on my couch, stripped near bare on this steamy July day. All the furniture is still pushed out of the way, and an echo hangs on the rare words I speak aloud. I look at this space I created, this home that's mine, and I can feel the love that has filled it up. It lingers on the air like the smell of Sunday brunch in the kitchen, or honeysuckle near the mailbox of the house I grew up in. I felt it wash over me and I began to sob tears of joy. I am overwhelmed.

I am overjoyed.

This is joy. This is happiness. This is what you've given to me. If I can give back just the tiniest fraction of this feeling, it will be the only thing I hope ever to accomplish in my life.