The Yellow Wallpaper Syndrome: 8 Lessons I Learned About Writing from a “Parasitic Helpless Shriek Goblin"

to Oliver Assy: thank you

I used to be an economics major and I was pretty horrible at it. While budget deficits, inflation percentages, and tax rates didn’t seem to matter to me, there was one useful jargon I found worth remembering during this awfully long one-semester experience: Opportunity Costs. For those of you who, like me, don’t really care much for the capitalistic corporate world, opportunity costs simply mean a trade-off: it’s what you’re willing to give up or sacrifice in return for a greater gain or good. Up until recently, I never really knew how strenuous it could be for a person to have to be put in a situation where s/he has to weigh out two options against each other in the first place. But if there’s anything the past few weeks have taught me, it’s that the scale has to tip over to one side eventually, one way or the other.

It all started once I realized that my descent into madness – or rather my understanding of it – began with a simple book: Back when I was in grad school, I recall having read The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In this short story, the author narrates in the first person point of view what happens to a woman who’s been somewhat impetuously diagnosed with “acute nervous depression” as she spirals even deeper into psychosis. Since she is forbidden from engaging in any kind of activity for fear that she could not handle it given her “situation,” the protagonist finds that the only way she could pass the time and entertain herself is by staring at a bizarre pattern on the wallpaper of the room she finds herself confined to. Slowly but surely, she inevitably goes insane as her containment eventually leads to her unfortunate demise.

Reading this, I wondered how fragile this woman must’ve been. Granted, this story reads like an implicit feminist manifesto speaking out against male patriarchy and societal gender roles, but surely, I thought to myself, a room can’t in and of itself push someone over the edge…can it? I, for one, didn’t think so until I experienced it myself by becoming a first-time mother. Interestingly enough, they tell you motherhood is the most wonderful experience any woman can go through. They tell you it will give your life meaning and purpose. They tell you that you will have many sleepless nights but one look at that little critter will make you forget all your pains and aches. What they don’t tell you, however, is that all of that – the good and the bad moments – will all take place in one | single | room: The baby’s room.

Being a 24/7 guardian of a clueless defenseless mini-extension of you really can drain you out of the last bit of energy you have (which wouldn’t be much anyway): It gets loud. It gets silent. Some days, this room suddenly feels like a football stadium. Other days, it’s a claustrophobic gym locker with each of the four walls gradually drawing in closer and closer; minute-by-minute and inch-by-inch. And just like that: I understood Gilman and immediately felt like I wanted to reach out and give her protagonist a giant hug. All things considered though, it’s worth mentioning that I do have one edge over Gilman’s character: While she lived in the 19th century, I, on the other hand have the privilege of having access to a 21rst century phone and laptop during this temporary “house-arrest” of mine. And with that luxury at my disposal, I am at liberty to use this technology as a vessel for communicating eight interesting lessons I learned about writing by observing my… (wait for it)… 3-week old son:

1) If it smells, it needs changing. Obviously, if something doesn’t quite feel in place, it most likely isn’t. Listen to your gut instincts any time you cringe because you’ve come across a situation that goes against what is normally supposed to happen. After all, it’s all about meeting the set requirements. That said, if somewhere along the lines, a blunder took place, roll up those sleeves of yours and invest in a bit of wiping and cleaning.

2) If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. I’ll be honest: that used to be a motto of mine long before my son became a pivotal part of my life. An additional lesson he taught me, however, was what consequences would inevitably arise once an individual ignored this simple – albeit useful ­– advice. In other words, if no further supplements were needed, yet one forced them in anyway, the superfluity would over-flood the entity. Similarly, if no changing was required but one went ahead and changed what s/he believed to be a messy residue, it would only aggravate the already very stressful situation and may even lead to crippling the tense circumstances all the more.

3) Write outside the lines. Not all farts are exclusively just farts; there sometimes may be a bit of poop there too – after all: there’s no smoke without fire, and no given rules are too golden to be broken. Yes, there are always standardized norms that one must respect and adhere to but understand that every piece is unique and you can’t be original in your work if all you ever do is conform to what everyone is expecting you to do.

4) It’s all about learning what sounds right. And if an individual is concerned mainly because s/he believes something sounds right to him/her but s/he isn’t sure as to whether it sounds right to others as well, that is when it becomes absolutely necessary to consult a second or third opinion: a specialist in the field.

5) Take pleasure in the little successes along the way. This is as applicable with regards to babies, as it is with the process of writing, and life in general. Those burps and farts might personally mean the world to you simply on accounts of the fact that you were able to make them happen even though they may seem utterly trifle to others. And that’s okay. That’s what learning to write is all about. A good writer is never a sell-out: A mature writer writes to please himself, not others.

6) Understand the sacrifices needed to get it right. Back to our discussion about opportunity costs: Now some days, that means you will barely get an hour or two of sleep until the work is done. Other days, it will be at the expense of your shower, lunch, or both. Deciding that this is a priority means that there will be days that the task at hand will have you nailed to that bed with ruffled hair, residual ungargled toothpaste, and disheveled flannels and pjs looking like a decaying corpse and feeling like a decaying corpse about to die a second painful death then return back to the grave. You simply cannot worry about details at this point. You don’t have time to anyway. 

7) Eliminating self-doubt begins with…well, the self. Sure, many times, there will be red flags alerting you that something is wrong. But many other times, you might nervously raid everything in sight only to discover that you simply cannot understand what has caused the situation to fall apart though it is obviously evident that things are quite problematic at the moment the way that they are. When that happens, there’s actually nothing you can do, but rather only one thing you should never do: blame yourself. If you’re diligently trying to mitigate things and the situation is simply not improving, be patient and take solace in the fact that you’re doing all you can. Emotional support from a loved one and possibly narcotics (unless you’re breastfeeding) become incredibly helpful at this point. 

8) There are no guarantees. It personally took me a long time to make peace with this last one. Though it’s something most people don’t want to hear, it’s true. And the sooner people accept it, ironically, the happier and more stress-free they’ll become. The only other way I can put this is by saying: learn to accept and deal with the curve balls you come across in your professional, social, and personal writing space. So basically, live with the fact that you could be: A) a total mess who still somehow manages to have things turn out okay; or B) a perfectionist who painstakingly pays careful attention to every little detail and yet still ends up screwing things up anyway. That said, keep in mind that uncertainty shouldn’t drive you away, but rather simply drive you. If faced with courage, you’ll soon come to notice that the unpredictable nature of things may very well make the process of “getting there” all the more exciting rather than frightening. After all, it’s all about maintaining a positive attitude. 

In a sense, I guess you could say that this little “parasitic helpless shriek goblin” of mine (ominously dubbed so by my best friend Philip) ended up teaching me a lot more about writing than I ever expected he could (which I suppose is saying a lot since I wasn’t actually expecting he’d teach me anything at all to begin with). Yellow Wallpaper Syndrome? Not a chance.