It must have been around four or five years ago that I sat at a writers' conference listening to the essays editor of The Rumpus talk about what kind of essays she liked and what kind she flat out did not. I remember thinking that I wanted to submit something to her and the Rumpus—I had great respect for both—but everything I could think to submit most definitely fit into the category of essays she did not like. At all.
Since that time, the essays editor has changed, but so have my essays and the topics on which I write, at least in part. Still, I had to put on my big girl pants to get up my nerve to send in an essay to The Rumpus. I chose an essay I had written last year, in 2015, but never submitted for publication. When I got a reply by email, I was prepared for the "Thank you for submitting but" rejection. Instead, when I opened the email, I found that my essay had been accepted, and I jumped up and down and whooped it up in my living room. Yes, my husband had to witness this, but he's known me long enough to not be terribly fazed by my shenanigans.
Here is the essay, up today: A Case, Diagnosis, and Its Findings. An expanded version of this essay is a chapter in my newly finished memoir-in-stories.