i’m stuck here waiting for a passing feeling.
I have been absent lately because I quit my job and I finished the first draft of my first book and as much as I sometimes entertain the idea that these things are not related, of course they are related. And the only thing harder than writing a book is finishing it because you stare into your half-empty cup of coffee or your half-empty glass of wine (time of day depending) and you think to yourself, what do I do now. Five months of my life are gone. My grandfather is still dead. Writing this book did not bring him back to life. And you wished him dead, anyway. Those last few days in the hospital, you wished him dead because he did not recognize who you were and he said such hurtful, delusional things to you. And even though it did not hurt and even though it does not hurt it still surfaces in your mind as a reality. Someday everyone you love will die and they will not recognize you and perhaps they, too, will tell you to go to hell.
I have finished the first draft of my first book and I have realized that no amount of writing can write away the pain of living. The pain of breathing. The pain of turning off your alarm clock and getting out of bed and feeding your cat and putting on your clothes and doing your makeup. Those things will always be there and the pain of doing those things will always be there.
Maybe a week goes by and you listen to the same song on repeat as you walk through Brooklyn and you move your car from parking space to parking space and this marks the passing of another block of time. You put your books into boxes and your apartment empties out and you tell your boss you’re not coming back and you tell yourself you will not put so much into your body. You will not keep so much out of your body. You will do the right things. You will not be a writer anymore. You will go back to school. You will have a good, healthy relationship with yourself. With this life. With other people.
And then you’re driving in your car and you are alone and suddenly you are not alone. All these people flood into the car with you and all these things that do not belong to you and all these ideas you do not mean to have and all these memories you do not remember. And there it is. The next thing you have to write.
And so in that way, we are never free from it. I am never free from it.
