Please Resurrect Me

Please resurrect me.

The prompt for this story is: “Write a story about someone trying to raise the dead”; but if you’re me, and I am, you’re writing this prompt: “How to be pretentious in 1000-ish words with roughly 15 minutes to spare before the deadline".

My cat, Lucy, died last November. She was close to 10 years old. She wasn’t doing so well, and it got to the point where she didn’t want to eat, so I took her to the emergency vet, who told me they thought she had cancer and that it had spread. I made the choice to have her euthanized. It wasn’t the wrong choice but it certainly wasn’t the right choice. I barely held it together in the vet’s office, and I have no idea how I made it home safe. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t stop screaming. I’m crying now. One hour before the end of the prompt submission; trying to tell this story. I don’t even know what the story is but I am trying to piece together how I got here, tonight, one hour before this deadline.

When I saw this prompt about raising the dead last week, I immediately thought of Lucy; I don’t think there is anything after this life, as it’s never made sense to me, but I had a terrible thought some time ago that there was something beyond this; that Lucy was out there in some void, and she was all alone; nobody else in her life has died. She was always skittish around people, and it took a while for her to come out whenever people were around. I can’t imagine how full the afterlife would look if everyone who ever existed was there. And if there is a God or Gods, there have been so many cats, let alone humans and other animals; who is with them? How would they divide their time? I guess my imagination in these moments I think about Lucy only goes so far as loneliness, fear, and neglect, and that desperation makes me feel like I would give anything to have Lucy back; but she is not coming back; desperation is a terrible thing.

This is my second prompt submission. The first was kind of written on a whim and although it felt like a strong piece to me–or at least a weird but memorable one–it was difficult to push through it, painful even. I discovered a talent for writing in college that I thought was going to take me into the future; 12 years later, and I’m writing a go-nowhere meta piece for an online contest in an attempt to break out of a perpetual block. This is not a good submission piece; it’s not a good anything, but it’s not for you, it’s for me. I’m trying to find that spark again, that fleeting instance where I wrote something that was considered polished and worthy of publication. The exact words about my best piece were: “there’s college writing, and then there’s this.” This was one of the best and worst compliments I’ve ever received. Hearing that during my last quarter in college was such a thrill; I felt like I was going to have a shot. But it’s the worst because, like all other things prior to that, I was just chasing validation, a grade, a gold star, money, whatever really; just acceptance; acceptance that I was okay, that I was good, that I was fucking great, that I had done enough. 

I had not done enough. This is not enough. This dream is based on a feeling that will never be satisfied, and the work continues in an effort to be satisfied, and the cycle repeats. The idea of it is something I’m trying to resurrect; the idea that I have a talent for this shit; that the things I have to say are important simply because I have said them, and they are important. Who will read this submission? I will, but only once for sure. But it’s so important to me. Why is it so important to me?

I got home from the bar tonight (the bar I go to in order to socialize, but I don’t talk to anyone and I don’t drink, so it's a place I go to drink soda), crying in the car about a 3 year relationship that ended this year; crying about Lucy; crying because I had a slight panic attack being in the bar; crying because I am depressed; but I got home and went straight into writing this important piece, this nonsense, this poetry, with only the idea of this phrase: Please resurrect me.

Please resurrect me, Malcolm.

I am trying but I don't know how.

Please resurrect Lucy however you can.

I can’t. There is nothing to be done.

Please resurrect your writing.

There is nothing to resurrect; I will write or I won't. I want to.

Please resurrect who you are.

I’m not sure who I am. I’m not sure I want to be who I was.

Please resurrect your ideas for the future.

I cannot see the future; I have never seen it.

Please resurrect me.

I feel like my life used to recover from this kind of thing much quicker in the past, but I think that’s probably the folly of youth. I do not feel young anymore; I feel everything; just everything. 

My time is running out, but I have so much to say, and also nothing left to say. How ridiculous writing is: I have a general eagerness to express myself, to be heard, but it is so painful to say. My entire body screams at me to put metaphorical pen to paper in Google Docs while screaming at me to give up; screams at the pretentiousness of this entire piece; screams because I needed it; this ridiculous real-time catharsis, this gushing of all of me into words that will be read once and probably forgotten by me. What a conundrum this process can be, and what sense is to be made of it? It makes no sense. The joy of the pain; the relief from the pain; the joy fades; this shitty piece remains.

The ending is disappointing, but it must end; the deadline approaches; the artificial stop point that we decide to follow. I am trying not to stop, but there is nothing left to say except everything. So I will stop.