Paper and Pen

I sit at the desk. Wait. Check the clock. Wait. Sip my coffee. Wait. Hear the dinner bell. Wait. Read business papers. Wait. Sip my coffee again. Wait. Check the clock again. Wait. Click my pen. Wait. Read my old stories. Wait.

I am stuck, looped, cursed to go through this abominable feeling forever and longer. And, of course, now the words flow. Now that they are of no use to me. They flow, they barrel, they stream through my mind and out of my mouth.

"Such a shitty situation, shouldn't have accepted the deadline, need to come up with something, all my ideas are crap, my life is fucked, I'm so screwed, God save me from this terrible, horrible, abominable, dreadful, appalling, atrocious, abhorrent, ghastly, abysmal, excruciating experience!"

I am alone in bed - my wife tosses and turns in another room, too disturbed by my sleep patterns of late to stay with me any longer. We used to stay together, on nights like this, nights of such stress when there were no word flows and a deadline was looming - but since the last time, when we would sleep together and wake up, every morning, with her on the couch, bruises from where I had gripped her too tightly matching the shade of her dark circles, indicating another sleepless night, we cannot. I used to miss her, and now I am simply glad I do not drag her into this mess I have become.

Someday this entire act will fall apart, more than it has already. Enough to be visible to the public. I will be a divorced man, an old-news author, scrambling to pay the electricity bills. I can see it, as if I am already there.

Eventually I will give in to my less-than-mediocre life; I will grow accustomed to only knowing my son through phone calls once a month and only having brief, clipped conversations with my wife. I will grow used to only getting texts from my friends to come up with another excuse for why we can't meet up, and only ever seeing people while I'm drunk in bars. Then all the rules are lifted, if only for the night. I will become a drunkard - a bar regular, learning to wake up every morning with a pounding headache and face the pain.

But here is the thing: I know all of this will happen to me, and I know I will learn to survive it, but I do not want it. I do not want that life, that loneliness. I do not want that isolation and immorality. Who I am now is not good enough - never good enough - but still better than that future.

And suddenly, after so long waiting, the words are beginning to flow. How? I do not know. Why? I do not know. But here they are, churning deep inside of my heart.

Now, all the waiting done at the desk is a waste. I stayed, and I waited with the pen and paper for lightning to strike, but nothing appeared. Now, now in bed with nothing, the idea has hit, and now comes the storm. I must write.

I scramble out of bed, slip on my sandals, and shuffle outside to my writing shed. Once, my supplies were closer, but the burden of the writing fell on every member of the family, and it led to such violent arguments our son would cry. Neither of us could take this, and an uneasy arrangement was made - I would continue to write at home, but never inside the house where I could be seen. It had been a good idea, yes, but in the heat of the moment I hate it with a burning passion, for the words are in my blood and I need to write.

Somehow I make it through the door, and then I am outside and I am sprinting, flying across the grass to the shed. My pajama pants fly behind me, and I know I must be a sight, dashing across the technicolor lawn in my striped blue pajamas underneath the full moon. Run, run, as fast as you can; you can't catch me  - I'm the Gingerbread Man! my imagination teases me, taking a memory of childish joy and twisting it into a mockery of my skill. And that - the voices in my head piping up once again after staying silent for so long, the insanity that I have come to embrace - that is what really lets me know. I am ready. It is time. I am ready and it is time to write.

I wrench the shed door open, yank the chain and glare as the dim lightbulb flickers on. Pull out one drawer after another - old manuscripts, old manuscripts, old manuscripts. Where is my paper? My pen? I know, somewhere deep inside of my panicked soul, that they are in this room. I put them somewhere safe, and now I do not know where. I half-turn in despair, and I see - fresh paper. A pen. I reach out to touch it, barely leafing through the pages. I am almost reverent.

It is like a spell has been cast over me - I grasp it in my hand, turn it over, and then get to work. Write, write, write. It's a chant in my head, my heart, my very soul.

I am unsure how long I have spent sitting in that shed. Dawn has passed, so I know it has been hours. But when the sun has risen, I run a hand through my wild, tangled mess of brunet hair and, with the biggest grin I have sported in many months, begin to laugh. This writing is a perfect manuscript, one of my best yet. It will get me through this hard time and then some - perhaps, even, it will give me enough confidence to fix things; for there are many things, and all need fixing.

And this all starts, every time, with the simplest of items: paper and pen.