You Have Written a New York Times Best Seller!

In and out. Inhale and exhale. Breathe. Drink. Eat. Rest. Listen to music. Watch a movie. Spend time with your family. Family…

Your heart should be soaring but for some reason it is thumping loudly, violently in your chest. Why are you so scared?! The book you have spent years tirelessly working on has been published, yet you don’t emerge from your den. You don’t return to reality to give the warm hugs you’ve been longing to give, and the look in your eyes that tells others you are truly present doesn’t return.

This is what you promised. Once your book was published, you would become a part of your family’s lives again. Join the family dinners, play the family board games. Go to your son’s soccer games and to your daughter’s kindergarten graduation. Yet, you remain crumpled in your pathetic office as your family sits in the living room on your pathetic couch. It's like there is a tea kettle in your head slowly filling with more and more steam. Why? You're not really sure. The whistling increases in volume and pitch until you keel over in pain. Before you can scream out, your heavy footsteps emerge from your prison of an office. You see your kids grip the armrests in anticipation, giving each other looks of enthusiasm.

When your slippered feet enter the living room, your heart is beating in an atypical way. Your brow is creased and the kids notice a new wrinkle by your mouth. Rather than acknowledging the obviously excited crowd sitting before you, you feel a vacant look appear in your eyes and an uninterested expression smooth over your face.

In and out. Inhale and exhale. Even though you feel like you are frozen in front of your children and wife, you feel the hard floor under your feet as the slippers carry you into the bedroom. Without a word, you lay down and fall into a daze. 

The dreams start like they do every night. You hear a faint cry outside your door. It sounds a little bit like your children but it couldn’t be. You’re dreaming and you’re a fiction writer. You should know the difference between imagination and reality. You hear a deeper weeping sound as well. It sounds a little bit like your wife. But you think nothing of it because soon you fall into a dreamless sleep.

…

As sunshine pours through the open shade, you struggle to pry your eyelids open. You notice that your wife has already left for the morning. You drag yourself to your office once again and happen to notice that the children have left and gone to school as well. Your most recent habit of not eating anything in the morning is continued. Why are you going to your office? You don’t know.

In and out. Inhale and exhale. Why did it still feel like it was hard to breathe when the weight of getting your book published was finally lifted?

Stumbling into your chair, you sit and close your tired eyes. You feel your heart beat irregularly once again. Badum thump. Thump thump dabum. You find yourself unable to feel any comfort or peace. 

You can’t take pride in your newly published book that the office so strongly reminds you of. The glances from strangers at the grocery store make you feel unworthy. The sad faces of your wife and children make you feel as if you’ve sacrificed too much to create the book that might not even become a success. You feel as if your writing is cheesy and tacky. 

You spend the rest of the day staring out the window. Children play at the park, people walk their dogs, and the landscapers come to mow the lawn. They seem to give you judgemental scowls even though they couldn’t even have read your new book yet. 

When you hear a knock on the door, a rare occasion, you get up despite the achy feeling in your bones. You are disappointed to find a package instead of a person, but terror reigns within you when you realize what’s in the package. 

In and out. Inhale and exhale. Badum thump. Thump thump badum. You carefully open the box, slicing through the tape and unwrapping the paper. In your hands you feel the glossy texture of a book cover. Your book cover. You’re mesmerized.

Page after page of rich ink seems to soak into your fingertips as you absorb the texture and content of the pages you flip through. Your words look crisp on the fresh, pristine pages of the new books. But before your heart can stabilize and finally escape from the irregular beat it has become accustomed to, you see the skeptical glare of the mailman. You hadn’t realized he was standing there with his clipboard for the past five minutes. 

“Your words are useless,” his brown eyes seem to tell you.

As the man leaves, you feel discouraged and leave the box of books in the doorway. You return to your office to look out the window, the magical feeling of crisp pages and rich ink being drained from your very being. 

… 

Your wife and kids abruptly burst through the door with a strange look on their faces. You are in utter disbelief at their facial expressions. Hope? You almost laugh at the thought that you would ever get back to normal again. You feel bitter for some reason. 

“Honey, something amazing has happened,” your wife smiles but her desperation is not invisible to you. You see the kids gripping her skirt with their tiny fists. 

You try to keep your breathing steady. In and out. Inhale and exhale. The tea kettle whistles in your head.

“Your book has become a New York Times Best Seller!” You see her waving a certificate above her head like a woman who has finally reached retirement after years of relentless physical and emotional strain. 

The noise coming from your internal tea kettle seizes. 

You feel electric. You feel like your nerve endings are red hot and that your lungs are going to explode. You are… happy? You reach over to scoop up your kids in a bear hug and kiss your wife. Your lips are inches from your wife’s face, but before the distance is closed, you feel like a car with a sputtering, broken engine. 

Badum thump. Thump thump badum. You hear your heart’s erratic, but now normal, rhythm. It resonates through your body and begins to sound like music only you can hear. You listen again for your heart’s comforting beat, thinking that you have finally won the battle, but there is nothing. Your muscles go slack and your eyes go wide because you realize that there is no in and out or badum thump. No inhale and exhale. 

You see darkness as you hit the floor.