Our parents had Joan Didion, but you're all stuck with me.
Thoughts of a recovering reluctant writer in July.
I watch visual artists and musicians my age with the bitter envy only writers can understand. I stare with the petrified curiosity of a car cash witness; I feel my nails dig into my palms as melodies dance from vibrations on a string, how oil paintings become sacred beside a shiny-faced, 22-year-old Rembrandt. I go home and I battle my drafts, writing the same inane story again and again until it doesn’t make sense anymore.
I tried to become anything other than a writer. I tried business, biology, Spanish language, and dropping out of college entirely before I allowed myself to admit what I am. I hated that I found myself important enough to write something meaningful. But like the crucifix caught up to Joan of Arc, the pen caught up to me. I had nowhere else to go, so I went home and I battled my drafts. I tried to make sense of what I de-familiarized. This is what I’ve worked out so far:
July. It’s summer in Squirrel Hill South. Everything smells like chlorine and hot pavement. The air hangs heavy and thick over your shoulders when you go outside. Heat rises up from the lower floors of the rental house, our poorly-installed window units groaning against the Sisyphean task of cooling things down. I can only lie around, stretching out to reach the receding cold spots of my comforter. The electricity bill looms over all of our heads like we’re inmates on death row. I have nothing much to write about.
My solace lies in my preschool students and decorating my bedroom. I think mostly of these two things, so I have nothing much to write about. Everything else is on fire. The whole world is on fire and people are burning up in the flames. I will never know these people, but it’s partially my fault. The thought makes my insides feel rotten. It feels horrible and evil, and I know it has to.
I dream about losing my way home nearly every night. I dream that, when I get there, I have to move all my furniture up an endless flight of wooden stairs. I dream a billion moths, choking out a flickering lamplight.
When I’m awake, my students say they love me. They grin and dance and the oldest is barely three years old. They remind me of why we wake up and go on trying.
Discovering that I need to work with kids in my life ideally teach them art that would heal me
“I hated that I found myself important enough to write something meaningful.” This line HIT