I recently purchased a major purchase, and it was a bit scary. It was a computer, and though I have yet to regret it (it’s been several hours), I have had a bit of buyer’s remorse in that I didn't know if it was the right decision. You see, when my Chromebook died (RIP) after 3 years, I just…sort of…didn’t buy a new one. I didn’t see the need. I hadn’t been writing, really. I hadn’t been writing and though it was breaking my heart, I was getting pretty resigned to it. I was understanding on a wholly new and fundamentally depressing level that I was about to turn 40 and I hadn’t written anything I liked in years, years, years!
It
was a dark time. I had long ago reached the conclusion I wasn’t going to write
the great American novel, I had compromised with myself that I was not going to
be interviewed by the New York Times for my opinion about Stephen King’s
legacy to millennials. I had walked up to that door that says “Cheesemonger” instead
of “Writer” and walked through it, letting myself be okay with that fact,
letting myself believe it was going to be all right. But I had also met a beautiful
person that made me think that I wasn’t insufferable, that I was worth trying
to be with for long periods of time. She loved me, and suddenly life was okay.
It wasn’t just her, it was my getting older, less angry, less outraged at the
developments of my little piece of the world. Things seemed like it would be okay
without the writing. Things could move forward for me without carving into the
wall every childish idea about pop culture and art and whatever skittered
across my cerebellum.
But
then, after about two months, I started to itch way back inside of my skull
where the thoughts grow and flow, fester and boil, tumble and toil. I started
thinking about all those stories from my past that I had left drying in the sun
along with the cut-too-short grass that feels like hard spikes when you lay on
it. The itching got worse as the sun began to slide under the horizon earlier
and earlier in the day. The itch got bad enough to try and write something on a
tiny pad of paper during a beach visit with my girlfriend. It got bad enough to try and patch together a piece on google docs on my phone, hacking it out with
swipes and thick fingers that changed every third word into something totally
wrong (who sucks a duck?). By the time Autumn (well, Late September I guess—it was
70 degrees, but the sun was down by 7pm), I was actively complaining about not
writing and everything else. I had no release for it, not artful content, no
one who wanted to hear it (“how about coming up with solutions?” my girlfriend
asks of me). I had to do something.
And
then my Aunt died, I turned 40, and my grandmother died. It’s been an ugly
year so far, though it had its happy times, it’s seemed to end with abrupt
confrontation that all those things that made me feel that I would be fine
without writing become like so much gravel on the soft shoulder of life. My
Aunt died suddenly, unexpectantly, and though I don’t think I handled it well,
it allowed me to reach some sort of understanding with her husband, my uncle,
who I had been somewhat estranged from for years. We didn’t talk much, we didn’t
really have the gift of gab when it came to conversation yet, but we connected
a least a little over the tragedy.
My
grandmother was a different story—we had known she was beginning to loosen at
the seams a few years ago, and talking with her at the end didn’t get traumatic
until the very end, but something about her passing combined with my aunts made
the itch grow. It had grown in pressure, the needle starting to get into that
orange space before the red. That she died on my birthday didn’t help. I did
what I needed to, I called my cousins and brother, talked it over with them,
cracked a few morbid jokes, and went to dinner with my favorite person. We stopped
at an apothecary and then walked home in the cool dark air, laughing and loving
and reveling in the beauty that the season can give you in the city when it’s still
too warm to hate the outside and still cool enough to walk holding each other.
I thought of my grandmother and my aunt, who had seen their last sunrise, seen their
last dark sky, had finished. I thought of how my Aunt had taken me to the
movies, made me dinner when my homework woes had led me to the house she and my
uncle shared, quietly loving me and caring for me when I had become too much
for my parents. I thought of my grandmother reading my first real story, my
first published piece, and her congratulating me for being a “real writer,” and
looking at me with that strange proud love that costs so little but feels so
good. I remember the practical love she had for my cousins and I as we shared
beers in her kitchen, helping where we could, but mostly dodging her as she
whipped up dinner in the way only someone who knows every inch of a place can.
I
think of them now, the last two members of the secret club of people who cared
for me and hoped I did good and knew me enough to want to see it. I don’t want
to think of the club, and all those people left to join it, but it’s getting to
be a longer list than I think I ever anticipated. And though I can’t say that their
passing led me to get back on the wagon train of Writing (and this always has
it’s spurts and sputters) but shit man, I’ve got to at least admit that it made
me realize that I had to at least try.
So here I am, trying. I'll keep going as long as I can, I don't believe they'll know it, but if I can keep trying, maybe it'll show somewhere in there that I loved them, I love them, and will love them as best I can.
