Let’s say that during my twenties, all I did – literally – was write; All I could do was hope that my parents would read this, see me, grow up and care. Let’s say that during my twenties, I published three books in three genres and each time, my life got significantly worse. When book #1 came out my father stopped talking to me. Book #2, I remember; But I don’t want to. And by the time book #3 was released, I had begun to come to the overwhelming acceptance that I needed to separate myself from my mother.
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This is the first essay I have written in three years. I couldn’t stomach the idea of the world starting another sentence with “I.” So let’s say, as an essayist, memoirist, and poet, I developed extreme anxiety around publishing and associated the entire process with loss; I am ready to give up the writing life to which I have devoted my entire adult life. And as a last hurray, I did the thing I thought I’d never do. Fuck it. I knew that if I wanted to write, whatever I wrote would have to be so far away from myself that I could not even remember my feelings.
At the very beginning of the story, my novel was based on a family. A group is raising children together. I am an only child, with no children, who lived alone and was never in a relationship. This was good. This was perfect. I was very far away. Initially, I thought this set of fiction would be part of an erotic story collection. Again, I wanted it to be a romance, because money.
And then, I couldn’t get off the bedroom floor.
But I persisted. I kept thinking about love. It’s safe to say that love is the only thing I ever want to write about. Its production, but also, its laziness. Its spontaneity, but also its hope. I was too cowardly to do this to myself because most of my experiences with love have been in my head, and to hide it, I spent a lot of my past writing time focusing on crafting a style. As for “me”, I didn’t want to be seen as longing. Need to read. To be disappointed. Still with the imagination, I finished the first chapter like it was nothing. I read and read it, knowing it was my favorite thing ever written.
The group mesmerized me. I loved him. I loved their children. I loved the way he took care to touch and ask follow-up questions. Had fun. I thought, I was still too far away. I swam. Not found anywhere in the text. I removed things. I was aggressive. I workshopped it. I made inappropriate jokes. I started again. I read seven books a week. I saved it for later. I almost felt that way Very Good.
As I got deeper into the story, a roadrunner started running around my skull. Thoughts move at a fast pace. Every idea, brilliant. My body, perfect. Most days, I was up all night. dance; Until I got wet. My laptop is in the bathroom sink. The cursor is blinking. The group was still there, waiting for me. I was still making it. I was always on top. they were happy. They had land and horses. They were open and actively dating. They laughed amid the disagreement. I rearranged my room, picked up furniture, ran up and down the stairs, cleaned my apartment up to the baseboards, and spent all my money. About what, I can’t tell you.
But the group was thriving. I mean, they were going through something, but they were safe enough as themselves to go through it. The Roadrunner moved faster, and faster. For several months I slept less than three hours a night. I saw streaks of light. I met God. So alive, I thought God was my grandmother. So different, I thought God had forgiven me. The whole time, I kept talking to myself. But it all felt so good, loving.
And then, I couldn’t get off the bedroom floor. One day I woke up and tears were already streaming down my face. I would brush my teeth, and before I even crossed the threshold, I would fall to the floor until the sun went down. Many months passed like this. Something was wrong. The group suffered a stroke. The group urged me to get up so I could pay my fare. I left the group.
The difference between the real thing and the fake is that with the imagination—no matter what I did—I couldn’t get the job done. After I spent more than a decade writing about myself, I had a method. A mission. I could depend on myself. To meet a deadline. To see through it. To make it all right again. But with Kalpana, something had gone wrong. I was walking slowly. Stressed and growing. Counting my steps on the stairs, my breaths, my touches. Descending into chaos. I was not able to get up from the floor. I couldn’t access my laptop. I became severely isolated, deleting all my social media and gradually stopped responding to anyone who contacted me. I was distraught; And I left my apartment on Friday morning to buy only five snacks that were easy to swallow so that I wouldn’t go hungry. The deadline passed again. And then.
Something was very wrong. If “I” wasn’t me anymore, why was I still there.
Something was wrong. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t speak. I was afraid of daylight; My mind broke as I remembered – and even more than my mother and father, I took this incident as an unforgivable betrayal. My brain was the only thing in my life that I ever completely trusted, and in fact, as soon as it gave up on me, I became increasingly cruel to myself. Because of not being able to cope. Because of not being able to keep it together. Because of not being able to take care of myself alone, when that was the whole point of my movement. The only thing I had turned me into someone I had never met. I started hating someone. Someone scared me. Someone got stuck. Some sick.
Most of all, I tried to get people to forgive me for ghosting because I knew the real people I ghosted wouldn’t do the same. The group waved and told them to come inside. They had new things to talk about. He said start again. I finished it all. What I spent two years writing was not a book, but a backstory. I changed the title. I was back on the floor. My head is under the bed, but I’m thinking one sentence at a time. When I started again, the group had a near death experience. The group struggled to express their adult feelings. The crowd was mourning. I was exhausted, and ready to die. Since I was about to get evicted, I’m ready to dive straight off the rollercoaster.
The group expanded their home. The couple had problems with their parents. The group created space as they struggled to tell the truth about themselves. I wanted an over-over. To be safe enough to tell someone I’m frozen with my head stuck under the bed. To find the language to say that I know I’ll do it again, but that’s not what I mean when I disappear. I couldn’t stop crying. I cried on the blank pages. I cried while peeing and tried to shower in the sink. I cried for imaginary children. I cried because I didn’t think my favorite character would make it to the end of the book.
In fact, I was writing towards it. Restructuring the book around it. This seemed to account for most of the findings; To end it. The words had me in such a mess, and as I wrote the scene, I clapped my palms on my forehead and wept for the beast. Something was very wrong. If “I” wasn’t me anymore, why was I still there.
I wrote like this on the floor until somehow it was completed. I let go, ending the book with another set of locutions, an inescapable longing, and a healing plan. With a correct diagnosis and a new disposition. And a few weeks ago, when a hundred copies of Thrupal’s story were delivered to the door during a flash flood warning, I saw the invisible camera. The character I wanted to eliminate is a meteorologist. As I tried to pick up the drenched boxes, they deformed in my hands. About a quarter of them were filled with water and could not be fixed, the spines slipping apart as I picked them up. I thought they were very beautiful. I thought I felt very new.
But after seeing it being broken, that weak feeling came back. That heartbeat from my publishing past. An alarm went off, and I thought about how this is the first book to be published that I’m not confused about whether I love the people in it or not. My imagination was the only thing I was not ashamed of when I was alone and absent. When I was really sick and losing everything – including my mind – and everything at the same time – it was the only thing that consoled me, because I wasn’t able to accept it.
I cry whenever I think about it, but looking back, loss has always been a kind of love. A rewarding love. A sacred flight. And because I’ve made my life my life, I took my buspirone, went for a walk, and talked to myself until the ruined books represented some bad omen. When I came back, I focused on what had been saved, cleaned up the leftover water, checked by myself and signed off on what had been saved. Everyone present there with me was looking at the love I had created. He held me while I changed shape. It’s a new decade. He smiled from the other side. We laughed at the idea of it happening again. This couldn’t happen. There was nothing or no one left to lose.
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good morning means i love you Available from Ecco by Kendra Allen.
