The quiet settles in around me like a falling dust. In my head, a timer appears, counting away the minutes till Zyan begins cooing away.
What will it be today? A regression nap of 45 minutes, or a full 2-hour sleep?
My back twinges a bit as it straightens against the office chair, reminding me to take it easy as it still recovers from the weekday 5am CrossFit class. There was a time when I avoided hard workouts, preferring a light sweat few times a week rather drawing in breath like it was my last. Now, not getting to at least 5 workouts a week brings out a painful angst in my soul. As if a piece of me is missing. Becoming a father at 52 made for a memorable event, but working out ensured I participated in my beautiful boy’s life without gasping. Each morning, watching him go from one toy to another, stumbling away, babbling incoherent words fills me up my soul in a way I didn’t think possible. My own television except the channel is Zyan all the time.
Again, with this? Dude, you are not the first old father in the world!
Incense smoke clouds up my small office, the scent pungently close to the smell of old piss. Looking out my small window, my ears strain (or wish) for HIS voice, gratitude for HIM warming my insides. Me a father. Another living being created thanks to my small efforts, and there HE sauntered into our lives. A wonder crosses my mind each morning when it’s just me and HIM. Even after 2 years, it still does not feel real. Constant scenarios pop up in my head of horrendous things that could happen. I play the same game about Bella, our 17-year-old Maltipoo. The thought of their demise or danger cramps my heart for a moment, and pain shoots inside me.
Why the fuck do you always go there? You are a fucking weirdo!
As if this happiness was unearned, not meant for me, or didn’t deserve. Around the corner lay Karma and punishment for my misdeeds. All the lies, the pretense of listening or talking to others for a few moments, then onto the next, but never stopping to reflect upon what created the deep hole. What was missing? Easier to stumble from one person to event to task to another, just shuffling forward, success finding me much later in life. And so now my baby boy, wife and dog form a new blanket, one that could be snatched away at any moment. That fear always nearby, waiting to take over my body, even though it feels like I am manifesting the things that I truly do not need or want, but failing in that endeavor.
Water drips from the nearby bathroom sink like a metronome, telling me time to keep pushing out words, giving birth to them, ignoring the afterbirth of grammatical mistakes or of not making sense (just like my life).
Keep moving!
A growing dread when the quiet deepens, and the page remains blank.
I got nothing left to say.
My lack of talent fails me to say something interesting, or different. There was a time when the fingers couldn’t be stopped, but now they must be pushed forward, forced even. Calling myself a writer sounds like a joke. The butt gets numb, and the temptation to get up and walk away threatens to break the quiet.
What about the noise in your head?
So much time wasted on wanting to write, making plans, but each time sitting down with nothing on my mind expecting miracles that the fingers will spit out things that are interesting, make sense and establish me as a writer.
Isn’t this just journaling? How is this different from your private thoughts?
The heart pounds, anxiety flows in rapidly, flushing out all my desire to write.
You a writer? Ha! You won one lousy writing competition in High School which was over 30 years ago foo!
Reading my old essays brings out a marvel in as they feel like they are written by someone else. The words unfamiliar, no longer part of me, out of me onto the page, and now simply forgotten. I wonder where those ideas came from. Who was the person that made them? Did he have the same doubts, fear or did the lack of experience make him far braver than he actually was? Was he always a dreamer? A leader? A writer? Ha! Wanting to be something doesn’t make you that, a hard learnt lesson. So much of my life sitting in dreams about a bright future without effort, just waiting for it to greet me. Tick tock, the time went and next thing you know another personality sits in front of this screen, doubt dripping into each of the letters pounded onto the screen. Words no longer fly out, but dribble out in sputters of incoherence and haziness, worry their main fuel, no booster energy supplied by fantasy.
From the bills to the child to the marriage to still not being able to do a pull up, these form my thoughts in the quiet I so desperately wanted but now regret. Better to rush through the tasks, the days, the times so there is no time to ponder the worries, fears, or justifications while denial constantly roves inside me. Avoiding improvement feels so strong some days that it feels nice not to get up from the bed, but sleep eludes me, punishing me by not giving me the blankness and darkness I desire. Instead, more and more images blast into my mind, showing me a world full of failures defeats, wrong turns, and the constant question as to why it took so long to be here.
The quiet pulses, squeezing my heart and brain to come up with an explanation for my 52 years in life.
What a big number! You found your way after 5 decades!
Quick to take credit when people mistake me for younger, but even faster to tell people at the gym my age when the weight or the workout feels overwhelming or difficult to do at the recommended goals. The number ready to shoot out depending on the situation. Never mind that my career and marriage and child came much later in life than they should have, but I didn’t want to grow up. It didn’t even occur to me to do that type of work. Better to stay insulated against the nuisance of earning a wage and actually paying bills within my financial reach rather than my family’s.
Back there again, huh?
Shaking off my history, fingers poised, ready to spit out something anything, a tremble on the tips prefaces that something was coming out. Never mind how it was, just my hands are moving in the silence. The tap tap tap of the keyboard reassuring me that I was a writer.
Even though the last thing you published was over 10 years ago?
The heart tremors accepting that no one may ever see whats here. Never see me, know me, like me, understand me. Just me and the page and the quiet. Maybe that’s all that’s needed. The page a vassal for my nonsense no one needs to read.
So you are writing for you? Who are you kidding?
Thinking even that feels like a lie because if these words don’t appear in someone’s mind while reading then what’s the point? Does it matter if no one can hear you scream? Or it enough that the words are here as long as the technology that contains it lasts (no way, it will be a printed version, because environment). The quiet intensifies the urge to get it out before it is ripped apart by my son even though a part of me fervently wishes he would so there’s valid excuse to stop. Different parts of me warring against each other because one side is afraid of what will come out of me. Fear pursues my mind because if the words don’t hit the page, then I can pretend all is well.
That’s worked for you all these years.
Nervous energy courses inside me as the desperation to put something down builds up.
Come on! Come on! Say fucking something!
Feeling empty, sitting in the room, fingers poised and a blank slate on my mind. Wishful thinking fills me as images of being a published writer come to me even though nothing of substance hits the pages.
So far you have gone 6 pages with nothing to say.
Defeat comes close as the first whine begins. The fingers tremble even more with anticipation.
Come on, come on, comeon,comeon,comeon!
Yet nothing comes to mind. My fucking brain produces nothing perhaps due to my stroke, my go to excuse. Unable to mine my past for more things to regret. Blankness comes up to me in a blanket. Time stretches but is sure to snap back as soon as HE speaks. The temptation is great to just talk about HIM. The only person who brings an immediate smile to my face, but its also cheating because it means I am back to avoiding. This is my therapy. This is my time to excavate, to dig, to carve out the pain onto this page does not splatter with my gushiness for HIM.
That’s all you got? What different thing will you say about a toddler that hasn’t been said by a parent. You are so unoriginal.
Nothing. Nothing inside me. Perhaps my mind has said it all with no more to add, no more time to waste for myself and for others. Maybe this is just my own quiet time to realize my failures. What a delightful way to see myself! Yet something tugs inside, a teeny tiny word. Move. Then another. Keep going. Ignore it. The inner voice that is, the one that has nothing ever good to say that. The one that’s always doubting, commenting, complaining. The one that is afraid all of time. The worst care scenarios are its jam. Comfort is its calling, nothing else. Just stay status quo. Change like cancer, unwanted and forever feared. It’s a drug, easy to listen to when unmotivated or unclear, it pounces upon those doubts and strains out reasons for not pushing forward. Trying to keep me down, status quo its oxygen, content in never moving forward, not learning or growing, better to remain distracted than on new paths that stretch me.
So the fingers begin moving against that emotional malaise, fight to put something down, to make my life concreate, putting down vague memories that won’t seem like that in a few years as the brain degenerates. The words as foreign as my feelings, unrecognizable except that I took the effort to put them down. The only evidence I need. This is what I reflect on, half remembered perhaps, but the quiet will linger inside me. For that moment when the letters are here, it means that the outside quiet is now inside me. And that’s what matters. Its my why. This is all that’s left for the time spent here. These things become my remember past even though they will read like a foreign language in a few years.
Who wrote this? I don’t remember you being any good!
Then HE calls out. A gurgle at first as he stirs, the sheets announcing his wakefulness before he gets a chance to. An unbidden smile on my face as the quiet remains no longer. For a moment, I linger just to take this moment in. A laugh and he call for me. I close the laptop and go towards the new quiet in my life.