Tag: fiction
Protected: Fiction: Control Alt Delete
chilled conclusion
The air pressed against her skin. A thousand invisible paper cuts of equally invisible ice.
A subtle shift from a light breeze did not offset the tiny tears to her flesh. Her steps were quick, but not quick enough to make much progress, as she wore far too little for the season. Just a sequined slip and thigh-high boots paired with a jacket meant for fashion not warmth, accentuating the molecular hairs that pressed up from her skin in protest of the winter air. And soft ivory skin too exposed to the moonlight surfaced across the gentle curvature of collarbone which slipped out of the satin jacket with each step.
She left her house with no particular destination in mind. Only a mission to not stay in the same spot for long. To let the moonlight drench her with its luster as she traced the paths she walked again and again, albeit not so frequently on such a cold winter’s night.
But this escape was purposeless as much as it was purposeful. She hoped that the chilled slices to her flesh would turn off all other sensations. That somehow—somehow by feeling everything at once, ripping in to her, all would fall into place.
Answers would be provided without questions asked.
The air would force her surrender,
and she would allow it that surrender with its silvery silence.
Through the six slits between branches boasting above her head she noticed a star slipping through a sea of soft clouds, illuminated by its simple force, yet mostly forgotten by breadth of the night sky’s endless navy.
She closed her eye tight and imagined the starlight dancing on her skin. Down her neck, to the nape of it, slowly down her spine, to the back of her right thigh, and down to her ankle, then exploding out of her toes towards the forever ahead of her. And again imagined its journey down the left of her, until it left again, bouncing off back to the universe, already forgetting its flare through her flesh.
Defeated by the stars and the slick surrounding she slipped back to doors which enclosed the perfect everything. Soft sheets, warm bed, hot shower, cooked meals, a furnace producing heat on demand. She crawled into bed, tucked herself in tight, and let dreams find her again, through every heartbeat of night’s pulse, until a piercing sun jolted her weary disposition into a new day’s reality, always awaiting the night.
Pregnant in a Pandemic
I had always planned to start trying for my second child 18 months after my first was born. I figured, like my first, this whole miracle of life thing would take months and require medical support like the creation of my first child. At age 36 I didn’t want to look back and think I waited too long to try. I wanted to give my son at least one sibling, maybe two. After my father’s death two years ago, and overall being so far from any family with children my son’s age, and growing up in a large extended family, it hit me hard how important it was to make my own little big family if I could.
Then, a global pandemic happened. In case you haven’t noticed.
I wasn’t in denial of what that meant. I weighed the pros and the many cons. I didn’t mind the idea of not seeing people during my pregnancy or missing things like baby showers and such. If it had been my first pregnancy I would be missing all that but been there, done that, and ok with hibernating these nine months. But I was expecting it to take a while to get pregnant—putting me at a late spring or summer or fall due date—after the second and likely worst peak of the pandemic had past. But the pandemic and my body had other ideas.
In March, I either had COVID or some form of debilitating anxiety where I couldn’t eat. The reason I think it was COVID is that my go-to when I am anxious is eating. But in a month, I lost 8lbs. I also had a lot of lung issues and ended up getting an inhaler and feeling liquid in my lungs for a while. It could have been bad allergies (I don’t have allergies typically) or maybe I was just losing it—but nonetheless I ended up eating healthy/less and with the massive reduction in social anxiety (not having to interact with other humans was just a huge relief, esp coming off what might have been an actual manic episode the prior fall and early winter) my body apparently said “ok, you are ready to be a mom again.”
With my first son, I took my pregnancy test on my 34th birthday. With this one, it was Mother’s Day. I figured my life is secretly scripted so of course I’d find out on mom’s day that I had rapidly reproduced this time around. I used a cheap-o test at first and there was a very very faint line. My text to a friend confirmed it was there. The more expensive test I took a few minutes later said it definitely was there. Pregnant. In a pandemic.
It was no longer a — well maybe I’ll get pregnant and maybe I’ll have to deal with the tail end of the pandemic in a while and maybe that will be difficult. It was—you are delivering in January. The exact month the pandemic will probably be at its actual worst, after a summer of people flouting the rules, after nearly a year of people saying they just want to get back to normal life. Oh, and for fun let’s make your due date two days after the inauguration what will likely be the most contested election in American history, when our prior president may refuse to leave office should be not get re-elected. Why not?
There are definitely pros to being pregnant during a pandemic. For starters, being able to work from home my entire pregnancy is a blessing. As I’m older now, this pregnancy has been a bit harder on me. I think part of that is because I’m not moving enough (which means I would be better off going to an office dusky) but being able to lie down and work, or sit down and wait for a wave of nausea to pass without getting any weird looks at the office is one of the best things about this specific situation. While last time I felt I had to push myself to not be disabled by pregnancy (working up until my due date with horrible carpal tunnel at the end and eventually being diagnosed with gestational hypertension and needing to be induced) I can take this pregnancy easy. Ish. I mean as easy as one can take a pregnancy with no childcare and a two year old wanting attention all day.
Yes, a negative of the pandemic has definitely been the loss of childcare. Prior to the pandemic my FIL came to watch our son four days a week. He enjoyed it and it worked out well for us. But then with COVID we couldn’t risk getting him sick—even though we immediately went into isolation and were being as careful as possible, I had to go to a few doctors appointments so we had to stop seeing my in laws for a while. My husband, who works flexible hours, stepped up to take on the bulk of the childcare. At first, that seemed to work well. I was thriving at work, sleeping well, able to focus without the commute and anxiety of judging myself so harshly for every movement around others. For a few months, I felt, hey, I can get the hang of this pandemic life.
My husband was definitely struggling, though, and as my pregnancy progressed the sleep I was getting turned into random wakings in the middle of the night. I began to be sad overall about the pandemic—about how my son cannot play with other kids, about how my mom can’t see her grandchild until who knows when, about how my sister and my son’s only aunt may not see him for years. We eventually made the choice to see our in laws again, but only 2 weeks after any in person doctor’s appointment. We have completely isolated otherwise, except for going around with our realtor looking at empty houses as we wanted to buy and move before baby number two. I think that little socialization and activity kept me sane these past few months. Oh, and we bought a house (also known as baby #3.) So we have been keeping busy. My son seems ok as he doesn’t know what he is missing. He is now used to mommy grabbing him when we are out and an older kid comes too close, like at the empty park the other night when an unmasked pre-teen came storming out of nowhere and sat right behind my unsuspecting son. Now that some parks are open we will go only when they are empty, and we wash hands after. It seems low risk. But who knows. We do our best. But like everyone else we can still get sick.
Pregnant women are much more likely to end up on a ventilator if we get COVID-19. I would very much prefer to not end up on a vent in my third trimester or ever. I’m scared now, a bit, but being as careful as I can be. I have only a handful of in-person doctor’s appointments left. I’ll go and wear my mask and try to stay far away from other humans and hope I can stay healthy. I worry about what happens when I go to the hospital to give birth. I worry about wearing a mask while in labor when I am already panicked and finding it hard to breathe. I worry about looking at every nurse and doctor who helps me while in the hospital and wondering — do they have COVID? What if I get COVID while in the hospital? Should I have a home birth? Should I get to the hospital so late I give birth in the parking lot and am close enough if anything goes wrong they can whisk me or baby inside and save our lives? What if I get sick at the hospital and die a few weeks later, leaving my kids with no mom? What if I get my husband, who has some high risk medical conditions, sick and leave my kids without a dad—and me without a husband?
But I keep reminding myself pregnancy is a risk in and of itself. Everything in life is risk. So I just need to be as careful as possible, keep calm, and carry on.
I mourn all the things I am missing out on this pregnancy. There has been little time to celebrate my growing bump. I am sad for the weeks ahead, after birth, when I can’t connect with other new mothers as I did last time. I worry for all the pregnant woman and new moms who are essential workers—or married to one—who aren’t able to lock themselves away from the virus.
Overall I, personally, am doing well. My concentration has gone to shit these past few months, but I’m surviving. After a few solid months at work when I was doing well, I came crashing down with the exhaustion and anxiety that is life these days. I keep reminding myself that just surviving—and doing the best I can (as long as I can keep my job, hopefully)—is enough right now. Gone are my fantasizes of thriving in my career, moving up the ladder, what have you. I can be a good employee and a mom and I don’t have to be a leader or brilliant or whatever it is that is worker bees think equals success. I am in a very good place if I can just hold it together mentally, and physically. I can have this baby and experience all of that and see what life looks like on the other side of it.
For now, I’m so grateful for the last months, for working from home and being able to see my son grow up. I didn’t see him much in his first year. I don’t have time or energy now to see him as much as I would like in a more present way, but I’m here nonetheless. I’m here to see him wake up and for a quick lunchtime cuddle and afternoon laugh. This has reminded me of how much I was missing. It really had made me realize what matters in life. In a sense, I think there is something to be said about being forced to hole up and slow down. And, assuming WFH will stick for a while, I look forward to being able to breastfeed longer versus having to sneak away to the mom’s room to pump every few hours. To not have to drive to the office in those first months after maternity leave when I almost got into an accident too many times to count because who sleeps with a <6 month old?
So I’m focused on the positives. And survival. And trying to move on to this next home-owning, mom-to-two, mentally stable (hopefully) phase of my life. I’ll do my best, but for the first time in my life, maybe I won’t give it my all. And I’m ok with that.
I should probably
Think of a character and plot so unlike me they would be both interesting to write about for hours on end and intoxicating to escape into. Escape is what I need, not from any one location, but from this mind which is like a forward-loading washing machine churning the same load of clothing over and over nonstop for eternity.
There is really nothing more to be said about *me* as much as I’d like to imagine my life is so interesting millions would gather to hear me read a few pages of a memoir I’ll never write — the one titled “I’m not funny. I’m hilarious.” Or my very-far-into-the-future best-selling self-hurt book “fuck zen: embracing your inner and outer anxiety.” All the books I’ll never write because I really don’t have much to say and what I do have to say is not as interesting as what everyone else has to say and so I might as well not say it.
But I still dream of figuring out how to write fiction. It seems awfully delightful—as one flings from childhood and its imagination allowance its easy to forget how to think up all the things that could be while buried in trying to resolve the things that are. Maybe in that imagination somewhere is a story that is meaningful enough to make readers gasp and sigh and feel and understand their own behavior and wants and needs a bit more—it always astounds me how little most people think about the whys of everything. So stories gently remind them of themselves and prod at those ignored vulnerabilities. The sore spots festering beneath fresh cookies made for bake sales and their accompanying smiles and social niceties and hiding behind office desks and in conference rooms where people turn into robots to perform their roles to find some meaning in all the meaninglessness, as well as to pay rent. I’m not very good at *that* kind of pretend so it would be helpful if I could find some talent for the other kind.
But alas, I too have no imagination. Or, I lost it a long, long time ago, somewhere in the fading wallpaper of my childhood home. I think it’s there somewhere, in me too, still. I’m curious at the least. So maybe there is a story in me, somewhere. The world has millions of books written and many are horrible and many have only been read by the author and her mother and her two best friends but they at least are books that were written!
This writing of fiction requires empathy not just for real people but for fake people as well. I’m unclear I have either. Though instead of loving my protagonist(s) I think I’d be served better as an author to hate them, or have a cold indifference to their choices, irregardless of how kind or evil they might be. The empathy of not judging ones behavior in knowing that all action is in reaction to something that at some point one had no control over. A general acceptance of the philosophy that free will is an illusion and we are all a chain of dominos tipping over in the direction we ought to, in response to other dominos tipping over on us.
If one day some critic writes about my writing, it should say something like this—she writes of humanity’s ugliness and beauty through the lens of sociopathic wit. No person’s vice is judged by the author, and even the reader finds themselves relating to the darkness of humanity, seeing how we all slip sometimes, at least mentally, into places we prefer not to admit even to our therapists and diaries. Not necessarily to the depths of her complexly fractured characters, but in their thoughts and impulses which seem to translate somehow to all of us in a personal way which guts us reading any of her many works — she will go down as one of the most prolific and thoughtful authors of the century.
Or, perhaps, she will go down as the woman who never accomplished more then blogging about all the things she would like to accomplish because her only talent in life was coming up with ideas of things to accomplish that she never would.
Oh well, maybe 2020 will tilt me towards prolific productivity or, at least, a plot, or person to write said plot about.
Stop.
She ran anxiously through a forest of overgrown trees that hadn’t been touched by another human in years. Thick foliage ripped her feet raw as they bled and painted lush verdant carpeting a morbid maroon. In the thick of thicket, surrounded by oak and pine, a lone stop sign stood, screaming its one purpose, “STOP!”
But she just kept running. She wasn’t sure where. The trees blocked the view of anything beyond and her feet were scraped to the bone, but she ran anyway in circles and squares and circles again.
There was, she later observed, a clear, paved path out of the forest, down the road, to town, where people laughed and played and drank and took comfortable shelter at night and in the storms. But, for whatever reason, she couldn’t see it. She refused to see it. Plenty watched this woman running in circles, her feet tattered, her clothes torn, her body aching, and questioned why she didn’t just step on to the path and head back into town.
She didn’t see it. The more she ran, the further blind she became to anything but trees and that stop sign, coming into view time and again, cutting through leaves, pinecones, and bits of broken and unbroken branches sprawling to the sky. She just kept running because that is all she knew how to do. And she hoped, without hope, that someday deep in that forest, there, in the prickled green, would be another pair of feet, freshly wounded, another set of eyes, seeking an exit but incapable of finding the obvious path out, and another pair of fingertips, reaching recklessly towards the branch-cut sky.
Instead she remained there, alone, revisiting the stop sign every few days and pondering its significance. “Why stop if there is no one else here,” she thought. “Why stop if I don’t even know the first thing about how to start.” She looked down at her battered feet, layered with old and fresh dirt and dried blood, and continued on, in circles, through the forest, running for the sake of staying in constant motion, hearing the laughter erupt from those in town, somewhere, nearby, and suffering from self-sourced infliction.
The forest isn’t real, the villagers knew. It was just a stop sign and a crazy woman circling it. She hadn’t any wounds on her feet, only deep in her heart, long ago pierced by something far more sinister than fabricated forest; her throbbing vessel, beating alive at her core, punctured prematurely, left open and raw, with a wanting wound, festering from infinite intervals of intellectual isolation.
…
Let’s keep in touch! Follow me at www.twitter.com/lifewinterest
I Hate Fiction. True or False?
I’ve decided to try to read more. More is pretty easy since that means going from 0 books a year to, well, more than that. But, being the ridiculous person I am, I decided I should read 36 books by the time I turn 37. That gives me a year and one month to make that happen.
I don’t like fiction. You might be surprised by that fact since when I write anything I tend to write descriptively, as if inspired by the floweriest of fiction writers. But, I guess, deep down, I’m not interested in made up stories or people. What I am interested in is how fiction can be used as a tool to explain what makes people tick. Most fiction, at least literary fiction, seems to do this somewhat — but most of it also doesn’t get philosophical enough for me. That’s why I liked Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (as much as I can like made up stories about made up people) and also why I have failed to get into most fiction books that I’ve picked up.
Continue reading “I Hate Fiction. True or False?”
life with interest 