Recovery Day, 2

Chapter 24

Recovery Day, 2

            It’s Saturday morning and I’m not feeling great, but I I think my mom was right when she said I’ll live. Doctor Greene, who I’ve now come to realize was simply trying to lighten the spirits when he let that single chuckle loose, and is not Lucifer himself,  was right when he said it wasn’t going to be pretty. It was a s****y stretch of days, but I’ll survive. I should probably just take it easy today and not put any strain on myself, but I’m going to try to get some writing done. 

    My head is clear, and I had some great ideas yesterday.  I open my laptop, ready to get started. I stare at the screen, wiggle my fingers over the keyboard…  lower them… wiggle them again… and despite having spent the entire day yesterday brainstorming ideas… nothing comes to me… 

I try to jog my memory, try to recall anything, one sparse little detail or idea among the countless I had over the last twenty four hours but I can produce nothing from the bottomless pit no matter how deep I scour - not a single thing. 

I get up, walk around in circles, talk with Leia, talk as Leia, watch TV, sit in different positions and rooms in my apartment, take Leia out, come back in and shower, sit back in front of my screen and… there’s nothing. 

 I kept telling myself to get up and write the ideas down, but I was certain I’d remember them �" but there’s just a blank space, an empty and hollow chasm. It’s like the last day of brainstorming, writing the rest of the plot in my mind and only needing to write it down now - it’s like it never happened…and I’m met with a grim feeling. I sense dark clouds rolling in, and my mind starts spiraling to wondering if I’ll ever finish it �" the self-loathing side of myself immediately answers that I won’t. 

A freak tornado makes land right then, crashes through my stomach - tears through me, carrying tractors and cars that smash into my guts, and shreds of wood and metal and razor sharp shrapnel that slice my insides apart, and mooing cows and carnage and absolute devastation that spirals up my stomach, surges through every organ in my body and circulates through every vein until it courses through my entire being. 

I feel myself descending into the dark abyss… and I reach out to find something �" a shred of positivity in my life, but there’s nothing �" not a single thing to grab hold of to help me claw my way out. I fall harder, faster �" arrive at the realization that I’ve just wasted hours, months of my life writing a book that I’m never going to finish because I simply can’t finish it, that I just had all this time off, and did nothing because I’m not good enough, that the dream I’ve had my entire life was nothing more than a sham, a pipe dream �" something to taunt me and tempt me, consume my time and energy, but is nothing I could ever achieve. 

            I even lied about being sick from school, played hooky like a complete asshat, and wasn’t even there to wish my kids a Happy Thanksgiving �" and this sends me crashing at warp speed further, deeper, into the darkest unchartered territory - wondering who could ever be with someone like me? It’s no wonder that I’m still single �" and all that was wasted time, too �" even more than the writing. I’m a s****y teacher, a lousy writer… 

And I deserve to be alone...  

    My nose gets stuffy… my eyes start tingling… From the depths, memories begin to rise… images… snapshots… Lucy’s restaurant meltdown… dog-hating Haley… treacherous Samantha… flakey Chelsea… I try to dig myself out… but they just keep coming… one after the next, failed date after failed date… 

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            It’s Monday morning. I apologize for ghosting you like that, but I’m not particularly proud of what happened over the last two days. Let’s just say it was a hell of a fall. I hesitate to even tell you the truth of it, but you’ve already seen my journal, so I like to think we’re close enough now that I can let you in. Before I open the floodgates, let me remind you of something. I’m not good at being sick…

At first, I was sad. Better yet, I was crushed, devastated, destroyed, broken by all of these bone-crushers hitting me all at once, which set off a chain reaction. 

As I wiped the initial wave of tears from my face, I stared in the bathroom mirror, the crown of baldness forming around my temples, my scraggly beard a disheveled mess after having not shaved for about two weeks, the whites and grays standing tall and reminding me that I’m well into my thirties and still alone…

 And I realized I’m the problem. I shredded myself apart, decided that everything about me was horrible, and I hated the person I was. I threw myself down in bed and tried to sleep away the pain. 

  As I stared into the blackness of my eyelids, I delved into the blackest reaches of the human mind… I thought about how I’d die alone… I wondered how many of my students would show up at my funeral… how many of them would be happy after I was gone… At some point, I realized my mind had strayed to some pretty grim subjects... but I was too far gone.

I opened my eyes and stared at Leia, who was always by my side, and wondered how long it would take after I died for her to eat me… I fell asleep, woke up, fell asleep, woke up… each time feeling empty inside… 

I don’t know when, but at some point the sadness was replaced by anger and my descent shifted from darkness into complete irrationality. Bizarre thoughts consumed me. I considered the possibility of quitting my teaching career and becoming a used car salesman, or going back to the s****y government job I had before I went back to school, or leaving it all behind and becoming a real-life riding the rails hobo because after seeing myself in the mirror, my beard is looking like I’d fit the part. I wondered if I should just quit and move into my minivan. I knew there’d be ample space for me… but what would I do with Luke and Leia? 

In the darkest moment, I quit writing for good and swore on my first born child that I’d never go back. I thought about how I’ve wasted so much time with it - countless hours and days that I’ll never get back. I’d filled my head with fairytales and dreams, and carried with me the delusional belief that I have the ability to ever produce something I’m confident in sharing with the world. 

At some point Sunday came, and I started feeling a little better physically, but I was still down in the dumps. I couldn’t find anything… not a sliver of hope or positivity. I just laid there for hours, getting up only to take Leia out. 

In the afternoon, realizing that I would have to get up and go to work in the morning because I had failed to find myself a new career path, and couldn’t commit to the hobo-life, I showered, and shaved. When I got out, I stepped on the scale and watched the numbers teeter-totter back and forth between 189.9 and 190.1 before it settled on the under, no doubt aided by my shaving ten minutes earlier, and the fact that I haven’t eaten solid foods for well over a week, but I didn’t care - I found something, a shred of positivity in my life.

 I met my weight loss goal. Not just my goal, but the REACH goal of fifty pounds within the year, and I still have two months to go �" and that’s what I grabbed hold of as I climbed way out of that dark hole, covered head to toe in dirt and s**t. Clean shaven, still with a few extra rolls and handles, and a whole lot of gray chest hair… but I looked better than marginally presentable. I looked pretty good. 

Suddenly other realizations came to me - little glimmers of hope. I remembered that Leia was always with me. I remembered that Steven and Nelson came up to check on me a couple of times, even dropped off some Thanksgiving leftovers. My mom kept texting me to see if I was okay. I had emails from students over the last few days, Rosa Cortez even, telling me to get well soon. My dad even called - not related to my sickness (he needs someone to take him to the doctor on Thursday), but when I told him I wasn’t feeling well, he was his normal chipper but aloof self and wished me well. I realized I’m not alone.

And even in my darkest hour, I never thought of Elaine. She never crossed my mind, not even once. Maybe the last thread has snapped. 

I found another positive after I regrouped and sat down in front of my laptop and began scrolling through some of what I’ve written over the last few months. Just looking at the product of hundreds of hours of work reminded me of how many of those were filled with absolute joy fueled by that basic process of putting my thoughts into words. I love writing. I don’t know why but it means everything to me.

 I moved through the first few chapters. It isn’t all great - but there are lines, paragraphs - entire scenes that I know are and if I can just tie up some loose ends and clean it up a bit, and actually dedicate the time to finishing it, it could be published. That’s the first step in making my dream a reality. 

I sat down to write, and for several hours… I wrote. I edited, revised, deleted, and I was loving every second of it and was lost in the world I’d created… Until I got a message from Sophie, 29, a pretty brunette librarian, and I was drawn away from writing and plunged myself into a conversation with her about literature.

I closed my laptop, and drifted away into dialogue about our favorite books and authors. It was a beautiful conversation that occurred over the span of less than an hour, until she said that Stephen King was overrated.

It wasn’t a sign that she was pure evil… it was a sign that she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. The man is a genius, and everything I aspire to be one day as a writer… and I started thinking about how Stephen King probably isn’t getting pulled away from his writing like this… That he’s a professional and he commits time every day to his craft, and that’s the reason he’s able to churn out one beautiful work after the next. 

It’s hard enough being a teacher and writer at once without the distractions, and I realized it’s been happening all along. I’ve lost countless nights of writing going out, almost as many getting drunk downstairs and complaining. More hours just staring at the screen with my head completely elsewhere. Dating has turned my mind to mush. 

There isn’t room in my life for teaching, writing and dating… and I can’t give up teaching. I’m going to finish the book no matter what happens, and because of that, I’ve decided to give up with online dating for now. School and finishing the book need to be my priority right now. The flame flickered, but it refused to go out.

Despite my haunting thoughts in my darkest hours, I’m not afraid of dying alone because I know someday I will find The One. Maybe it’ll be in the next chapter of my life, maybe four chapters from now,  maybe not until I’m in the last chapter of the book of my life… but I’ll find her… but for now,  I’m so close to finishing my novel, and after all the time I've put in, I owe it to myself to see it through to the end, so for now, I can’t have any distractions. 

Sorry ladies, Pete Thomas, 33 is going away for a while. Right now, Mister Thomas has students to teach.