Diary of A Starving Novelist

I found an earring this morning while cleaning up the house. I was sweeping my living room, getting rid of the dust had settled over the last few months. All those mornings missing her, I couldn’t make it out of bed. Finally on a morning when the  yellow sunlight streamed in through my window. The warmth made me smile before I even opened my eyes. Spring time. Maybe a new season could make me feel ready for it all again.

                I pushed forward the couch to get the stuff left unattended. There it was, a white enamel rose missing its back. It had yellowed slightly on the petals making the bloom look almost alive. I picked it up in my hands and was startled by how light it felt. For all the memories that came rushing back to me. My mother’s hair swept back when she wore them, reddish strands shimmering in the light. Her clear, shinning nails as she brushed the strands back. Smelling the lavender scent that followed her everywhere.

                I put the earring in my ear, using a pencil eraser to keep it on. And just like that, I was back in bed, the blinds shut tight, wondering how I could ever have thought things would be okay again.

Disclaimer- if at any point you get bored and want to stop reading DON’T. Read until the end please.

To all of those I love the most,

                As some, if not all of you know, I have an “anxiety disorder”, which is something that even I used to roll my eyes at. Until that first panic attack hit me square in the chest. As someone who has always had time on my hands (hello- almost two years unemployed!) this job (which I love) was leaving me breathless. All of a sudden I had full time work, 2 different families, and a group of friends that have, over the years, become a family to me themselves. There needed to be more hours in the day.

                I am NOT complaining. I know everyone has their own problems, I know some of them are a million times more serious than mine. This year everything is falling into place in my life, and I have never been happier. (Truly). I am a simple girl with simple dreams and they all seem to be coming true. But, I realized that I need to slow down. Unfortunately, this has meant being around less while I try to make sure that I have enough time to spend with everyone that matters to me.

                Here is the important part: I don’t want anyone to think that because I am not around as often, I have forgotten what is important, or that I have forgotten the people that have been there for me. I have not. Each and every one of you has made me feel accepted, loved, needed, wanted, and protected. I am grateful to those of you that have opened your homes to me and made me feel like I would always have a support system. I am thankful everyday because I know I wouldn’t have made it where I am today without all of you.

                I know I am young, and I have many places still to go.  I hope you will all be along for the ride as I hope to be along for all the many things that happen in your lives. And no matter how fast life moves, I will drop EVERYTHING on any given day to be there for you if you need it.

Loving you all,

Me

A short peice I wrote late last year:

            Sometimes I become unsure of whether or not you happened to me.  I remember finding you; much like a child comes across a particularly handsome pebble.  Moving it with the tips of their shoes, examining its sharp edges and changing colors, they finally place it in their pocket for reasons known not even to themselves. 

            I remember that I watched you every once in a while, across a classroom.  Voices going foggy in my mind as I imagined exactly what you were.  Fumbling with the pebble in my pocket I gave you a voice and a personality that perfectly suited my own.  Sometimes you smiled a sideways smile, a half one.  I wondered what it would take to curl the other half of your lips as well.  I would decide it was some witty remark of my own and that it would even make you blush. 

            I remember being broken.  Although sometimes I remember broken as ignited, depending on the state I am in when I stop to think back.  Either way, in an attempt to put myself back together or to light a fire in something else, I met you.

            Your nervous hands shoved deep into your pockets.  I wondered if you had a pebble in there too.  Three shots of rum still tingled on my tongue and chased my own nerves away.  Your nervous smile was a full one.  Both sides of your lips rose up, almost to your eyes.

            And then you are a quick flash of cold, shaking but firm hands.  Of whiskey mixed with rum and Bustello Café.  Of the Coney Island beach where I stood next to you feeling bigger than ever.  Of the smell of books and the poetry that slipped off you.  Of embers rising where you stood placing band aids and clear tape over the cracked pieces of me that had been threatening to slip off days before. 

            It passed.  Flames subsided, thoughts filed away.  I tossed my pebble into a lake and watched it sink.  Still I sometimes put my hands in my pockets to see if it’s still there.  When it is not I begin to wonder if it ever really was. 

Here are the first two paragraphs of my “in the works” novel. I cant share anymore, you’ll just have to buy it when its published… whenever that happens.

It was an unforgivingly hot summer night. Homes were draped in darkness so heavy and quiet it rang in sleeping ears. People were jostled awake by a low rumbling that moved their furniture. Sweaty arms reached out for one another and voices screamed incoherent sounds. Children ran into their parents’ beds and pulled the covers up over their heads. Cars smashed as trees fell from their plots and bricks dislodged from buildings. A minute later it settled, but by then the lights had all been flicked on and no one was going back to sleep. 

Two more came before the month was up. News reports echoed from every television and radio.  The death toll rose. A country that was only concerned with which celebrity landed in rehab that week came to hold its breath and hope the earth would stand still. Every moment was lived with a dull fear scraping the bottom of people’s stomach.