The Choice
Another day. Another God forsaken, fucked up day that begins with me opening my eyes followed immediately by THE CHOICE. FUCK. Will I write? Or will I do nothing. I agonize in bed, the covers pulled tightly over my head.
Maybe if my life was full, if I had a job that ate up the majority of my day and a relationship, with a sweet, young thing, that took up the remaining hours I could look at myself in the mirror and shout, “SEE! I have no TIME to write. I am BUSY!” Unfortunately, I can’t look in the mirror because I have time, eons of cursed time.
I have ordered my life to have this time. I put almost 30 grand in the bank so I wouldn’t have to work full time for a year. I find menial jobs to pay some bills. I found the perfect writer’s chair and new lap top computer. I dumped the drunk, deliciously decadent, ex-stripper fiancé to give myself more TIME to write.
And yet I will do nothing.
I know this.Of course that is not entirely true. It is impossible to do nothing because doing nothing is actually doing something. Even as I lay still I am in the act of reclining. I f I shut my eyes I still breathe, my heart still beats. And I can never shut off my brain. “WRITE, you LOSER! WRITE!” it shouts, howling in the silence of my apartment, my spiritual prison.
With every beat of my heart I move close to interminable death, to infinite regret at a life spent in the promise of better things if only I would have WRITTEN. I look back 6 months upon my barren artistic path. I have sown it with salt. Nothing has grown.
I read Kerouac and dream of writing as he does. My dream mocks. I am a hack with the singular talent of writing a good hook at the end of average chapters of verse.
The clock is ticking. The money is getting thin. When will I write?
I pluck the white from my brow.
Richard Matheson wrote I AM LEGEND. How nice. I AM PARASITE, SUCCUBUS, SYCOPHANT. I must borrow from my many selves to accomplish even this simple task.
And now - to sleep! I regard my anticipated slumber with bitterness and trepidation. Because, on awakening it will be there again, waiting with bared claws, dripping fang and leering grin…
…THE CHOICE.