Day of the Broken Writer

This piece was originally published on Substack as part of a collaborative project. Reposting here for all your Wrizzlers.

This piece is part of “Day of the ___ Writer,” an open collab on the daily experiences behind our writing. Post on your pub about your day, and check out our growing mosaic of many lives.

I wake up shattered. Each morning is a reclamation project; putting myself back together from the constituent parts that make up less than their sum, somehow. I am wabi-sabi’d with dime-store epoxy. I piss on the seat because I’m staring at my phone.

There is a perfect child awaking in the next room. He is all light and smiles. He has also shit himself and repainted parts of his room with what he’s found in his diaper. I am holding him to contain the damage. I am holding him in frustration and anger. Am I leaving bruises? Is the damage done or did I contain it? I think of repainting of the wall with myself; another shit-stain to clean up.

On the morning check-in Zoom meeting, I sip room-temperature coffee, staring into my own glazed-over gaze in the webcam window. I have my clown make-up on, smiling for the camera. I think of Pagliacci. I think of anything but the work. Pieces chipping off like crusted face paint, cracks in the façade. I glance at my phone and hit the dopamine button until it is time for lunch.

Journaling is how I hold myself together, for the most part. A cataloging and labeling of thoughts, emotions, in-going medications, out-going tasks; tasks that proliferate until they are forgotten or buried or I’m forced to reckon that I don’t need or want or can’t afford to hold that piece of myself anymore. A lost part of the whole. Muscles atrophying in an ergonomic desk chair.

I’m drawn to self-destruction, like a moth to a flame1. Like staring at the on-coming headlights until they smear across the windshield, converging until they are the light at the end of a life-long tunnel. Every character I write has the conviction to cross the double-yellow lines. But my car has lane assist. My car beeps if I let go of the steering wheel. My car brakes automatically. It’s an electric car, because I care about the planet.

The word “dependent” fills me with dread, as I pick up mine from daycare. He wants inanely loud and upbeat music. Something to scream along to, happiness unbound, dancing through the wreckage of my faltering sanity. He is home for the last hour of my workday, unspooling the remaining energy and chaos of a three-year old while my laptop dings with the “urgent” messages of co-workers who decided that 4pm is when they want to start working, despite me idling here every previous, theoretically precious, minute of the day. I strangle the rational part of my brain that says it isn’t a conspiracy against me. Maybe the violence I’m daydreaming will make it into a story?

I fall asleep while returning to my son to the peace of his dreams. Then startle awake, stiff and unruly, in a bed too small for a full-sized human. It is at least 2 hours past when sane people eat their dinner. I opt for alcohol instead. My wife has retreated to her phone, attempting to patch herself back together. She sends memes via Instagram. More urgent chiming.

I finally sit down to write. I stare at the blank page or the blinking cursor or the dust-speckled keyboard of the typewriter I bought to coax myself into active practice. I try to figure out if this — the writing — is another piece of myself that will chip and shatter off, and I won’t be able to put it back into place. If I don’t do the maintenance now, will it survive the neglect?

I look at my notes. I look at my stacked piles of books. I look at the saved movies and shows on my neglected (but still active) subscription services. I check the number of emails in my inboxes. Somehow it is 2am. I have done nothing. I gather the shards of myself, toss them into bed.

Tomorrow, I will put it all together.

Thanks to Trevor Cohen for prompt and putting this all together (no pun intended). Thanks to Haly, the Moonlight Bard ✒️ for tipping me off to it.

I am very much a writer who does not write (enough). I don’t have a writing routine or a significant project that I’m working on, so I wanted to talk about the internal conflict that creates for me (for a better look at the parenting side of that, check out Tom Schecter’s piece).

— V