WRITING: March Madness

It is showing up in my writing, and now my verbal conversation, and I have had to bite my tongue lest those who listen start to wonder. It doesn’t look to go away, yet at fifteen it was beaten to retreat in shadows, only peeking now and then to shrink back before the daylight of reality.

I am thinking too much. Too deep, too dramatic, and too somber to be able to fully function in a world of dirty plates and underwear. Example: Monday’s basket of clean laundry has settled in to look familiar in the living room, a fixture that I walk around to reach to open the blinds. Since Tuesday night I have reached in and found a matching pair of socks for J to wear and laid them on the dresser, easily found by him at five a.m. daily. Last night I washed the coffeepot, and filled the basket with the grounds, and poured the water in and shut the door so he could merely press the switch on in the morning as is our routine, before he wakes me up at five and I pack his lunch and pour his coffee, and he is gone by five-fifteen. This morning I awoke, alone, sometime after six, and searched, but could not find the coffeepot, although the maker waited patiently to start. J’s socks were where I left them, by the keyboard, and the coffeepot was hiding in the cupboard.

Perhaps it is wrong, this writing thing, this all-consuming godless god that keeps me from the sense of normal that I sought to hide within. All it seems to do is grow its tentacles to reach deep inside and change all to a different version of my life. I now belong to it, and everything is charged with meaning, and the answers disappear while questions multiply like cancer cells not cured by chemicals of bills and dinner and the screaming vacuum cleaner.

The more I think, the more I write; the more I write, the more I think. A cycle of self-feeding frenzy that I still, I think, can halt.

But will I, while I can?