On not writing

Half-written stories sit unshared because they have no tidy beginning or ending. They're just snippets, really, but I can't stop myself from writing them.

For as long as I can remember, I have narrated my life. Often I narrated in the third person, which drove me crazy but my brain just wouldn't stop, wouldn't stop silently telling the story of my life back to myself. Even the most mundane details ran through my head in story form:

"She headed to the bathroom, emptied her bladder, wondered once again how many squares of toilet paper the average female used afterwards. It irritated her not to know - is she typical? efficient? wasteful? With all the ridiculous studies out there, has no one bothered to study this?"

As though my trips to the bathroom needed narration. Or my choice of breakfast cereal. Or the things I noticed as I wandered through the halls at school. As though anything in my quiet average life even warranted narration.

Even as a little girl, both the narration and the annoyance with the narration were there in my head:

"She sat down with her Barbies, trying to decide which storyline to act out today...Oh STOP, just let me play!"

And then - then! - the most irritating of all, when I would third-person narrate my annoyance with the running stream of third-person narration:

"Why couldn't she turn it off? Why couldn't she just wash her hands or observe an interaction or pay the cashier without her brain mentally writing it down, as though she isn't already aware of what she herself is currently doing? Maddening! Infuriating! And most of all, unbelievably annoying."

I remember spending weeks trying to at least shift to a first-person narrative. I was a teenager by then, already in love with writing. I had my pen-and-paper diaries, my online diary, my secret poems that I have never shared with anyone because somehow I find poetry to be the most intimate of all forms of writing. There were stories for English class - one particularly dark one was passed around by friends and classmates, my quiet shy self enjoying a bit of attention for a few days. Even essays were a pleasure to write, choosing just the right words, transitioning from paragraph to paragraph, topic to topic, presenting my arguments and sources and oh, it was satisfying.

I did manage, at last, to get rid of the third person in my head. That first-person narration continues, though, and tiny blog posts continually draft themselves without my permission. Even when I'm not writing, I'm never really not writing.

It feels good to let those words out, but sometimes it feels better to simply keep them to myself. Let the story write itself, silent and unshared, and hope that the words will still be there when I'm old and sifting through memories of the past.

Onward we go, ever onward, as the story unfolds around us.

Evening for one

They've been going to sleep well, these kids, a mercy after long days of skating and swimming and errands. And dinner, why does it have to come every night? Odd how the simple act of eating can cause such mental exhaustion - choosing, cooking, cajoling, cleaning. I'm ready to put myself to bed after all that.

But I don't. They tidy their toys and eat their snack and brush their teeth. I read to them about Laura Ingalls and Nellie Oleson ("I think she's the meanest person ever!", they exclaim). At last I put them to bed and then I stay up too late playing spider solitaire while listening to sappy love songs. It's kind of pathetic but it's nice, too.

Eventually the satisfaction of lining up all the cards just so wears off, so I close the computer and read for the next hour (or two or three) instead. I'm going to regret this in the morning, I know.

When it gets too late to justify just one more chapter, I head to the boys' bedroom where they're both sound asleep. The preschooler looks like an angel, as he always does when he's sleeping (perhaps simply by virtue of it being the only time he's quiet, ever), while the long and lanky boy is sprawled out, arms grazing the floor, like a gangly teenager who doesn't quite fit into his bed anymore. I want to leave them both sleeping peacefully where they are, save my arms and my back the effort of carrying them down the hall and depositing them on my bed, where they proceed to squirm around and kick me all night long. I promised them, though, and a promise is a promise, so my arms and back and I suck it up and move them into my bed. The oldest startles when I lay him down, swinging out his hand and catching me square in the bridge of the nose. This must be my thanks, I think sardonically, for keeping my word.

They ask to join me every night when their dad is out of town. Sometimes I say yes and sometimes I insist on a night of sound sleep by myself. I don't know if they sense, like me, the emptiness that seems to pervade the house when he's not here at night, even with the four (and a half) of us still remaining, or if they simply like to take advantage of the chance to snuggle back into the bed they each slept on until they were kicked out by the next baby, one after the other. Baby girl got kicked out early, though; maybe these kids are just preparing me again for the extra space I'll lose when Baby Number Four arrives to fill it.

I re-read the recipe for the lentil, carrot, and potato hash I have planned for tomorrow evening's dinner, jotting down the items I need to pick up. The kids are likely to complain, but I'm thoroughly tired of the various combinations of sandwiches, soup, and breakfast food that we eat so often when it's just us. What else...blood test tomorrow (oh boy). The boy's swim bag is by the front door; the preschooler's skates and warm clothes are in the trunk. Everything's ready, I just need to convince myself to turn out the light and go to sleep.

I suppose now's as good a time as any. Good night, world.

Just writing along with the EO...