Why aren’t I blind yet? The whiteness staring back at me surely should have seared my irises by now. Maybe I’m dead. They do say that you see a bright white light at the end. That would explain the complete absence of thought that I have been nursing for the past hour. I should try to reach out. Extend my hand forward, towards the light. Maybe I’ll grab hold of a gentle greeter waiting to guide me through to the next plain. Maybe they are just beyond the light, waiting for me to make the first move. Nut I can’t. Not because I am afraid of death, but because I’m afraid of what it means if I’m not dead. If I don’t find the hand of some warm, kind angel. If my knuckles instead brush the cold, smooth surface of my computer screen. If that happens then I will have to face the reality that I am a failure. Without words, without substance or thought. I dare call myself a writer, an artist, anything but a disgrace. Writers write, and I haven’t written anything.
Two months. It’s been about two months since I’ve written anything, really. Blogs don’t count, because they are a job to me now. Even though no one reads it, I have made it my job to get a blog post out at least once a week. Journaling doesn’t count either, because that is just recounting my day, thoughts, hopes. That isn’t creative. It doesn’t really mean anything or speak to me. No, I haven’t written in two months. I haven’t expressed my feelings into a poem, or stretched my creativity into a story. Maybe I’m done with feeling and out of stories. Maybe I’m not a writer, and never was in the first place.
So, I hope that I’m dead. If I’m dead, then I don’t have to deal with the fact that I never fulfilled my expectations. If I’m dead, then I don’t have to be a writer, or not writer. I don’t have to work my day job and tell people that what I really want to do is write. Then, when they ask me if I’m working on anything, I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to say “Yeah a few things, but I’m still working on them.” I don’t have to tell myself everyday that I should be writing as I scroll through my phone, or watch a show that I’ve already seen ten times over. If I’m dead, then I don’t have to sit here, staring at this screen, wondering whether I’m dead or not. I don’t have to endure the mockery of its blankness as wrack my brain for anything. Any little inkling of an idea to spit up onto a page. So, I hope that I’m dead, because at least then I’d have a direction. Then I’d have peace.
Semi-Employed 