June 30, 2011

“Write or Die”

I can’t say exactly how long it’s been, but for some time now, I’ve been having this recurring dream: I’m riding my bicycle in a familiar neighborhood with a winding road. I know the houses, I can name the people in those houses, and the canopied corners guarded by fat barks feel like home to me.

Last night, my dream was the same except some houses that used to be blue were now red, and others that used to be white were now green. Change was happening, and I didn’t know who these new people were; it seemed I had been away from this place for too long. When I rounded the bend to start my descent, I suddenly found myself in a car.

Cruising down a strange, mist-filled gulley, a curtain of snow flitted in the distance and the road glistened and shone. I pulled to the shoulder, just next to the dying grass and gravel, and realized that ice coated the asphalt. The anemic road was straight, without railings, and plunged into a ravine.

This morning I went to work. I ate lunch with my boyfriend. Next to  our walnut table two women discussws something just beneath my comprehension kept us from touching. Instead, I told him that I sometimes wondered about withholding sex from him with the intention of keeping him interested.

“But punishing you would mean punishing myself,” I said. “I won’t do it.”

After my chamomile came, he reiterated the same: “Sometimes I feel like I should be a jerk to keep you on your toes. I haven’t because so far, this is working.”

Our musings probably originate from both our previous relationships where drama was everywhere. Lurking behind the Bambi eyes given and received, there were reasons why neither of us should have stayed six months in either situation. But we did. And then they were over.

I hypothesized that people who have resumes containing strings of six- or twelve-month relationships manufacture drama because they don’t know any better. These relationship rookies think there’s a need to keep things interesting because what will they do without the adrenaline high they get from their significant other? How will they know they’re in love without the constant crutch of feeling something outside of themselves? And why would they stay when they are no longer the center of that other person’s universe?

But the truth is this: one day we will stop talking. We’ll take each other for granted because we’re too comfortable or busy or bored. If things keep on the way they’re going, it’s inevitable. And that’s when the work begins. Three months in, the promises he makes about never taking me for granted are lovely sentiments, but I know this kind of wooing takes lots of energy and more time than either of us eventually might have.

And one day we’ll lose a parent, a friend, or a job. We may even (heaven forbid) lose a child. And when that happens—when the world shifts so completely that everything is out of focus and we have to find ourselves again, we’ll also have to relocate each other. Through the blur of tragedy, we will have to adjust to not recognizing our own reflections and fight to see a place for the other person.

When that day comes, even the sturdiness of all the things we have in common and all the love we feel for each other may not be enough to keep us together. When that day comes, I want to be able to love him and let him go.

But aside from those certainties, there’s this thing I’m doing that will land me right where I was just before I decided to divorce: I’m working really hard at something that has nothing to do with writing in order to ‘have enough.’ But what is enough, really? And if I don’t carve out writing in all my days, no amount of money or love from a good man will account for what I’m losing.

And I think my dream has to do with that change—how I’m constantly putting my writing away and how it keeps falling lower on my list of priorities.

Staring at the icy road, I have to make a decision: write or die.