Cover Your Mouth When You Blog

Things I Knew All Along: Part I

Sometimes I think John and I fell in love in New Orleans. We didn't. The first time we were in New Orleans together was a year into our relationship, long after we'd said I love you. But he emailed me one day at work, during those tentative weeks when we'd first met and were just friends, and asked about my recent trip to New Orleans with friends. Tell me some stories, he wrote.

I wrote, Well, the hotel was awesome. An old converted house kind of. Lots of New Orleans charm. Got there Sat. afternoon, got some fried goods and oysters, shopped a bit, met my friends' friends who came up from Florida with their cute little baby. Went out and ate a thousand more oysters. Went back to the hotel and rocked the little baby to sleep to some Lucinda Williams. Drank, acted obnoxious, jumped on the bed for 20 min. trying to get Tina to wake up and go out with us, fell into the wall, got a bruise on my back. Went down to Frenchman street, saw an awesome band with a big horn section, danced, danced, danced. Annoyed Greg by spilling beer on his jeans. Shrimp po' boy from verti mart at 4am. Slept. Woke up. Hangover. Excedrin. Beignets in the morning, sat in jackson square. Beautiful weather. Shopped, walked around, more oysters at Acme. Napped. Dinner at Copelands (place my boss suggested . . . yum.) Back to Frenchman St. Made some new best friends at the Apple Barrel (aka the Crapple Barrel by its regulars). Got a palm reading from Jimmy the bartender and then a neuroscientist who was in town for the neuroscience convention analyzed a dream I had (b/c apparently neuroscientists can do that?). Drank a thousand 2 dollar beers. Left around 5am after deciding not to make out with the Willie Nelson singing guitar player, Brad, after extensive conversation about the legalization of marijuana and after some girl named Kristy called the bar and he told the bartender to tell her he wasn't there. Slept on the couch of some dude's apartment that Jen felt the need to make out with. 'Cause if he turned out to be an axe murderer I guess it would be better if he killed us both? Caught the bus back to the hotel looking like the morning after. Ate. Flew home. There's a synopsis for you. I love new orleans.

He wrote, Did I ever tell you I have a huge crush on you? He hadn't. But I'd known this all along.

I told him I bought him a souvenir from a homeless man who'd wandered into the bar on Frenchman Street. "Really it was just the smallest thing that he was selling and so I bought it because he was nice and then I thought, you know, John will really love this tattered, seashell-imprinted leather wallet." I gave it to him a few days later after we went to a movie and our knees came close to touching as we slouched in our seats. He carried the thin, dirty wallet for months; eventually it split in two at the fold.

"What're you gonna do with a man's wallet?" Jimmy the bartender had asked me after I passed the homeless man four dollars and slipped the wallet into my purse.

"Give it to a friend," I'd said.

"A man?" he'd asked.

"Yeah, a man. John."

"You're sittin' here in this city thinkin' about him? While he's up there in Chicago?"

"I guess so. He's kind of a new friend."

"That ain't no friend smile you're wearin', darlin."

I'd known this all along.

[This is a work in process.]

This Will Do

I’ve always imagined that one day I’d be a writer. Not a person who writes employee biographies and bulleted bits of information in a PowerPoint presentation during the day and the occasional blog post at night, but a real writer. A writer by profession. I always imagined that this transformation would take place the day I found myself living deep in the hills where, during the winter, from a distance, someone driving on the nearest paved road from my cabin would see a plume of smoke chugging from a stone chimney, the only sign of a human nestled in the thick of trees. I’d be inside, stooped over a black Underwood typewriter, sipping black coffee, a fire crackling, tapping my bare feet against the bowing planks of a hundred-year-old hardwood floor. At last, with some quiet and solitude, I’d whittle away at those blunt thoughts about love and sadness as the human condition, carving and chipping until incongruous and meandering ideas finally fit together, revealing a striking and as yet unrevealed perspective on who we are, what we mean, why we persevere.

I think I’m in North Carolina in this scene, though, to my knowledge, I’ve never actually been to North Carolina. And so far, I’ve never stayed in a cabin with hundred-year-old hardwood floors, I own a silver Dell laptop – not a weighty, black Underwood – I still like my coffee with milk and, though my last apartment did have a fireplace, the only flame that ever flickered from its mouth was that of a cluster of pillar candles my roommate arranged in the hearth after showing me a picture of the idea in that month’s issue of Real Simple. I live in a city of three million people at the intersection of two of the thousands of paved roads that make up a sprawling city grid. My nearest neighbor sleeps nine feet above me and listens to talk radio in the bathroom on weekday mornings. There is sometimes solitude, but there is never quiet. I am still not a writer.

I loaned my car to my sister the night before last; hers was in the shop until maybe Friday, the mechanic had said. In gratitude, she offered to pick me up in the morning, latte in hand, and deposit me at the train stop, since it was forecasted to be the coldest day of the winter so far.

The next morning, I get a call at 7am:

JEN: Your car’s not starting.

ME: Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you - you have to give it gas.

JEN: While I turn the key?

ME: Yeah, turn the key and give it gas.

JEN: It’s not starting.

ME: Are you giving it gas?

JEN: YES.

ME: I mean you have to really PUMP it! Give it gas!

JEN: I AM! I know what ‘give it gas’ means. It’s making a weird clicking sound.

ME: Is it revving a little too? Like a little muted roar under the hood?

JEN: No. Just the clicking.

ME: [exaggerated sigh] Well, I don’t know what to tell you other than give it gas! I have to get ready for work.

7:10am:

JEN: I can’t come get you. Your car’s not starting.

ME: Did you give it gas?

JEN: YES! Jesus!

ME: Well, did you flood the engine or something?

JEN: Are you serious? It’s not starting. I can’t come get you.

ME: Fuck! FUCK! How are you getting to work?

JEN: I’m not going. I can’t go. I can’t get there.

ME: Well, I have to go then. I have to put on three more layers of clothes and walk to fucking train. I’m coming over there to see if I need to have it towed or whatever. FUCK. I have to go.

I leave my apartment ten minutes later – a pair of tights under my pants, a jacket zipped over my wool sweater, two pair of socks, feet stuffed in UGG boots, heavy coat stretched over my torso, its buttons straining around the bulk, scarf coiled to my ears, wool cap and gloves – walk the six blocks to the train, get off two stops later and walk the four blocks to Jen’s apartment, where my car is parked. (People, ten blocks is a mile. People, it was three degrees yesterday morning.)

“Okay, baby. Mama’s here.” I coo, approaching the car. “I know it’s cold, honey, but let’s just get you started so you don’t have to be towed, okay? Okay?” There is a warm latte in the cup holder. “Alright, baby, let’s go. I know it’s cold. I’d really appreciate it, okay?”

Pump. Click Click Click. Pump Pump. Click Click Click.

“Come on, honey.” Pump Pump. Click Click Click.

“Okay! Okay, but just know that I AM NOT happy about this. I am NOT happy.”

I call Jen.

ME: Hey. It’s totally dead.

JEN: I know that.

ME: Are you at home?

JEN: No, I borrowed Denise’s car. I’m on my way to work. I cannot believe this fucking morning.

ME: Seriously. I’m getting a cab to work. I can’t walk to the train again. Thanks for the coffee. Sorry I yelled at you.

JEN: It’s okay. It’s chaos this morning.

ME: Later.

A cab pulls over as I snap the phone shut and, as I step toward it, gripping the door handle, it peels away, missing my toes by four inches.

“Jesus! What the fuck was that?” I shout into the frigid air and a man in the crosswalk laughs and shrugs.

“I cannot handle this fucking morning!” I say to no one in particular. I watch for a cab for a few more minutes. No cab comes.

On the train to downtown, I rub my hands rapidly over the tops of my tingling legs. The guy I went out with Saturday night had a car with seat warmers. I’ve never dated a man with a car with seat warmers. I think of J and wonder if he is riding his bike in this cold. I hope he has taken the bus, though he hates taking the bus.

The guy with the car with seat warmers told me he’d built a new deck off his condo over the summer. Tore down the old, rotting one and put a new one in himself. He was thinking of building a wall in his bedroom because it is oddly shaped – long, with a closet at each end.

“I can’t picture it,” I said.

“I’d have to draw it for you,” he said.

He builds bridges for a living. I bet he could replace the battery in my car. He offered to give me a ride to the airport to pick up my friend who’s visiting this weekend.

“Is that too forward after one date?” he asked, “Maybe you don’t want to introduce me to your friend?”

Yes, it is, I thought, and no, I don’t. “I’ll have my car back from my sister by then, but that’s really nice of you.”

I bet he would replace the battery in my car. Could J replace a car battery? I don’t know. I assume he couldn’t and recall a frequent argument, “Why are you constantly underestimating me?” I want to call my father and have him fix the car while I’m at work. My father lives 600 miles away.

I am 45 minutes late to work and my boss asks if I have triple A. I imagine Jen and me running jumper cables from Denise’s car to mine in the dark. My legs are still tingling. I call triple A and am talked into the Gold Membership.

My mom calls in the afternoon. “Well, I’m driving your father’s truck today because my car’s broken down.”

“So is mine and so is Jen’s.”

“I know! I talked to Jen this morning.”

“I walked a mile and a half to get to work today and its three degrees. My legs just stopped tingling. I thought I’d done permanent damage. A cab driver almost ran over my toes.”

“What a jerk. Why?”

“I have no idea.”

“Your father went to talk to the Toyota dealer here to see if they have any deals going. Your sister’s car blew a gasket. She’s gonna have to get a new one.”

“It blew a gasket?”

“Mm. Hm.”

“I guess that’s where that saying came from.”

“What?”

“Blew a gasket. I guess cars have gaskets.”

“Mm. Hm.”

“I joined triple A.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“Mom, I think I have to marry someone handy. Someone who can fix cars in the cold.”

“You should. That’s a good idea. Your father is not handy.”

“But he could put a new battery in my car if he were here.”

“Are you kidding? He could just cuss at it a lot.”

“Oh, that’s how I handled the situation.”

“Yeah, you got that from your father.”

I go to Jen’s apartment after work to wait for the triple A guy. She has come back from the convenience store with three bottles of wine. “C’s coming over. She’s bringing the baby,” she says.

We drink wine and dance with the baby and then my aunt calls from Kansas to see what scent of candles Jen and I would like her to send us. She’s started making candles in her basement. Stirring and pouring the wax is cathartic, she says. I request lavender and citrus and then have to hang up because the triple A truck is outside.

The car starts on the fifth try, but the man says there is zero chance it will start in the morning.

“What are the chances this will start in the morning?” I asked him.

“Zero.”

I call Jen and tell her that I have to take my car to the mechanic, but the tow truck guy said they can replace the battery tonight.

“Are you coming back over?” she asks, “We’re ordering food.”

“Probably not. Who knows how long this’ll take.”

I follow the tow truck to a mechanic on Belmont and a man named Martin, who has a pale area on his upper lip, like he got a tan and then shaved his mustache, shows me that the battery is dead because the alternator is bad. He shows me the reading on some kind of gauge and then shows me what a good reading should look like by hooking the gauge to a different car.

“We can fix the alternator tonight,” Martin tells me.

“I’ll have to leave it here?”

“Yeah. You want a loaner for the night?”

“A loaner?”

“Yeah, I’ll give you a car. You bring it back tomorrow and get your car. It’ll be ready.”

I write down my name and phone number and Martin shows me out the back door where a light blue Honda is running with the lights on. Twenty minutes have passed since I left Jen’s apartment.

I call Jen from the car.

“I left my car at a place called Martin’s Auto and Martin gave me a car that’s nicer than my real one, so I’m coming back over.”

“We ordered pizza. There’ll be enough.”

We eat pizza and drink wine and dance with the baby and C says, “Some days I have to get her out of the house to remember that she’s fun. She did not sleep last night. Today’s kind of been kicking my ass.”

“Today’s been kickin ass and takin names all day,” Jen says.

C and the baby leave and Jen and I sit at opposite ends of the couch and finish the wine and she listens to me talk again about how I want to be a writer, but I’m still not one and I’m bored with talking about it and bored with wondering when and how I ever will be.

Jen teaches social skills to teenaged boys with autism. She’s been pushed and spit on and yelled at and once chased a six-foot-tall boy five blocks after he escaped from the school during a fire drill and wanted to jog the streets throwing a rock into each of the nearby sewage grates. She knows what makes each of the boys uncomfortable, what will make them frustrated and what will make them laugh. A good day is when, despite the chaos, she feels that she connected with one boy, taught one boy something meaningful. While I talk and Jen listens I think, Jen is not waiting for a secluded cabin in a thick of trees to become what she wants to become.

It gets late and I drive the loaner home. I pull my boots off at the door and my socks come off inside them. My bare feet tap across the hardwood floor and a thought floats around: This is life and this will have to do. I’ll write about this. The noise and the incongruence and the meanderings. Here. And this will do.

Stage II or Mentally Constructing a Melodramatic Future Blog Post While Watching a Rock Show

First there's Denial and then there's Anger.

Anger that I'm thinking of you tonight because I realized the band I've come to see is the same band that sat next to us at that wedding I went to with you two years ago and you said, "That's The Ponys at the table on our left," and I whispered, "Really?" and stole glances at the girl guitarist as she cut her vegan hotdog into bite-sized pieces. A hipster wedding, replete with ironic 80's music for the walk down the aisle and an officiant wearing a too small thrift store suit with an orange jacket and butterfly collared shirt that a girl in the bathroom said was untucked because the zipper on his pants had split. Anger that you wouldn't dance with me after dinner, not even to the slow songs. Anger that when your friend with the longish black hair who restores old furniture and makes soy ice cream in his free time asked what I did for a living and I told him, you said, "It pays the bills."

Anger that I recognize the beautiful girl taking pictures of the band from the right side of the stage and her husband standing next to her and that I want to say Hi, but I can't remember his name, because you only introduced us once, because people were always too this or too that for you to really be friends with them. Anger that before I met them you said, "They're impressed that you went to Portugal to build a house," and I felt a zing in my chest, struggling to tamp down the tiny voice inside that wanted to ask, "Did you sound proud when you told them? Do you think I've done something good? Important?" Anger that I always thought the answer was no.

Anger that every time I mentioned inviting another couple over for dinner, that couple you knew and we'd met for drinks, the couple with the guy with the same first name as me, you always said, "They'd probably be happy just going out somewhere," or "But what would we cook?" And I'd say, "I'd like to have them over to my new place though," and "We have that recipe for Ropa Vieja and we could make mojitos." When I ran into that couple when you weren't with me they said, "Congrats on your new place!" and the girl hugged me. Anger that she said, "J said it's very "adult" looking." And I laughed and said, "That's a weird thing to say." Anger that I realized later that you didn't want this couple, both public service lawyers, to see how much money I made. You didn't want them to see the Crate & Barrel sofa and the new TV. Anger that you were embarrassed of something I was proud to have accomplished.

Anger that the time you told me a girl in the record store had an engagement ring with a small diamond embedded flush into the band - "She said it only cost $1,200" - and I said I didn't really like that style, you thought that meant I wanted something bigger and more expensive and you called me materialistic. Anger that I knew then that when you felt threatened, when you felt vulnerable, inadequate - by your own standards, not mine - I would be the sacrificial lamb for an ego fractured in childhood. Anger that leaving you was an act of self-preservation.

If you read this you'd be angry. Angry that I have misrepresented you in many ways. Angry that I've left out the tender, loving, accepting, encouraging parts. Angry that I've made myself blameless. But that's the Anger Stage of loss - it doesn't remember. And the reality is, you will never read this. Because you never did. Even when I asked you to. And there's anger about that, too.

Be My Guest

About five years ago, my brother asked if he could read something I'd written for a creative writing course I was taking at a local fine arts college at the time, so I emailed him a story about a trip I'd taken with three girlfriends over fourth of July weekend during which my friend Kelly's Ford Escort began to sputter and cough smoke en route to St. Louis and we'd ended up stranded for the night in a town just off the highway called Boonville. I received an email from him the next day that quoted from the story:

"Trapped in Boonville. I imagined hanging out the local tavern and falling in love with a young, scruffy-faced man who wore Stetson cologne and flannel shirts. A manly type of man would would open doors for me and hold my hand as I stretched my leg to step into his large pick-up truck, the kind with four wheels on the back that are impossible to pass on the highway. We would get married and live on the outskirts of Boonville and our children would ride the bus to school. While he worked at the Plant during the day, I would pick fresh strawberries from the garden and make jars of jam to give to the neighbors and sell at a stand every October at the Boonville town festival." [emphasis his].

He went on to say, "I loved this. I laughed, thinking . . . this is my sister . . . this is how she thinks."

It has always been much easier for me to share the fruits of my right brain's labor with strangers than with friends or family. Somehow a room full of strangers at a writing studio or a billion sets of eyes plugged into the World Wide Web (or the twelve sets that may actually visit this blog) seem a safer, more comfortable audience. There's a decent-sized room in one corner of my brain where a tidbit of news on the war in Iraq, a rant against feminism I'd read in the online version of a UK newspaper, the way my nostrils appeared in a picture I'd looked at that morning and a thousand other microcosmic pieces of information that are not integral to my life or the workings of my daily routine are being constantly diced, ground and mixed in a rusty, sometimes loud machine that takes up most of the room. Occasionally, eventually, the machine spits something almost coherent into a more conscious lobe of my brain and I'm able to get it down on paper, or onto this blog. And then the machine continues to grind.

To invite a group of unaquainted passers-by - members of a writing class, or you, dear reader - for a tour of this room requires little to no preparation. No need to polish up the machine or parse through the thoughts being worked over and tuck away certain topics or ideas to avoid offense, embarrassment or the exposition of something too private or dripping with the stench of strong opinion. Strangers don't care about your mess, beyond its intrigue.

But a close friend on a tour of this room might spot that comment she made last week about your recent break-up being "For The Best" just as it slides through a chute and lands on the conveyor belt next to your Need To Mourn The Loss of This Relationship The Way The Middle Eastern Women You've Seen on TV Mourn Their Dead, with tears and howling and stumbling in dusty streets. And then that friend might feel ashamed for having said the wrong thing or betrayed that you have secretly mashed her well-intended words through your machine or she might feel that you are absurd for thinking about the pain of a break-up on the same plane as the pain of a death and she will think that you are too dramatic or serious.

The prospect of exposing the hulking, chugging machine to some of the people who've known me the longest has somehow grown in my imagination to the equivalent of revealing that all these years I've actually been spying on my friends and family for the CIA. As if they'll puzzle, "This is what she's been up to all along? I really don't know her at all." It's ridiculous, I know. And, in most cases, I imagine an example of how I underestimate people.

But the point of this post is that on the train home from work this evening, I read a chapter of Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones in which she writes about having accumulated a copious amount of old notebooks filled with her "complaints, boring descriptions, and flagrant anger" and how when she was considering throwing them out, a friend said she should hold on to them. Instead Goldberg left them on her friend's doorstep and, upon returning from a weekend trip, her friend told her, "I've been reading your notebooks all weekend. They are so intimate; so scared, insecure for pages, then suddenly they are not you - just raw energy and wild mind. And now here you are - Natalie - in the flesh, just a person. It feels so funny." Of the experience, Goldberg writes, "I feel good because I don't care that she sees how I really am. I'm glad. I want someone to know me."

The paragraph made me think about that time my brother read my story and instead of saying "I liked it" or "this part was funny" he said "this is my sister . . . this is how she thinks." And I realized how much I had wanted him, or anyone, to read something I'd written and understand something new about me, to know me, even if only from a silly passage about making strawberry jam. And I also thought of how, when I started this blog, I sent the link to my sister, my friend Sarah and J with a note, "In an effort to get myself writing and keep myself writing, I've started a blog. I figure the point of a blog is for someone else to read it, so you guys are the chosen. If and when you have time of course. Eventually I may share it with others. For now, I'm timid."

About two months later J and I went to dinner with Sarah and her boyfriend. Sarah brought up specific posts that she'd enjoyed, asked me if I'd thought about trying to polish any of them up for submission. J took rapid gulps from his water glass and offered an ambiguous affirmation of my explanation to Sarah as to why I blogged under a psuedonym, "It'd be bad if anyone from her work stumbled across it." After dinner I asked him if he'd ever logged onto my blog. He hadn't. Not once. In that moment, something told me it was over between us. Our relationship had always been tumultuous. He was hurt by my reflexive insensitivity. I was discouraged by his knee-jerk judgments of other people. So many things seemed like obstacles, but I'd always believed we could hurdle them. But I realized then that, two months before, I'd sent him an invitaton to tour the room in my brain that I only entrust to a select few and he'd tossed it like the Weekly Shopper.

"I felt like it would be an invasion of your privacy to read it," he said.

"But I invited you."

"I talk to you everyday. You should just be able to tell me what's on your mind. I shouldn't have to go to your blog and read it," he said.

"It's not the same. It's about the writing. You're missing the point."

"I'm sorry if I just don't have time!"

"You're lying." You didn't care. I don't know why, but you didn't. I don't understand why it feels like this is so important, but it does.

On the train today, reading another writer's - a real writer's, a published writer's - words, "I want someone to know me," I finally understand.

Honest Woman

Lately everyone from my Pilates instructor to my gynecologist has taken to asking me when my boyfriend is going to make an "honest woman" of me. Meanwhile I'm explaining through gritted teeth, for the third time, to the incompetents at Eva's Bridal (where I've ordered a dress for my borther's wedding) that no, I am not the bride, I am the bridesmaid, and if another person calls me from the Eva's Bridal mailing list (that I distinctly remember not signing up for) - another photographer, another videographer, another florist, with a Splenda-sweet "congratulaaations" and offer of reasonably priced wedding services - I may, ironically, go Bridezilla on their ass. I'm not even getting married and I can hear the hungry stomach of the monstrous wedding industry growling, it's soggy tongue wagging in my direction. I expect to break into hives between the bursting racks of organza, a la Carrie Bradshaw, but I've already got 'em.

Somewhere in the pit, though, I know it's not just the unwanted phone calls pissing me off; I am illogically insulted at having been mistaken for a bride. "Do I look like a bride to you?" I want to demand of the roundish woman behind the counter. "Well?" I want to yank her over the credenza by her quilted heart lapel pin. Instead, realizing the absurdity of my offense, I gnaw the insides of my cheeks, wondering if I'll ever have a less affronted reaction to the idea of being "made honest."

At age 28, marriage still feels like a grown-up thing that I shouldn't be expected to think about yet. Oh you're only twenty-eight, you're too young for all of that, I expect people to say. Like routine mammograms or a diversified stock portfolio. But twenty-eight's already three years past the average female marrying age and six years past my mother's age when she married. If I were still living in the southeast Kansas town where I grew up, I'd be two years and a handful of cats from spinster status.

I've realized that once you reach a certain age and date someone for a certain amount of time, a non-banded ring finger starts to make people fidgety. Grandmas ask, during a Happy Birthday phone call, if you received any "special" gifts this year. Aunts do a blatant left-hand check at the door at Thanksgiving. "They're just excited," Mom tells me. So why aren't I?

My typical response to the numerous "so when?s" has been one-half defiance, one-half nonchalance. "When we feel like it, I guess." I'll admit, I know I'm speaking mostly for myself here. The "we" is "me". J says calmly, whenever you want. So why don't I want?

Thing is, I think I do. Or will. I just don't know when. And from moving to Chicago from Kansas to turning in my renter's card and buying a place of my own, I have made sure to do things when I want. So, I'm just waiting to want. First I need to make an honest woman of myself. Figure out what my life willl be. And while I think the idea of giving myself over, even temporarily, to the "shoulds" and "musts" of modern bridehood might always anger me and the goodie gumdrops phone calls from wedding photographers might always annoy me, perhaps once I know I'm something else, something besides a bride, these things won't threaten me. I'll be ready to be the bride. Sans hives. Honestly.

Pest Control

Since early May I've been fighting a dermatological plague. An infestation of hives, bumps and dry, scaly patches has repeatedly overtaken my skin, with only two weeks of temporary extermination, provided by two rounds of oral steroids. When the rash flared again, my allergist, a pretty Middle Eastern woman swathed completely in a traditional hejab, looked at me with austere eyes.

"Have you been feeling fatigued?" she asks, dark eyebrows tightly knitted.

"Not really." The obsession gerbil in my brain wakes up and begins to rustle around.

"Any sudden weight gain or loss? Achy joints? Sore muscles?"

"Not really." The obsession gerbil has laced up his running shoes and is leaning against my hippocampus, stretching out his calves.

"Hm, well I want to order some blood work. Just to rule some things out."

"Well, what would they be looking for?" The obsession gerbil has stepped into his small metal wheel and is waiting, tiny ears perked, for the starting signal.

"It could be a thyroid issue. Or lupus. Or hepatitis." Bang! And we're off. The obsession gerbil is scampering along, tiny fangs glinting through a satisfied grin and the wheel is spinning, squeaking in the back of my brain. This is it. It's finally happening. The as-yet undiagnosed disease that will cut short my life-so-full-of-promise would soon be identified.

You see, for quite some time, I've held a secret belief that I am destined to die an untimely death. A sharp pain behind my eyes is not the price paid for a night of vodka, but "my brain tumor flaring up again." A chest cold is not the logical end of sleeping with wet hair in front of an open window in November in Chicago, but an advanced symptom of HIV. WebMD is the bearer of bad tidings in the form of the worst case scenario. "Skin rash" might be a symptom of a pollen allergy or Hodgkin's Disease. It is my default to assume that chemo, rather than a prescription for Allegra, will be the cure for my ills.

So, one week later, having received the news that my blood is doing everything it is supposed to and nothing it is not, I feel relief. But in the back of my brain, as the obsession gerbil's little legs slow to a halt, I recognize an unsettling reaction to the news of my good health: slight disappointment. This is not the response of a sane person, I think, worrying now about my mental condition.

After some contemplation, it occurred to me when this strange and morbid idea formed - this idea that I will not live to see the late-twenties lines forming at the edges of my eyes grow into the deep grooves of the late-forties and the eventual soft sags of old age. When I entered college I wanted to be a writer. I enjoyed words and teachers had encouraged me. But having grown up in Cultural Vacuum, Kansas (pop. 2500) I was easily convinced, one day in a course called Intro to Journalism, that because journalism was a business of "connections" and "networking" that I could not be a writer. Who did I know, after all? Nobody who was anybody. And what did I have to say anyway? My life had not been extraordinary, like the lives I imagined of my classmates. The one with the black hair and nose ring and hand in the air with smart questions. The one with the dark skin and and tear-drop eyes and anecdotes from her life before in India. I was white and blond and middle-class and midwestern. My parents were nice and hardworking. I was shy when meeting new people. I was not meant to be a writer.

So the next semester I enrolled in business courses and said that, once I graduated, any job would do. Any paying job. I just wanted a degree. Work would not define me. And to distract myself from the truth - to drown out the voice that whispered, "you're lying to yourself" - the obsession gerbil moved in and brought his squeaky wheel with him, dutifully rescuing me from any hard examination of my life or my choices by spinning his wheel about a mole on my arm that might be cancerous or a mysterious bruise. And he'd hoof it like a champ on the topic of being dateless. Or fat.

So, long story long, dear reader, I'm blogging for the first time, with the intention of writing everyday, with the intention of resurrecting the dream of being a writer than an insecure, 20-year-old me laid down eight years ago. I am still not sure that I am meant to be a writer; it is still frightening. But more terrifying, I finally realize, is the prospect of looking myself in the mirror forty years from now, soft sags around my eyes, and wishing.

The mysterious allergic rash is still nested in the crooks of my elbows and the backs of my knees and shows few signs of retreat. But the obsession gerbil is being evicted.