Out of Sorts

Right now, I feel like doing everything but writing.

I’d rather be in bed.  I’d rather be bowling.  Hell, I’d rather be on my hands and knees in the bathroom scrubbing my toilet with a toothbrush.  I may still do that last one.

The honest reality is that I’m out of sorts.  Somehow, I’ve sat down to write the last of the short story for After the Silence, and I can’t get the words to come.  I can picture the ending so clear in my minds eye.  Even here, right now, in this very moment I am playing the scene in my head.  No matter what I do, I can’t make the scene leave my fingers.  There seems to be some kind of barrier between mind and fingers that I cannot penetrate.

Part of it is the fact that I’m sick.  My son is sick again, feeling worse than he did the last three days.  I can feel it creeping through me as well, and the wife is starting to succumb to whatever rot my spawn has contracted.  I’m angry, because I don’t have the ability to take time off my job right now.  It’s still just my first month, and I cannot afford to send the wrong message.  Especially now, when more and more is being heaped upon my plate with ever mounting expectations.

So I sit, and I drink, and I grumble.  Physically as well as emotionally, thanks to the tiny human.  I gnash my teeth, I stomp my feet, and I rage against the injustices, real or imagined, which have pinned me to this moment.  I want nothing more than to throw up my hands and run away from all this noise.

I can’t.  At the end of it all, I simply can’t do that.  I can’t leave, because no matter how fast I run I’ll still be there with me.  Our demons are omni-present.  We share our lives with them.  Through every hope, in every valley, nothing is hidden from them.  It’s part of what gives them such power over us: because they are us.

I’m the one out of sorts, and the whispers and doubts and pains and angers piling on are still me.  I’m so tired of running from something which, by its very nature, cannot be evaded.

So here I am, out of sorts, upset and tired, sick and agitated, and writing anyway.  I can’t tell if it is courage or madness.  Maybe when all other things are stripped away, and its down to do or die, there really isn’t a difference between the two.

Grumpfully,

The Unsheathed Quill