0.01

It’s late and I’m sitting up at my table, I let it go dark so I can write in peace. My mind is trying desperately to find itself again.

My last episode came through like a bomb, scattering my nerves, chemicals and their pathways like shards of glass, discarded casualties. I watch as they attempt to find their way back, as they make wrong turns, enter places they shouldn’t, desperate and delirious. I’m afraid along the way one might find a false home, plant roots for poison fruit.

My mind is consumed with numbers these days. The ticking away, the adding and subtracting, the scrapping, the readding. This is the first thing that enters my mind when I wake, and they are what determines my mood as I fall asleep. I sit stagnant all day, not able to give my mind to anything else. Books lay before me, laundry, half formed ideas, all untouched. I feel sick now and think I might throw up. Maybe it’s this heater, or the hunger, maybe it’s the thought of everything.

 My mind has always found a way to hold me three feet from life, all I’ve done is watch it go by. By that I mean I’ve wasted time, avoided decisions and commitment, I haven’t progressed in passionate pursuit of anything. I suppose my novels are the closest thing I have to an end goal, a future. They are my pride and what I strive for; but there is waste even in that. My whole life, the very proof of my existence, and who will read them? The only outlet to express my ability and who will ever see?

I want so badly to stretch out, to push my mind to its limits, to excel. It always circles back to this.

“0.01.” I see that number pop up from behind my computer, laying beside my pencil, inside my notebooks. 0.01. That’s the chance of making it as an author.

Do I really love writing enough to keep pouring into it, knowing my words will not find their audience? I think no, I don’t. Yet here I am.