When I say that I’m a writer
“So, what do you do?”
Worry. Distract. Complain. These are not the answers I divulge to my new doctor. Instead, I give her the one she’s looking for.
“I’m a writer.”
She pivots quickly away from the glow of the computer screen, her short strawberry blonde hair bouncing with her. Over the rims of her glasses, her eyes widen, eager for more information.
I oblige. It’s a practiced routine now. Feign enthusiasm. Gloss over the details. And if I’m feeling really saucy, hazard an “It’s great!”
Some are incredulous that you can, in fact, get a “good” job with an English degree. Others act as though you’re an exotic species of human that somehow had the good fortune to tumble into your dream career a few years out of college. Almost all believe, “You must love your job.” I am getting good at this performance.
For the last two years, I’ve written recruitment materials for my alma mater. I’ve worked on everything from huge advertising campaigns to 100-word postcards. My career is the joy of my parents, who sacrificed their livelihood to send their only daughter to college and become the first in the family to enter the white collar world.
It’s in my job title, but I feel less like a writer than ever.
So many writers struggle to identify as “real” writers. We offer ourselves these arbitrary benchmarks as excuses. When I’m published in a literary magazine, then I’ll be a writer. When I make money from my work, then I’ll be a writer. When I quit my day job to finally finish that novel, then I’ll be a writer.
Still, I write every day, though I consider it more like everyday writing. I don’t know who occupies the clever turns of phrase urging overwhelmed high schoolers to submit an application, but it isn’t me. With every punny headline, I shrink further into the background, where my dreams of writerly independence wait impatiently outside the harbor of the 9 to 5.
Sometimes I spend hours baking and cooking instead of writing because I can’t remember how to slow down and observe.
Sometimes as I drive over the tracks into the small Midwestern college town, I wonder if I would flinch when the truth comes barreling toward me with the speed of a locomotive.
Sometimes I cry in the overflowing parking lot outside my office building because I’ve left friends behind in the desperation to find words with enough bravery to liberate me from the lifestyle I’m too cowardly to change to myself.
But there are no trains today, and I tell my doctor none of this.
She and the nurse check my heart rate three times. I’m a bundle of nerves and discontent. They ask me to turn the flimsy gown around so that the ties are facing front. One of the knots won’t untie, so I awkwardly drape the excess fabric across my stomach.
The nurse rolls in a cart with a monitor and sticks little pads across my chest that connect to a series of wires. They want to see if my heart is beating normally. I want to see if my heart is beating.
The writer I want to be doesn’t sit in a basement cubical for nine hours a day. She doesn’t have five managers or frozen lunches. She has no start time, no annual review, no political wounds, no third degree gaslight burns. No, she simply lives. She simply writes.
As I recline on the table, I wonder what the echocardiogram is revealing about me. Does it see an ungrateful Millennial incapable of being satisfied? Does it see a writer that’s forgotten how to bleed? Does it see my greatest fear? That in my own inadequacy, I am touching no lives deeply and all lives softly, passing through as transient as snow that dances on your windshield before melting into oblivion?
Apparently, it sees only a fast heartbeat.
“Well, there’s nothing abnormal,” the nurse says to the monitor.
That’s questionable, I think. I nearly crack a joke about the mysteries of the heart but decide against it. A note of hysteria might sneak out. The nurse walks back over to remove the sticky pads and return the wires to the cart. I’m left alone to dress before the doctor returns.
My pulse has tamed a bit by the time the doctor concludes our appointment with an invitation to return in the fall. I assure her this urgent heartbeat is not my normal state of being, citing my Fitbit data from a few months ago when I was still remembering to wear it. Blame the fluorescent light, cold rooms, February rain, and potential for impending doom.
There’s a smile on her lips as we both head for the door and she says: “Your parents must be really proud of you.”
They are. I know this. But I think writing is an act of becoming as much as it is an act of doing. And I will never quite be finished.
She decides to walk with me back to the lobby, where the chime of elevators, swish of medical coats, and hum of conversation immediately pull us into their current. I thank her as we part ways, she returning to the maze of hallways and examination rooms, and I to cross the tracks again.
I do as I have always done. I worry. I distract. I complain.
I write.
