When I finish this manuscript, I’m going to
go roller skating. We bought the roller skates a month ago? A couple of months
ago. Maybe a few months ago? There’s a roller skate club in town, which is one
hundred percent the most delightful thing I’ve ever heard. A club, for roller
skating. Roller skaters, wearing roller skates, go roller skate in a church
that they take over for the purpose of roller skating, and that’s where they do
the thing. Skate, I mean, on four wheels.

I picture an enormous stone building with a
soaring roof overhead and stained-glass windows and marble pillars and all the
pews removed and a group of women – it’s mostly women, we are quietly assured,
and pretty queer – doing roller skate things on roller skates, just skating
around and maybe there’s a disco ball that lowers quietly from the ceiling and
the music is like a Billie Eilish remix with rocket sounds and we all go
“woo!”, which sounds pretty reasonable when you think about it. Also
everyone’s wearing rainbow shorts and sunglasses.

So that’s my dream, though we’re going to
practice our roller skating in the garage downstairs first because neither of
us is very good at roller skating. When we got up on wheels at the roller skate
store we mostly went around in circles tilting precariously backwards and going
“ahh!” and “ooofp!” and “eerh!”, windmilling our
arms and then reassuring each other that we’d get real good real soon and then
we would be roller skating super stars who make friends with other roller
skating rock stars and then we’d have roller pals, who pal around doing roller
skate things, as you do, on roller skates. Like, roll. Forward. And then, back.
And then turn? Roller skate things. You know.

That’s all happening once the manuscript is
done. When will it be done? THAT’S A GOOD QUESTION.

The book is under contract at Holt, and that
is wonderful. The manuscript, the frustration and tears it has engendered in me
is less wonderful, and my embarrassment about it over all is the worst. Anxiety
and being paralyzed, being paralyzed and feeling sick, feeling sick and wishing
I had never agreed to write anything ever, because I can’t write, are you
kidding me?

“Are you sure this is the career for
you?” my former agent asked me recently. That’s not why she’s my former agent.
She is my friend and she has seen just a tiny part of the wreck I’ve been this
past year, year and a half.

It’s not just the manuscript, it’s not just
writing, it’s not just being afraid. It’s the bad days, the bad run of days
when I have a flareup and the meds aren’t helping and whatever it is that’s wrapped
around my bones and burning me when I move, the smoke has wafted into my brain
and everything is impossible. Flareups are often prompted by anxiety, but
sometimes they’re just a flareup. But it’s all connected, isn’t it?

Maybe this isn’t the career for me. But I keep thinking, this is almost done. This next year won’t be like this past year, where I’ve discovered that mourning isn’t straightforward, a straight arrow from weeping like you’ll never stop to a fond smile and a pang in your heart whenever you think of the person you lost. No, it’s a more like a scream in your heart that sometimes works its way into your throat and you’re hiding in the bathroom of the coffee shop with your head between your knees before someone knocks to see if you’re ever coming out. Or something like that, that is the rumor anyway, someone once told me.

I’m almost done. This weekend I crept so
close to almost done. I’m working now, the manuscript open in another window,
all the random new docs I’ve opened to paste in something I’ve cut from the book
but can’t stand losing forever, or need to move but I’m not sure where, or the
new words I’ve written that are terrible, and don’t go in that spot but they
could work later if I work on them so I’ll just put them over here so I don’t
forget.

I love writing. I sink into it and I’m gone,
sliding words into place until they click and the satisfaction when I reemerge and
everything works like it has always been there, it’s like nothing else and the
frustration when I can’t get it, when I can’t disappear, when the words aren’t
coming and when resorting to the thesaurus just makes me want to slam my laptop
down and walk away forever but I’m always back, sitting down, sinking in, because
I’m good at this and it feels good, and this has always been what I have wanted
to do. I have always wanted to be a writer.

When I’m done – not this weekend, but
really close, just some chapters to flesh out, and the skeletons are there and
the way everything has to go is clear in my head and also on the big sheets of butcher
paper my friend Meagan posted up to help me track all my plotlines, to help me
visualize how it should go, so close to finishing – we’re going to roller skate.
Kelsey’s skates are a minty 50’s green blue and mine are leopard print. I have
leopard print roller skates, with hot pink accents. I have a pair of shorts
already, and they have pockets. I need tights, rainbow ones or fishnet ones or
striped ones, and Kelsey’s shorts have sequins and they’re rainbow, you should
see them.

We’re going to roller skate this week,
okay? No falling down, just flying forward, knees slightly bent, leaning
forward, picking up speed. And I’ll decide, maybe this week or maybe not, if
this is me. If I can do this. If this is the career for me.