In the Badger's Den: Living with a Writer and Living to Tell About It

Living with a writer is hard. I know this because I've lived with myself for twenty-eight years, and trust me when I say, I'm not easy to live with. Ask my husband. We both consider ourselves experts on the subject. I'm difficult to live with despite the fact that I'm a writer...and the fact that I am has only managed to complicate things.

The complications don't come from my words or my work. They come from within, because when I write I become someone something different.

Most of the time, I transform into a temperamental and pissed-off badger (my husband's description, not mine), hell-bent on getting a story down on paper and not caring who I hurt to make it happen. Once transformed, even a sneeze can provoke a particularly evil version of the stink-eye and annoyed little huffs and sighs. And no, this badger doesn't want to hear about a particularly cool part of your video game or that the cats just did something incredibly cute. To put it simply, when I write, I'm usually a bitch.

Cute but deadly.

But sometimes...sometimes I transform into something a little different. Sometimes, I become needy, helpless. Sometimes I want you to speak, to edit my work, to provide me inspiration. And don't you dare look back at your video game until you've given me what I need...or else the badger will return. Yes, that's a threat.

I feel sorry for my husband. Even as I write this, he has withdrawn to his respective corner of the couch, as far away from me as possible, careful not to move too much in one direction or the other, lest he should disturb the beast. As self-aware as I am about my problem, I can't do much to stop it. I know what a bitch I can be, but when I'm writing, it's like I can't control it. Just call me Ms. Hyde, I guess.

And Jeremy puts up with it all! He not only puts up with it but is the most supportive and wonderful husband I could ask for. I'm one lucky badger. He deals with my crap, supports my writing in countless ways, and is a continued source of inspiration. Just this morning, he helped me with a writing prompt.

Now, I haven't technically participated in this prompt, so I'm not linking up, BUT it did inspire this post, so I'm grateful to Write on Edge for such a fun writing exercise. I encourage you to check out this community if you haven't already. It's filled with talented and probably less-temperamental writers who will dazzle you with their words.

This week's RemembeRED memoir assignment was to write a Title and Tagline that captures your life. On our way to get breakfast this morning, I told Jeremy about the assignment, asked him what he thought. As usual, he provided me with interesting feedback.

"The title should be: 'Jeremy and Katie Go To Waffle House.'"

I laughed. It was not quite what I had in mind. "No, I think you're missing the point. It's not supposed to be a title of what I'm doing right now. It should be representative of my entire life."

"Actually, I think that title is a perfect microcosm of your life and our lives together. We get along. We fight a little, and in the end, there's a always food." Ah, there's the tagline. The guy never misses a beat.

The funny thing is I actually considered using that title and tagline for the linkup. In fact, I agree with him that it does pretty much sum up our lives. Of course, it also makes us sound incredibly boring. Trips to Waffle House aren't exactly something that set us apart from everyone else. What does set us apart is the fact that I sometimes transform into a badger and that Jeremy usually lives through it, and really, what more could you ask for in life?

Are you a temperamental writer? Do you "transform" when you write?

Telephonophobia

Back in the days before my neuroses.

Brrr-ringg! Brr-ringg!

At the shrilling of my cell phone, my hands begin to shake, palms itching madly. But this is not the typical reaction of a woman in love. My sweating and shaking is more from fear than flirtation.

I’ve been expecting this call, dreading it. I want to answer, but physically, I just can’t. I can do nothing but stare at the phone until it finally beeps, signaling my missed call.

When I log onto my computer hours later, I receive an instant message from him. Safely hidden behind my screen, I’m gutsier than I was earlier. I always am. The computer turns this shy girl into a compelling and confident woman. I wish I could hide behind it in every aspect of my life.

I tried calling earlier. His message carries a hint of his frustration, or maybe I’m just imagining it. I don’t immediately respond.

I should tell him that I’m a neurotic mess. I should tell him that my nerves have gotten the best of me. I should confide that I hate phones, that my social anxieties turn me into a sweaty, blubbering mess. I should reveal that I’ve avoided past relationships because of this anxiety.

And while I’m busy thinking of what I should tell him, my phone rings again.

My pulse quickens. He’s caught me this time, cornered me and removed avoidance from the equation.

Answer.

His instant message pops up on my computer screen as the phone continues to ring, and despite all of my fears, I gather my courage and answer.  

“Hello.”

Our first conversation is awkward. As expected, I sweat a little, but I keep talking anyway...for hours. And when he calls again the next day, I answer without hesitation, knowing that to this guy I’m compelling and confident even offline. 

Author's Note: This memoir post is in response to the Write on Edge Remembered prompt this week:

In “On Writing” Stephen King wrote, “The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.”

Write a memoir post – first-person and true – inspired by that statement.

Word limit is 300.

I still have a phobia of talking on the phone, but thankfully, my now husband was able to alleviate those fears then long enough to make me fall completely in love with him. Our online relationship evolved to a telephone/long-distance relationship after that fateful phone call. We're celebrating our four-year anniversary on Thursday of this week.

Happy Anniversary to my Once and Future Geek!! I'm glad I answered the phone. :)

A Cage Without a Key

The fog is like a cage without a key. - Elizabeth Wurtzel

Fog sat heavy on the horizon, a cloak of condensation hiding the secrets of the city, of its inhabitants, of its past. The streets were empty, the air silent. An outsider might have thought that something was amiss, but in this city, in this time, the scene was commonplace, more normal than not.

Within one of the boarded up buildings lining the abandoned streets, a little girl sat quietly at a small desk. She carefully traced the outline of her hand on a yellowed sheet of paper with a stubby red crayon. Over and over again, she traced, methodically, almost hypnotically, until the sheet bore the indentation of her ministrations.

The adults around her paid her no mind, interested only in their own affairs, but she felt no loneliness, no sense of longing or need. She just kept tracing her hand.

The building she occupied somewhat resembled a home but was a mere shadow of its former purpose. Furniture was strewn meaningless around the room, lopsided, upside down. The desk that the girl sat at was the only item that seemed to still have any sense of import, a relic from a different time and place.

Across the room, one of the adults ran into an upended table, the resulting sound that resonated through the largely empty house startled the occupants. The little girl finally stopped her tracing, dead brown eyes lifting towards the source of the noise. A thought skipped through her empty mind, a fleeting piece of her humanity grasping at anything tangible.

Loud.

The woman who caused the commotion stared blankly at the table then grunted and shuffled away. But the little girl was mesmerized. Carefully, she put down the crayon, which was almost completely used up anyway, and rose from the desk.

She had grown used to focusing her broken mind on a single task, much like her tracing, so she managed to dedicate her energy to making her way across the room, motivated only by that single coherent thought.

Loud.

When she arrived at the table, she pushed at it with her hand.

Nothing.

She tried again, this time pushing harder. A squeak resulted as the edge of the table scraped across the hard-wood floors.

Noise.

A smile tried to work its way across the girl’s broken face. Her mouth twitched with the effort. Those nearest to her stopped to watch, forming a small and awkward audience around her and the table.

She lifted her leg a fraction and kicked the table with all her might. This time she re-created the sound that had initially startled them all. And this time she did smile.

Loud. Noise.

“Loud noise.” She said in a quiet voice that was rusty and hoarse from lack of use.

The adults moaned their agreement and went back to shuffling aimlessly.

But the little girl was awakened, as if from a dream. She remembered the day of the outbreak. The panic in the streets. The rush to quarantine the infected. She remembered being herded into the random house, being separated from her parents. The men in masks had shouted at her to “move it!” She had cried for her mother.

Once inside the house, there had been panic. Adults rushed around, yelling at each other, yelling at the men outside. The doors were locked, then immediately boarded up from the outside.

They were trapped.

And the little girl remembered that they had been trapped for a year or longer.

Reeling from the rush of memory and feeling, she looked down at her cold, gray hand and finally knew that she was dead.

Author's Note: This week we were to be inspired by one of two pictures for the Red Writing Hood prompt. I chose the picture below, which gave life to my zombie tale. New Orleans always sparks my imagination. :) This is the 600-word prologue of a longer piece. 

A Bus to Nowhere

Sometimes I think of escaping on a Greyhound bus, just heading over to that station in town that doubles as a beer and lotto haven and demanding a ticket to anywhere. Wouldn’t that be romantic of me?

Of course, the clerk behind the dusty, crowded counter would ask, “Where to?” And I’d have to actually make a decision.

Decisions have never been my thing. Probably why I’m stuck in this dirty little town with nowhere to go and nothing to do. I should work on that, making a decision once in awhile.

Every now and then.

But the impulsiveness of my Greyhound dream is ruined by the uptight clerk just working for the weekend and that miniscule pay stub that’ll barely keep the hot water running.

Hot water is always the first to go, too. You figure you can’t live without electricity, but hot water is far from being vital, so you stop paying the gas bill first. Unless you’re my sister who takes forty-five minute showers. She scalds the impurities from her skin and gets down-to-the-bone clean. When she steps out of the bathroom with her dark blonde hair hidden under the tall towel turban resting on her head, she smiles with sweet ferocity and asks, “Oh, did you need to take a shower?”

I learned at an early age to appreciate a cold shower, so hot water would definitely be the first to go if I was the clerk behind the counter, with my tiny paycheck, enjoying a chance to ruin a customer’s attempt at impulsivity.

“Hey, lady.” The squeaky voice of the clerk knocks me out of my daydream violently, and I find myself standing in the stark reality and fluorescent lights of J’s Quik Stop.  The clerk behind the dusty, crowded counter says, “You’re holding up the line.”

What am I doing?

I blink at the clerk with the leftover pimples and crooked teeth and find myself demanding a dream. “I want a bus ticket.”

“To where?”

There’s a hundred and forty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents in my pocket. I grabbed it from the bottom of my jewelry box before leaving the house and telling my mom: I’ll be right back. She smiled sloppily at me and took another swig of Jack’s.  Okay, honey.

“To where, lady?”

And I tell him some anonymous place that doesn’t matter.

Two decisions in one day. This must be a world record for me.

He prints out the ticket, and I hand him my money. It’s a transaction that will determine my future, my place in life. The ticket feels heavy in my hand. Substantial. I stare at it for a moment, while the line behind me made up of men with six-packs sighs and fidgets like a six-year old who has to go potty.

The clerk clears his throat.

I smile, then turn around and walk away. There’s a bench just outside of the Quik Stop, with an ad promising of a quick and easy divorce for just under six hundred dollars. I smile at the pretty irony, because I divorced my life for just a hundred and some change.

I sit down and wait for the faint sound of the bus in the distance, arriving to carry me away.

I don’t know what awaits me in that anonymous town, hundreds of miles away, but I do know that I’m finally doing something. And, for now, that has to count for everything.

Author's Note: This week for Red Writing Hood we were challenged to write about a season of change for our characters. I was once a bored and jaded teenager, dreaming of leaving my small town behind for a pipe dream. Thankfully, I stayed put and realized my dream just where I was, but the romance of a bus trip to nowhere has never left me. 

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Well?

At the bottom of the well, she wept silently. 

Hours had passed, and she knew:

Time was her enemy, ticking away in darkness. 

Counting down.

Author's Note: This week's Write on Edge Red Writing Hood assignment was to Tweet a Story in 140 characters or less. Greedy girl I am; I used every one of my 140 characters. This story has been in my heart for quite some time, and I thought I'd use this opportunity to write it. That's it for now. I'm all twittered out.