Every Cork in the Sink

Winter was poisoning me. I hadn't written anything in damn near a month. Not a word. I had spent a fair amount of days staring at a blank white screen, but I hadn't written a fucking word. It was exhausting.

It had been a strange winter for the northeast. In recent years we had snow storm after snow storm, accumulating foot after foot of snow, slush, and shit, but this year, barely a dusting. It was the middle of February and I sat at my desk, staring out the window at the dead grass and bare trees. I wasn't disappointed. I hate snow. I just wished it was fucking warmer.

To make matters worse, I was on a three to four month stretch of unemployment. In the fall, I had taken a job installing traffic counters. It was good money, and kept me out of offices and hostile situations, but it was technically seasonal. Tri-seasonal. We didn't work in the winter. Snow plows would fuck up our counts.

But there weren't any snow plows.

There was no snow.

There was nothing to do and nowhere to go. I was sedated.

I was living on unemployment checks and staring out the fucking window, waiting for inspiration to strike and it wasn't. I longed for summer. The days of warmth and sunglasses. Tee shirts and lake water. Public intoxication and women in bathing suits.

I could almost see it.

Out the window.

Laughing. Boat motors. The smell of barbecue. The cooing of gulls and crashing of waves.

I had gained fifteen pounds since the cold had set in. Since I had stopped working. Since I had been staring at the fucking screen every day.

Parts of my family had gotten a hold of me after many years and I played scrabble with them over the internet and thought about seeing them and didn't. I didn't leave my chair unless I had to. Unless it was time to eat. Or shit. Or sleep.

In November I had written a novel. In thirty days. I had been quite proud at the time, and planned on using my time off to expand and edit it.

Now I hated it.

It was awful. Self indulgent. A third of a story. Whining. I felt the compulsion to finish it. The innate drive. But I hated it and I hadn't looked at it in almost two months. It was shit. Everything I had written was shit.

I spent most of my unemployment on wine and thirty packs of cheap beer. Looking for some semblance of the same inspiration from the past year, the glory days of when I would drink and write and love and feel wonderful all of the times and nothing was ever really a problem. Now, I just drank until I fell asleep in my chair, wishing I was better. I hated myself for it. Every glass to my lips. Every cork in the sink, I hated myself. Every blank page. Every day faded in a clouded stupor. I hated.

Days ticked off of the calendar and I thought about calling friends. Getting out of the house. I missed my friends. I felt a chasm between us.

I didn't.

I didn't call friends.

I didn't write.

I sat back in my chair, stared out the window, drank, and dreamed.

"Someday," I said to myself, "someday things will be better."

It was cold out.