Writing essays is my favorite part of the week. The task is simple.
Write about something honestly. Write what I really think, not what I’m supposed to think. Limit the length of the essay so it can be read in under ten minutes. Edit with a fine-toothed comb. Give myself permission to be unpopular.
The weekly essays come out on Wednesdays. No matter what else is going on in my life, it must take a back seat. I don’t take it lightly that plenty of my subscribers pay good money to read my work. I like fulfilling the contract.
Sometimes I’ve worked on something all week, and Wednesday is about editing. Sometimes I wake up on Wednesday and have a blank page facing me. The minute I get an idea, I sit down at the laptop and start. There are days I have no idea. I sit down and write anyway.
Writing is respected in this house; Secret Service knows it’s my work. If he’s home, he leaves me be—for the most part. Sometimes he comes in and sits on the bed and tells me something. Then I have to growl at him.
I have written during my mother’s death, on vacation, when I had pneumonia, and while under emotional and financial strain. In fourteen months, nothing has stopped me from writing on Wednesdays.
Until today. People, I have nothing. It terrifies me.
In fairness to myself and you, I wrote another essay this week which I submitted to a magazine. It’s probably the essay you’d have received today. In full transparency, you’ve been ripped off. The good one went somewhere else.
Ordinarily, I’d have more than one topic to write about. I have a busy brain. But not this week. It’s been a week of bad sleep, a week of attempted recovery from catastrophe.
Secret Service says,
“I think this is probably just the repercussions. You’re still going through it.”
He’s right, of course. I can’t expect to be right after spending six straight days fearing for my safety.
I briefly consider writing about why I hated The Perfect Couple so much, but I ditch this idea for several reasons.
First, I will definitely be accused of picking on Nicole Kidman, and everyone would be right.
Second, both Laurie Stone (Everything is Personal, do yourself a favor and subscribe) and David Cale pointed out my Number One Beef with the show on social media before I did:
That damned wedding cake.
They both noted that the multi-tiered cake looked like it weighed nothing. They beat me to the punch.
It is a huge pet peeve of mine: when actors handle things that should weigh fifty pounds like they weigh ten ounces. I hate it when this kind of sloppiness takes me out of the action, and the housekeeper Gosia, played brilliantly by Irina Dubova, handles the cake like it’s a volleyball. I kept waiting for her to spike it over the net.
But I did enjoy her performance more than anyone else’s. I blame the director for the lightness of the cake. Jack Reynor, who plays Thomas, has the same problem. In his hands, the cake is also light as a feather.
I can’t make a whole essay about the cake, and I probably need to let Nicole Kidman alone. Although just once I want her to play someone who isn’t rich and impeccably dressed.
I could write an essay titled,
Nicole Kidman’s Coats.
The ones she had in The Undoing were just stunning. Then in the last episode of this catastrophic series, she shows up in London in a beautiful teal number, undoubtedly cashmere.
Only a very rich woman would buy a coat in that color. The rest of us need one we can wear to a funeral, if necessary.
Alright, I’ll stop. But Nicole Kidman’s Coats would make an excellent band name.
I think I know what’s wrong. I am exhausted. I don’t want to be overdramatic, so I look up the word exhaustion.
1. a state of extreme physical or mental fatigue.
Yes. I am exhausted on both counts, and I can say this without being accused of hyperbole.
I tend to ignore exhaustion. If I have something to do, I do it.
The exception to this rule is finishing my book. I will do anything other than finish my memoir. If I finish the book, it means people will read it.
I realize it’s the whole point of writing a book; I’m not an idiot. You’d have to be a fly on the wall of my therapist’s office to fully understand my nature, which is to shoot myself in the foot the minute I am within a whiff of succeeding at something.
I text my editor earlier today and say,
Book will be done by October 1st.
It was supposed to be ready September 15th. But I had that whole Breaking Bad episode in Virginia, which took up 90% of my brain and time.
I am back in New York, just in time for my stepson’s wedding this weekend. Friday, I’ll get an order of wholesale flowers delivered. I am doing the little arrangements for the rehearsal dinner myself.
Anyway, fat chance the book is going to be done this weekend.
My brothers and their families are arriving. I’m delighted they’re coming. I’m rarely in the same room with both of my brothers. Plus, the wedding is going to be fun because I know my stepson and his bride. They’ll host a great party.
My editor texts me back that she was going to reach out today and asks if there is anything she can do to help. The book, that is. She’s not offering to take thorns off roses.
Boy, does she have my number.
I write,
I need to recover my brain. I might reach out to you in a day or two…
Followed by some boring stuff about what I’m going to do to try and get some sleep.
Lack of sleep gives me physical pain. My head feels like a swollen, stupid watermelon. My eyes hurt, and I squint all the time. My head throbs. Emotionally, the word grim comes to mind. I haven’t been this grim since before my mother died.
It’s not just the lack of sleep. It’s the napping. I’m not a good napper.
I’m so tired some days I’m asleep by 8 pm. When I wake up, I’m delighted. I think I’ve slept through the night.
I look at the clock. It's only 10 pm. Secret Service hasn’t even come to bed yet.
And so it goes. I sleep for two hours, wake up, fret, read the newspapers, fret some more. In an hour or three I go back to sleep. I do not sleep in greater intervals than two hours, hence, it’s napping.
Not sleeping.
This has been going on for over a week. I am no longer in my right mind.
Some essay this is. It’s more like a visit to the doctor’s office. Instead of being a reader, you’ve been unwillingly cast as a psychiatrist. I’ve taken the reader hostage in the guise of having an essay. Instead, you get nothing but complaints.
Last night I took the Benadryl, which I hate doing, but it works. I knew today was Wednesday, and I wanted to be fresh.
As I wait for the Benadryl to take effect, I start rereading The Bell Jar. Again, not a great choice before bed, but I am doing a reading in the city in early October where we read a bit of Plath and then a bit of our own work.
When I was eleven years old, I read The Bell Jar and immediately it became my favorite book. I finally had a name for what had been plaguing me for two years: depression.
I would never have been able to describe to an adult what was wrong with me. I didn’t have to. I was lucky to bump into Plath, who explained it for me.
At the reading, we’ve only got six minutes each. Most of the women are poets, so they’ll read a Plath poem and then one of their own. I’m going to read from The Bell Jar, then a few minutes of my memoir.
Memory is a funny thing. I thought the bit about waking up in the crawl space was Chapter One, because that’s the chapter which was important to me.
It’s Chapter Fourteen.
While Republicans try to ban the books they think children shouldn’t read, I think about people like me. When I picked up that book at eleven, wordless, alone, with no way to describe the terrible thing engulfing me, Plath let me know I still belonged to the human race.
I don’t know what horrors would have been in store for me if I hadn’t read her. Books don’t corrupt. In my experience (and much like rock and roll) they save lives.
The Benadryl hits. Wonderful. I close my eyes.
I sleep two hours and wake up. I can barely believe it. Even Benadryl is foiled by my insomnia.
I start reading the news, which is probably the last thing on earth I should do. I read about explosives in Hezbollah’s pagers, how many people died, how many wounded.
I have a question for Netanyahu, and the ayatollahs, and American warmongers:
Do you really think this helps?
I am so sick of men in charge. I am so sick of them doing the same things over and over expecting different results. I am tired of people committing atrocities in the name of “fighting back.”
Because it doesn’t work. It just perpetuates more fighting. I suppose that’s what they want. War is big business.
I was discussing the world with my hairdresser the other day, who is an Iranian American. She is not on the side of the ayatollahs.
“The problem with our foreign policy,” I say, “is we have no policies.”
“Exactly,” she says. “We just react.”
Women could straighten things out. Maybe that’s too broad a generalization, but the numbers back me up: only 7% of our world leaders are women. Gender equality isn’t projected for another 130 years.
Ask yourself if the earth can survive another 130 years of men’s leadership.
Late this morning, I take a nap. I wake up. I still feel horrible, so I take some Tylenol. I go back to sleep.
Around two pm, I wake up without the horrible headache.
“Just write,” I say to myself. I write.
My English teacher in 10th grade, a man who became my lifelong friend, is named Fred Franklin.
Fred looked at me once and said,
“Work will save you.”
He was right about most things. He was right about this. Just like Sylvia Plath let me know not only could I survive depression, I could write about it.
Incredible Liz, truly...Plath saved me too. In The Bell Jar, I saw my story. And no, we can not withstand another 130 years of male domination. Praying the tide will turn a bit come November. Keep writing, you were made for this.
This is perfect.