I want to be a writer because when I am very anxious I find myself going over my chore list, “laundry-trash-recycling-compost-catbox-dishes-counters-sinks.” I think it as one long word, spoken quickly, like a panicked incantation against evil. I think it, because I hate doing housework and there is just enough Catholicism etched into my DNA that I somehow believe there is redemption in suffering. If I do my chores, my loathsome chores, then I will be good and being good will protect me.
This habit has become so ingrained that I am convinced it will be with me long after my children are grown and I’ve retired from being a housewife. When I am old and frail, my skin and hair both worn thin and pale, and death tiptoes too close to my bed I shall sit up in the darkness and scream out this chore list to the night. Which will be better than muttering it to cashiers when I’m afraid to tell them they’ve given me less change than they ought.
It is only one of my many character flaws and, just like the rest, I would like to give it away to a work of fiction. Let some other character carry her chores around like a crucifix to ward off imaginary monsters. Let it serve her somehow before her story is over. Maybe she’ll live forever, accidentally discovering that death hates doing dishes even more than she does, and will not take her soul if completing that list is the payment for it.
I couldn’t possibly burden one character with all of my flaws. Let another one tell the same painful, embarrassing stories to one lover after another until she finds the one who knows when to laugh with her and when to let her cry. I gave up that search long ago. Maybe she’ll bang her head against that wall just a few more times than I did and find the loose brick by which she can tear down that entire wall.
I’m not going to go into every quirk that has lost its charm here. It’s just that I’m ready to give away my demons. Like the hitchhiking ghosts at the end of The Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland, let them wave goodbye as the conveyor belt moves them away from me, with their happy new owners. Taken one at a time I think they might be interesting stories. It’s just that I am not greedy enough to keep them all to myself, so I’m going to be a writer instead.
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