My Plague Year: No Peace

None of this is new.

That’s the thought I have as I type this. That it won’t be perfect or good, and that nothing I have experienced is new. I hold up the fear of a blank page and I hold it up against the enormity of the mess inside my head, and for almost a year now, the blank page has remained.

I notice people reading. Sometimes they’re on the train. Or on a bench, in a coffee shop or in a pub. I was in the pub yesterday with my husband. I drank ginger beer and looked out at the dark water of the Thames. The pub claims to be the oldest in London. There’s a pole outside, sticking out of the river. A noose hangs from a crossbeam.

I’m looking at the noose and I’m listening to my husband, but I’m also looking at the woman next to me, quietly reading a book and drinking wine. A man comes to meet her, and she stops reading the book and starts to tell him about it. There was a moment there, of perfect stillness, and I used to have it.

Since my father died, I have no attention for reading.

I used to manage about fifty pages on a busy day. Otherwise, it was over one hundred. Most of my recently completed degree in English Literature and Creative Writing consisted of reading books. I remember researching an essay once, and spending eight hours in the same chair at the library, reading academic texts and writing up notes without noticing the time. That ability has left me.

There’s been a small breakthrough. Over the two weeks of Christmas, I managed to finish one book. I try not to feel bad that it used to be two or three. It was in In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Over the summer, I read two books. They were Paradise by Toni Morrison, and The Stand by Stephen King. I don’t know what literary gunshot I’m hoping will shake me.

The worst moment was this autumn, when another academic course took a lot of my attention. Which kept me busy, which I felt was good, but only because then I could avoid the fact I can no longer manage stillness. I decided to pick the easiest thing I could find other than comic books, and I chose Twilight. I manage it clumsily, in ten pages at a time before bed, before realising I’m not doing myself any favours because not only am I anxious, I am also bored.

I meet my friend Marie for breakfast at Clifton Nurseries. I arrive late, because not only do I not have any patience for reading, but on bad days it takes me about double the time to do anything. Marie greets me with an envious serenity, and over coffee and toast I tell her there are days when I feel the sky is about to fall on me. I ramble on about therapists and religion, my inability to read and write and exercise and to just stop eating the entire fridge. I tell her about my ambitious plans to run in a race, and to take part in National Novel Writing Month. I figure I can shake myself awake with a Grand Plan.

She laughs. It’s a kind laugh though, one of understanding. She’s read all the books and attended all the courses. She tells me to not be hard on myself. My body is trying to process a large trauma. If I can’t read, I can’t read. If I can’t write, then I can’t write. Time, healing, and all that. It makes me feel better for the rest of the year.

But this is an idea I have. About everything that hasn’t worked and isn’t working. About everything that maybe worked for a while. About how my father was alive one moment and then wasn’t, and how it’s almost been a year and I don’t even know what to do. So if I can’t read, and I can’t write fiction, and I can’t be still, then I’ll just write here.

Without the fear of whether things are perfect or good or new. I don’t care if anyone reads this or not. I’m just pulling it out of me, all of it, and sending it into the void.

I’m going to write about my Plague Year.