back to the future

Day 7- Back to the Future

At first I didn't realize someone was knocking at the door. The dogs were going crazy but that didn't get my attention right away because they go crazy at lots of things, but when the tone of the barking changed from interested/excited bark to get-away-from-my-house/i'll-rip-your-head-off it got me out of my chair.
I don't like to answer the door during the day, or at all really. I'm usually at home alone and you never know who it might be. Also, they could be selling things. Or it could be a neighbor wanting something from you. In any case it's not in my best interest to answer the door. Also I prefer to avoid interaction with people if at all possible.

I tiptoed up to the door so as not to alert the interloper on the other side that I was home. I looked through the peephole to see the oversized head of a man in need of a shave and a haircut. He didn't look homeless or anything, just like he didn't have anyone to impress so he gave up. He definitely wasn't answer the door material so I began to tiptoe back to the living room. Another knock came, this one more urgent than the first. WHat the hell? What is so important? I looked again through the peephole. Was he bleeding? Was someone chasing him? He looked ok to me so I turned my back to walk away once again. Again he knocked frantically, this time I watched him until he finally walked away. He was wearing stupid shoes and a grey members only jacket. I watched till he came to the end of my walkway. He looked left, right, then took something out of his pocket. He had it in his palm whatever it was, and he was studying it closely. He brought it close to his face, put it to his ear, and stood motionless for what seemed like an eternity. I realized I had been unconsciously shifting from right foot to left. I wish he'd go away already, I've got to pee. Whatever it was, he put it back in his pocket and turned right down the sidewalk.

Finally I could get back to it. It's hard enough overcoming the worst bout of writers block in the history of writers block without having to contend with creepy dude distractions. Members only? Who wears those anymore? I went to the bathroom then sat back down in front of the computer. My mind was blank. The flow I had established before was dammed. I stared at the screen and the paragraph in front of me was uninspiring at best. I decided I was hungry. Yeah, definitely can't write anything on an empty stomach. A peanut butter and banana sandwich beckoned me from the kitchen and I knew nothing else would fit the bill. As I assembled the sandwich my mind wandered back to the stranger at the door. Part of me wished I had answered the door out of pure curiosity, and part of me had the nagging feeling that it was more than curiosity- I needed to find out what he wanted. Normally I heed the messages of my intuition but the tug in the direction of thinking about the stranger started to annoy me because I knew I had a deadline to meet and his interruption was ill-timed. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that the stranger's message (assuming there was one? why did I automatically assume he had something to tell me?) and my writer's block weren't mutually exclusive events.

The daylight was starting to fade, and as I sat and ate my sandwich I felt as if continuing to work on this novel this evening would be an exercise in futility. My publisher was sympathetic that I was still grieving in spite of the fact that it had been a year since my grandfather had died. My grandmother and grandfather raised me from a baby, and remained my main parental influence through my adult life despite the fact that I spent my teenage years with my mother and stepfather. Those years were supposed to provide me with "stability" (read: monetary comfort) and a "normal life". What no one seemed to consider is that I had already had a normal life up until I was uprooted and moved to an alien city with parents I didn't know at all. That's when the "mental issues" as my mother calls them became visible to everyone else. I had always known I wasn't quite the same as most of the other kids. A lot of that can be chalked up to the fact that we were gypsies- moving practically every year and stealing and scavenging to survive in between. It's hard to measure what most other kids are really like when you only hang out with them for a couple of years, tops. Those times were someone else's movie though, someone else's life in which I was playing the part of the lead character. My shrink calls it disassociation. She's good, my shrink, but I wonder if she knows that quite literally my life was not mine until I was yanked out of it at twelve? She's under the impression that the meds I'm taking have shown me that the life I had experienced from birth until twelve years old was in fact my own. I don't think about those times too much either way, it's difficult to remember too much about it and it's painful to remember the parts I can.

*********************************************TBC*****************************************