Premeditating Writer

According to the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual Volume 4(DSM 1V), "obsessions are persistent ideas, thoughts, impulses or images that are experienced as intrusive and inappropriate." To give you an example, it’s like having a song you recently heard go through your head continually even though you want it to stop.

I read recently that one of the driving forces of the compulsions is constant doubt. Which got me thinking, you know? I’m not a complainer. Not aloud, anyway. I complain to myself, which is bad enough. I guess it’s fine sometimes to have doubts about yourself. But I do it too often, and now I wonder if I suffer from this Obsessive Compulsive Disorder thing.

While agonizing on the last chapters of my second novel (and then the process of editing, of course), I tend to criticize and compare myself to other writers. I’m not as good. And to demonstrate it, I’m not published yet. I feel as if I’m frozen in place because it has taken me forever to finish my second book. And while cultivating the plagued-by-doubt-syndrome, I procrastinate, find excuses to do anything but write.


A recent publication on Mother Teresa titled, "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light", is a compilation of letters written by her over a 60 year period. They show that for a few weeks in 1959, Mother Teresa never once felt the presence of Jesus and often plagued by doubt about the existence of God.


So maybe there’s still hope for me.

I remembered someone had once told me that death is lighter than a feather, and I will deny all knowledge of it.



At 3:45 in the morning, I awake from a dream. Suffering from sleeplessness, I see in the bathroom mirror, dark circles around my eyes brought on by the wrath of insomnia. The noise should have faded by now if only I could forget. I had stepped into a world where time stopped, and where joy ceased to exist.

I quietly slip under the covers again and move closer to my husband, which is how I like to remind myself that I am not alone, the curve of his body molding comfortably with mine. “The same dream?” His voice is soft in the night. He takes my scarred hand in his and brings it to his face. A silence between us grows warmer with each moment soon turns to whispers. I drift back to sleep. Later that night, I am again in my dream and again awakened by the loud bang.

I look up dazed and see that one of the balconies that had been over the toy store is lying smashed in the street. Glass windows are gone and all that remain is the metal grill which once held it up. Surrounded by the wall of terror the explosion induced, I realize death had spared me for the moment.

As in a dream, I move closer to the voice. He is young, perhaps in his early twenties. I kneel next to him trying to shake off my need for tears. Beads of sweat form on his forehead and his eyes glaze over with pain. He weeps. My heart fills with sorrow.

“What is your name?”

“David.”