I was meant to be sitting up, writing when my long work day should have had me in bed hours ago, like most of my co-workers. From a small age, it seems, I've been created for late nights. I never could sleep a full night. I'd sit up, watching TV, reading under the covers, and all the while I think it simply didn't occur to me at the time that I should be writing instead. It was like I was waiting for my life to make room for it, and so it has.

When I say write, I would not so pompously say that I am a writer, because I tend to shudder when people define themselves that way almost as badly as when they say poet, unless, of course, they are already famous at the time. What I'm saying is that I could be, that I think I have the pattern down, at least.

When I read other writers depicting a writer parent, it varies. The father writers are the passionate, socially riding the fence of convention, driving the mothers mad or killing themselves with some tawdry vice. The writer mothers, what few I've read, either died young or lived to look on the back of the cover like really cool old ladies, women who even in their fifties would be desirable to most men, if only for the way they say things. I wonder if I could be a writer mother. I have a notebook and pen in almost every room in my apartment, including the bathroom, though I seldom use them even when they come in handy. I have stacks of magazines that have in each at least one kernel of something I'm interested in. When some noders have met me, they have even stated that I looked like one who was drinking everything in as I witnessed it.

Writing, for me, has to do with late nights. And not horribly late, but late for someone who works 10 hours at a job doing the farthest thing you'd think of when you think of writing, late for someone who lives two lives, as most writers do.

I was meant to sit up late at night, while the rest of the world sleeps. I was built for it. You can see that I was born, practically, with circles under my eyes and horrible nearsightedness. I was born with long-ish fingers and strong hands. They were whittled by early employment and writing with pens. Even my ass seems to have been sculpted for long sittings, since for as much as I sit on it, it hasn't yet started to spread flat. I have, what some people call a black girl's butt, but thankfully, I hope it's not disproportionate. Everything in my life. Being an introverted only child of passive parents who raised me on TV so much that whatever interest I took in books was taken by force. Writing at every stage of life, in almost anal detail, even if no one ever reads it. The contentment that can be so easily had with me by being alone, with a book, a pen and paper, or even nothing at all but just looking around. The ease with which I fall into other people's dramas while shutting out people's ability to get into my head and heart while wanting to tell the world my story. The addiction that is almost more powerful than love, sex, or romance all rolled together.

Kind of sick, isn't it? Well, maybe it is, but I can't help loving it. I was meant for this.

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