August 14, 2019

Looking out the living room’s nook window, my automatic gate’s motor arm hangs loose. As an angered Monday morning drains my energy, the beans and eggs I scrambled settles in my unfulfilled stomach. My world of words spin with words I actually need to be typing, because I have a book to re-write. With life’s future, past and present accompanying me each step around my home, failure lurks in the shadows.

Sleep deprived from the prior week of being sick, and returning from below the equator, I’m up and at it anyways. News that her dreams maybe shipping off a month sooner, previews me left alone fighting the writing frustration. And to add, I cry in her lap because I miss my dad.

In a panic that our world wouldn’t understand how much this book means to me, she leaves the house for a meeting. I’m left with my puppy, dry eggs, and beans with anxiety. Knowing I’d need to nourish my body for the new writing fight, I still can’t get over losing 30,000 words after FocusWriter crashed.

Fuck my life.

The Mondays had never felt so Mondazed. No book for the spring, she’s leaving for the Navy, I’m still hungover from my cousin’s party Saturday night, and I miss my dad. Being sick was the extra sauce I ordered.

Moving along the morning to write, the earth rotates beneath my house slippers. Within 20 minutes, success, fear, failure, and a panic attack is added to my journey. Spinning between my eyes are verbs, nouns, adjectives, and a timeless Monday; which jumps into 2023, where I meet Jay-Z on book 11’s tour.

I text my boy Omari, “I’m having a panic attack, but I’m good.”

I wasn’t.

I call my mom in tears, “I miss dad, I’m having a panic attack.” Guilt follows when she tells me she’s enjoying life at the Ilani Casino. Although she didn’t say that, it doesn’t matter because I was embarrassed.

Walking to my bed, I lie down, and can’t seem to grasp what an iPhone is—or, what the hell was plugged into my wall. It, however, which was my phone, kept ringing.

Now fearing the crazy house for the rest of my life, I answer. Speaking to my sister, she reminds me what happened; as if I’d awaken from a dream.

Getting up to walk around, my puppy’s in her crate. I kneel on her bed and vomit rises. Through my living room’s nook window, exactly where the gate’s motor arm is visibly broken, two police officers approach my front door from the driveway. I’m pissed. They’d likely broken the motor gate even more. But it prompts me onto my feet to open the door.

“Hey, how are you, sir?” One officer asks.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I reply.

“Are you having any health, or mental issues today?”

“Nope.” My puppy runs out the front door with her tail tucked between her legs, “don’t mind her, she’s young and still learning stuff,” I say.

“Okay, just checking on ya’. Your sister made a report and had some concerns.”

Watching them walk off the property, I’m awaken by the vision of being escorted between them in a straight jacket. Seconds prior to them knocking on my door, I’m kneeled on my puppy’s bed, regurgitating the bullshit whirlwind of anxiety and panic. Thinking they’d saw that, I thought for sure I wouldn’t be dogged a writer.

Instead, my puppy’s bed becomes the strange place I begin writing this appreciation to the police. I was good good after that.

-Budd (TK)