My Little Brown Book of Fears, Tears, Et Cetera

Copyright © 2013 Mary Magee.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-7062-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7063-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013904731

Balboa Press rev. date: 4/30/2013

CONTENTS

Calling All Mothers

God – 1982

A Page From My Diary

Reasons

Fresh Start

At First Sight

Night Madness

My Dream

As Good As Gold

Rich World

June 3, 1986 Perry died tonight…

Memorabilia

Friends

To Love Again

My Friend

What About Me

Conclusion

She felt drained, as old and heavy as a stone despite her forty-four years. It had been a bad day in a long succession of bad days. Somehow along the way life had become very difficult…

She was seated at the vanity in her spacious bedroom, staring into the lite mirror. Large emerald green eyes set wide apart in a heart shaped face looked back at her. She had a small full mouth startling red against the pallor of her skin, while her long thick hair was very fair as to be almost silver.

If I had a typewriter or the solution for getting one, I could try again to sell my work, she thought. Her goal was to become a published writer. Nothing has ever sold but perhaps it will finally.

WORLD NEWS, 6pm the sound of the news commentators voice faded in and out of her busy mind… We are having a Harmonic Conversion August sixteenth. This is where the world will end or we will all be happier. I feel we decided during the night to be happier, or the world has ended… came the steady drown of the canned voice. Because it is a Sunday, there will be a three day lag time for Earth Ending paper work. So we remain on hold, anxious for the effect of this Harmonic Conversion.

Turning the radio off, she thought; I grow crazier with it all. I read and write, and pray, and hope, for a miracle. There is a guy on television that offers a miracle for one thousand dollars and he will guarantee it, and set you up with a twenty-five dollar a month payment plan. Reasonable, but I can’t afford the twenty-five dollars a month! she thought.

It was a year since he had gone. He just disappeared one day and she saw herself crouched in the bottom corner of her soul screaming silently, Don’t leave me, please love me! For many months she had wanted to ball up like an unborn baby and stay inside of her soul. She wanted to withdraw her membership in the human race. Maybe all of our training and talk about love were lies told to us as children, to keep us from despair. Maybe there is no love in the world. She thought.

She pulled the old ragged letter from the top vanity drawer. It was a year old now and still no address.

It began: Dear William, perhaps you will want to keep this note, maybe read it again, maybe think about it, and maybe answer it someday. I believe that I finally understand that you do love me. Not enough to forgive, not enough to be understanding, just enough for sex sometimes. Not enough to fight the problems and not enough to be a friend or mate. Not enough to stand by your marriage or make a family for our children. Not enough to be my husband until death do us part. So you disappeared. I loved you much more than that. I never wanted to lose your love. With no idea how to share yourself with a family that loves you, and no need to be understood (or to understand) your life will never be complete. I know it is time for me to accept your decision to break up our home after fifteen years of marriage. It is your decision to turn your back and ignore a wife and children that loves you more than that. It is time for me to seek a new life and put away the pain of your decision. I loved you and wanted to understand and you ignored that love. I loved you and you took all of my hopes and dreams. With the help of God we will get well from this. Molly

She refolded the letter and replaced it in the drawer. Looking onto the mirrors reflection, she smiled. It all seemed so long ago now. But she could still remember that awful pain and the big emptiness inside. She had vowed to herself never again to let that happen in her life.

Standing, she stretched, and walked into the living room she turned on the television set and sat down to watch the news. She heard about death, murder, accident, birth, child abuse, and suicide. What a world we have made for our kids, she thought, snapping off the set.

Returning to her bedroom, she had been packing and cleaning, always cleaning. Lifting a box from the top shelf of the closet she sat it on the floor and sat down next to it. The box was full of her writings and the last five years of her diaries. She began sorting through the papers, putting the fiction in one pile, and the diaries in another.

She was keeping busy and trying not to let the excitement of the move overtake her thoughts. Trying not to think, just listen to the radio. Tomorrow she would start the new job as marketing manager for a nationwide candy company and next month the big move to another state. Life was going pretty good for her now, except for the emptiness inside and even that was not so bad anymore.

Finishing the paper sorting, she returned all the papers to the box and put the diaries on the vanity. Returning the box to the shelf, she decided to have a hot shower and then read her diaries from these last five years.

The shower relaxed her somewhat. But she was wide awake and she knew sleep was not going to come easy tonight. She would be glad when the move was over and they were settled into the new house, new schools, new job, in a new state… their new life. Creating a new life was not easy… Perhaps she could read herself to sleep.

She curled up in the middle of the large waterbed and began putting the diaries in order according to dates. Lighting a cigarette, she began to read…

Dearest book of shadows and secrets you are always waiting existing only to embrace my problems, hopes, and dreams. How could I live without your help? My darling book, YOU are my sanity and will be the main factor in my success one day.

My ever waiting friend, only YOU, understand my deep inner need to write. And my burning desire for wealth and fame. Only you hold my tears from rejection and help me with the ever constant pain of poverty. YOU alone hold my dreams forever safe, within your bindings.

It is very painful to be poor in a rich world. I cannot afford to feed my kids a balanced diet. I can only afford medical attention for them when it is an emergency. Their sight and hearing are checked at school, and they get dental attention only if it is an emergency.

They wear secondhand clothing and cheap tennis shoes. I wear pass-ons from my friends and never have perfume. I drink generic cola and my old man drinks generic beer, and I buy super glue to repair my eye glasses. Life is hard.

My life is half over; I am middle age, so I know I will never break out of poverty. I can’t live long enough to have my own home with nice things or a new car, a balanced diet, or medical attention.

The only hope I have, as YOU know my dear book, is to become a published writer. When I can, I dream all the way to a multimillion dollar best-selling book. Perhaps make a major motion picture on television.

There are other possibilities but I doubt them. I doubt that I could gain wealth through an inheritance. Everyone that I personally know is poor, so an inheritance is not likely. I could win sweepstake/lottery, etc., but the odds are very great and I’m not too lucky. I could beg, only I don’t know anyone to beg. I could borrow (with interest) except I don’t know a lender. I can’t steal, only because I can’t figure out how! If I could come up with a ninety-six percent fail safe plan, I might steal. So that takes care of beg, borrow, or steal!

I have learned that I will never gain wealth through employment. The only hope I find is to become a published writer. So I write every day and I read until my eyes cross, and I pray, and silently cry over each rejection. They number eighty three now, with two out.

I read and reread interviews of famous writers that were once just like me, poor and unpublished. Many of them faced more rejection and inconvenience than I. Now they are multimillionaires.

I could earn two to three hundred dollars a week selling short fiction to monthly magazines. But for the last four years everything I’ve produced has been rejected. I need a job and with four kids, and writing, and reading, I can’t find time for another job. Perhaps I know that I will never be rich or famous by working at a job.

This evening, as I sat watching the beauty of the sunset, feeling the cool night breeze and catching the entrance of the evening star, I wished to write a sixty thousand word fiction book that will become a best seller and earn us three hundred thousand dollars in the first three years. A fiction best seller…

My only attempt at a book is being typed now for submittal to a publishing house other than subsidy. It was highly accepted by a subsidy publishing firm. They have an ideal business. They stand to lose nothing, and they could gain a lot. I like their position.

This is true; they did highly accept my work. They wanted me to pay for the publishing and get forty percent of the selling price of each book. They wanted to print it so badly that they worked out a payment plan for me. But I can’t afford to have it printed. It seems I could make more money that way but it takes up front money that I don’t have. Well dear friend the question remains: how can I earn money from my work? NOW! The big publishing firms don’t accept unsolicited work. Therefore I must hire an agency or become one. Or go with a smaller less known publishing firm.

I run into obstacles everyway I turn. But I believe little book, I truly believe, that I will find my way over, under, around, or through these obstacles somehow.

I can’t believe that I must keep living this way. We deserve a home, a color television, and a car, and to be able to pay our debts. I will find the way, my dear friend. I just don’t believe I would be able to believe as I do, unless I am also capable of doing it. Somehow I will find the way!

Why can’t we rush perfection; just a little boost or small shove? Why can’t the magazine that has one of my shorts for fifteen weeks send me a check? We could pay the phone bill and have it turned on again, and buy some shoes and clothes, and pay the rent on