Just The Life Of A Writer (Revised)

I found a dirt-crusted liquor bottle in my basement when I was twelve; that was the day it all started.

The first things I put in it were a few coins, a piece of purple ribbon I‘d stolen from a crush, and the pins that once held up my locomotive poster.

Simple things, inconsequential, careless even; then, it hadn’t mattered what I put in my bottle, just that I had to keep filling it. It was all so easy then.

As I headed into high school, things started getting harder - or so I had thought. I didn’t realize how black-and-white my life had been. I added more and more to my little bottle; a strip of paper with my locker combination; one of the laces that’d ripped from my cleats; a piece of hard candy my sister’d brought back from China; the pin I got when I lettered in basketball; a tube of strawberry chap stick that belonged to my first kiss - all the things I had thought were important, even though they weren’t.

As I ran into adulthood, much too unprepared, the donations grew morbid: the key to my car that’d been stolen from my driveway; ashes from my parent’s house that‘d gotten burned down; a wilted rose from my fiancé’s bouquet when I was left at the alter; a previously lit cigarette for each time I tried to quit smoking.

Sure, good happened too, but I can’t remember what - all I put in my bottle were cries of help, laments to the struggles I endured; all I could focus on was the darkness. I couldn’t see the secret light that tried to filter in.

Through those years, it didn’t seem like my bottle would ever reach the top - which was a good thing? My old days not cased in the bottle were my infant years, my childhood - the years where there wasn’t really any meaning in anything, the years I was just sort of there, just sort of hopping from place to place. And if my life before the bottle was so pointless, then what would it be beyond the bottle? I closed off my mind from those thoughts that crept up in the dead of night when all I could do was write a hopeless little story - I just kept filling my bottle, half-believing that the world would die away before I could finish.

But just a week ago, I’d mixed in one final element - the title of my manuscript torn from the cover page - and corked it. Who would have thought the story I used to distract myself from the prospect of closing the bottle would be the last piece of my life to enter it?

The strange thing is, when I stopped my bottle, it didn’t feel like the end - at least, not the end of everything. More like the end of an era, a horrible, pitiful, hope-wrenched era that clouded the sky and rained acid on rolling hills. I looked at my bottle and wanted so badly to take it and fling at out my third-story window, to see it smash against the concrete alley below. But I couldn’t, because like it or not, my bottle was my past - and it led to my future; my much brighter future.

It’s what’s led me to now, to the loading dock of flight 132, on my way to meet with my recently-signed editor - my only carry-on an old glass liquor bottle I still can’t believe they let me bring on board.

I walk back to row fourteen, just a hair behind first class. So close to success, and yet… not there yet. I may never get there. I situate myself in the aisle seat, glad the flight’s a late one and most of the seats are vacant.

The flight takes off and I sit quietly, listening to the overwhelming white noise of the plane; the propellers, the engine, the baby in the back, the black-and-white movie in the front. I pick up my bottle and stare into it - into the sad, hollow years I’ve somehow managed to escape from. Maybe now I’ll get somewhere - now that I’ve published a book, now that I can afford to move upstate - now that I can afford to move on.

A passenger leans over from the seat across from me. “Excuse me, but what exactly is that?” he asks.

“It’s…” I trail off. I think about that. Really, it’s a lot of things; near the bottom is innocent hope and a future, which grows dimmer and dimmer as the layers build up until it reaches a peak of desolation; it’s full of heartache and unnecessary trouble, lost love and misunderstandings; depression and triumph and falling repeatedly; and at the very top, just a smidge of - perhaps - a success to come. Perhaps.

“It's nothing much, I guess,” I say. “It’s just the life of a writer.”