THE CONSTELLATIONS OF THOUGHT 8: A WRITERS DIARY
HANGING BY ONE HAND
“I’m calling to tell you, I have 84 miles before I run out of gas, and I want to buy a book. I need you to send money for gas.” I always need someone to pay for life’s bullshit, because I refuse to play along with it. “So that I can be free to buy a Deborah Levy book,” I said to my younger brother. He doesn’t know who that is, so I didn’t bother to tell him the title. “Send it via Apple Cash, not Zelle; my Chase account is negative.” With nothing more to add, I hung up. He’s a finance graduate. He has a steady job as an accountant. My mom is an accountant too. I should have been one. I missed my calling to write. “To write what?” “What are you writing?” My mom and brother tend to ask. Desperation, I want to say. I still haven’t figured that out. Why does that question always come up like I’m supposed to know? It depends on the day. “71 miles,” my speedometer said. “You’ll get paid tomorrow from the suit store gig. Survive the day, and you’ll have money by midnight,” I reminded myself. “You need gas, but you should have enough to handle errands.” Still no Apple Cash notifications. I’m handsome and broke like a Hollywood actor. Down to 65 miles, I start praying for a miracle and think I should go back to church. I am reading the gas station signs one by one: “$3.94,” then “$4.09,” and finally “$3.96.” God answered.
My phone buzzed, “Your new Apple Cash balance is $20.” My fiancée, Lauren, sent me an Apple Pay payment, followed by a string of texts asking me to help make some extra cash. “Sell my camera. I don’t have any expectations, whatever they’ll give me for it.” Lauren is high on a cortisol spike from this morning. “I never use it anymore, so it’s collecting dust. You can sell whatever lenses are in that bag, too. They won’t fit on any other camera we have, but you can check if you’d like. I want to take photos with film anyway.” Unexpected bills came through this morning. They cleaned out our account. Lauren woke up to our account being negative and wasn’t expecting it. “I’m sorry I put so much on you so soon this morning, but it sounds like things are going to work out.”
I felt it was a typical experience for couples in the early stages of engagement. I thought we were going through what unstable young adults go through. I got $160 for everything in the Canon bag. They wrote a check and told me to cash it at the Forest Bank down the street. I took the money and went to Lauren’s job to get her card so I could drive to Capital One to make the deposit. With a new hope, I didn’t fret over the morning. I texted Lauren back: “Okay, sweetie. It’s okay, I was only caught off guard by the range of emotions. I didn’t want you to feel helpless. For the first time, I didn’t know what to do. Then I felt lazy because I didn’t want to get up. I felt that writing was holding me back. And I didn’t know what to do because I felt tired.” After reading my response, Lauren felt like she had ruined my day. Traveling home from Mexico had exhausted me. She could tell I needed the day because I couldn’t write anything down all weekend. “It’s alright, baby. Right now, my emotions are erupting everywhere. Since we got back yesterday, we have been navigating something new. Everything feels somewhat heavier—not in a bad way. In a way that suggests greater importance. You’re not lazy for not getting up. If anything, I felt guilty for interrupting your free day with my problems. I know you probably needed that extra rest. I’ll make dinner and everything when I get home, and you can relax. I’ll make it up to you.” Between selling the camera, cashing the check, and making the deposit, it was already 12 pm, and I was ready for lunch. Now, a new problem arose, but a cigarette would solve that. Summer is here. Who needs to eat? “Skinny and petite, the bones should show through the meat,” this is what I would say. To keep up with social media’s version of chic.
I never cared about the trend because being hungry was always in. Lauren would always tell me, “You’re tired; you don’t have to write it all down now. You can’t work on a full stomach. Come sit next to me.” Since I was hungry, I tried to remember Saturday, June 7th, 2026. No matter how hard I searched my mind and stomach, I couldn’t remember anything. There is nothing for me to pull out myself to draw in the moment as I had experienced it. Drinking any alcohol while on ADHD meds makes my mind go completely blank. When it goes blank like this, nothing anchors my memory. I drink quite a bit. I had a double shot of Jameson and a Coke for breakfast. Whiskey sneaks up on me. Vodka triggers my worst behavior. And wine makes me feel horny, while beer and tequila bring out my happy, fun side. Champagne always guarantees a good time. I drank all the alcohol I mentioned before the proposal dinner. My mother had set up a dinner reservation for Lauren and me. I told her that we have a reservation for 6 pm at a table overlooking the villa and the ocean. I remember my nerves. I had to remain poised until dinner. My mother, sister, brother, and his partner all helped keep the secret. We all went to the mall to help my soon-to-be fiancée pick out a cute dress. There’s one thing I admired most about proposing at the villa. In our photos, resting behind was the last known thing before you were in a complete ocean. That was Lands End. Nothing but the ocean could change how Lauren and I love each other. I wanted to keep a piece of a once-in-a-lifetime moment for myself. But I ended up sharing it with the world itself. Everyone in Cabo San Lucas is rich with something. Not in pesos. Rich in their soil, their sand, their water, and their mountains. I want my love to carry the same immense weight as their wealth.
We returned to Austin with a love more devoted than a soldier’s loyalty to his country. We even bickered over the wedding details, enriched by our newly invested love. I’ve placed the memory in words for everyone to read. Still, it seemed richer to hold on to it for me. But with everything that involves writing, it’s for me to remember. Not the events, as I saw it, as I breathed it in. Lauren has taken my hand a million times; somehow, the times she has now. It feels rejuvenated. almost as if she were awaiting the moment to shed the reminiscence of all the bad days she has ever had. Her rabbit’s foot broke the day I proposed. Lauren went on to claim that she no longer needed luck. That everything she needed was with her now. I look at it as if she’s breaking up with the unknowns. I suppose we both understand what real luck looks like.