“You are a waste of space,” she says to me. “Look at you. Pushing 60 and you’ve done nothing with your life. And you’ve even stopped writing!”

I look back at her. Her is me. I am her. I am lost. Foundering. She glares at me. So disappointed in her. In me.

“I’m exhausted,” I say. “I have to work. I have a household, a family, chores. By the end of the day I’ve got nothing left to put on paper.”

The ghost of Ray Bradbury forms. “A day without writing is a little death!” He says, then fades away.

My mother’s ghost takes his place. “I know you can be an artist and yet look at you! Failed as always.”

It goes on like this. Has gone on like this. I am drowning in an ocean of failure.

I put my hand above the water, hoping someone will throw a line.