"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves." – Bill Vaughn

Date: January 1st, 2018

Occasion: New Year's Day

Country: Worldwide

■ □ ■ □ ■ □ ■ □

XXXIX | Erasable Ink

THE THREE WORDS eyeball her with utter skepticism. Though inanimate on paper, the dark blue letters are almost scowling at her, scolding her for her incompetence. She wonders how authors can get anything written when their mind is screaming different ideas from every direction. A novel may be great, but it can only be appreciated by an audience when in print.

Around her, cicadas harmonize on the windowsill, their chirps reverberating into the tranquil night sky. She wishes she can be a cicada, where her only responsibility would be staying alive. If only life were so simple. The rest of her family have long since gone to bed, having hopped off a plane a few hours ago and suffering from jet lag. For this occasion, it feels as if she's the only person on the planet still awake. There's a haunting peace to the thought. Her lamp faintly flickers, its dim glow casting shadows across three words:

New Year's Resolutions.

"How hard is it to write one damn resolution?" the girl whispers to herself.

The only earwitnesses are several towering trees and the cicadas, which continue chittering without a care in the word. The wind picks up, whistling through the leaves. Whistling at her to hurry and write the resolutions before the clock strikes midnight. Like whistling at a dog to come here, or hailing a taxi driver. Like a command.

It'd been almost an hour since she'd first forced herself to put pen to paper, but the only things she's achieved so far are writing those three words and getting frustrated to the point where she nearly throws her notebook out the window. Maybe the cicadas can make do with it. At this point, the cicadas can probably write better resolutions than her, and that's just sad. Raking a hand through her blonde tangles, which look like they came straight from the vines of the Amazon rainforest, she finally sets her pen down beside the notebook, where it lays stiffly in defeat.

As frustration bubbles up her throat like magma, she forces herself to stay calm. No problem, she thinks to herself. I'll try again in a few minutes. It'll be fine. I can do this. Perfect resolutions. How hard can it be?

It proves to be very hard, as five minutes pass. Then ten. minutes. Fifteen minutes. Before she knows it, her phone, the only other source of light in the room, signals the passing of twenty whole minutes. By this time, sleep has almost consumed her. Her head slowly droops, with even gravity resisting against her struggle. Before she knows it, her forehead is resting on the frigid wood of her desk.

Though her head is resting, defeat is what pulled her down, not exhaustion. So, she lays there, sprawled on her desk, eyes wide open, staring at the notebook, wishing the resolutions would write themselves. Ten seconds pass, she counts, before something peculiar happens. Scribbling noises start up beside her ear, growing louder and louder, like an engine being revved. Head perking up, her eyes widen to the size of galleons as she watches something spectacular. Something terrifying. Something impossible.

Her pen is moving all by itself.

She rubs her eyes to rid the hallucinations, but the problem is, there aren't any. The pen is indeed skidding on the piece of paper, drawing and writing with the speed of a cheetah chasing its prey. The page is soon covered in ink black cursive, much neater than her own practical, sans-serif handwriting. Though the pen usually leaves blots when she writes, this writing leaves none. It's the epitome of perfection. She suddenly wonders how sad it is to be jealous of a pen, of all objects.

"What's happening?" she asks the pen in a small voice, the opposite of the grandiose pen. In fact, she's surprised that her vocal chords still have the ability to make sounds.

The pen does not reply.

But now her eyes are transfixed upon the paper in horror, limbs suddenly frozen, feet rooted to the ground, as she finally recognizes what the pen is drawing. It's similar to watching a murder mystery, with the clues seemingly unrelated, but the closer you get to the end, the more the pieces come together. The same thing happens with this pen, and when the drawing is complete with a flourish, she has to fight back the urge to throw up.

She fixates upon the image of her overconfident fifth grade self, about to perform the song which would win her the Talent Show Trophy. It'd been the most hyped event of the year, something she'd rehearsed for until her voice was hoarse, until sheet music became a blur of black and white. She'd even made the finals. The trophy was almost hers. So close, but so far.

Not every person is a victim of perfectionism, especially that caused by a traumatic experience, so she was either special in this department, or just had the worst luck. At this point, the latter definitely proves true. Perfectionism drains us. It demands a perfect life, or the illusion of it, such that every past mistake should be repressed. She'd been doing great at that, but now this stupid pen has to screw it up and transport her back to that horrible day. She watches herself opening her mouth to sing the first note, thinking she would be fine at the time, that her practice would make perfect.

But that would soon prove false.

As thousands of expectant eyes stared her down, her throat shriveled up. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, as though a burglar had stolen her vocal chords. The audience was getting skittish. The children started heckling her. If the audience had tomatoes, they would've thrown them at her, and she would've stood there and let them, because she was frozen by a performer's worst nightmare. Stage fright.

She couldn't sing, nor she could she speak. All she could do was flee that stage as fast as her legs could take her, once her legs began working again. Running far, far away. Leaving her singing voice behind, back to wither in the remains of her shattered dreams.

The experience hadn't come without repercussions, of course. From then on, she promised herself that everything she did would be perfect. No mistakes. What did no mistakes mean? No chance of being heckled. Of being laughed at. Of being made fun of, ever again. And that's why her New Year's resolutions have to be perfect too, because those define how a year goes. How can she have a perfect year without perfect resolutions?

The pen quivers in the air. She can almost hear it ask, "learned your lesson, yet?"

Salty tears sting her eyes, a sob threatening to burst from her throat. It's almost like she's back on that stage, in the center of attention, an expectant audience watching her every move with eagle eyes. The nightmare plays out in front of her, a lucid nightmare she'd tried to ignore for the past eight years.

"What do you want, you stupid pen?" Her arm swipes out, but the pen darts away before she can hit it. "What do you want from me?"

The pen does not utter a word.

But now, a different sound begins to echo through the room. A soft friction between pen and paper. The peculiar sound of erasing, even though her eraser lies by her hand, nowhere near the notebook. Glancing back at the paper, she gasps as the lines unfurl themselves from the page, dissolving in the air as quickly as they appeared. Leaving without a trace, as though they're just distant memories.

Because they are distant memories.

"How on earth...?" she breathes.

Little does she know, the clock is now a minute away from striking midnight, marking the first second of 2018. As the last line dissolves in the air, the clock strikes twelve. Fireworks explode outside her window in a shower of sparks as people cheer below. She was clearly not the only person awake at this time. Figures. They'd probably already written their resolutions. Or maybe, just maybe, they hadn't written any at all. Maybe they just don't care. And maybe that's a better way to live life, without being tethered down by perfectionism.

She glances back at the pen. "Is this what you were trying to tell me?"

Without waiting for an answer, she snatches the pen out of the air, which has reverted back to its motionless state. When she stares back down at her blank notebook, a huge weight is lifted off her chest as she realizes those memories are in the past. No one even remembers them except her. She's the one who's been holding on for dear life. They can be erased, as though they were never there. They can't hurt her. Not if she lets them.

Eight years of trauma dissolve in the air as easily as the drawings on the paper. Finally putting pen to paper, she carefully inscribes three words beneath the title, words that will make 2018 the best year it can be.

A fresh start.