Just Write

I need to write.

I've known since I was a child that all I wanted to do was write. The problem with that is writing is hard. Writing is shoving aside my perfectionist flaw, my need to be in control and know exactly what's going to happen one step at a time. Writing is just getting words out and not backspacing - something I am entirely incapable of. Writing is learning that making mistakes is okay, because they are for my eyes alone, and I can always go back and redo them (which will happen anyway - there is no such thing as a perfect draft).

I've read a lot on the career I'm looking at, and I'm past the excited, bright-eyed point. I'm past the illusion that 'all it takes is imagination'. I used to think that authors who answered their readers' questions of, "How do you become a writer?" with, "You don't give up. You just get the words out; it's okay if it stinks at first." were corny and irritating. But they're right. They're so right, and I see it more with each passing experience.

But the thing about writing is that, even though it's hard, it's something I'm willing to work at. I'm willing to spend the rest of my life being frustrated, exhausted, and disillusioned - just to get words out on paper. That sounds silly, but I guess that's enough proof that I can do it. I just have to make myself do it. I have to stop procrastinating. I have to take time to practice, even if I feel paranoid and unmotivated.

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it." - Anne Lamott

White-Out

White Out/Liquid Paper

If life were made of words, print on pages, ink on paper, I would be more careful to write mine out. I wish I had a brush, to white-out the mistakes, the chapters that took a horribly wrong turn. But then, I'll see that spot, the pale blotch in the midst of everything else, and it would call more attention to it.
To forget something, to pretend it never happened, makes it painfully more obvious. How do you brush over it, rewrite, backspace, and move forward? How do you just ignore a typo and continue?

I can't ignore my typos. Both literally and figuratively, I can't just overlook those mistakes. But I can't just brush over them, either. So I sit here, staring at the backspace tab, wishing I could just redo the entire thing.
I'm not good at shitty first drafts. They say to be a good writer, you need to accept that it isn't going to turn out good the first time. But I can't accept that. I can't handle doing it badly the first time, because the concept of how I could have done it haunts me.

Why do all my posts turn out like this? I have so many different prompts, so many different opportunities to do better. But they keep turning out like this - insightful in the most morbid ways, discouraging, quiet.
If I can't be honest in my writing, though, I don't know where else I can. Honesty is the trait we deny ourselves, and it's the one thing that allows us to heal.

I need to heal. I need to stop looking at the backspace key, and I need to move forward.

String

String.

I wonder how the string on a balloon would feel, if it were given that personification. To be tied to something that's always going higher, wandering, floating, and to be aimlessly led along. Would it wish it were the balloon? Free, light, with no mind or reason to where it wants to go.
Sometimes I feel like I'm that string. Tied to these different people, places, and memories, being tugged along because I'm not strong enough to let go.

Does the string fray? Does it lose value the longer it holds on, keeping the balloon together, hanging there? The balloon has to be tied before a string it attached, so I wonder if it were to let go, would the balloon still continue on? It probably would.

They probably would.

The string has no use if it isn't holding onto something. It might take a while before anyone would want to use it for anything else. I wonder how long it would take before I would find another face, another memory to grasp onto.

I wish I were the balloon.

Drama

I thought that once my adult life started, there would be less drama in it - both figuratively and literally. But that's not the case at all.

I've always been a sympathetic person, but I'm terrible and trying to read other people if it involves me. Relationships are really difficult, and I'm not only referring to romantically. It's hard to make a physical effort to maintain a friendship - to contact them, make them happy, keep a healthy, honest atmosphere. I like it, but at the same time I don't. The more friends you make, the more drama is involved.
He said, she said, they said, etc. That's without including the awkward territory of trying to be friends with someone you used to date.

"Hey, I know we broke up, but we can still be friends."

"Hey, your dog died, but you can still keep it."

I guess I would be lying if I said I didn't want that friendship, though. When you're that close to someone for so long - when you share everything with them, it's impossible to not want them nearby. I mean, it's easier if they're a jerk. But it's hard when they're still somebody worth caring about, someone you can't possibly look at the same ever again. And that's probably why they say you shouldn't stay friends - because you can't fully consider them only a friend after everything you shared.
I'm getting off topic.

I hate free-writing like this, because too many things come out, and some things are better left unsaid.

Fear pt. 2

Not living up to who you are inside - that's something that people should really be afraid of.

There's a part of me that believes that I could be someone special in the future. That the encouragements from my family, my best friends - the promises my sister and I made together - are the foundation for who I am meant to be.

"Is writing really all I want out of life?"

"Am I going to actually be able to publish?"

"Does this person think I'm worth it?"

"Do I think I'm worth it?"

These things rush through my mind constantly.

My parents raised me under pressure. I suppose they expected a diamond to be piddled out of their efforts, but it left me with a permanent sense of expectation - their expectation. I'm supposed to grow-up to be better than my siblings. I'm supposed to make something of my life, get a good job, finish college, have a nice family, etc.

But all I really want is to get out. I just want to leave this town, this state, this country. I want to taste things and meet people, write about the way light fractures over mountains - or the fog that curls over London's streets. I want to be someone that isn't theirs, and then I question if that's actually me or not.
Is the me they want actually who I am, or is it just a mirage?

I don't know, and I guess I fear that, too.

Fear pt. 1

Fear should be something solid. It should be something you can face, something you can view and analyze - something a psychologist would actually be able to piece together and make sense of.
I don't fear something solid, though; I fear the things you can't see. I fear the concept that I'll never be able to find my place in the world. I fear that my life will find a desolate conclusion before I can actually reach one of my ambitions.

I'm afraid of emotions. I don't like the way they can encompass one's thoughts and blind logic, or the way I actually crave them as much as I hate them. They snuff out the senses, and they bind my ability to think. I want to think almost as much as I want to be able to just 'let go' and feel.
I fear the possibility that I might not have friends anymore. I fear letting people down and earning their distrust, abandoning those who I'm closest to.

But most of all, I think I fear never being able to write. The idea of losing that, of not being able to be a novelist or just bleed out my thoughts on paper - I fear that the most. Not living up to who you are inside - that's something that people should really be afraid of.
I need writing more than I need anything else, and without that, I'm not really me.

I fear that I'll lose myself. Not just with writing, but with life. I fear that I'll become a person that no one can be proud of.

Pranks - Paul

So, my best friend's father, Paul, has lived in Springfield since he was a child. He was one of those guys who lived out life in the worst and best possible ways, and he made it his personal goal to just experience everything.

When he was in high school, he and his best friend went to a college party. They chose to engage in a scavenger hunt that would involve a list of things they had to get if they wanted to win a big prize (which, most of the time it was a keg of beer). Among the several things on the list, one of them was an American flag - and they had to retrieve one off a pole. The only one they knew about - and was the closest - was at a McDonalds down the road.

They drove there, and it was around late hours, when dinner crowds were dying down and the light was all about gone. Usually McDonalds restaurants have clear, broad glass windows - so the endeavor wouldn't be easy. So, his best friend suggested that he would distract the people in the restaurant and Paul would get the flag off the pole.

His best friend ran over to the nearest window while Paul worked on the flag, and before it was even halfway down, he could hear people yelling. When he turned around, his best friend's pants were around his ankles and he was mooning half the restaurant.

They didn't win the prize, but they managed to get away with the flag.