I Would Kill to Make You Feel
I Wanna Stick my Fist into your Mouth and Twist Your Artic Heart (1/3)
“Not good enough,” I mutter under my breath, “too robotic.”
Groaning in defeat, I toss the comments onto my desk. I flop down onto my bed and cross my arms over my eyes.
I’m not completely stupid; I knew that writing was hard. After all, at the writing camp I went to for a summer when I seventeen, they’d let us tour a publishing company’s building and we were shown all of the stories that would never see the shelves.
More often than not they were packed away in boxes and that would be the end of their journey. I just didn’t think that mine would stop there.
I didn’t expect anything big from it, just a published book was all, but I wasn’t even going to get that. So this is me, waving my white flag and formally giving up.
I’d worked on the damn thing for two years. I have wasted so much paper trying to write and re-write everything and then revise it all again so many times that the paper fills a whole tote that’s now resting under my bed – all because I can’t write emotions.
How do you even do that, past ‘I’m angry?’ What anger feel like, because it certainly doesn’t feel ‘blood boiling.’ At least, not for real. I’ve felt anger and in no way does my ‘blood boil,’ or whatever the accepted metaphor is.
It’s more in the chest, with a small tightening and fists clenching subconsciously and praying that your voice doesn’t crack when you’re screaming – but that’s not really feeling, is it? Those are thoughts, and actions to show anger. How do you explain what something feels like, if you yourself are not currently feeling it?
Even then, I don’t think that I’d know how to express it. The worst part is that I know that, I know that I can’t write emotions, but what did I go and do? Waste two years of my life writing something that was heavily emotion based. Namely, heartbreak.
As someone who is nineteen, just out of high school and has been dating the same lanky, lovable asshole since eighth grade, I have no experience with such emotion. If heartbreak is really as bad as everyone makes it out to be, maybe I’m lucky, but really, it’s not helping me out here.
After all, all of the great writers and playwrights I’d learned about in school, like Edgar Allen Poe and Tennessee Williams, had tragic background stories. As much as I dramatize things, nothing I’ve been through could possibly match their pain.
Cursing my good luck, I slip down onto the floor and groan again. Really, how was I supposed to feel anything but happy with someone as loving and attentive as Jack for a partner? Unless…
The epiphany hits hard and fast just as Jack gets home from work, and I’m up and running downstairs as fast as my feet can carry me.
“Hey, Alex,” Jack says in surprise.
“Yeah, hey, whatever,” I say quickly, “Can you do me a favor?”
“I guess,” he says, shrugging off his jacket.
“Break my heart?”
Groaning in defeat, I toss the comments onto my desk. I flop down onto my bed and cross my arms over my eyes.
I’m not completely stupid; I knew that writing was hard. After all, at the writing camp I went to for a summer when I seventeen, they’d let us tour a publishing company’s building and we were shown all of the stories that would never see the shelves.
More often than not they were packed away in boxes and that would be the end of their journey. I just didn’t think that mine would stop there.
I didn’t expect anything big from it, just a published book was all, but I wasn’t even going to get that. So this is me, waving my white flag and formally giving up.
I’d worked on the damn thing for two years. I have wasted so much paper trying to write and re-write everything and then revise it all again so many times that the paper fills a whole tote that’s now resting under my bed – all because I can’t write emotions.
How do you even do that, past ‘I’m angry?’ What anger feel like, because it certainly doesn’t feel ‘blood boiling.’ At least, not for real. I’ve felt anger and in no way does my ‘blood boil,’ or whatever the accepted metaphor is.
It’s more in the chest, with a small tightening and fists clenching subconsciously and praying that your voice doesn’t crack when you’re screaming – but that’s not really feeling, is it? Those are thoughts, and actions to show anger. How do you explain what something feels like, if you yourself are not currently feeling it?
Even then, I don’t think that I’d know how to express it. The worst part is that I know that, I know that I can’t write emotions, but what did I go and do? Waste two years of my life writing something that was heavily emotion based. Namely, heartbreak.
As someone who is nineteen, just out of high school and has been dating the same lanky, lovable asshole since eighth grade, I have no experience with such emotion. If heartbreak is really as bad as everyone makes it out to be, maybe I’m lucky, but really, it’s not helping me out here.
After all, all of the great writers and playwrights I’d learned about in school, like Edgar Allen Poe and Tennessee Williams, had tragic background stories. As much as I dramatize things, nothing I’ve been through could possibly match their pain.
Cursing my good luck, I slip down onto the floor and groan again. Really, how was I supposed to feel anything but happy with someone as loving and attentive as Jack for a partner? Unless…
The epiphany hits hard and fast just as Jack gets home from work, and I’m up and running downstairs as fast as my feet can carry me.
“Hey, Alex,” Jack says in surprise.
“Yeah, hey, whatever,” I say quickly, “Can you do me a favor?”
“I guess,” he says, shrugging off his jacket.
“Break my heart?”