Problem Child

(It’s a beginning.  I wonder if it’ll ever have an end.)

“You will stay in this room until it is clean, do you understand?” Karen was at her wits end! Her daughter continued to ignore her.

“I don’t understand! Why won’t you just listen to me? Why won’t you do what I say?” She watched her daughter helplessly. Laura kept her back to her mother and pretended not to hear.

In anger, Karen reached out and grabbed her daughter’s shoulder and spun her around, “Look at me when I talk to you!”

The look of hatred and anger on Laura’s face was a brick through the paper walls of her mother’s defenses. Karen released her daughter’s shoulder and stepped back. Laura turned away again, her back rigid with defiance that seemed too powerful for an eleven year old girl.

“I know you hate me now, but someday when you have kids, you’ll understand.” Karen backed out of her daughter’s disaster of a room and closed the door. She walked downstairs to the living room of their small worn out house and flopped into the over stuffed cushions of their second hand couch.

“How did it get like this,” Karen thought to herself. “I never wanted to be this kind of mother. ‘When you have kids, you’ll understand…’ How was that supposed to help? She’s only eleven! How are those words supposed to get through to her?”

Karen wiped angry tears from her eyes as she continued to beat herself up. “You’re a horrible mother you know. Your daughter hates you. Everyone knows it. Nobody blames Laura for being so stubborn and spoiled. They all just look at you.”

She picked up a pillow from the couch, an old faded quilted thing she’d made in Home Ec so many years ago. She buried her face in it and gave into grief and self pity, loud angry sobs muffled by the time compressed foam batting.

The high pitched jingle of an ice cream truck floated in on the warm currents coming through the open windows. She heard the screen door in the kitchen slide open with a bang as her seven year old son George burst into the house. “Mom!”

Karen quickly swallowed her tears and wiped her eyes. She tossed the pillow back into the corner of the couch, the wet spots turned in toward the cushions. She picked up a magazine, Hi-Lites for Children, and pretended to be reading.

“Mom! The ice cream man’s here! Can I have a dollar?!” George came skidding into the room, his clothes covered in dirt, needles and pine sap. He put his grubby little hands on his knees as he gaspingly tried to catch his breath. “Mom! Can I?”

Karen looked at her prince of a son, his short curly hair tousled with the wildness of summer vacation. She couldn’t help but smile at him, his flushed freckled cheeks were just so cute! “Fine, you can have a dollar. But go wash your hands and face first.”

“Awe! But he’s gonna leave!” George’s big brown eyes looked like they would jump out of their head.

“Well then, you better hurry.” She got up and went to her pocket book while George darted to the bathroom. She heard the screech of the foot stool being moved closer to the sink and the water start running. “Use soap,” she yelled. She heard him groan but knew he’d do what he was told. George was such an easy child.

The jingling tune of the ice cream truck grew louder as it pulled into the circle at the end of their dusty dead end street. George darted out of the bathroom, his hands still wet, and wiped them on his dirty knees. Karen groaned inwardly but knew it was useless. She handed her son a dollar. Before she knew what was going on, George was shouting up the stairs, “Laura!!! The ice cream man’s here! Hurry up! Mom’s giving us money!”

Karen paused and waited for her daughter’s reply. There was nothing but silence from upstairs. She thought to herself, “I bet she’s not doing a single thing I told her to.”

“Laura!!!” George started to pound up the stairs, but his mother stopped him.

”Laura’s grounded George. Don’t bother her. Just go get your ice cream.”

George turned around and looked at his mother his mouth open to argue on his sister’s behalf. For the first time he noticed the red puffiness around his mother’s eyes. He looked back up the stairs at Laura’s closed door. He knew; they’d been fighting again. He closed his mouth and walked back down the stairs.

It took all Karen’s effort not to break down crying at the disappointment that radiated from her angelic son. She covered it up by reaching into her purse for another dollar. She handed it to him, “Get her a Bomb Pop. She can eat it later.”

George took the second dollar from his mother, then hugged her tight around the legs. The ice cream man’s song finished its loop, paused and started again. George looked up the stairs once more, then banged out the front screen door.

Karen watched him run to catch up with the other neighbor hood kids. How did she manage to get one loving caring son and one stubborn ungrateful daughter? If only she could take them both and mix them up, resulting in two equally normal children. But, she wouldn’t really want to give up any of George’s sweetness for a mellower Laura. What was she going to do?

Letting Go

One of the most difficult challenges I have in my life is letting go of anything! I have so many THINGS in boxes! And that’s after I moved 4 times in 3 years and gave away, sold, or threw out a majority of my stuff!

In my gaming group we’ve reached the point where we want to move from 5 man dungeons to 10 man raids. Our first raid is scheduled for the Wednesday after classes end. The next two weeks are going to be filled with gear runs (getting magic weapons and armor to help us in the raid) through Heroic (hard mode) dungeons, and I can’t be there to heal people because I need to focus on my finals. Letting my friends run these instances in the care of another healer is what I can only imagine parents feel when they send their kids off with other adults. It’s like a string is tied to my spine right between my shoulder blades and it’s being pulled through my chest, passing through my heart! But I have to remind myself, “It’s just a game. Let them go.” Finals are my higher priority.

Letting go of my characters in my stories is proving just as difficult as anything else I’ve had to let go of in this world. I write them up and unless they were evil or something bad was supposed to happen to them right from the beginning, I have a hard time letting them go out and experience things on their own. I find that instead of editing a story to make it more interesting, I just write something new!

With all of this in mind, I’m going to challenge myself. For my last Creative Writing class, I am going to turn in a new version of “When Steak Interrupts Your Lunch”, complete with Bad Things happening to one of my main characters. (Insert dramatic music here.) Oh my gosh, that tight feeling from my spine through my chest just intensified! But I am going to do it! I am going to let my characters go!

(Maybe I should take up Sky Diving? That would be a really strong exercise in letting go, I’m sure!)

“In order for me to be a partner, an equal, you have to trust that I can stand by your side and that we are there to protect each other. Partners enter that dark alley together, sidekicks get left behind.

I’m not a sidekick.”

Doom

Doom. An explosion of darkness, anxiety and self doubt
Doom. The concussive sound of a great bell
Doom. It echoes through time
Doom. The future crumbles
Doom. Please God
Doom. no

“Why do you always do this to me? These are my toys, my creations! If I want them to live happy boring lives where nothing bad ever happens, that’s my choice!”

Ares just laughed as he watch his troops storm through Aphrodite’s village, “Sack and raze sister dear, sack and raze!”

“Oooooh!” Dite swept her arm across the table destroying everything in one vicious tidal wave of destruction. Armies and civilians a like were demolished in the wake of her anger. “It’s not fair! I’m not playing with you anymore!”

She picked up what was left of her living dolls and stormed away to her secret place. Why was her brother such a jerk?

Story Arc

Grrr!  I’ve lost the Arc again!  I get so caught up in the characters and their feelings and the world they live in, I just can’t get the stories to GO anywhere!  How the heck do people do this???

Last night in Painting 1 I made the mistake of asking my teacher for the formula for color.  “There has to be a formula!  I want you to tell me, ‘take 1 part Cadmium Yellow light, mix it with 2 parts Ultramarine Blue, and you get THIS color green…’”

His response was to tell me to take every color of paint I have and mix it with every other color and make a grid.  Then take all those colors and mix them down with white in a gradient until I have every color I could possibly make, and then I’d have my formula.  I wanted to tell him to go screw.

I’m sure there’s a formula for writing too.  I just don’t want to do that much work! I mean, if you have to use a forumla for writing, does that make you a real writer?  Or, like in painting, does it just teach you how to paint by number?

I just wish I had a better feel for this.  I know that in order to create a masterpiece in art, you have to draw an uncountable number of crappy pictures before the good one comes out.  I’m sure it’s the same with writing too.  Maybe I’m putting too much pressure on myself to have a good story instead of just a finished one.

Ugh.

I just don’t understand how my life could have so much drama, and yet I can’t seem to write drama to save my life.

Fish Sticks

(This is totally unfinished, but some folks wanted to read it, so here you go.)

It all started with fish sticks. Xanar gave me my first taste. I took one bite of these golden flaky delights and my spirits rose considerably. They made my mouth so happy that my healing incantations spilled from my lip with a smile in their words and they health of my party members was maintained with greater efficiency. I wanted more.

“What fish do you make these from Xanar?”

The soft spoken elf smiled at me, his spikey sunset hair punctuating his features over the black void created by his armour. “It’s golden darter meat. You like them?”

I cackled a laugh through my once well strung vocal chords. “I haven’t tasted anything this well since I was living! Tastebuds don’t have the same flare once you’re dead, but your fish sticks bring life back to my tongue!”

Xanar chuckled, “Despair, your tongue has plenty of life. Just ask Iio.”

I’d have blushed if the green blood in my veins could move that fast. I looked over at Iio, the undead Warlock who’d recently transferred to our guild. He gave me a friendly lear and chuckled, “I wouldn’t know anything about that Xanar. I don’t know what you’ve heard.”

A friendly orcish voice retorted from behind me, “We can hear just about everything through the walls of that tent you knuckle head!”

My jaw dropped! I rehinged it and shouted, “Fuskami! You didn’t hear a damn thing cause there was nothing to hear!”

Xanar gave me a wink, “See. You’ve got a perfectly lively tongue.”

Everyone started laughing; I’d fallen into their trap. Still, it was a good sound to hear. Fuskami came up behind me and ruffled my hair with his thick green hand, “It’s ok kid. We all know Iio hasn’t got it him. With the way pieces keep falling off you Forsaken, I bet he’s got nothing left under those robes.”

Fire flashed around our warlock’s head at the orc’s remark, “Hey! I assure you, everything is quite well attached where it’s supposed to be!”

Fuskami tried to lift Iio’s robe with his axe, “Oh yeah? Where are you knees?”

In my mind I rolled my eyes. Those two would be at it for a while. I turned to our new Warrior, a silent mountain of a Tauren who’d just transferred to the guild as well. “You did really well in there Thoronok. I know you said you haven’t been a protection warrior for a while, but it looks like old skills die hard.”

A slow smile spread along the crack of his face. “It has been over a year since I last fought that way.” He looked back at the smoldering gates of the enemy’s Botanica. “But we seemed to have done all right. I’m sorry you fell though.”

I patted his massive fur covered arm, “It’s all good Thor. I’m used to dying. Iio had me soul stoned, so it’s not like my spirit had too far to go to get back to my corpse. Besides, it’s difficult keeping the enemy’s attention when you’ve got two hunters like Xanar and Fuskami pummeling them with arrows, a Warlock throwing massive shadow damage at them, and a healer as obvious as me keeping you alive. And that place was packed with Botanist and their corrupted plant experiments. How were you to know those things would leave their soil and come at me like that?”

Thoronok smiled down on me, “You do talk a lot.”

I swatted him indignantly, “The point is you did a great job and we’re happy to have you on the team.”

He chuckled; a deep pleasant rumbling sound in the barrel of his chest, “I am happy to be here. Thank you.”

I turned to the rest of the group that I had gathered together for the evening’s mission. Each was veteran of this war in their own right. In battle they called the shots and I stood in the background keeping them alive. But somehow, outside of combat, I had become a leader. It was only because of my overly alive tongue that I made so many connections. If a group needed to be formed, I usually knew right away who to go to. It felt good, and at the same time, the responsibility weighed on me.

What if Thoronok hadn’t been able to hold the attention of the opponents we were fighting? What if Iio’s damage was so great that they all attacked him first? What if I couldn’t heal everyone and keep them alive in time? There were so many things that could go wrong, and I felt all that responsibility on my shoulders. But I cared for my friends, and we did a great job. We were a team.

“Come on guys, let’s go home.”

———-

So here’s the thing about those fish sticks. Terrokar Forest is a dangerous place to fish, and if you don’t know how to handle a rod, don’t even try to cast a line there! Xanar had more than enough fishing to do to keep Chester and himself fed. I didn’t want to burden him with the responsibility of keeping my spirit, and my tongue, happy as well. It was time for me to learn to fish myself. But who wants to fish alone?

I looked around the Guild Hall at my fellow comrades in arms. There were plenty of new recruits fresh out of Durotar, barely wearing armor that was more than fancy leather street clothes.

His smile is a dangerous smile.  When that smile is turned my way, my breath catches in my chest and the world spins out from under me. The glint in his eyes flashes an addictive kind of evil.  I can’t help but want more.

He sat across the table from me, that smile following the most innocent of questions.  I had to catch myself, remember what he said.  Time loses it’s grip on reality when he looks at me that way.  How long has he been waiting?

My lips are dry,  my mouth is parched.  I break his gaze by reaching for my glass of water.  I take a long cool sip and feel my world return to my control.  I tell myself, “Just don’t meet his eyes again.  Don’t let his smile drag you away.”   I know it’s too late, he already knows the hold he has on me.

I shake my head just a bit to clear it.  I know he sees me.  I can feel his smile deepen.  I clear my throat, “Hmm, my favorite movie.  That’s a tough one.  I like so many.”

SO EMO

Last night I was sitting in front of my computer, staring at Despair standing on the Aldor Rise in the city of Shattrath. I had my headphones on and the voice of my friend Vino came through them saying, “Despair, what’s wrong?”

I watched Despair walk aimlessly around in a circle, trying to decide wether to head to the flight master on her way to Nagrand or the battle master for a run through Alterac Valley. I didn’t want to do either. I finally said to Vino, “Do you ever get the feeling like you’ve wasted a whole bunch of time on something that really doesn’t mean anything at all?”

He replied instantly, “Yeah. But it’s not true. This game would be so much less fun without you.”

And I said, “No. I think you all would miss me for a little while. But it would be like picking up a rock out of mud. There’s a hole for a few seconds, but then water fills it and smooths it over and it’s like there never was a rock there at all.”

He told me it was not true, that the people who play the game are what make it worth playing. I do tend to agree with him. Heck, I’m even going to Long Island this weekend to meet some of those people in person. But still…

I want to find someone to share my time with. Not on the game, but in person. Someone to hug, someone to love. Someone to sing with and dance with and go on long road trips with. Someone to drink a six pack of beer with and watch Tales from the Crypt’s Deamon Knight with. As much as I love my guild, and with the exception of tomorrow night, I can’t do that with any of them.

And yet, it’s so much easier to just stick with them, these friends who are just virtual voices in my head. Yes, there are real people attached to those voices, but they aren’t tangible to me. But I am afraid of the tangible, because the tangible can be taken away. Nothing you can hold in your hand ever lasts for me. It all goes away.

bleh

This post is brought to you by the emo-tastic Manga I’m reading and Porcellino’s Perfect Example. I promise less self pity and more stories, character descriptions, dialog, and story critiques are coming. I just have a bunch of head junk to dispose of first.

(Hey Steve!  How this post for intimacy!  It’s a taste of all the crap inside me I’m afraid to put into my characters and show other people. I’d much rather hide it behind a smile.)

Observation on Time

One of the most important skills an artist needs to hone is Observation. I try to be very observant of the world around me, like my post yesterday about the sounds of the new door locks.

One thing I noticed today is that I judge the passage of time by how many times my emotions change. When I think that January 1st was three months ago, it seems like time has flown by. But, when I think of that time in terms of all the emotions I’ve experienced in those three months, I can’t believe the time has been so short.

Three months ago I said goodbye to my boyfriend and watched him board a bus that would take him away from me for nearly a year. He’s in Iraq now, and he’s no longer my boyfriend. When I think about the heaping pile of emotions that went into watching him leave, coping with him being gone, realizing that we weren’t right for each other, dealing with the guilt of breaking up with him while he was overseas, and then dealing with the pain when he proved to me that I was right, we didn’t belong together, it’s hard to imagine that all of that took place in less than 3 months.

Now throw in my Birthday. I’m another year older and I survived 30. That weekend was so much fun! There were good friends, margaritas, animation, and my best friend’s Black Belt test. That weekend was just full of win! However, one day later, I found out that one of my Heroes passed away in his sleep at the age of 37. To go from win to lose over night, that 24 hours stretches out over an eternity.

The rest of that week seems like the longest week in history. Ten years had passed since I’d seen my friend, and his loss was still so painful. It was as if those ten years were an elastic band stretched out over time, and upon learning of his death, it snapped back at me and struck me in the face. That week was filled with memories and reunions. The three days leading up to me leaving for his funeral were filled with doubt and anxiety. Would any of these people really understand why I was there? Did it matter? Tear filled phone calls with friends I hadn’t seen in only a year convinced me I had to go. And when I got there, the gamut of emotions I experienced over the next 48 hours seems like a lifetime took place in that one weekend.

It’s hard to believe that only a week has passed since then. It seems as if that funeral was months ago. I reconnected with an old friend while I was there and the warm emotions I felt towards him in contrast to the grief I felt over losing my friend extends the length of those three days as if they were weeks. And the positive optimism I experienced from those warm feelings compared to the fog of doubt and anxiety I feel today makes that week since I last heard form him seem much longer.

And, finally, when I compare the departure of my now exboyfriend to the last two weeks and the loss of my friend, it seems as if a year, at least, must separate them. But no, it was less than 3 months.

If I felt happy every day, would time fly as if it hardly existed? Would I just wake up and realize 10 years were gone when it seemed like only yesterday?

I think this observation is going to be important to my writing somehow.