Sorry.

Just a random thing I felt like writing....I've been really preoccupied by the concept of growing up lately....It seems like the more I think about it, the faster time goes. So I try not to think about it, but that's like trying not to think about something when someone commands you not to. It just doesn't work.

Sorry. She was sorry. Sorry that when she looked in the mirror, she saw someone older than she expected. In her mind's eye, she saw her five-year-old self, puzzled and hurt by the neglect she was showing to the setting world of her childhood.

But it was inevitable. The days--they just slipped, she couldn't help it, they just got away from her, leaked out of her tightly cupped hands. She wanted to find the source, use one hand to stopper time, wherever it began, and use her other hand to reach out to the girl of her past, the girl being left behind, the girl being locked away--alone in a world of magic, vibrant colors, and childish secrets meant to be whispered into attentive ears, not brokenly mumbled into empty air. But she was too far gone, the time was too late.

There once was a time she was sure who she was, when some magic, and dreams, and her faith was enough. There once was a day she hoped she'd become a hero like in the cartoons she'd so devotedly watched, when she thought she'd rise up and unfold her wings. But she grew and changed, the world changed, time was moving, moving along, pushing and nudging her towards new dreams, more realistic and cold hopes, more logical and precise wishes. It nudged so far into cold and rationality that that the dreams, hopes, and wishes soon became "goals"--stony pellets and shells that encased her soft, glittering, childish heart. Goals closed her eyes with exhaustion when years ago she'd spent her nights intently staring at the ceiling sprinkled with glow-in-the-dark stars from Toys-R-Us. Back then, the ceiling had been the whole galaxy and beyond.

Sorry. She was so sorry. Sorry to her reflection, sorry for hating that awkward girl in the mirror. Sorry to the past, sorry for locking it away. And sorry to herself, because she was stuck, in between. Between the child who had to be forgotten in order to survive the new obstacles time brought, and the adult she feared becoming--the adult who embodied dullness, faithlessness, and utter cynicism.

No-Name.

This next post is what I wrote for the character-yearning assignment. To be honest, I didn't really want to post this. Something about it isn't right...but I can't figure out which part to fix. I've been tinkering here and there, and the wrong-ness just gets worse and worse.

So why did I post it?

I think I feel a certain responsibility to post everything I write for this course onto my writing blog.....Cause not everyone's checking this blog right?!? 0.0....anyways, it's like, I owe it to the blog to not let the flow of posts stutter and stop...so here it is.

No-Name

Janie’s mother wants her to scrap her college essay. She says it’s too dark, uncreative, and untruthful. It is not the Janie she knows, she is sure.

But who is Janie? She is certainly not the same person as Jane Doe, who goes to school and has friends (she hopes), and laughs, and jokes, and fools around. Jane Doe lives outside and doesn’t know how to frown. She has the depth of a paper plate and the contentedness of an ignorant child.

Janie spends her time at home. Sometimes she is laughing with her mother and smiling with a wordless happiness, other times not. Other times she is fighting and saying cruel things. But Janie’s mother sees no reason for Janie to be truly unhappy. She has had unbelievable luck in life. This consists of plenty to eat, a warm home, and a robust moral education. And Jane Doe, of whom Janie’s mother is also aware, has also had unbelievable luck, this time consisting of a busy social life, abundant resources, and robust academics. Between Janie and Jane Doe, Janie’s mother asserts, nothing is amiss.

But there is also She. Janie’s mother doesn’t know who this is.

She. As in, “She who knows not what her name is,” or “She who answers to Janie and Jane Doe, but feels strange in both names, when She takes the time to think about it.” So let us refer to She as No-Name, for the time being.

No-Name is always confused and never knows what to do. She has much too many dreams, and each dream is a much-too-big dream. No-Name sits up late at night, criss-cross-apple-sauced and straight-backed in her bed, thinking. Listening, to the ticking of her clock and her own breathing. She listens steadily as Time circles her, very close, but never near enough for her to catch in her clumsy hands, so the hours always slip-slide-slip and tick-tock-tick away. No-Name dreams even when she’s awake, and she can be ridiculously foolish. She cries and laughs at the same time. She is all feeling and intuition, so there are no order to her thoughts, yet she continues to think and think, until she slips into a deep, dreamless sleep—which annoys her because she likes dreaming, regardless of whether it’s nightmare or fairytale. Perhaps No-Name doesn’t dream in her sleep because she dreams too much when she’s awake. Because she is already a shadow, insubstantial and invisible, when she is awake.

So when No-Name is asleep, she is gone. Non-existent. She returns in the morning when her body wakes up. But she doesn’t stay for long. If people saw No-Name, they would laugh, which is why she never leaves her room. Her captivity is an inevitable phenomenon, she thinks. She is a blundering, illogical, emotional mess. While her mind is quick, her heart lacks defenses. Her heart is an egg with no shell. There’s just that thin, clear membrane surrounding the core—the yolk—and when you poke it, if you dare poke it, it will surely pop, and the yellow will flood out, into the whites, utterly vulnerable and lost.

When No-Name finds herself looking at the Name blanks on her assignments and school forms, she doesn’t know how to sign them. She doesn’t know how to sign the cards and letters that she writes. Janie? Jane Doe? She feels like not signing, or signing as someone else, though she doesn’t yet know who that “someone else” is.

No-Name is rewriting her college essay. She goes through the trouble of scrapping the first because Janie’s mother is right. Her essay is too dark, uncreative, untruthful. But No-Name does not want to write as the Janie her mother knows. She wants to write an essay about herself, truly. An essay that will place her securely on the paper. But how does one truthfully write about oneself? How can one form words when one is a chaotic splatter of ink on a Rorschach test? How does one grab one’s dreams and lay them bare on so fragile a medium?—A medium that can be water-logged, ripped, shredded, burned.

In the end, the name at the top of the paper will be Jane Doe, and the person written into the essay will be Janie. As she writes, No-Name suspects she will fail to leave the confines of her room yet again. Yet again, she sits safe and unhappy in the quiet.

Alone

Today (meaning September 9th) was my dog's birthday. My first dog, Terry, I mean. He was put up for adoption about two and a half years ago because my mom got allergic to him. Interestingly, the writing activity today was to write about a time we felt alone.


After her mother left for grocery shopping, she switched off the TV and got up, pulling herself through the still air. She wandered the house aimlessly. She wandered past the empty food bowl set on the kitchen floor. She wandered past the unoccupied dog house in the hallway. She wandered past toys not being played with, a half-consumed chew bone that would never be finished, and an old leash that would never be taken out again. She wandered and wandered, going twice around the living room, through the kitchen, past the dining room, and down the hallway until she'd wandered into her room.

The whole house was quiet--more quiet than it had ever been in seven years. It was so quiet, the stillness was pressing in, digging in, closing in. She sat on the floor, cross-legged by the unoccupied dog bed that made her feel hollowed out inside. Slowly, her gut was crumbling in on itself. It kept crumbling and crumbling and crumbling, until it caved in on itself and an empty, endless pit had been carved in. The pit was growing so huge, even memories couldn't fill it. Slowly it grew deeper and deeper, darker and emptier until she fell in too, and she was sitting at the bottom of the pit, next to her memories.

Where did he go?

Who took him home? Was he tired or hungry, cold, or feeling abandoned by the only close people he'd known his entire life? Or was he sleeping, dreaming, content, satisfied? Though her dog was the one who'd been left at the shelter, she felt like she was the one being left behind.

Where did he go?

He'd been taken to a new home, but she hadn't gone anywhere.