a story

Maybe it was a famous person who said this, or maybe it is something I just made up, but I think writing is a lot like spinning in a circle really fast. Half of the time, I am overwhelmed, have no idea what I am doing, read back through what I wrote and am left feeling like vomiting. But occasionally, I have the time of my life and I feel really alive and the world becomes this new, colorful place.
This is the first year that I've ever really dedicated time to exploring writing. It is exciting being so on the edge of it. I still don't know what my "creative process" is, what kind of writing I like best, what inspires me the most, if I even have potential, etc. etc. But I realized that I just have to get up in the morning and do it (advice I've stolen from Anne Lamott) and take it from there.
So in that spirit, I am trying to spend an hour everyday this week just writing. That is a bigger challenge for me than it seems. I think I have this fear that everything has to be perfect the first time around. I am learning, however, that writing is really more of a purifying process than anything else. Fear of awful first-drafts shouldn't be something that stops me- they are probably supposed to be awful. I think I just need to write, get all the "bleh" and "ick" out there on the page and then sift through it for something good that's hiding. So that's what I'm doing this week.
I am in an introductory fiction writing workshop and our assignment for next week is to write a story in the second-person perspective. Today, during my hour of learning dedication, I started writing about a random character I've been thinking about in the second-person voice. Some of what I wrote today is below.

You are sitting where the janitors usually pile the wrestling mats, the corner of the gym that fosters dust and bacterial diseases. Occupy space. Ty to melt away from space. Here you have your very own window on the social planet of fourth period: a world of running in circles and eyeballs freely rolling and everything smells like sweat and piss.

Outside, rain is drumming like the chubby kid’s fingers in history class, his pink, pudgy hands always banging out some rhythm on the cover of a textbook that could be titled “America: We are Awesome and You Better Believe It.” This morning, during oatmeal-with-bananas-on-top, your grandmother had the news on and Susan Withthe Weather said to bring an umbrella. You didn’t. You stared at her the same way you stare at the back of chubby kid’s neck, ready to snap his fingers off one-by-one before realizing that you are not violent. You are just afraid and that doesn’t leave room for being much else.

Prison probably feels a lot like too many high school kids in a too-small gym, just maybe without the dodgeballs. Something screams inside you to run out to the track (where you would be if Susan hadn’t cursed the day to hell) to wash away that feeling. But no, you can’t. You were told once that emotions shouldn’t be treated like wet clothes to be thrown out on a whim. You aren’t sure if that’s true.

Today was crowded hallways, lunch in the library, movies playing in two of your classes, and now, you are here, forced to socialize and so you don’t socialize. You watch her. In this too-small gym, she is so close and the shampoo smell of her hair is a miracle. She makes you feel happy and sad, like the violin of that Damien Rice song you play in your room every night, loud. Sometimes you are a boy, and sometimes you are a sad violin, and sometimes, both.

Now you have sneakers squeaking and rain instead of an Irish folk-artist playing in your ear, but you are still sentimental. You think about your life, which you hope hasn’t really started yet. Maybe you’ll move somewhere cliché, like New York, and then you’ll join a grunge punk band and live off of Chinese take-out. Maybe she will love you and carry that clean shampoo smell into your life and you won’t sit here anymore, making friends with staph infections and dust bunnies.

The most hopeful thing you know about is gravity, because sometimes you feel like jumping off the rounded horizon of this weird planet. It wouldn’t work. Something is pushing you back down and that something is sometimes the only thing that really, truly wants you to be here.

A bell is ringing. Get up. Occupy space. Your face-arms-legs-crotch feel over-exposed in the gym suits they give you so that everyone looks the same. She walks to the far hallway, giggling with her friends as they enter the locker room, and you head in the opposite direction. You are always moving away from the things you want.