 case, I would have tried to be like…what do you have to say about this before I just decide to cut you out of my life? I feel like we were close enough (she was one of three bridesmaids in my wedding) that I can feel a little upset that she didn't ask me about it first.
When I wake up, I would rather feel a little guilty about being mad at someone and losing friends, but still respecting myself for not just caving on my beliefs and for not being one of very few people who stick up for myself, than to wake up with a less complicated life and feel depressed that I couldn't even stand up for myself. I feel depressed anyways, but at least I can say I have a backbone. Maybe that makes me horribly stubborn. Maybe I take grudges to a whole other level…but there you have it.
This is what I got so far…not even the surest where I’m exactly going with this, but I thought I would throw this out there into the universe. Note: I am putting  around sections that in my Word document, I have in different fonts to differentiate different “parts” of the document.
[I wear a mask, both inside and out. It is nighttime, and I am attending a party or a dance of some sort. My dress is far more risqué than anything I own or have ever worn before, but I cannot really see it…I just know that it is stunning and yet I feel incredibly awkward in it.
Despite the masks, we all know who each other are. The same, the usual…but then, but wait…who is that? He walks toward me, eyes locked onto mine. His eyes are black behind his mask. His mask is red, and it contrasts so brightly with his black suit, black hair, and those black, black eyes. I am stuck, frozen in spot. My mouth opens into an “O” of horror, though I cannot say why I am so terrified. The man stops in front of me. His mouth curves into a smile, though it is not entirely kind. No—I would say it is more of a knowing smirk.
“Don’t look so surprised,” I hear him say, but his mouth doesn’t move.
“Do I know you?” I whisper, and the words seem to take forever to come out.
He leans so closely to me that I can feel the heat coming off of his body, can feel the air from his breath when he answers. My body shivers; my heart races; I start to feel light headed; I am going to die.
“Right.” Glumly, she turned her head to gaze out of the window she was sitting beside. It was raining outside, and the sky was so dark and dismal. It wasn’t the kind of rain she liked—it was cold and hard, unforgiving against anyone who dared to travel outside in it. She watched her father walk through their garden, no hat or any other protection against the weather except his usual outfit. Only a few feet from their door, and she could tell he was already completely drenched. His dark hair was matted against his face, but he didn’t bother to push it back.
“But I’m not other people,” she said sadly.
“We will go out later if you want,” he offered.
“No… No, I can’t think about two things at once. I will only go when this dream is not consuming my head.” She wrapped her blanket more tightly around her.
And he just wasn’t there anymore. Sometimes he was a blessing, and sometimes he was a curse. She just couldn’t make up her mind. But she decided she couldn’t really blame herself for indecisiveness…sometimes he was just so understanding and helpful, saying things that she was too scared to admit to herself or accepting things that she was having trouble swallowing. And then, out of nowhere, he would turn mean and cruel. And if she didn’t get him out right then, she would end up hurt and crying. But he was always so…cold. Even when helpful, he just didn’t have any emotion. She couldn’t remember him ever laughing or smiling, or even looking happy, really.
The last story I completed was literally about a decade in the making. Which seems so sad when I realize that it’s not nearly as good as it probably should be, haha. But it’s not like I worked on it for a whole decade…I wrote the original idea when I was about 10-12 years old (I apparently didn’t really date things back then…I try to date everything now), and it was literally, likel, 18 pages long. It was a very complex idea, and I managed to pen it in 18 *written* pages. A few years later, I reread it and laugh about how awful it is, but I acknowledge that the idea is awesome (I think, anyways), so I try to rewrite it. It takes about two years, and it is about 418 pages written this time. I add backstory, more characters, more description…and I am so proud of it. I anonymously sent it to one of my high school English teachers to read after I typed it up (although, I suspect he knew who it was)…and I was absolutely crushed when one week later, he emailed me back and said he didn’t make it through one chapter because it was so boring and predictable. Apparently he thought I was better than I what I turned out to be, because he had seen me writing during school and always asked if I was ever going to let anyone read it. Well, that’s why I didn’t want to…because I seriously was very upset over that email. It still kind of haunts me to this day, because I was going into ninth grade at the time, and that was really the first time I tried to let someone other than family read something I wrote that wasn’t a school assignment.
So, I abandoned it. And yet, a few years later, I came back to it. Now, I had written some other stuff in between all of it..I wrote tons of poetry, probably all of it bad, and I had written some fanfictions and some original stories, some short, some longer. But this idea was driving me crazy! I just wanted to write it and read it later and still think it was good and accurately portrayed this awesome storyline I had in my head. I tried to rewrite it by simply going through the one I had most recently written and just changing things. It didn’t get far. I let it go again.
I’m pretty sure I tried that again, and it didn’t work. So finally, after writing a story that was about…I’m going to say, 115 pages typed that was completely original and kind of out of nowhere…I just started typing it one day and it went from there and took just a few months for me to complete…I seemed to have it again. I was sitting at work one day, and no one was in the store, which meant I could read or whatever if I wanted to (it was a book store, and it was awesome because I really could do what I wanted on some days if no one was in there), and I just started typing on our computer. And after I finished it, and it was about two pages, I realized…I wanted this to be the new start of my old story idea. I thought, “This will be the prologue, and I will not look at any of my old versions of this story.” Completely new, but using the core old idea. And…I finished it. I went through so many bouts of writer’s block even during this version, though. I have yet to figure out a good way to get through it.
It seems like the more I try to force myself to write, the worse it is, and the way my life has gone, it seems like when I am ready to write something, I will just sit down and write it. That’s how most of my school and especially college essays have gone. I will try to force myself to write it, and I will hate it…so I will put it off until there’s, like, two days left, and then I’m freaking out, so I just stop thinking about it, and then all of a sudden I will just pull up Word and start going at it. And once I start, I just have to do it all. I was known for just putting out a 14 page paper in one sitting, no matter how tired I got, because I knew if I quit, I wouldn’t be able to finish it. I hate that about myself, and I wonder if it’s just something I have in my head now and it’s not really true. And the worst part is, once I think about something for so long, once I write it, I have a lot of trouble going back through and trying to edit it.
So back to this story…I finished it. Problem is, I didn’t know if it was actually “good” or not. I put something on facebook to see if I would get any volunteers to read through it and give me real feedback. And I was very adamant about that–I wanted to know if it was actually good, or what I could try to change if it wasn’t. What aspects of writing did I need to work on? A few people actually volunteered, and I was so excited and so scared. I was scared of rejection again. But I emailed them all the story and said again…if you don’t like it, please tell me why and any pointers you have.