Inspiration hit this morning, and concluded in the following concoction, the first fictional installment I would now like to share with you here. It is a short tale of woe, written purely from my mind's eye, and displayed in all its gloomy glory below. And so with that, I give you the troubled tale of:
TROUSDALE
Does he know how crazy it really feels to be crazy? Three nights here and I fear the pain growing in his eyes has still known little of this. He stares at me from down that long sterile hallway...
Trousdale.
Even as far away as he is, I can still see the whites of his eyes boring into these brown ones of mine. What must he have been through to look like that, and stare like that? He has this look about him as if having already lived the grim lives of at least 30 desolate men, and yet still only carries an age of no more than 7 and 20.
I'd long ago given up on my own fight against this beast, and I've accepted my fate in this shiny white hell, but one so young as he should not yet have to be forced into such reality. There is so much more he has yet to live before he can truly say he can go no further; so many more sleepless nights, tossing and turning in torment; so many more relationships to ruin with trepidatious thoughts; to see the worlds in his mind crumble, and high hopes shatter from this pitiable plight.
I know his story. I lived it once. I lived it fully, and now am paying the price. But he is not yet reached the checkout counter of this tale. He has not yet earned the right to sit back in a barred room, breathe deep and repeat that he'd sure done his best.
No, that time for him has not yet come, as it has for so many others of us. We are the forgotten ones, the ones for which there is no more hope in people's hearts, or support in their wallets.
But Trousdale, he must go on living to the end of it, until he can find no more reason to rise from his bed each day, and no more sympathy in the eyes of the ones he loves. I know he is not there yet, for I can see it in the way he looks at me, dissecting me with this gaze. I think he is trying to compare myself to him, imagine how he might someday reach where I am, and that is never a healthy practice. He should not be surrounded by such examples that plant infectious ideas in his head. He is in danger of fancying himself much worse than he yet has become, and that would cripple his ability to live out the rest of the sound days he is still so blessed with.
They signed his dispatch papers this morning, and yet he still just sits there, all day at the end of that hallway, staring. I want to go to him, tell him to get on with his life, leave this forsaken place, but I am in no state to move or motivate.
The others have no better luck, having too seen it all and lost the drive to inspire. We still do our best, mind you. But in a place like this, one must accept the sad state of this truth that cannot be cured, and learn to go about your days here as if they were your last and at the same time have already slipped away.
If you are reading this and have no inclination of what write, then feel yourself fortunate and I urge you to think on this no further. It is not a subject of interest to the undisturbed, and not one worth unraveling.
But if you do happen to share sight of this sense, then allow me to conclude by wishing you my dearest heart's desire that you find balance, and hope to never see you walking these halls, staring blankly at me from the other end of this hallway.
It may be too late for him, for Trousdale - though only so soon begun - but that does not have to be for you as well. I have lived in both worlds and seen it all. And I can assure you, given the choice again, I would not take post here, no matter how much they are paying me.
Lately, I've been noticing my own increasing hesitation to write on this blog, and subsequently longer delay between posts. It made me stop and think: why might I be feeling this way? I don't think it's for lack of content - I still have plenty to say about my journey's progress - nor do I think it's for lack of wanting to share it with you all.
So what is it then?
Perhaps, I thought, it goes beyond the content itself, and beyond the concerns for the audience or the writer... perhaps it's something even simpler and broader than that.
Now as with all truly intriguing questions into oneself, it took a great deal of introspection for me to answer these above. But the truth was ultimately found out, to my great relief, and here's what I found.
I realized that I don't actually enjoy writing non-fiction... any of it. I don't enjoy writing about the humdrum details of real life, be it mine or someone else's. Yes, true I did find it very valuable to post to this blog early on in my journey. But the motivation there was much more about using writing as a means to process my recent growth, to get it all out of me into something more concrete, and less about having a record of it for others to absorb.
In light of this, I have now in retrospect considered that posting such personal thoughts on a public online blog was perhaps not the best choice. Given the purpose I've realized this self-non-fictional type of writing serves me, the posting of it anywhere but where I alone can read it seems superfluous now. It now seems rather silly to have shared it with so many other people, when really the value of the writing itself was merely only in the act of writing it, and thus loses its appeal and importance once written.
I realize now the decision to start this online blog may not have been made for the best reasons, fueled more by a hope of gaining others' acceptance and recognition than of giving others a window into themselves (as previously mentioned). Perhaps it was a selfish decision to create this blog, and share all my self-indulgent scribblings with all of you.
Perhaps it was... but then, here we are anyway.
And here I am, realizing my dislike for non-fictional writing style. Yes, we are going back to that now.
You see, coupled with that new realization is also the understanding that I quite enjoy writing fiction instead. I love creating stories in my head about the people I see, the names I hear, or the characters I encounter. I love testing my imagination when presented the opportunity to take a story and just run with it. And most of all, I love the freedom in writing fiction to be original and really say something worth reading that hasn't yet existed in its entirety in reality.
I think I even often imagine my own life as if it were a fictional story, dreaming up scenarios and events that haven't happened (and likely never will happen) that seem far more significant and exciting than the real thing. Whatever that may say about an inability to face my own truth is besides the point - at least for the purpose of this post - and the bottom line here is that I simply prefer creating and writing fiction from within rather than recording and retelling the non-fiction around me.
Oh, and I can't tell you how glad I am to have uncovered this. I keep saying how much I need to develop my own voice as a writer, if I want to progress in that adventure. And here is indisputable proof that I am moving forward, slowly narrowing down what kind of writing I want to pursue, what I have to say in that style, and how I want to say it.
So the question now remains, what to do with this blog? Now that I've made this discovery, it would seem inappropriate to continue using it as originally intended. However, I feel it would be a shame to abandon the whole practice altogether.
My thought here is then to maybe shift the focus of this blog ever so slightly to allow for a greater deal of fiction in my posts. Perhaps I could use this as a means to practice that developing voice as a fiction writer, and share with you all the fruits of my labor there for further review and feedback.
After all, there are Passages to all matters of life, real or imaginary, and likewise benefit to writing about all of them. So the Writes of Passage title of this blog would still absolutely apply to the fictional writing I would now begin to post.
It also continues to speak to the Passage I am exploring of becoming a better writer, and the necessary writings that must demonstrate such growth. So it's almost as if the blog title now has a double meaning, and therefore even stronger significance. Funny how that happens, isn't it?
It's a fictional life I dream of - dream of living, and (better yet) dream of writing. And I look forward to sharing more of that vision with you all as we continue through all such Passages of our lives.
