For most of my life, teachers have told me that I should be a writer. My mother has always thought I should be a writer. As a child, I pretty much always expected to one day become a writer.

And I do write, sometimes. I used to write stories with my friends in notebooks we would pass from person to person. I wrote poems too, and they nearly always rhymed, which I think is a good sign. And sometimes, now, I'll open up a notebook I have on my shelf, the one I use to plan my "serious" stories- the ones I think I could publish, if I wanted to- and jot down some notes, some ideas.

I even have a few ideas floating around my head. Most of them come from dreams. Not my dreams- mine are always strange (Saturday night I dreamt I was beating up my school's choir teacher for holding my class captive) but usually not particularly involved or interesting. Or even memorable.

My boyfriend, on the other hand, has incredible dreams. It's like the video games he plays for hours a day seep into his head and begin formulating plotlines of their own. They have consistent themes, a storyline, usually a few challenges and a romantic companion-plot for company. Mine are more often about me trying to escape.... a house, a concentration camp, the choir director's reign over our class, you name it.

And while escapes make for good stories, they don't inspire me the way his dreams do.

In fact, I think the last time I independently had an idea for a story was fourth grade. Mind you, it was a good idea, and I think I'll still use it, but that was a long time ago, so I'm clearly not bathing in creativity. Even so, I'd like to come up with something original. A story that has characters NOT based on me and my friends, for instance.

There's an old adage that says to write what you know. It's a real problem because I don't think I know much of anything. I know about Harry Potter, but that's already a series and writing about it would be kind of... copying. Or fanfiction. And that's not what I'm after.

..well, I guess I know about love. But it's something I'm hesitant to write about. I do, of course, read books with the sole intent of digesting a romantic adventure of some kind. But I don't think that's what I would want to write about. Writing should have a point... shouldn't it?

Actually, I'm fairly certain that's just something our English teachers tell us so that they can keep their jobs. After eighth grade, there's not much you can really say about English, so they make stuff up to keep us in our seats. But I digress.

Personally, I don't have a great deal of inspiration. Nature doesn't do it (and it's overdone anyway, I think). The one thing that inspires me, without fail, is love. It may sound strange or naive or presumptuous, because I'm so young, because I'm in high school, but the way I feel about John grants me such a bounty of creative energy that I actually CAN'T write, I actually CAN'T draw. I have to throw myself down on my bed and fling my arms out and fidget around for a while and hug my teddy bear because words aren't enough to express that feeling...

I've tried to describe it to myself, and it's hard. After a few tries, I decided that love feels like your soul is ripping itself out of your body, because it wants to merge with another soul. So now that your insides are being metaphorically torn from you beyond your control, you hurt, you ache, and you want to end the pain. So you resort to spending time with that person who thinks it's so polite to steal fragile things like souls from unsuspecting girls.

But the hurt goes away when you get the chance to hold or kiss that person, because your souls are touching through your skin and your breath and they don't have to stretch themselves across a few miles to touch.

As beautiful as that metaphor is (or seems to be, to me- to be honest, it doesn't sound pleasant at all, does it?), it's not something I can make into a story. Not unless I want to narrate a story that trivializes love. Or else a series of books, pages and pages and chapters and words piled on. Love isn't something that can ever be fully expressed. I think that's why, even when I'm holding John, saying "I love you," I get the feeling like he won't believe me, like I want to cry, because it just can't be understood unless it's felt.

In driving school we watched a long video about a man who had had a normal life before getting drunk and accidentally killing a woman in an accident. That doesn't invoke much emotion, does it? That sentence is boring, bland, run-of-the-mill. But the video had weight. It meant something because, instead of telling us about the accident and how he could have prevented it, the man told us his entire life story. Everything about him- his dreams, decision to change majors in college, amount of money he paid his dad for fixing up a car for him- everything. And it carried emotion because it was so REAL. That man was normal. He had a life JUST. LIKE. OURS. Nothing out of the ordinary. And he got drunk and hit someone.

I think love is like that. (Here I will make a pitiful attempt at making this entry sound like it's all on one topic. because honestly, I'm just rambling.) For me, someone people usually consider pretty good at writing- and at love too, may I add, as people seem naturally drawn to ask me for advice in the dating department- words are just not enough. I can't possibly convey the depth and strength of the love I feel without detailing each experience and emotion and connection and feeling.

Writing is an outlet for all that emotion, but for me, somehow, it's never enough. Love is too much for a story. It's one of those things that must be experienced, must be felt, to be understood. That change in the human mind, the human soul, can't be perceived without knowing what that person was like before their soul got metaphorically ripped out.

And here I am, trying my best, and I'm not doing a very good job of explaining love. There's not enough space on my blog to do that, not enough space in the human attention span to handle a dictum of that length. So I'll end it here, saying only that I had no idea where I was going when I began writing this, and that I was just excited that my Acting II teacher thinks I write well.

I thought of a fantastic idea for the Stuck at Prom contest yesterday during Latin class, and even though I already started on the old design, I'm going to do the new one instead!

I'm going to need a lot of duct tape but I think I can do it! This design will be easier and cuter- not to mention more creative!

When John and I have finished the outfits I'll post some pictures up here. If we make it to the top ten, please vote for us! We'd greatly appreciate it! And if you do, just let me know, and I'll try to come leave you minis or something on your Xanga site. :) I know that's not much but it's all I can really do.

Remember, you can vote ONCE A DAY per legitimate email account! So you can vote EVERY DAY for the whole voting period. If you decide to vote, please do it every day- and for us!

In addition, you all have friends and family. Ask them to vote too! Who knows, maybe my design will turn out really well and it will be worth voting for. :)

Thanks for your time!

Well, I did like this boy for a long time and it turned out that he had liked me too. The revelation came only after we'd both gotten over it, so it was one of those, "are you KIDDING me?" situations.

But I'm extremely satisfied and content with my boyfriend now, and I'm glad I never got together with the first boy. We would have fought a bunch, I think. So I guess you could say he got away, but boy, good thing too!

   

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