Category: Creative Writing

A section for my attempt at creative writing. Jumping from poetry, to fiction, this section is looking to explore the many possibilities of how to write and present ideas.

Drunk

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How long does pain last?

Will the pain of a razor stop when I put it down? Will my OCD listen when everything is in order? And if I have thoughts of suicide, will I be fixed when I decide not to jump?

Is a cure a solution?

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. That’s what they say. They love to say. 

Adding a bit of warmth to the faucet, my hands continue to bath in the sink of an unknown bathroom. Flying high my thoughts continue to grow on themselves.

A boy with blue eyes. So blue they say. Obsessively, they say over and over again as they look into the dreamy blue and try to see what the eyes see.

And what do these eyes see? As I look into the bathroom mirror with a slight shake as the eighth shot settles, my thoughts become a bit more clouded.

Gazing into those deep blues, I know they want something, anything. I watch as they look upon every detail of my face. They focus on the curve of my eyebrows as they flutter to stay center. They watch as my mouth does the work of my nose as the mirror begins to fog. 

As I huff and puff, the eyes keep looking. They find my ears and wonder what they hear. A fellow explorer, but not nearly as skilled as the eyes. The eyes see everything, while the ears can only listen. 

But upon this desperate search, the eyes forget to check where they began. If the deep blues had only taken a second to look ahead. Ahead, they would see an ocean. Beautiful, yes of course, but the ocean is a dangerous place. 

They would see a storm with waves crashing on one another. Ruthlessly fighting to be on top of the other, the attempt to dominate would be endless. And as this war rages on, the clouds would continue to darken. Growing in shades, the clouds continue to laugh at the waves, for they were all inferior to the crystalized water vapor that danced above them. And as these water vapors came together they let down their powers of lightning and rain simply because they could. 

And if only they saw what not even the eyes can look at. What would they have to say then?

Around and around and around I go. With thoughts like these bouncing, so do I. Consciousness becomes too abstract, and my eyes forget what is center as they fail me once again. 

Falling onto my back, my right-hand hits the toilet and goes for a swim. Good thing I flushed.

Drunk, hurt and confused, nothing new.

How did I get here? 

Closing my eyes, I pull myself together. Wiping my right-hand clean on my khaki pants, I take a deep breath.

Count to ten they say, then it’s all better. 

Glancing at the toilet, I see my reflection moving with the small ripples in the water. Crashing into each other, the toilet water distorts my image. But sometimes, the bent views are the truest. 

What did I see in the toilet water?

That night, a child. A scared child.

help

The Man in the Cave

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I wonder who first thought to write a word. To extend verbal language into a written system. The man, and yes, it was probably a man who decided that speaking may not be enough. 

Sitting in his cave alone, the man probably stumbled upon this idea. With ink in one hand and paper in the other, the man sat in his cave and considered making the first sentence. No, the first word… the first letter even. Anything. He wanted to, but this is a hard task. Being the first is never easy. And before he wrote, he began to think. 

He, who took the first attempt of writing sound, probably took a second and then looked around. Unsure, he wondered if a noise, could be encapsulated without the use of his mois. Whether words could flow from the page, or if they were bound within a cage. And if he did find a way for words to flow, who would care to know?

He may have then thought that written language didn’t have to be a thing of beauty, but instead practicality. He wondered if he could use words to describe the size of the deer that he brought home just days ago? Could he write down the size of its antlers, and use that to compare to the one that he killed the previous month? And with these comparisons could he record his biggest set of antlers ever? But what is a record worth, if not even he can remember what the deer looked like? If the record was years ago, then could he even picture them? He wondered about the value of words that we have no memory of.

But this was all fine for the man. Not ideal, but workable he told himself. Then he wouldn’t think about its lack of beauty and he wouldn’t bother to record because he thought there must be more. Writing was the gateway to the unknown. With written words, sentences could be structured. They could be planned and organized. In a neat, concise fashion he was convinced the world could be written about, and then understood.

Determined and confident, the man looked out from his cave in search of insight. His eyes found his son. Playing in the knee-high grass, his son knelt down and felt every blade of bright, healthy green in between his finger-tips. Slowly moving his hands across the tips of each delicate vegetation, the wide-eyed boy listened to the sound of each piece of grass move ever so slightly as his hands flowed through them. And with his ear to the blades themselves, he listened to the sound of the Earth rotating on its axis. Listening to the Earth be tugged around and around, the son was just about to feel sorry for the Earth as a gust of breeze flew through the field. 

Moving much like a lion pouncing on its prey, the breeze came in and blew the boy onto his back. Laughing in delight, the son rose back to his knees and listened as the breeze played its song. Using the grass as its instrument, the rattling of thousands of individual tiny plants began to move in a chaotic harmony. Pressuring one another to listen to the commands of the breeze, much like a conductor with an orchestra, the blades of grass pushed and pulled on each other to create a gentle sound only experience can tell you about. 

And that’s when the man in his cave knew what he needed to do. Putting the pen and paper down, the man joined his son in the field. 

Organization wasn’t the gateway to understanding the world. That cage his words would be trapped within would be unrelenting. Restricted from the very world they were attempting to generate, the man knew his words would be bound to the paper they lay upon. 

The decision was his to make, and only his. Would he spend his days in the cave writing about his son, or would he spend them in the field with his son? 

Laying down next to his son, the breeze continued to orchestrate the blades of grass, in a melody for them, and only them, to hear.

The Paper

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Paper, a simple invention. It is the representation of its writer’s power. This power can hold us back, or it can encourage us to take the next step. It can let us see with clear vision, or with no vision at all. 

Yet I am not looking to write a post on the abstract power of paper. Instead, I hope to address one paper. A simple paper, single-sided, Times New Roman, double-spaced, and equipped with just the right-sized headers.  Every six months I faced this paper. And every six months I faced the same issue. I was “forced,” more forced by myself than anyone else, to lie my way through the semi-annual depression screening.

The questions would always begin harmless. Have you had a poor appetite?  Do you feel tired? Simple questions, but the simple answers are not what they are after.  As clear as an inverse relation graph can show, with each question growing in significance, my confidence got smaller and smaller.  The time between each question extended rapidly. Questions like, Have you been feeling hopeless about the future? and Have you been feeling blue? became trickier to maneuver.

This trend continued until I was stuck.  I was stuck debating whether to answer with how I felt or with how I should have felt.  What I actually thought or what I was told to think. I usually solved this issue by turning to my mother.  She told me what I should think. She was good at that, always has been. She told me the excuses I needed to hear to feel normal.  With her help I was able to maneuver and lie through the questions successfully for years.

Years went by and paper after paper I was faced with the same questions over and over again.   Each time I read them, they got worse. Severity grew from 4 to 5, which later grew to 6 and then to 7.  Questions that I could once confidently check off became questionable. Questions that were questionable now became impossible.  Impossible until the normal was gone. Until the moment I accepted that I may just be “abnormal” after all.  

On that day, that day when I accepted my “abnormality”, I looked at the paper and I answered the questions.  I answered them all. It felt good to tell the truth. I didn’t really know why, but I just felt satisfied. Not an hour after leaving the office, I received a call from the nurse who gave me my semi-annual paper.  I heard concern in her voice. Over the phone, she asked if I knew what I had written, how I had answered and what it meant. I said of course I do. She asked if I was getting help. And I said of course I was. She said okay, have a nice day, and hung up.

That was it.  Years of fear from telling the truth… for that.  For a two-minute phone call. It is amazing how extreme our imagination can inflate these situations.  I mean come on, I was expecting something. No screaming or crying on the phone in protest of my answers?  Not even a call to my parents informing them of my possible condition? Nothing.

Fear can be such an unnecessary emotion.  Fear is the anticipation of pain and danger.  Normal is also such a relative and frustrating word. Therefore, it can be concluded that fear from not being normal could quite possibly be the most pointless source of pain for anyone experiencing it. 

Many people in this world live their day to day lives in fear of pointless social norms.  In fear of standing out, and being vulnerable.  These fears are destructive and limiting.  I don’t know if they can be erased, but I believe they can be addressed. 

I used to think sadness was weakness, so I lied.  Now, I see it as neither good or bad, it just is. Instead, the power lies in the truth.  The truth was that I was depressed, and the truth was not going to go anywhere until I addressed its power in the first place.  Don’t let fear hold you from the truth because without our truths comes merely the power of our representation rather than ourselves.

Connection When You Least Expect It

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There I was, at the annual New Years Party I have been desperately waiting for all year.  As soon as I stepped inside the mansion-like house, a feeling took me over. With the music blasting and lights flashing, a sense of fun mania took me over. I was going to have a great night.  

With dozens of people from all around the area, I was astonished by how many of them I had never met and would probably never meet again.  With everyone in such a good mood, it was impossible to not feel the same way. Whether people were playing drinking games, busting a move on the dance floor, or lounging on the couch talking about god knows what, it seemed there was something to do for everyone.

The party was sensational, but as usual, it was only short-term.  A feeling that seems to never fully go away began to resurface. I have grown accustomed to this feeling, hence why it only took my subconscious seconds to know what to do next.  Like a snake slithering away silently, I withdrew from the scene and stepped outside as everyone continued to have the time of their lives.

As I stood there, with the cold winter breeze chilling my skin, a feeling of peace fell over me.  I knew that I would just need ten minutes of this bliss before the night would be mine once again.  As I stood in the cold winter night, I noticed a man around my age sitting with his legs hanging from the edge of the porch.  As he looked down at his feet, which he swayed back and forth much as a child does on a swing, I recognized our similar situations.

I then proceeded to sit next to him.  At first, we both said nothing. Listening to the distant noises of the party just one door away and looking over the glass-like lake, the need for words was not yet present.  

After a few minutes, I began our conversation with a simple hello.  As we talked, there was no secret as to why we had ventured off to such an isolated spot.  We spoke of depression, anxiety, and most of all, we spoke of suicide. There was no judgment and there was no stigma.  We simply spoke our thoughts, and nothing was there to stop us.

The loveliest part of this conversation was that both of us were isolated, as we desired to be, but we were also not alone.  It is rare when we simultaneously experience both solitude and the comfort of another person. We stayed in this unusual sense of bliss for what seemed like hours.  

Eventually, some of the partiers ventured outside to find their lost friend.  As they found us sitting on the porch, I watched a look of confusion fall over their faces.  If they were not questioning why their friend was sitting out in the cold, they certainly must have been questioning why he was doing so with a stranger.  I then watched as my newfound friend bounded up from the porch with light in his eyes. I don’t believe it was entirely fake, yet I do believe his joy was a bit exaggerated in order to silence their questioning thoughts.  

As they jumped away, back into the party, I was alone once again.  Surprisingly, I felt better. I felt fuller. Normally it took a bit longer to get back to this level of happiness, but for some reason, my tank seemed to be refilled.  Therefore, my next decision was simple, it was time to slither back into the exotic New Years’ atmosphere.  

It was not until the next morning that I began to hash out the night.  Who was that I sat next to? And did we really tell each other our deepest, darkest secrets?  The answer is that I will never know who that person is, and I quite frankly don’t need to. I don’t need to know when he was born, or where he grew up, or even his name.  He is someone I bonded with. Someone I formed a true connection with, and it only took five minutes.  

We bonded because we were vulnerable.  Sitting outside in the middle of the night, talking about the things much of society would push back, we let ourselves be fully seen.  We spoke openly and allowed our vulnerable selves to be present. Now do not mistake my words, I am not saying that is the only way to form a connection.  There are a number of ways to create great connections and friendships. I simply state an example of a healthy one. One that is rarely done, especially with a stranger.  Especially with someone you know so little about.   

The thing is, I knew enough about him before we even spoke our first words.  I saw that empty look, that empty feeling that I, and many others, have lived with for years.  And knowing we had that much in common was enough for me to show my vulnerable self and then hope he would do the same.  And thankful he did.

Connection, real connection, is a huge component of what the human mind requires.  We need someone to rationalize our thoughts with. We need someone to celebrate with.  And most importantly, we need someone to be alone with. To find human connection we simply need to be courageous.  We need to make the first step with our hearts out and our hands held high. To show our vulnerable selves even when there is no guarantee it will work out.  

Maybe not at your next New Years’ party, but somewhere, you should connect with someone.  You should form a bond because let me tell you, there is no better feeling than when you show your demons and all you get in return is a genuine smile.