Natasza
“I’ve lost myself. I’ve lost myself and I’ve buried the key so deep it is unreachable, dissolving as the memory of it fades and I am stuck as someone I was never meant to be”. Eww. Much too cliche. I flip over to the next page, scanning for any sign of significance in the ocean of words.
There is one thing I don’t understand in all of this, and it’s how I was so bad at writing when this was only around 8 months ago. I mean it’s not like my grammar sucks or my words lack connections between themselves, it’s just that all of my story ideas and plots are so unoriginal. A girl who is a loner goes to school, there is a new student, they become friends, girl learns that friendship isn’t calculated in quantity but quality. Boring. Next page. Teenager runs away from home because they are tired of their parents, meets a person who lost their whole family, becomes homesick, returns and learns the value of family. Sad but too overused. I flip the page again. Adult working on their computer for 12 hours straight, gets an email, opens a weird link, gets transported to a never-seen-before world, is worried, goes on an adventure in fantasy land, goes back home, remembers that you have to have fun in your life. A bit more unique but who would want to read this? Too happy.
All these countless amounts of words and sentences are neglected by being placed in incompetent narratives. A variety of ravishing words pushed into an abundance of black letters to tell bland tales. What has my writing come to? Or well, more accurately, what did my writing come to? I’m better now and I know it, I just haven’t been able to prove it to anyone else just yet. In the past few months, I’ve written numerous short stories, like a billion poems, many, and I mean many, mystery plots, fantasy tales, loads of novels, and books, just not on a physical surface. I know it sounds like I’m showing off, but if life has taught me anything, it’s that you’ve got to be confident in yourself because no one else is going to do it for you. I’m an exceptional writer and I am 100% sure of it. However, the blank page in front of me, pencil hovering over it, and idea empty mind prove otherwise. Whatever, I’m sick of this. All the white gaps make me wanna gag.
I ferociously slam my notebook shut, exposing the pastel blue front, prompting me to gaze at the similarly-colored sky above me. Looking up, through all the twigs and leaves, I manage to catch a glimpse of the cloudless blue, reminding me of all the alluring stars and planets, hidden from our view until the right moment comes. It gets me wondering, how do the stars know when it’s their time to shine? Pun intended. How do they, among the endless sky, show their complicated selves at the perfect moment, just as our hope starts diminishing due to the strength of the deep darkness of the night? And why are they symbolic of divinity? Why would someone put a meaning on a bunch of gases? I guess humans really are weird. We put representations and similes into places they don’t need to be. But, I also guess that that’s the point of writing. To connect opposite ideas and turn them into a complicated relationship. To describe the meaning behind a simple idea. To teach a 15-year-old girl that instead of pondering on theoretical questions, she should go out there, into the world, and enjoy it while she still can.
With that in mind, I jump off the treehouse, my dirty converse hitting the hard ground, the fall softened by the rich and soft soil, with bits and pieces of what once were thriving green leaves. I fall onto my knees as if bending down to the majestical leader of the environment surrounding me, mother nature, crowned by creatures she gave birth to. As I dig my fingers into the dirt, the spaces under my fingernails fill up with the pieces of the ground that keeps us standing every day. I keep going, deeper and deeper, feeling the enigmatic stories of the souls and organisms that have passed through this exact spot. When I feel as though I have dug a hole to the other end of the planet, I stop, catching my breath, and tilt backward, falling into the dark brown arms of nature. ‘This is what a 15-year-old should do’ I think to myself, laying on the lively ground.
As I lay there, I am only able to see a certain amount of the surrounding nature, which frustrates me because I want to take in all the beauty and not just part of it, so I get up, dusting off the small remains of the brown and orange leaves. And I twirl. Twirl and twirl and twirl, so that I can see everything around me. The textured ground becomes my stage and the humongous trees are the audience, watching me perform my dance. Just like a ballerina, I am no longer aware of the environment around me as it all becomes a blur. It’s as if the world is being washed away, and everything looks just like it does when I look outside the front windscreen of a car in the ‘drive-thru cleaning’. Fuzzy and unclear. The trees become large, out-of-focus ovals, with a bunch of brown and orange dots all around them as I keep twirling. My mind struggles to keep up with my feet’ pace and soon starts spinning on its own. I step with one foot onto my other foot which throws me off balance, causing my perfect dance to look more like an endless stumble. My body feels as if it’s sinking into the ground, gaining 10 kilograms a second, while my head might just float away like a balloon any second now, or pop from all the pressure. A gurgle in my stomach catches me off guard, causing me to lose my focus. My feet trip on one another and once again I fall, though this time it’s not as glorious as when I fell in mother nature’s arms because my face comes crashing into the dirt, leaving wounds on my face. And yet, despite all of this, I laugh.
Though the laughing hurts my stomach, even more, the need to vomit has faded away. What’s left of my failed, though I would say it was quite successful, performance is not only the memory of it but also my, now, even dirtier converse. Oh, and the scrapes on my face. I bring my hand closer to the marks left by my dance, feeling some sort of liquid descending my face. Pulling my hand back, a bold red color covers my fingers. How could I be stupid enough not to notice when my face is bleeding. Remembering the paper I have in my notebook, I pull it out of my back pocket, hoping that the pages I try to help (by creating fantasies on their ‘bodies’), will now help me potentially stop the bleeding. I recognize a resemblance between the sides of the leaves surrounding me and the edge of the ripped paper that I bring towards my face. I feel the paper absorbing the blood, losing its marble white feature as if the blood is devouring its next victim. The pages of my notebook start swiftly flipping through as a breeze passes, revealing the masses of inadequate words and stories I’ve written in there. Maybe I should try again.
With my hand still holding the paper towards the wound, I carefully climb up a tree, hoping not to create any more injuries. The spaces and gaps in between the trees’ surface crawl up my back as I lay down on a branch. I calmly open my notebook and grab a pencil from my other pocket. As I wonder what to write, I take a deep breath and realize I don’t have to. I bring the pencil towards the top of the blank page, and the words flow out. Tons and tons of words. I have so many things to write about and so little time to write that I don’t want to take any more breaths because I’d be wasting time. Everything comes so easily that I’m anxious that it’s not of good quality, but when I look back at what I have written, I cover my mouth with my free hand in shock. This isn’t just good, this is astounding! After all this time, I’ve finally written something I can be proud of. And I know exactly why. The next time I’m stuck while writing, I jump off the tree, letting the blood-soaked paper fall onto the dirt, and I go out into the world to experience.