I have come to a halt in the forest and set myself down atop a rotting tree stump. I lean my face into my icy palms and take in shaky breaths as stubborn tears pour one by one out of my eyes. They burn against my cold cheeks and I wipe them away furiously.
I reach into my coat pocket and pull out my worn, black journal and flip through the cream colored pages until I come to a blank page. I remove my ballpoint pen from my other pocket and press it to the paper, writing in bold letters and am startled by another tear that slips out of the corner of my eye. Sighing, I look up through the trees, remembering the years gone by and a frown forms on my face. I return my gaze to my journal and read the hurried words, unaware of what I had even written.
The words say:
I HATE THAT I
STILL THINK
YOU’RE A GOOD PERSON.
I am not at all startled by the words etched on the page – they came from the depths of my heart. They came from the part of me that has yet to get over what happened between us – even after two years.
I still wake up in the morning and see her sweet smile in my head.
I still go for walks in the park and hear her boisterous laugh.
I still look up at the night sky and see her eyes sparkling in the stars.
And when I close my eyes at the end of the day, I still replay the moment she turned on me.
I swallow a lump that has formed in my throat and place my pen back to the paper and write;
In many ways, memories can be our worst form of torture. The pain will still reside in the deepest parts of our souls. The memories will forever stay with us. In my experience, one does not “get over” something quite so terrible, rather one chooses to live with the pain -allowing it to consume them until they are nothing but a mere shadow, or one chooses to live through it – taking shaky steps through each day as they find just how to do that, until they are able to walk with stability. The pain is still there, they are still hurting deep inside, but they have managed to find a way to live through it, rather than with it.
So to my Dearest Christine, here is where I say goodbye to the happy days gone by, to the heart to heart talks in the middle of the night, and the laughs and tears we shared together.
Now I choose to live through the pain.
I lift the small pen away from the paper and let out a sigh as my shoulders droop from the burden that has been lifted from me. Too long have I allowed this pain to weigh me down. For too long have I allowed it to rule over me.
Now it was all gone and at last I could live again.
Not as the man I was before, but as a new man.
A changed man.
A healed man.
~~~*~~~
So I downloaded a free trial of this TOTALLY AMAZING PROGRAM called ZenWriter. It plays beautiful music, has an image as your background (so it’s not a boring white screen you’re writing on), and is completely designed to keep you immersed in your story. I love it so much and am going to have to look into buying the real thing pronto. O_O
So with the music playing, the background image, and the use of two writing prompts, this short story emerged. I’d never written in first person before and was actually really surprised by how much I enjoyed it! I’ll have to try it out a bit more. In some ways I feel like I wrote better in that POV than in third person…*thinky face*
Any feedback on this story/my writing is much appreciated! 😀
On another note, I’m like all done with NaNoWriMo prep and I’m kinda sad cause now I’m totally dying to write the book, but I have to wait so long to start on it! *cries* XD
What have you been working on lately?
Love,
~Fluffet~
OH MY HEART. *wipes away tear*
that was really good! I can think of several book characters who need to read this.
Most crazily, ~Olive
Aww, thank you so much, Olive! <3
~Jaclynn~