Breaking Glass

I decided I want to get back into creative writing. To get over my writers' block of the century, I thought of a fun way to get my creative juices flowing...

So I picked something to describe, to illustrate verbally--which was:

"Throwing a glass at a wall."

Here's the result.

Scene: Throwing a glass at a wall

            I was so angry at what he’d said that the glass in my grip started to feel more like a grenade. Might as well be, I thought. This shithole could use a gutting. I clenched the clear $5.00 dinner-set piece in my hands so hard and mightily that I imagined my flesh fusing to the surface. He was laughing with the bartender. What did he just say? I thought. I couldn’t even hear anymore. His laughter, the smile—how could he fool all these people? I sat in my stool, running my left index finger around the top of my pint glass, right hand firmly groping the base. My head hung low, feet resting on the stool rungs with my toes pointed outward. My knees sat farther apart than the last two people on a New York subway.

            The words being spoken at me—[are you sure he was talking about you?] were like insects hurdling toward a car on the freeway—some of them flew right over my head, some of them splattered and exploded on my face, and others were lucky they never reached my ears. Thick glass within my grip caved under the intense pressure; [don’t lose it in here—just hold it together] I could feel the hair-thin cracks spread out away from my right middle finger’s grasp. Anger [that motherfucker] can adopt a body of its own [will stop TODAY]

SMASH!

            Tiny chards of sharp, transparent confetti went flying in the air, defacing the mirrored wall behind the booze.  Bottles of Grey Goose and Tanqueray and Jameson knocked together and fell to the ground, shattering on impact. One by one, more bottles followed, desperate to get away from the crime scene they’d just witnessed. Cracked and distorted, the cheap mirror hadn’t shattered; rather, I watched a bent image of my own face staring back to me, red and raw with abhorrence. [This isn’t anger. This is a revolution.] I stood, animalistic, in the foggy yellowlight so common in dive bars. I breathed deeply, quickly, and heavily. My right hand, bloody and cut, matched my left hand in clenching themselves into tight balls of fists. Insane would be a kind word used to describe this moment of me.

            All around me was a war scene. I just threw a beer glass into an entire stash of glassware at full force, I reacted like a rabid animal ready to attack, and my captor sat still. Unbothered.

            His eyes stayed low and dark, reading deeply into his whiskey straight. Bartender was still shocked at my outburst. He couldn’t wait to run away from it, but he was afraid I’d pull a gun, so he started cleaning up the broken bottles instead. I watched for a second, feeling sorry about the mess and then [I’m not safe yet] I jerked my gaze back to Ser.

             I could see almost-unintelligible specks of blood gracing his once-statuesque  forehead like a dainty mist; microscopic shards of glass easily embedded themselves in his bald head, undetected except for the blood. The back right side of Ser’s jaw, of an enviable quality that once projected manliness [where’d his beard go?], now dripped with deep, red warmth. When his forehead beaded up with blood, the drops were whisked away promptly with the back of his right thumb. On the inside of his index finger and part of his hand was the blood he wiped from his jaw. He cocked his head to one side, winced, and slowly set an inch-wide piece of glass on the bartop in front of me. He raised his eyes to meet mine [such evil] and tipped his hat. He stood up from his spot, adjusted his collar, gave Bartender a generous tip and walked out.

            I got what I wanted. His vile words were no longer smacking me around, his pitiful presence was probably miles away by now. There have been times when I’ve felt ashamed of such explosive moments, but nothing will be a reward as much as my freedom. [I’ve won. I’m safe.]

            I gathered my things, albeit slightly shaken and coming down off the adrenaline high. I helped Bartender clean, and I gave him my word that I would repay the liquor. I probably won’t though.

            He gave me a cigarette and I walked outside, shuffling my boots while awkwardly searching my pockets for the lighter.

*Flickflick—spark—inhale*

            Ah, nicotine. So calm.

            Two guys just walked by. They were laughing.

            [What did he just say?]

Your Life Shouldn't be a Color by Number

I know I didn't post yesterday, but I have a good excuse. I spent my day frolicking in nature with one of my very best friends and her annoyingly untrained chocolate lab, and I didn't get home until 1 am. Another reason/excuse might be that since I was having a solid Happy Day yesterday, I didn't have anything emotionally charged enough to extract a deep, insightful message to write about. 

That's a good thing, right?

I was feeling a little better about things, so I spent my time outside and with friends. But...I'm feeling a little better, so I lost ideas to write about. Maybe this is what scared me away from writing consistently before--in the past, the only time I'd actually sit and write was to release emotions. Once I hit a moment where I'm actually in a good spot with my emotions, I stop trying to write. I could do that today, too, because I still feel pretty decent. But I'm changing my habits. I'm committed to myself; I'm determined to write.

So I'm going to write about this show called Banshee.

I know my parents will read this and roll their eyes because I've been saying for the past week, "You HAVE to watch this show, it's so goooood!" I think I've seen the pilot episode three times now and I'd gladly watch it again.

I'm drawn to and become rather obsessed with TV shows that are produced and written well. Breaking Bad, as many of my peers know, was my favorite series for a long time. I loved (and still love) Breaking Bad because of the intricate storytelling going on in each scene, like in the pilot episode when Walt drives home from the car wash, covering up the oil spot with his car in his driveway when he pulls in. The donut wheel he had on his Aztec was pitiful, the oil spot said, "We have major money problems." The manner in which Walt pulled into the driveway communicated defeat. Not a word was spoken, but that scene--the emotions behind it, the foreshadowing embedded in it--was delivered in in a powerful, silent, 3-second punch.

It's absolutely beautiful. I feel myself filling up with appreciation and love whenever I think about the writers on that show. They don't include intricate details like that to make the show more entertaining or to make more money. They do it because they care about quality, solid, praise-worthy storytelling, even if their extra efforts go right over most peoples' heads. Which, in fact, they do.

They could just stop, you know. They could just quit weaving those subtle bits of story development into the plot and instead add in more meth, violence, kingpins, and point-blank murders. But they don't. They stick to their integrity and deliver a masterpiece of under-the-radar artistry and obvious-to-everyone entertainment. 

Banshee has his same allure to me. As I mentioned earlier, I've seen the pilot three times. Last night was my third venture, and I found myself thinking, "Oh wow, I didn't know about that..." or "I never noticed that before." That, to me, is a sign of quality production. The audio, the angles, the familiar lack-of-dialogue storytelling I see in Breaking Bad has resurrected itself in Banshee.

Banshee (Cinemax, on at Fridays @ 10) is written and produced by the same guys as True Blood, but it has nothing to do with paranormal anything. Especially banshees. Banshee is an amish/small-town hybrid city that is almost entirely (unofficially) controlled by a big-money mob boss, where the mob consists 90% of the town's residents. The Sheriff's Department decides they need outside help with bringing this guy down, and basically, things just don't go as planned. There's sex, violence, action, and emotionally driven "aw, HELL yeah!"'s. I'll stop now and let you watch for yourselves. 

I get that it's on Cinemax and not everyone will even know what I'm talking about, but I guess my point is: Pay attention to the details. Not just in TV, but in movies, news, books, essays, nature, and your relationships. In real life. The story--the delicious, tasty berry that gives the creative mind an overwhelming sense of color and energy and fulfillment--hinges on the details. Don't walk through life blind, too busy with work/school/money to notice the beauty in the blueprint. 

Example: Breaking Bad versus Real Housewives of Anything. If you're a girl and you watch these shows, try an experiment--try to pick up anything specific or detailed about the series that contributes to the storyline. Here, I'll do the experiment for you! There is no storyline, and if there are any details, they don't matter. This show feeds into our desire to be distracted, not insightful. It's entertaining, sure, but I leave that show with a sense of emptiness because it completely lacks substance.

Your life has the blueprint to be as great of a story as Breaking Bad or Banshee. It's up to you, the writer/producer/director/actor, to put substance in it. Think of it like a coloring book. You could make your life an intricate masterpiece, or a Color by Number piece. 

Now, go outside and notice how beautiful the crystalized dirt is when it's frozen. When it rains, go outside and just take a deep breath--smell the innocence in a fresh rainfall. While the leaves fall, grab one and read its veins like a book. Because even our own veins are a story in some way.

 VERSUS

The Transition from Bologna to Steak (...wait, what?)

I don’t really feel like writing today, but I promised myself I would break my habit of…well, not writing. Thanks to my eternal BFF, Mommy, I’ve grasped the concept that this horrible, painful spot I’m in right now has manifested itself to show me something important about myself. Of course, we all love to say “everything happens for a reason” and “it’s for the best” as if those worn-out clichés are the key to surviving a shattering breakup. I’ve applied these phrases to my life many times, and they don't do anything for me anymore.

In elementary school, I used to have a bologna sandwich for lunch nearly every day from K-4. I loved it. Bologna sandwiches were freaking awesome, especially the way my mom made them. Yay, Bologna, you were a constructive part of my then-current state of happiness! Having that sandwich was fulfilling, beneficial to my health at the time, and it usually made me feel much better at the end of the day. Then one day I realized I had been eating bologna sandwiches for the past four years, and I just lost my taste for the pseudo meat.

Haven’t had bologna since. I don't hate it, but...eh. I can do better.

Whether you’re a friend of mine or not, just understand that telling an adult, “I’m sorry, everything happens for a reason,” or, “it’s for the best,” is akin to cramming a bologna sandwich down a mouth that has already had 15,000 bologna sandwiches. Let’s not get this misunderstood, though: If a friend of mine throws me one of those phrases while trying to comfort and support me, I’ll love it. I need to hear that in the beginning stages of grief. (By the way, thank you so much to all of you who have reached out to me.) But in order to progress later on, hearing that “things will eventually get better” won’t do the trick.

This isn’t really about repetition or wear of cliché phrases, though. It’s about how I have to do more than just keep them on repeat, thinking I’ll wake up one day cured of this mess because “it happened for a reason.”

Mom, my in-home professional life coach (seriously), gave me some reading material today that covered exactly what I’m feeling. It was so relevant I could barely get through a page without losing my vision due to cloudy, teary eyes. But there was gold in them there pages, I tell ya.

It’s a little confusing to explain why this was so effective for me because I’m already so used to being “life-coached” by my mom. It’s like a foreign language for some people to grasp these concepts I’m about to go over, but bear with me while I try to run through this. It’ll help someone else down the line, and that’s the ultimate pat-on-the-back for me.

Here’s my takeaway from the reading:

1.       Everything I’m feeling right now is natural. It is okay to be sad, depressed, angry, and not want to get out of bed all day…in the raw stages, at least.

2.       Getting drunk or smoking weed or cigarettes or the like will only prolong my recovery and keep me in an immature state of mind.

3.       The reasons I resent him are actually just mirrored reasons why I resent myself. (But still....amiright?)

4.       The reasons why I resent myself are the exact things I need to work on in myself in order to grow and mature.

5.       I need to treat myself the way I wanted to be treated by him—I need to understand that I never got the treatment I wanted from him because I couldn’t treat myself in the same way.

You’re like, “But Shannon, what did you even say in numbers 3-5?” Or maybe you’re just all, “Well, duh.” But this was the beginning of a breakthrough for me.

Without getting into too many personal “waah, poor me” details, I’ll just say this:

In every single way that I was hurt by him, if I turned the situation around on myself, I was actually the one guilty of all the mistreatment. He never put me first—I always put him first, I never put myself first. He obviously had no respect for commitment—I’ve actually felt guilty for years for not committing to myself, my writing and my own goals. He rarely ever made the extra effort for me—I rarely ever put any effort into my own happenings, I was too concerned with his. He’s a slimy little prick—well, I’ll just let him have that one.

See? The problems I had with him are actually problems I felt within myself that weren’t resolved. You know the phrase, “You have to love yourself before you can love someone else.” That’s exactly what I’m trying to illustrate. These same issues would keep arising in the next relationship I’d be in again and again until I finally resolved it within me.

Most people don’t get that. I don’t blame them, it’s not an easy pill to swallow—realizing that every problem you have in your life can only be resolved from within. There’s no SuperMan (see what I did there?) coming to fix the problems I had in my last relationship. There’s a SuperMe, and she’s the only one qualified for the job.

From now on, I’m putting myself first. Sorry ‘bout it, but I am the only one I can trust, I’m the only one in control of my life, and I’m the only one who really knows what I want. I have to learn to listen to my intuition, my little inner voice, more acutely and do what’s best for me—and me only.

From now on, I’m committing to myself. I’m forcing myself to write every day because that’s what I should’ve been doing since I was 16. I wanted to have my first book written by my 22^nd birthday, and thinking about this failure really hurts me inside. The same kind of hurt I feel because of him, by the way. Weird…..

And from now on, if an extra push is necessary for me to progress with my life, I’ll finally suck it up and make it. My affinity for laziness tempts me to take the easiest road sometimes, and this easy route rarely takes that extra effort needed to achieve greatness. Since I happen to be destined for greatness, I have no choice but to make that effort for myself.

I hope some of this was useful for someone out there. I’m a long way from being okay, but at least I know I’m not pushing back the due date by not acknowledging my feelings. I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol, nor do I want to; I haven’t depended on any (shouldn’t-be)-illegal substances for an escape. I embrace the pain. I’m not hard on myself for feeling hurt. I just want to feel as fulfilled in my life as I possibly can as quickly as possible. And everyone is deserving of this deep solace.

Hey, you know, scummy things happen to good people. But I promise, this will be my bottom. I’m going to work on myself like I never have before, and I’ll look back on this guy and laugh about how truly green I was to think he had any power over me or my feelings.

Ah, I can't wait. In more ways than one, one day I'll have gone from eating bologna to filet mignon. And I do love me some filet mignon.

 

Already Seeing Positives from a Pitfall

I just got cheated on in the most vulgar way possible. Everything in my relationship was perfect; my boyfriend was very attentive and let me know how much he loved me. We were talking about marriage. Babies. How we would raise our family. We were making plans to get our parents all together to meet for the first time. My parents bought him expensive dinners and pricy, classy Christmas gifts. And yet, there was always something in the back of my mind telling me to run.

I was, and still am by default (considering this happened yesterday) oversaturated with love for this guy. It hurt my heart that, as a self-proclaimed “word artist”, I couldn’t find any phrase powerful enough to encompass just how in love I was (am) with him. And he reciprocated, and we were happy.

So happy. I had never been happier.

One day after we had just said goodbye, we planned on meeting back up about a week later. A day after this goodbye, he goes and sleeps with his ex-rebound-girl. Why? “Because she asked,” he said.

But I have a feeling she didn’t ask, and he was the one initiating the whole encounter.

My ex and I had a great—scratch that, mind-blowing sex life. And he throws it all away for a girl he supposedly “didn’t even like, used for rides, and was trashy.” So he said.

I keep replaying this scenario in my mind.

Let me tell you something about a traumatized mind. I saw a picture one time, and to credit this photographer I would also like to point out the cruel concurrence of his page being called “Andrew’s Nature”. This picture was taken of the dirt/rock ground in Yellowstone National Park—there's a large circumference of beautiful yellow-copper-sunshine on the outside bleeding into a lighter, pearly hue closer to the inside, then cooling off with a blueish-turquoise-aqua near the middle of this circle. In the center is a black, cold, soul-swallowing bottomless pit.

Take this image and attach it to a memory of those blue coin collectors in malls, where you drop your penny in and it spirals and spirals and down it drops into the hole in the middle.

For a long time, my mind was completely yellow-copper-sunshine. Didn’t have to overanalyze things, could be confident in my life and relationships. The penny in my brain danced around the outside of that circle without any fear of falling in the center. Then, something happened where I lost some confidence (receive a message from a stranger telling me my boyfriend cheated). My penny stoops a little into the beautiful-but-sad blueish-turquoise-aqua. Then I find out the truth, all my worst fears confirmed—my penny drops into the center of that coin collector. My mind at this time is no longer bright, sunshiny, or beautiful. It is in a black vacuum of psychological torture.

I could perceive this situation as though something was wrong with me, and that’s why he did it. I choose not to take that route. This is not my fault, I did nothing wrong, and yet I have to deal with the horrible backlash of this betrayal. When I’m done writing this, rest assured I will write another document solely to unleash my utter hatred I have for this person now. But this isn’t the place for that. (If you want to get ahold of this beautifully written anger piece, just let me know and I’ll send it privately. It’s gonna be gold.)

So, right now, I want to reach out to all the women and men I can who have been cheated, betrayed, or heartbroken, and give you all an Internet hug. Your situation isn’t the same as mine, but in every situation there is a reason to give yourself a break. I could (and I have, but briefly) translate this whole situation to mean “You are worthless. You didn’t mean anything to him. You must not be important. You did something wrong.” But ultimately I know better than that, and I refuse to believe these thoughts. And you should too.

As my mom tells me all the time, in order to heal, you HAVE to recognize that your sense of worth can’t come from your significant other. She always tells me, “If you do that, and he leaves, where does that leave you?” Screw him (or her). Let them leave! Because you’re (and I'm) still here, the same person as before, no less worthy and no less beautiful and no less wonderful.

I still need time to heal from this, and I don’t expect to feel completely okay again for some time. This was a devastating experience for me, my family, and although my friends aren’t devastated, they sure doctored up when they heard I was. I’m taking every positive I can and holding onto it. Look at me now--I'm already making a positive out of this by picking up my writing again (thanks, Mom). I’m trying to constantly remind myself of everything I’ve written here. I do know for certain that I’ll look back on this heartbreaking time and think to myself, “That was the best thing to ever happen to me."

Oh, and I should throw out there that throughout my two-year relationship, my intuition (the universe) tried to tell me many times to get away from him. So did my friends, and sometimes family members as well, but I didn’t listen. I kept making excuses for him/me/us because I was blinded by love, and I had always said, “The only deal breaker right now is if someone cheats on me. I will never look back after that.”

Checkmate, Universe.

But I know I’ll thank you one day.



[http://andrewsnature.blogspot.com/2011/08/photos-i-had-taken-on-my-trip-to.html
Scroll about 3/4 of the way down and that's the picture I described above. Picture uploader won't work, meh.]