I just like this:

I’ve already lost track of the days!

Actually, I just got confused. I never really get to sleep in anymore so I (half) woke up thinking to myself,

“Wait, it’s a sleep in day, which means it’s a…Saturday? No, that’s not right, I don’t have work! Spring break, no school, duh!” And just smiled at the luxury of it all.

Anyway, here’s another piece I had been working on. I’m being told that I’m pretty good at these “flash fiction” pieces! This is the second revision of this particular one, so far.

 

“Lost Earring”

The last time I saw him, I lost half of my favorite pair of earrings; a pair I had worn almost daily. Simple, reliable; they went with everything.  I got compliments on them all of the time and they were only five bucks.

We were sitting on the couch, miles apart, when I realized it was missing. He insisted we look for it and began to tear pillows off of the couch. No big deal, I thought, I’ll find it later, but he was adamant. No luck. We settled back in, stealing side glances while facing the television, now even farther apart.

Half joking, but mostly serious I comment, “You’re the worst investment when it comes to romantic relationships.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I kept thinking about all of the places my earring could have fallen off—the car? The restaurant? Why hadn’t I heard it hit the floor? Maybe I had and didn’t think anything of it? Now my memory was falsifying details.

Later on he kissed me goodbye and I kissed him back for good measure.

I never found that earring.

Don’t underestimate the things that I will do.

I’m officially on Spring break. Here’s what I’ve got planned for the week: nothing! Ahahah. No really, I have a few little things planned, but I’m actually really excited about having nothing planned! The only thing I want to do, (especially with all of this rain) is cuddle up with a couple books from my own reading list.

As you may or may not know, I’m once again taking a creative writing class this semester, as well as the literary journal production class (Bravura) and in doing so I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing and work-shopping and  revising. It’s intimidating and fun and exciting all at the same time; especially when you get a positive response to your writing (or in my case my flash non/fiction).  So I thought I’d share some of the stuff I’ve been working on. Here is one such piece:

“I didn’t do it.”

My Barbies loved to have dance parties and I loved to get them together, dress them up and coordinate these parties. As their master party planner, I sat on the floor in my room one sunny afternoon perusing through Barbie’s closet trying to put together a stylish ensemble for her upcoming event. As I was rummaging through pleather, sequins, neon and everything pink I noticed my sister in the corner of my eye. She was standing in my doorway and appeared to be slightly perturbed. Perhaps she hadn’t gotten the invitation to my latest Barbie dance party extravaganza? Then again, maybe I purposely had forgotten to send it?

She was rarely invited because she always ended up chewing–on Barbie’s high heels, hands or even worse, her feet. Barbie would end up leaving parties having to carry her shoes in her newly deformed hands because they no longer fit her newly widened or shortened feet. It was traumatizing for everyone involved. And somehow I always ended up being blamed for this.

“Keep those little plastic accessories away from your sister! She’s going to end up choking to death!”

So I take the accessories away and end up with a crippled Barbie. There was just no winning; my sister had to be taken off of the guest list.

As she was standing there, I started to notice small, slightly alarming details: her little hands were clutched, one of them holding a newly sharpened pencil and she was gritting her tiny teeth. I felt the little hairs on my neck stand up. Clearly she was out for blood. Before I had the chance to utter a word she started running at me with every intention of stabbing me with her tiny spear. Eyes wide and frozen, I just sat there anticipating the blow. Luckily for me she hadn’t quite mastered the art of the loop, swoop and pull, which resulted in her tripping herself and stabbing herself in the eyelid.

I sat there are watched, half horrified and partially justified, as she laid on the floor screaming her head off, and thought to myself, “I do not touch her!”

More to come later, kids!

xo

GnR

You know I’m getting kind of worried, she doesn’t seem herself at all.

Oftentimes when I sit at the computer to write a paper for school, I do so with the hope that the words, sentences, paragraphs will just spew forth from my brain and be translated by my fingers pecking away on a keyboard, forming intelligent thoughts, ideas and analyses, written eloquently, that will earn me that coveted A.

Of course, more often than not, this is never the case. There was one time over the last semester that I was able to bust out a four page paper in a little over two hours but it was on poetry and this particular poet spoke to me and I enjoyed taking the few poems I had selected and dissecting them stanza by stanza and line by line, much in the same way that I might a favorite song. Why can’t it always be that easy?

I’ve been stuck lately. I’ve hit a wall and I don’t know how to get over it, around it or break through it. It’s painful. It leaves me with no motivation, no inspiration and a crippling fear; I do everything I can to avoid sitting at the computer, staring a blank Word screen. Time ticks by and it’s still blank and there is still no inclination to write. But I am running out of time, as with writing school papers come deadlines. It’s starting to cause anxiety and maybe even depression. I’ve found myself sleeping more just to avoid even trying to get up and write. My motivation to do anything remotely productive is slowly but surely dwindling. All I keep wondering is why?

Sometimes I feel like I’m two different people. There’s the happy girl that’s always down, always laughing and can roll with the punches and then there is the one that’s quiet, a little melancholy, that gets lost in her thoughts and sometimes has a rough time getting back to Earth. These two are in a constant, delicate balance for the most part–a perfect limbo, but there are times that I seem to regress and instead of looking forward, I tend to look back. And rather than looking back in appreciation, I look back with a lachrymose longing. I look back on my former life as if it were a dream–and not one that I was ready to wake up from–and I miss so much about it. The wheels start turning and the memories start pouring down. To top it off, I’ve had those suffocated, trapped feelings once again. It can be a dangerous combination.

So does all of this make me crazy? I’m hoping it just makes me normal. It’s just part of growing up. It’s just… life. Right? I can’t be the strongest, happiest girl all of the time and for whatever reason, it pains me to admit that. I figure I just need to stay focused; although currently I’m having a hard time figuring out how to do so…

But as my dad would say to me, “It’d kill an ordinary girl.”