Tuesday, March 11, 2008

"A Long walk home"-short story

As she walked away, from the painful scene Jane felt somewhere inside that she was making a big mistake. She was walking away from life. Walking away from everything she knew and held dear at one point or another. Everything from the tingling sensation in the pit of her abdomen to her heart’s crazy daredevil exploits up and down her throat told her that her best bet was to turn back around and run to the dangerous safety of the past. To return in glorious defeat to his arms, whose vice like grip held fast her mind and her heart, but most of all her soul. Whose eyes fell smotheringly quiet on her retreating back. smiling at her useless attempt to leave and start afresh. Smiling at her comfortably imminent return.

He had given her more than she could’ve hoped for. When she met him he had given her the belief that love existed outside of fairy tales. The hope that the bitter, materialistic, cynical world held corner pockets for heaven and true happiness. He helped her dream of things she hadn’t known existed; feel feelings she’d thought had ceased to exist in real life. Now she just hoped she could walk away. She only dreamt of making a life for herself outside of his enveloping grasp. And all the belief in the world couldn’t make her feel more ready to leave.

She’d turn the corner this time. She wouldn’t look back. Not even once- not to say goodbye, not to say sorry. Or to ask for a little supportive nod of a head. She’d be strong. When she was clear of him and his undercurrent emotional tide, she’d cry. Sweet tears of relief. Of sadness. Of peace. Then she’d rouse herself, and welcome back the world she’d shunned. Welcome back the world she’d thought had shunned her. This time, as she turned the corner, she only saw his smooth face and charming, light smile in her mind’s eye. There she saw his dark hair glistening from the same rain that had soaked through her clothes and wet her soul. Whet her appetite for the crazy freedom that she drank in thirstily with the rainwater flowing down her cheek. Her burned image of him leaving, she smiled the same sweet smile when they first met. When he first told her of their life to be spent together.

Her knew found freedom in hand, Jane began the long walk home.

OK....
I wrote this story a while back(actually, I think it was during the first month of of our first semester, so let's just say it was a little longer than "awhile back".I felt I had to explain it a bit because the plot's not clearly stated enough(I'm wokring on that), and it seems to place more importance on the words and emotions. So. It's about this very ordinary girl who doesn't really look forward to everyday life. She's not depressed or suicidal or anything- she just starts to believe that the kind of life she reads about in those 'they all lived happily ever after'novels isn't for her. She's taken it for granted that she'll probably never really fall in love and that nothing exciting will evet happen to her, and she's accepted this notion that the world is a bitter, harsh place to be in-end of story.

Then she meets this guy, and he starts making her beleive in these dreams and basically start believeing that it's catully possible for people to be happy-as in actually, genuinely happy.

Except when things start to go wrong in the relationship(it can be for any reason, say- he's slightly emotionally overbearing and a bit of a bully in that sense), and she wants to leave, she can't seem to find the strength to do so. She's tried multiple times, but like he expects, she always just comes back-sometimes not even making it that far.

This is the last time- this time it actually works, so in a bitter-sweet sense she's free. I can't stress this enough-, I really tried to move away from the good guy, bad guy idea in the story. Her so called "significant other" isn't a bad person. he's a pain at times, but it's not him she's fighting. At risk of sounding melodramatic and cliched, she's fighting that thing inside her that's telling her she's not worth anything on her own. That she needs to be part of the relationship to be someone and that she can't do it(i.e. she can't leave). SO when she finally leaves, it's a bitter-sweet ending becuase she's left him, but she's also proved to herself that she could get out of a bad relationship and still be a whole human being-and be worth a whole human being. Hope you liked it.