Sunday, November 22, 2009

well i got something to say, my friends. i will never lay down without a fight.

i've been reading Donald Miller's "A million Miles in a Thousand Years". and i mostly feel like i'm looking in a mirror. or reading about myself. reading about my family...

"Robert McKee put down his coffee cup and leaned onto the podium. He put his hand on his forehead and wiped back his gray hair. He said, "You have to take your character to the place where he just can't take it anymore." He looked at us with a tenderness we hadn't seen in him before. "You've been there haven't you? You've been out on the ledge. The marriage is over now; the dream is over now; nothing good can come from this."
He got louder. "Writing a story isn't about making your peaceful fantasties come true. The whole point of the story is the character arc. You didn't think joy could change a person, did you? Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over. But it's conflict that changes a person."
His voice was like thunder now. "You put your characters through hell. You put them through hell. That's the only way we change."

a couple of pages later:

"...I wasn't numb anymore. I was allowed to feel the brunt of it. The bones penetrated my chest in a sudden rip, emptying a body of blood down my shirt and onto my lap. The blood pooled in the lap of my pants and seeped into the carpet in my hotel room. I clasped my hand over my heart and knelt between the bed and the television and rolled onto the floor and cried out to God a lamenting demand that he would come and save me from the sorrow that, for the immensity of it, I could only attribute to him in the first place. I didn't want to learn whatever it was he wanted to teach me. I cried out to him an angry petititon for rescue. I doubted him and needed him at the same time. God seemed to me, in that moment, a cruel father burning a scar into my skin with his cigarette. And yet I knew he was the only one with the power to make the pain go away."

i understand nothing in this moment.
my heart feels like it's in a coma.
and further, if there was any hope left for love in the romantic sense, i assure you it's dead.
my trust has been shot down within inches of obliteration.
so, good luck with that.
and i hate this year with a passion i can't even begin to express.
i'm tired of being strong.

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