I don’t remember the last time I sat around moping because it was Valentine’s Day. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it was probably the last time someone made me help pick out flowers or a present for someone else and said something like, “Now which do you like best? If it were you getting this, what would you want?” because you know it’s got that underlying implication: “Wow, that sucks that no one is doing anything for you because no one loves you, but would you just mind pretending for a few minutes?” You know, basically rubbing salt in a wound (perhaps after peeling back most of your skin) before slowly dipping you into acid. BUT… even that hasn’t really happened in a while (the assistant shopper part… not the salt and acid thing).
Last week I was sitting at my computer. It was somewhere around 2 a.m., and I’d been looking at that stupid blinking cursor for about an hour, but I just couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to be writing. I was starting to get really tired and I asked myself, “Why does this have to be so hard sometimes?” Even as I asked it, I knew the answer. Nothing worth having is ever easy and sometimes it takes a LONG time. And then, in a feat of meta-awesomeness, I directed my thoughts at my own brain.
“And you. Why do you pull me in with all of these great ideas and make me feel like I’ve got something to work with before inexplicably turning on me and making me feel like I can’t do anything to please you?”
This went on for a little while longer whilst I wrote absolutely nothing. Just before I fell asleep, I scribbled “writing is a relationship” on a Post-It note and left it next to my computer. I fell asleep wondering what people would do if I changed my Facebook relationship status to say that I’m “in a relationship and it’s complicated.” They’d obviously ask, “With whom?” …because they all use proper grammar. “With writing,” I’d reply. Naturally, they would all assume that I’d really lost it this time. Even more so than when I created a Facebook account for my dogs.
