Killing Me

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Warning: The following story, if it can be classified as such, is highly unconventional (you’ll understand if you decide to read it), although I believe that the message it tries to convey comes across more effectively this way. It contains coarse language and sensitive subject matter. Furthermore, it is purely fictional, and in no way reflects my life or expresses how I feel.

Please, tell me what you think...



KILLING ME

I don’t really talk that much. I prefer to write. I think I’ve written more words than I’ve said in my entire life. Not that I’m any good at it, though; it’s just easier.

I have time, for one thing. I can spend hours writing and making sense of my thoughts, but sometimes it’s just so hard to get my damn point across when I’m talking. It’s always been that way. If you’re right-handed, and you can, like, paint pictures with your right hand, why would you try it with your left? So then you keep doing everything with your right hand, and eventually you realize how fucking useless you would be if, say, your right hand was mashed up in some freak car accident. That’s what it’s like to me with writing, if it makes any sense. Just give me some time, and I can paint some grisly shit with my words. I just haven’t practised enough with oral communication than I should have, I guess, and now this is how things have turned out. I envy all the ambidextrous bastards out there.

But, like I said, it’s just easier. I mean, I’ve been getting more and more crap to write about every single day. I’m kind of going off on a tangent, here. I know that, right now, this may not be making a lot of sense to you. This would be a lot simpler if you’d read my journals.

I started keeping those journals in the ninth grade. It was actually my high school agenda that I was writing in. I mean, I did pay for it, and never bothered to take note of the homework, so I had to figure out something to do with it. So, yeah, I turned it into a journal, and I wrote down all the shit that happened every week. I did the same thing with my agendas for the next two years, so it was really no surprise when I saw all the “needs improvement” under “homework completion” on my report cards.

Now I’m obviously not going to tell you all the details, but I think it’s best if I tell you at least some of it, and put this into perspective.

First off, I’ve never really liked the fact that I’ve been born into a stepfamily. Sometimes, I wished that what’s-her-face had never left dad to begin with. I would never have been born, that way. It made everyone bitter when he married my mom, and put me at the receiving end of all their frustration. Well, mostly my step-siblings. No, it’s not that they were a pain in the ass or anything...but just because they were my half-brother and half-sister didn’t mean that they had to treat me so indifferently! Sometimes, I wish that they’d been a pain in the ass, like normal brothers and sisters. I hardly even mentioned them in my journals because of just that – they were never really there for me; there was nothing much to say about them. I had to deal with everything by myself.

And why does dad have to be a fucking neurosurgeon? I mean, fine and dandy for him, but sometimes I wonder what things would be like if he were...a teacher, or a police officer, or I don’t know – anything that would have made him less of a pretentious jerk. I mean, with a background like his in biology, and chemistry, and who-gives-a-shit-istry, you’d think he’d be smart enough to understand that people are unique, and that he can’t expect every one of his kids to follow in his footsteps.

Sure, he’s been paying for our education. He’s been pushing us to try harder, to strive for excellence. I guess he’s just doing what he thought was best. He gave us all a chance to learn, but he needs to learn to give others a chance.

He doesn’t even know me. No one really knows me. I’ve never even had a best friend. I don’t know what it’s like to have that one person you can just go to, and say exactly how you feel, and describe every one of your problems, and still not feel like an idiot.

Instead, I have a bunch of haters. There’s this one girl...she’s the fucking protagonist of half my journals. I don’t know...it’s something about the way I look, or dress, or something, that she didn’t like. And if she doesn’t like me, then basically no one is allowed to like me. That’s the way it is. I never told anyone about this – it’s kind of embarrassing – and now I’ve endured her bullshit for almost two years.

There are other people, too, like her ugly troll boyfriend. He took one of my journals right out of my open locker, once, and never gave it back. He read it to a bunch of other people I didn’t really like, until they had laughed all the energy out of their systems. Then, he burned it.

After that, this bulimic chick he knew decided to spread a rumour that I was gay. It stuck.

There’s a lot more crap that I don’t want to bore you with. I don’t know what else to tell you. I mean, it’s all there in my journals. Read it yourself, if you even care at all. Besides, now that I think about it, I really don’t want to remember any of it.

I don’t know what made me think it, but for some reason I felt like writing in those journals and then hiding them under my bed would make everything go away. As if I could pull out all the memories from my head and throw them away into those notebooks, where I would never have to see them again.

I was wrong! I’m so stupid. It only made it worse. You can’t suppress this kind of shit...I learned that. A little too late, unfortunately. After watching those journals pile up over the years, it made me realize that I’ve been robbed of my life, and it’s been tearing me up for too long.

If you have a soul, then I know that this is hurting you...but it’s killing me.

I can’t imagine what you must be thinking or saying, if anything. But you have to understand, it’s just too hard for me to reach out to anyone. I wouldn’t know what to say to them, and I just couldn’t find it in myself to let them read my journals. I’m too self-conscious, and I’ve always been like that. I’m afraid of what people will think of me, so I just hide. And if I just kept bottling it up like this, trust me – I know I’ll eventually go out of my mind, and will end up hurting somebody. So don’t you or anyone even dare call me selfish after I’m gone.

All I ever wanted was to fucking love and be loved, and to make people respect me for who I am. Do I even have to say that? I mean, isn’t that what everyone wants?

People need to realize that everything they do and everything they say plants a seed in another person’s head. And when that seed grows, it’s either going to turn into something amazing and bear a whole lot of fruit, or it’s going to eat that person up from the inside out. And it may even end up devouring everyone else, too.

That’s it, then. People planted weeds in my head.

So, I have to do this. I’m fucking scared, but what else can I do? I don’t see any other way out. You probably disagree, but does it really matter? Are you even going do anything about it?

You can try and stop me, if you really care.



Sincerely,










~~~




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Points 1040
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Wow. This was good.

I didn't see any grammer errors.

I loved the way you wrote it. At first I thought it was just some kind of story, but then when I got to the end, I realized it was a note. A suicide note, perhaps?

Great job. The way it's written keeps the reader guessing, as to if it's a note of some kind or just rambling in some kids journal. [That's the sort of impression I got from it anyway. At first, i thought it was a journal entry of some kind, but then I realized it was a note.]

Good job!




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This is an interesting approach to a common storyline, and I think your take here is definitely worth continuing with.

One thing that bugged me a little was the abrasiveness of it.

I guess when I read your warning at the top, I was expecting something a little bit courser, a little more raw, and I wouldn't say that this quite met my expectations. You have a voice, certainly, and I think the profanity is definitely used to increase the distinctive quality of your narrator, but I don't think you've gone far enough. It just seems scaled down--like you could have gone so much farther but you stepped back instead.

You haven't showed us much: it reads like a personal essay, with too much vague, "my life really sucks" introspection. Your narrator is telling us all about him. It's a scenario. "What if there was this kid and all these things happened and...." There is no shock here, nothing unexpected to make the reader realize something beyond what you have flat out told us.

My big problem with the format is just that, I think. It's all telling. No showing. We aren't actively engaged in this story because we aren't making any inferences. It's not a story that the reader gets to participate in or feel invested in.

I think you could probably rehab this, because your writing style and overall syntax are excellent. Good work!
Paramedic
Writer
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Nije vas zahvatila druga kušnja osim ljudske. Ta vjeran je Bog: neæe pustiti da budete kušani preko svojih sila, nego æe s kušnjom dati i ishod da možete izdržati.




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Wow... that's probably the only word i can use right now. It was to the point and scattered at the same time. This should be published because i feel allot of people would be thrilled to have someone as unique as you in the writing business. The only thing that confused me was that i didn't quiet understand who she was at the beginning. I mean yes she hid from people and didn't like her family and all that but who was she on the outside? You could have gone deeper with the character rather than showing us what she thought or what she hated. What did she love? What did she miss? What did she dream about? It was a little dark. You must remember a book is always good when there is a light at the end of the tunnel. In this story the tunnel kept going and i never saw a light to look forward to. But really well done.

Can't wait to hear more from you :)

sara13




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Hey,

Very nice. This story reminds me sooo much of "http://inkpop.com/projects/12430/cover-me-again/read-project/?chapterid=19290#chapter" which is not bad because if you scroll down to Jasmine Bells on that page, you'll see just how much I love that story.

Anyway, Shepard said that the cursing should have been stepped up but I think it should have been stepped down. I'm no saint when it comes to cursing but in this it just became random and irrelevant. There was no need to put that extra "shit" or "damn".

Another problem I saw was everything this character (still not sure whether it's a girl or a boy, but I'm leaning on guy because you said the bulimic girl said that he was gay and gay refers to boys) said was shallow and complete telling vs. showing. What I got from this piece was "My siblings hate me and I'm an outcast in school and I feel like I'm drowning in my self-pity and blah, blah, blah." Give us more to work on, I mean no one is a complete leper. Everyone's got friends or at least people that they know well and like. You have a cliche topic but I'm hoping you take a different spin on it. :)

Your grammar was pretty good, just tiny little things that can be fixed if you looked over it again. Overall, good job.

~Jas
I am nothing
but a mouthful of 'sorry's, half-hearted
apologies that roll of my tongue, smoothquick, like 'r's
or maybe like pocket candy
that's just a bit too sweet.

~*~



"Storybooks and roleplays are just for fun!" To which I say: of course! But why only "just"? Sometimes fun is found in the full-send. Sometimes fun is found in taking it seriously, and aiming to do it with excellence!
— soundofmind