Don't Find Me

Chelarose wrote:I didn’t want him to find me.

For the umpteenth time, I looked over my shoulder to see if he was following me. Despite the fact that it was too late for him to have noticed where I was going, paranoia insisted that I was underestimating Karl. I hadn’t wanted to go on this hike. That fact made me feel guilty. Why? Also, no transition between this sentence and the next. Fix. Love should be beautiful. This wasn’t beautiful. It felt like a stretched-out moment in time. I wasn’t the only one who wanted to end this relationship, to put my life back into play, but I was scared. What? I don't really get that sentence. After spending this much time belonging to someone, the thought of being single seemed foreign. Did I remember how to be single? I hated myself for agreeing to go on this hike. Time alone with Karl I took out "and me" because it was superfluous. was dangerous. The mild conversation made me remember why I wanted to break up with him. I could talk with my friends for hours. Talking with Karl took more energy than the hike, as if I was straining for every new word in the conversation so that we wouldn’t run out of stuff to talk about. This is a really big paragraph and I'm not really sure how to cut it up, but you should cut it.

I wondered if that’s why my parents got divorced; maybe they ran out of stuff to talk about so they decided to argue instead. Arguments were something new and you hardly had to work for them if you fired yourself up enough. However, arguments hurt, and people could only take so much hurt. I was too young to sacrifice hurting myself to keep a relationship going. I don't really like this paragraph. It feels like filler. I mean, I know it's kind of not but this is all drabble-ish.

Running away from Karl was probably wrong but I couldn’t take anymore of his words. Every word he said made it harder to talk to him, every sentence he finished was one less thing to talk about and I didn’t want to run out of conversations today. But leaving him made her run out of conversations anyway. We could be happy in our land of love for a little while longer if he only stopped talking. I just wanted to be happy. I really don't follow your character's train of thought. She doesn't want them to have no conversation but she doesn't want him to talk either. What? This isn’t what happiness was but I still had time left to pretend. You have thoroughly lost me by now. He told me to wait on the big boulder next to the tree with the raven’s nest. My feet were tired and I didn’t want to continue walking. So he told me to take a break while he tried to find cell phone service so that his sister knew to be waiting by the entrance to the path by the time we made our way out. :( If she's tired then why did he ask her to walk to some other place? Why couldn't they just sit where they were? He used so many words, so many sentences and I felt our relationship speeding away. I used to like that he was articulate. The next guy I dated, if I dated again, would be quiet, that way it would take longer for our conversations to get this stale.

When he was far enough away from the boulder, I crept into the trees and walked in further through the trees I'm not liking these two phrases. Revise., following the sound of running water. The trees gave way to a river. I knew further up the trail was a waterfall, but it was late in the afternoon and if we didn’t head back soon we’d end up walking in the dark. For some reason my feet had stopped hurting as soon as I walked away from Karl and I hardly cared that the branches I had had to walk through had scarred my arms. Scars are wounds that didn't really heal completely. I don't think the verb is working there. The view was beautiful, more beautiful than love. I could learn to be single again if I could keep finding this kind of beauty. But what was beauty without anyone to share it with? Was it even real? The past few sentences sound like hallmark cards. Care to revise? I loved the sound of rushing water; I found it exciting for some reason, and it made my heart run quicker. As I sat down and brought my knees to my chest in a childish manner, I looked around at the green and yellow hues of the leaves under the bright sun, and the murky blue-green colour of the water. The colours soothed me. Soothing colours and stimulating sounds, oh how I wished it could still exist if I was single. ...This girl seems obsessed with having a relationship.

My mom saw no beauty in the world anymore. Love was beautiful, she said, but I think she might have been wrong. There was no beauty in a life where you talked alone, laughed alone, cried alone, ate alone, walked alone, or did anything without someone at your side to share all those moments with you, she said, and I believed her because it didn’t seem to me like she lead a life worth living. Her life without love was miserable. I don’t think I had been miserable before I started dating Karl, two years ago. When the divorce happened, three months after we started going out, I wasn’t so sure. My mom was miserable, so surely that’s what I’d become, right? I’d rather see my life in colours like greens and yellows, instead of the life she saw in black and white. Biting my lip, I hugged my knees closer because I knew what was going to happen. I would go back and Karl and I would go back home. Little by little we’d keep using up the only things we had left to say to each other and then it’d be over. Then I’d be alone just like mother, who doesn’t know how to be alone. Did I know how to be alone? Could I know how to be alone if I didn’t know how to be single? It was too much of a paradox to be possible. Honestly at this point your character has lost my sympathy. She seems too weak and I can't relate to her. You have to at least let her garner my sympathy by showing us why instead of telling us all this in a huge block of text like this one. I was scared of that, of being alone, of not knowing how to be alone, and wanting to know how to be alone so much that I was miserable. That scared me enough that I’d be willing to pretend I’m in love, willing to pretend I was happy, willing to hike through forest, and reach for words that could only save me for a few more seconds so that I’d have a reason to pretend. I wasn’t ready to lose a life of colour and sounds; I wasn’t ready to be miserable.

I wasn’t ready for him to find me.


This is a rough draft of something I just wrote on a whim. I hope you enjoy it, criticism is welcome and appreciated.

Chelarose,

Overall, I loved it! The only thing that bugged me was the paragraphs. Personally, I prefer writing with smaller paragraphs than you used. About halfway through longer ones, I get bored (often times no matter how good the writing is) and I want to skip through the rest of it and simply start at the next one. In some books this has caused me to miss vital information and I end up backtracking and rereading a lot.

Hope this helps!

Hey Chelarose! You have a very beautiful username.

Now, for your story! I found many of the thoughts very interesting and it was, all in all, written well... always a good thing! To make it better, consider adding more physical description. No, not necessarily description of what she looks like... that's probably not that important. But I would like to see some description of the hike that she's going on. After all, that seems like that's a highly important thing! What sort of terrain is she going through? Is it safe to be alone? Maybe something happens to her? I don't know... but the main story is in her head, and I think it would be much more awesome if something outside her as well.