People, Relationships, Emotion

You know what I’m interested in and will always be interested in?

People.  I like to be alone and I spend a lot of time alone but my mind and imagination are filled with people — people I know, people I used to know, people whose words I read, fictitious people, actors, strangers.  I will always be endlessly fascinated by people.  That’s why I don’t understand the fascination with zombies and vampires.  Have you ever had a conversation with a 10 year-old girl?  Better than Godzilla.

I read two great stories about regular people recently.  One was a short story about a woman who is told her husband has died and she’s…relieved.  Her relief is interesting and the ending of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” was priceless.

The other story, Story About a Family, is just that.  A cleanly written story about a family.   No fancy storytelling gimmicks.  The author, Erika Schimdt, simply tells us who this family is and how they relate to one another.

That’s another thing I’m interested in — relationships.  I agree with author Julia Fierro who said in an interview:

I will always write about relationships. I am inspired by psychology and emotion, conflict and drama. The world is most significant to me as a web of relationships. If a story isn’t filtered through a psychological lens, you’ll have trouble keeping my attention. Humanity’s individual, and collective, fears and needs and desires are the only religion I’ve got and I am obsessively devoted.

The story I have been writing in my head for months is about a relationship between two really disparate characters and what happens when one of them doesn’t acknowledge how much that relationship means to the both of them.  I want to read that story.  That’s why I came up with it.  I just have the title though — “Yes, Anastasia”.  Don’t steal it.

I was inspired to write this post because…I’m challenging myself to post every day this week and also because of emotion, another thing that will always interest me.  Specifically, the unbridled emotion expressed in a post on the blog You Should See My Scars:

I don’t want to be depressed anymore.  I don’t want to have anxiety or depression.  i want to find love.

yea I’m saying it.  Im saying what every 24 yr old guy isn’t supposed to say.  I don’t wanna fuck around.  I want to find love.  I want to love someone and I want someone to love me in return.

There.  Fuck you if you think that sounds stupid.

Why else are we alive?

I love the raw honesty of that.  It is so endearing and fascinating to me.  I think everyone in their 20s wants what this guy wants and thinks the way he thinks about love.  That it’s something to find.  I think love is something to be aware of.  You don’t make it happen.  You let it happen.  It’s not “sitting behind a tree or under a rock,” as Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote.  It’s something you create.  It’s self-generated.  Romantic love can’t touch self-generated love.

Why are we alive?  To learn to open our eyes to things that are right in front of you.

MM