i am shooting for acrobat, but would settle for burlesque dancer or clown

[emerald_boa]

Well, I'm a pretty fucked up individual, and it doesn't look like I'm going to figure out how to be well-adjusted anytime soon. I'm not convinced that anyone will ever really want to read my writing. I'm among the least socially comfortable people I know. I once started a barfight by accident. I make people cry without meaning to do it. I will

Comments

[beneficentbeast]

For what it's worth I really enjoy your writing. But hey, go where you think your strengths are, do what you gotta do.

...dunno how serious you are in this but just assuming that you're being serious at least about your writing.

[emerald_boa]

No, I'm not kidding, there is actually a circus. The school puts it on every spring. I want to be in it, and I'm definitely going to practices. I don't think regular strenuous exercise is quite the panacea for mood problems that some people claim it is, but it does help. Especially if you're prone to dissociating from your body like I am. You have to know where your physical self is to turn a cartwheel. It kind of forces you to be your whole, real being instead of some dualistic thing where you feel like a soul or a mind stuck in a lump of meat that doesn't have much to do with the rest

[spacklegeek]

I could see you as a circus girl.

Remarkably well, actually.

But I also love reading your writing, for what that's worth. I was just thinking about this last night, wondering if that was something I read in a book somewhere, or if that was something you wrote. (Glad to see it's something you wrote. Please, I would love more. I'll write more if you write more, eh?)

I've had the idea to write about what happens to Red Molly after the song ends. But maybe you'd actually write it...

[emerald_boa]

Since that's a story that I'd been completely making up off the top of my head as I went along, I'll probably write more when I know enough of what happens next to fill another page or two. Thanks for reminding me, though. I forget about these things a lot. I start projects and wander off and they never get finished and they sit around taking up space (real or digital) and collecting dust for months or years. :)

I remember in high school you wrote a short story based on Tracey Chapman's song Fast Car , and it won some sort of contest. I want to say you read it aloud at a Delta assembly, but I might have imagined that part.

(I like that I seem like a circus girl, at least to you.)

[spacklegeek]

:D

I actually did read it aloud at an ATM. It won 1st place in the African American Read-In's Creative Writing category. Um. I posted it here.

(You seem like a lot of things, but a circus girl is one of them. At least to me.)

[emerald_boa]

2003. That was the year I bought the first CD I ever bought, and the first CD I ever liked that didn't belong to my parents. I was shorter than I am now, and skinnier. I dyed my hair pink because I wasn't brave enough to actually talk to anyone. I wished I had a boyfriend because I didn't know any better. I cut classes to sit in the library and systematically read through Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies.

It's strange how much I still feel like that person in many ways, how much I've changed in some, how much of that year I can't actually remember very well. You never think "wow, I'm really incredibly young," no matter how young you are, but in retrospect it's always painfully clear that you were tiny and naive and a child, you know? My future self will be having similar thoughts about the me-of-here in 2017. Me-of-here will take it as a compliment that she seems like a lot of things.

But yeah, I think it's cool that your story is one of the things I do remember. I thought I'd never be able to write as well as

[beneficentbeast]

Ok cool, I just wasn't entirely sure because people talk about joining the circus as kind of a joke trope. That's sounds like a really great opportunity for you though, go for it.

As for your writing, I second Carrie when I say I really enjoy reading it but there's nothing wrong with trying new stuff and expanding your skills either :)