Yesterday I tried to write fiction, and failed again. I am too accustomed to writing realities and I blame it on you. After two years, I still write with the same notion that the things that happen to us everyday are what make a story real.
I used to think Spain changed me as a writer. I always think different places change my writing. I don’t think I changed. I think I still write the same way. Only there are no stories now. There is my Mac notebook, a house that doesn’t quite belong to me, and my father who washes the dishes silently. I ask him to wait, to let me wash them later. I insist that he is tired from work. Just a few minutes ago, he was falling asleep on the magazine. He is just as stubborn as my mother and goes ahead and places the dishes in the washer.
The day is hot, and only getting more unbearable as the sun sets. I have had my coffee. I am not in the mood to do anything productive. I feel stale. I am savoring life, but I feel that my writing is failing me. I don’t like to use the word fail, but I’ve already done it three times.
I wonder if I have tried hard enough to be a good friend. I wonder if I have made sense. Maybe I have said too much. Maybe I am confusing. Maybe I should have…
I am angry because I feel that I am losing you. I am angry that I cannot make you see. I have talked too much about what my life is and what my needs are as a dissatisfied 20 year-old. I have had expectations. Too many of them. I am angry that you don’t talk to me. I am angry that you think before you hit send. I am angry that I am talk, and you always change your mind about disclosure. I am angry that I never know what it is you want, what it is I can give. I am angry that I don’t know my place in your life. But I am not angry enough to forget and give up and stop. I am not angry enough to stay angry. I am not angry enough to move far away. I don’t care when you will talk, but I am not giving up. I will be writing. I will be waiting. I won’t give up.
Yesterday I tried. Today, I am going to try harder. This is what you told me. This is what you said many times over. I thought my goal in life would be to change the world with writing. But I realized how unrealistic that would be. So now, I am only writing to better myself and to inspire and to feel happy. I think that if I make one person smile, then I have changed something in a very small way. I am asking you to do the same, to stop wanting to change everything that is fucked up. I am asking that you start living, without boundaries, but with joy.
I don’t want to change the world. I just want to write. I come from a family that has wanted to change a whole country. I come from a family that has had high expectations, idealistic dreams and grandeur imaginations. I am not like them. I have learned that if you live your whole life just to change the world, you forget to live for yourself, and instead you become trapped in a prison of impossible dreams.
I know what to say and I am saying it: people may not give a damn or thank everyone who helps them, but there is always someone whose life is changed along the way, and that is what makes all the difference.
I am going to think of a new story line now, and make a cup of tea, and think of realities.