Prompt #116
Poor, pitiful me
Good morning.
Here’s a photo of five people being chased by something, or I don’t know, maybe they’re trying to catch something? Maybe they’re just running? For… fun? Are they looking for shade? Is it “first one back to the car gets the last beer in the cooler”?
Whatever else this photo is, it’s also my attempt to portray friends having a good old time together. Which kind of, sort of, goes with the story (below). We do the best we can around here with the tools we are given.
Quick Note: I’m visiting a new grand baby on the east coast at the moment and, wouldn’t you know, she thinks the world revolves around her! (It does.) So I’m popping in here quickly to give you today’s prompt and will get to your stories as soon as Little Miss Perfection gives me a chance. Babies! Good thing they’re so cute!
Here’s…
…a short thing I wrote recently on the subject of loneliness. Well, it started with the subject of loneliness and then it morphed and grew and went other places. In the end, I suppose it’s mostly about being an anxious person. (Who, me?) Anyway, here you go:
Perfect Visit
I am not lonely, but I am lonely-adjacent. I am almost lonely. I am on the verge of loneliness. I am afraid of being lonely. I have friends, but I am certain I do not have enough friends. I feel that other people have more friends than I do. I think I want more friends and then I remember that I don’t have room for more friends, I don’t have time to see the friends I already have. Also, friends make me nervous. I heard from Nancy yesterday, she says she hopes I come visit soon and stay for a few days, she wants to make me eggs and toast. And I love hearing this, it’s enough to hear it, must I really go there and eat the eggs? We have friends arriving on Friday and they are spending the night and already I am wondering what we will do with them all afternoon. On Saturday, we are driving them to the airport and then having dinner at a couple’s house. I don’t know this couple very well and I don’t know their house. Do we bring flowers and chocolates? Are we the old people who believe you can’t show up empty-handed? What will we talk about? Will we have to reciprocate and invite them to our house? Went to the hospital to visit my friend with the brain hemorrhage. She was being readied for a shower, so I just yelled hello from the hallway and went home. And now she knows I made the effort. In that way, it was the perfect visit.
Okay. Your turn. I will explain.
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write a story that starts with a declarative sentence about your character’s state of mind.
My story starts with this declaration: “I am not lonely.” Yours could begin: “I do like not other people.” Or “I am a very honest person.” Or, “I am not a fan of public transportation.” Or “I never loved my wife.” Or “Out of principle, he refused to speak to his neighbor.”
If you need more to spark you, take a look at these words, each of which can be used to describe someone: careless, cold, agreeable, dismissive, extravagant, jealous, irritable, reasonable, productive, shy, stressed, selfish, cautious, assertive.
See where the declaration leads you.
I hope this is enough to get your imagination moving. Be like me: do your best with the tools you’ve been given!
See you next time!
(Attempt to keep stories under 400 words if posting in the comments. My brain can’t process more than that at one time.)
Ever since I read Jane Kenyon’s poem Otherwise, I’ve thought how I might be otherwise myself. Or going back a ways, might have been otherwise than I was, that got me to this point where I am now, when I’m thinking I might be different, or might have been, and still could be if only. It matters where you start from I guess. We start alone, and add on from there. At least that’s the plan someone wrote. I never gave it much thought. For all the thinking I thought I was doing I never gave anything much thought. Not that changed anything anyway. To get otherwise you have to start somewhere, but that was the mystery, just as any otherwise now is a mystery. Seems like it’s one mystery after another, meanwhile, have a baby, fall in love, circumnavigate mountains and the produce aisle… Other people seem to do it. Like Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall made love and wrote poetry on a Vermont farm until Jane died. The ultimate otherwise there. And Don sat in a blue chair looking out the window at his barn and fields, until finally, he died. Or are all the others only illusion? What otherwise, I ask, would be anything other than this self same old mystery, and I don’t have an answer.
I have no regrets - that’s what I say when the subject comes up. I say it out of philosophical conviction. I believe we are born with certain karma and what we do and what happens to us is what’s fated to happen. My brain believes this but my heart isn’t buying it. For example, I deeply regret that I lacked courage with the opposite sex. I was so shy, so terrified of being rejected, that I took no initiative. In fact, much of my youth was spent observing life rather than participating in it. You’re only young once and I squandered many of my best years out of timidity.
I regret the times I was cruel. It may have only been a handful, but they haunt me. In eighth grade I told Susan that Tony wanted to break up with her. I did it out of the sheer joy of inflicting hurt on someone I didn’t like. Susan’s face fell before it remade itself into a mask of scorn. Then there was cruelty by passivity. I want to think of myself as someone who would befriend the lonely and stick up for those who were picked on, but I never did. I wasn’t the ringleader but I followed along, avoiding the friendless oddballs for fear they would contaminate me with their sadness.
I am happily married. I have a child who loves me and a good job. Everything turned out ok, I guess. And yet karma and philosophical conviction be damned, I have regrets. Plenty of regrets.