Impasse

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
-Maya Angelou

I have a story inside me. Actually, I have a lot of stories inside me. I wish I had the ambition to get them out and make them something more than fickle ideas with random details scattered everywhere like a mirror shattered on the floor. I don't know what's wrong with me. I know the stories. I know their characters and their backgrounds and how it will all end, but I can never make myself sit down and get them out.

I think I'm scared. I think that I'm so petrified that I will never achieve my dream of becoming a published author that I'm not even trying. I hate that. I don't care if I fail, so long as someone reads my stories - so long as someone remembers me as an author. That's all I really want to be. That is my main goal in life. Not so much to be a writer, but to be remembered. I think that writing is going to be my legacy, I just have to get the stories out first.

This morning I started writing a story about a miserable woman. She has two kids and a husband that is never home because he's a cheater. She knows this very well, but she doesn't do anything about it. She wants to leave him, but not the life he's provided for her and their children. Part of her loves him, but part of her wants to kill him in his sleep. She realizes that her life has been unraveling for years. She flashes back to high school. She was well liked, pretty, happy - everything one can hope to be in high school. And then her boyfriend dies. And then her best friend goes to college thousands of miles away, and she never gets the chance to tell him she loves him. She has always regretted letting him go, and blames her reluctance to tell him for her miserable life. She wants to get away, but she won't.

A few weeks ago I came up with an idea about a coffee shop and the woman who runs it. She is lonely, but she is content with her life. She's had one great tragedy, and great joys, she is simply going through life, becoming more and more bitter with every passing year, hoping that something will come along and change everything. One day, another woman comes into the coffee shop. She looks miserable and worn down - as if life has put her through the ringer and left her without the strength to go on doing anything but going through the motions. The owner takes pity on her and they get to talking. Over the next few weeks, the worn down woman tells her story - the great love of her life found her right before she was about to make a big mistake. He rescued her, and she gave him her heart. They were married and had the American dream, a perfect son, a dog, and a picket fence. And then his past caught up with him, just as their son was diagnosed with Leukemia. He went to prison for manslaughter and killed himself after just three months of his life sentence. Her son is holding on but fading fast - he needs a new treatment and the bills are piling up. The owner reveals that in college, her best friend was killed in a robbery and the killer set free. It made her lose faith in the world and shut down. She stopped talking to her friends, stopped calling her family, and eventually dropped out of school to work in a coffee shop full time. She hates her life, but doesn't know how to let people in. Eventually, the owner ends up donating bone marrow to the other woman's son and giving her a job. When asked what the other woman can do in return, the owner tells her to take good care of the coffee shop. She needs to go out into the world and find out what she's been missing out on.

I have a thousand more ideas, but absolutely no drive. I hate it. I want to be someone. I want to do something memorable before I die. I want to write books that touch peoples' hearts. I want to be charming like Caprice Crane and provocative like Jodi Picoult, consistent like James Patterson and beloved like Maya Angelou. I want to do something great. I just don't know how.

If you actually read this, congratulations if your eyes don't hurt and you're not desperately confused about my rambling. I love you.

-Helen
The girl who can spend an hour nonstop writing a long rambling blog about her ideas, but come to a complete blank when it comes to making her ideas something more.