Write More, Right Now!

I've been getting on myself for not writing a whole lot now a days. It used to be my sanctuary, my safe, my warm blanket at the end of a shitty day, food when the hunger strike was done-you get the point. I was always writing when I was younger. I had a million and one ideas flowing through my brain and I wanted to remember every single one of them and not let one go to waste.
This lasted until a year after high school. I didn't have anymore boring classes to sit through and take advantage of the time by writing random stories, poems and personal complaints. Now for some reason it feels like a chore. I think a lot of it has to do with my not practicing much anymore. I've lost a huge chunk of my vocabulary, which stifles me from continuing out of sheer disappointment with myself. I dropped out of high school right before turning 18 and didn't get my GED until 5 years later.

I've always had this thing with friends where I guess I was perceived as stupid or something. My closest friends would figure they were helping me out by saying "well no, you're not book smart, but you're street smart". There were more than 10 occasions I came home crying from school because I was sick of being dumb. I just didn't get things as quickly as other kids did, bottom line. I was also being taken out of schools, and thrown into another one left and right. It's no wonder I didn't graduate on time, and I was already at a continuation school. Where else was I going to go? I never thought I'd go to college.

I thought I was going to write for the rest of my life and some how someone would find me irresistibly funny and entertaining and I would get published and my whole life would be a glamorous faire hidden away in some cabin in the middle of Italy, smoking my life away thinking of another story as ground breaking as my last memoir. I have these fantasies all the time. My favorite one is.....should I be telling you these things? Oh hell why not?

My ultimate fantasy is to (I need a time machine) live in the 1900's during a a time when exploration and science flourished, when insects were finally being dissected and plans put under a microscope. I see myself in the middle of a rain forest somewhere in the middle of India, hidden in a little shack made of bamboo and giant fallen leaves. I have a pet monkey that gathers food and makes my wine, he also is of great company to me. I am there for research, I have recently been banned from using anymore government money to explore, due to the fact that the doctor has told me for my health that I should stay in the states and recover from the snake bite I had survived in the Amazon.
I am researching a new type of plant, it's satin and hairy to the touch, although it's bristles are so microscopic with a human eye you cannot see it. The specimen sprouts flowers from all sides of the head making one big purple flower. Every petal has it's own color, pink, green, blue, yellow, yet together it's the perfect blend to make a light lavender purple. Not possible you say? That is why I am here! Science, love!

My monkey, Seymour, changes the labels of the tiny glass vases lined up on a wooden stock each with a tiny bit of water at the bottom and a sprouting flower of the one in question. He's taking each flower to rotate to it's appropriate day, I am on the other side of the 10 ft shack, drawing the insides of the flower I had just cut open. With my feather pen and ink well I have been trained to fill in the lines quite right, but the lack of protein I've been consuming is making my hands shake.

I am at  the verge of a huge break through when-I sweat. I let a single drop of sweat fall on to the findings I have been recording. The entire drawing bleeds together, the ink washes away as the brine sweeps the pages shore. I jump up with a grab at the head and scream as loud as I can. My monkey then hurries to my bed made up of branches, twigs and feathers to find my opium pipe. Once located he swings to my side and lights my fire. "Good Seymour" As I fall asleep.

So yeah, I do have a lot more fantasies of living in the middle of no where and my only excuse for being alone is the fact that no one lives within 100 miles of myself. This all being said I'm sure you're wondering where it all came from.

I watched Harriet the Spy two nights ago. When I was about 7-8 I remember being obsessed with that movie but I couldn't remember why. I mean I've always loved mysteries and shit but I just couldn't remember the movie. As i watched it my entire life came back to me. She's always writing in her journal, she gets attacked for what she writes to herself, she loses her best friends and her mentor, Rosie O'Donnell.

There was one scene that completely stuck out to me as I was watching it for the first time in 18 years, so much that I paused it before the scene actually started, stared at the screen and tried to think of my associations with it.I couldn't think of it. Harriet is sitting alone on a bench in front of a water fountain writing in her journal. She's asking herself what her mentor would tell her in her situation. "If you have to choose between having a friends and being a spy, I choose spy." Underlines, capitols whole thing. She continues to question if the possibility to have both could be true, and then her entire 6th grade class  roll up on roller blades drenched in a make shift armour of pans, trash can covers, anything tin. They bang on them and roll around her until she stops writing and runs away, then they follow her.

I started to cry, honestly. I get it, it's a movie, but it did remind me a lot of myself when I was younger. I assume it was after watching this movie that I got my first notebook because on the front it says PRIVATE just like it did in the movie. I was writing one day in class until someone picked it out of my hands and started reading it to the class. I tried to get it from them but they kept kicking me, punching me, holding me back. I was not liked ever in school, especially elementary. don't ask me why, I thought I was cool, but I was usually the target of thefts, fights, gum in hair, cutting hair, having the shortest hair in class because of this, gossip, oh and i totally got the fake notes from cute boys in class, I changed my name because I was tired of hearing my real name through the lips of spiteful others, so when i heard it again it wouldn't feel like me, I changed it to Katy, and only the people on my baseball team knew that.

Anything cruel that kids liked to do I usually got the blunt end of.
So I could see why the movie made me so emotional. I guess also it's what I should be taking from it to apply to my life now. Which is : write more often. It's not a chore, I love to do it, I love to read it and it makes life worth living.