Untamed

“I miss your writing. Do you still write, anyway?”

The black text sat on my screen, as I rubbed my tired eyes from whiling away countless hours in front of my laptop. The message in my inbox was from an old friend, someone who had always been there to share a word or two on whatever drivel of writing I had to shove in their face. The question itself was amusing, to me, because only a few days before I had asked myself the same question. Being in this place, that was so familiar now, yet has changed so much has made writing seem that little bit farther away than it used to be. Really, I just let it slip too easily. I didn’t lean how to let it move with me. On the one hand, I gained freedom and mobility. On the other, I let some part of me stay behind, collect dust and linger until I had remembered that it was something I enjoyed, something he enjoyed. Something they enjoyed.

So much time spent on something so continuous. It wasn’t even one of those phases where the idea was fleetingly ‘cool,’ yet stopped after a couple of days. There was an attachment to it all, right down to the basic output of where it all lived. A few times I tried to continue the trend I started, elsewhere, disjointed from it all, but I could never bring myself to do the deed. Nothing felt right about the way it started. Where should it begin? Why shouldn’t it continue from where it once was left? And yet, it all came down to the fact that it just couldn’t compare. There was no familiarity, no personality. No matter what, I could not shake the feeling that I was still leaving it all behind. Everything about it felt half-assed and that was something which I could not tolerate, something which I felt was far from my style and ability.

It makes me wonder what took so long for me to get this far and realise exactly what it was I had been missing all this time. Sure, there were a lot more things involved now than used to exist in my life, but that just seams to be a ‘in the meantime’ excuse for leaving it all. So many things happened back when I made this a larger part of my life that I have become so detached from. People I had encountered, who I don’t even remember or recognise anymore. Things that were said that I struggle to remember their significance or relevance.

So here I sit, as I finally smile at my success of reviving the old, the lost, the forgotten. I am home. All together, nothing separated. Finally. I reply.

Yes, I still write.

Writing isn’t the same as it used to be, in many senses. Back in the old days there used to be typewriters, but that removed the personality within writing. Sure, there’s the way someone writes, the way things are expressed and written but that still doesn’t seem the same. Handwriting can say a lot about a person, more than one may actually believe – where you were sitting, how you were writing with your wrist, how fast or how slow; it all can be told just by ones handwriting.

Typewriters were always there, removing the personality within writing and making anything anyone ever said look the same as everyone else. No matter what they said or who they were as a person, the black ink and standard font made it look as common as anyone else’s work, and it wasn’t until you took a closer examination at the writing that you realised what you had in front of you. The same can be said for meeting a person face-to-face, only its their physical appearance that immediately displayed something about the person, without you having to take too much time to ask questions.

Even now we’re just as common and anonymous with writing via a computer. Online publishing makes a slight change, allowing virtual space to look like anything that the owner wants, usually but that can only be created ‘personal’ to a certain extent. At the end of the day, there’s still someone out there with the same background colour as you, perhaps even the same title. With so many users online, it makes it difficult to be unique, personal and noticeable with something as simple as a user name – the only other easily created option that shows something about you, immediately.

It gets touchy when you move into the field of common appearance. How does one define themselves, how do I make what I am writing now seem my own, unique and personal when it doesn’t show anything about me at all. My handwriting certainly isn’t here, the evidence of how I put each letter on page in ink isn’t able to be deciphered through this common Windows default font. How can I be me, by using a user name, when there are so many other people online who also possibly (and most likely) share the same name as you to identify themselves? When a service denies use of a name because it is already taken, how can you represent you on a personal level when the name you desired was used by someone else?

We all have things in common, but technology and more “convenient” methods unnecessarily make everyone too common and too similar. We don’t particularly need these methods to do any of the tasks we do today, it just happens to be that they are more common. It’s easier to find a free online publishing service such as Blogger or even WordPress to share your views, opinions, ideas and creativity to the world than it is to put greater effort into publishing a book with the same views or ideas. People have time, they just don’t want to spend that time doing something productive, because it would require dedication and effort. Perhaps that or their ideas and views are so common or similar to other peoples that they feel comfortable not doing anything more with their work.

Time is everything, and always something that we believe we never have enough of. You certainly cannot get back the time you lost or used, so why is it easier to spend hours upon hours playing a game but not to spend something as little as forty-five minutes writing or doing something that expresses who you are. You are never the night elf warrior you create in a game, the game makes you that way, gives you only a limited options of “expression” that can, and will, begin to look similar or exactly the same as every other player in the realm.

We are much happier to be nothing, than something.

“I wouldn’t want to cross your path,” he said smiling politely at me. I felt slightly amused by this, intrigued about what kind of power I could possibly possess. I had no idea what he really meant by his words, and even if he truly thought of them to be what he actually wanted to say. Had he been reading me correctly to begin with? Still, I entertained the idea and begged him to continue, to explain and tell me more.

“You just seem to have this ‘don’t fuck with me’ kind of attitudes, you just kind of notice that you shouldn’t be crossed with,’ he explained. I felt my face contort into a look of confusion – I was thinking about this one, trying to decipher the clues. Perhaps I just don’t pay enough attention to the things that I say or do, perhaps I can’t see that I am a hostile person but I sure as hell didn’t feel like one. Not unless provoked, at least. “I’m not really sure what to tell you,” I started, “I don’t feel as though I do anything particularly aggressive, where did you get this idea from, anyway?”

“Your writing,” he said.

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Fantastic.

That is all. For now.

If there was ever a time that I would use the word ‘hate,’ it would be for this – for this that grips me in my chest, for this that makes my heart feel as though it is beating randomly, sometimes skipping a beat and other times doubling a beat. For this that forces me to recall the wanton of it all, for this that tugs at my sleeve and his, for this that reduces me to tears. A hollowed memory of what used to exist and what will never change, regardless of how much effort and emotion is ever poured into it. My voice is stifled by the absence but always continues to desire an outburst, to yell, for the first time in over a year. ‘That’s not going to change anything, and you know it,’ the voice of reason told me and it was right – I do know it.

Perhaps, foolishly, I despise him for the way that a feeling will slowly seep in through that hollowed memory. Despise him for being able to fill that hollow successfully, in the face of my own attempts to do anything to it myself. Yet I wonder if it really is all down to me, with the blame resting firmly on my own shoulders. My face remained dry whilst his was soaked with several hours’ worth of tears, even days later. It was difficult to understand how I could sit there and remain detached, and how I could simply walk away without saying much at all. It made perfect sense to me back then, but now, when I find myself flicking through a book and changing the meaning of “flicking through” to “stoping and reading,” it is difficult for me to understand.

I enter a conundrum, an infinite loop that will only continue when it is solved with the simple solution that on first glance doesn’t seem so simple at all. I don’t want to be caught on the things that appear to relate, I don’t want to stop every so often in the middle of life’s road and feel as though I’m about to cry. I don’t want to think that what he did is a most likely possibility to happen again, I don’t want to let the latter be purely because I’ve been made slightly paranoid, guarded and cautious. I don’t want to feel annoyed every time it interferes with my life, with us, when I don’t want it to. Most of all, I don’t want to let him feel as though anything he does is a comparison, or as though he can’t be believed or trusted by me.

A simple solution that I know must be done.

I take my time playing with the small golden balls that are threaded on some wire along the frame of a small box, which ironically is just the right size. Letting them go forever is something that I would much rather do, but for some reason I find myself unable to go through with it. Instead I sit there, aligning the golden balls in perfect symmetry to each other and finally place the book inside, closing the copper-framed lid. “I’m hopeless at keeping secrets from you,” were the words of the past trying to make one last attempt to stop me from implementing the simple solution.

‘It’s never going to not have happened,’ and with that, I put the past away and left it there.