Run-On

Chapter 4, The One With The Masterpiece

I am soaring.

My masterpiece is created.

I have typed it. I have reviewed it. I have mulled it over for weeks now. I am ready to send it. But I cannot, for some godforsaken reason, bring myself to do it.

I get sweaty palms, my back gets stiff, my hands get shaky, my chest starts aching and my bones get dry. My stomach twists into knots that they only teach you how to unravel in the Navy and my hair feels like it's going to fall right off the back of my neck if it climbs any higher. I am clearly terrified of the send button, but I don't know why. I've gotten rejection before in every shape, size, and color. This would just be another shade added. I've watched my artwork crumble before me like majestic towers come crashing down to the ground. Even if it did get destroyed and mangled and shredded by editors who just want me to conform, I'd protect my story with every ounce of me. Nothing is stopping me from pressing send right this second. But some force of nature is clawing at me and for some reason, I delete the draft for the seventeenth time in the past hour. I close my laptop completely shut. I actually have to calm myself down. I am not ready for this life.

I have spent well over a hundred days, months, well over a hundred years with this very work that I can finally see as this installment being completed; I think it was born with me. I think it has been brewing in this heart as long as the sky has been holding onto the atmosphere. I think maybe this story was mine, born to tell. I am so protective of it, I am so afraid of anybody touching it. Everybody has to hear it. I pick up the phone and call her since I don't know what else to do. She answers and she sounds like she is smiling. Maybe it's just the writer in me that picks apart how she says every letter; and I am obsessed with the way that her Rs roll of of her tongue and how the Th sound doesn't whistle through her teeth, but sweetly swings off of her teeth. She can make curse words sound like poetry.

I tell her I finished. She's the second person on this planet to know. I am the first. That is a BIG step. Even though that may just be the thing to do, I guess, when you care about someone so deeply that you share a part of your soul with them. But to me, this is bearing everything I have. I am betting stars and the sun on this very sentence. Fireworks pour out of my eyes as I tell her about this, sparks coming out of my throat. This is thrilling. I am terrified. She laughs, and at first it bothers me. I push the inside of an eyebrow down towards my eye and ask her what's funny.

"What's funny?" She says, laughing again. "It's just funny how you treat it like it's your child."

I really could be offended, I guess.

"This is really important to me," I say, heat rising into my chest and spreading across my shoulders. I could explain it to her, but I'm afraid she would just laugh it off.

"I know, I'm not belittling that," she insists, and I nod and shrug it off. But there is a beckoning in the pit of my stomach, the only part that gets exercised when you're horrified, terrified, mortified, or disgusted. It's telling me that she is lying. I would cut that part out of my body if it wasn't the only part of me that made sense. I ignore the nagging feeling and hang up the phone. I am sorely disappointed.

This is truly a part of who I am, shouldn't she be excited for me? Isn't that what you do? I chose her, her, to be the first person to know that I finished. I could've called my mom, and she would've shown more excitement for me. I could've called the phone number that the crack addict girl left in the backseat, and she would've offered something less hurtful. Isn't that what you do when you've dedicated your part of life to them? When someone whispers a passionate part of their heart into your ear, even if you don't understand, aren't you supposed to be thrilled for them? With them? I am far from experienced in this area, but even I know that! Isn't that what you do in this kind of situation?!