DIARY EXTRACT
(Edited for the purpose of this post, and to decode my messy handwriting)
Wednesday, April 6th,
8:00pm, Paris, 2016
Dear Reader,
I finished writing my
book last night, and it wasn’t like the John Williams’ Jurassic Park theme
moment of pure awe that I had expected it to be. At all.
I froze for a second,
and then I burst into tears and I couldn’t stop crying. Mam rang me at that
exact moment, so naturally I panicked and hid under the bed covers with Manchot the penguin teddy. So no,
writing a book doesn’t make you seem more grown up or better than anyone else.
It wrings you like a wet towel ‘till you’re nothing but a crumpled heap of a
girl with a penguin, crying over people that don’t even exist.
Finally, moments
later, when I was somewhat more composed and had apologised to Manchot and tidied his soggy fur with a hair
dryer, I called Mam back. But as I muttered a hello, I crumbled.
‘Ah!
I’m just mourning my characters, Mam!’
And it’s funny, because as a ‘listener’ in most friendship groups and
‘designated breakfast cooker’ - the least rattled wolf in the pack after a
vodka-fuelled night on the town, I would not consider myself a crier at all, at
least not for anything that’s actually
sad. It’s the moving things that get me every now and then. A heart felt
birthday card. Irish immigrants coming home to Ireland to surprise their
parents. A free cupcake. And of course, most of the fiction that I read.
I felt stupid, crying over
fictional characters. But hey, they’re real to me. As far as my writing went: I
meant to make it a bitter-sweet ending, which it was, but I also rushed through
it stressfully and I think I ended up making it more bitter than sweet.
I really don’t want to cry again
though, especially not in the laundry room, where I’m sitting between two girls
I’ve never met. What if I started full on blubbering, and then they’d ask me if
I was okay, and it’d be too hard for me to answer in a comprehensible way, 1)
because who can understand a crying girl? And 2) because who can understand my
accent mixed with tears and French? It’s like trying to open a can of beans
with a safety scissors. So… I ought to change the subject.
I’ve become seriously obsessed with
a new band recently called Twenty One Pilots, and I’d never heard of them
before this because apparently, I live under a rock. No wait, I think I had
heard the name before. I just didn’t want to look them up. I heard that they
sang rap songs, you know, not my
scene at all.
Dear God, I sound like I’m
centuries old. I love this band now though, so my oldness has been cancelled
out. (Right?) I came across them eventually in the recommended
videos/bottomless pit section of YouTube, and wooaahh… it’s like, there is rap, but there is also singing, and
sometimes cute ukulele. It’s like alternative-indie-rap, like the Eminem genre
mixed with the Coldplay genre and it’s just the coolest.
I haven’t been this obsessed with a
band since I was 15. To be honest though, my obsession with the band I loved at
15 (and still love) started when I was around 9, years before we had a
broadband connection or satellite TV. (Haha
it wasn’t even that long ago, but that’s Irish country side life for ya) I
couldn’t watch music videos, or even stay on a band website long enough for it
to load before a sibling or parent told me to get off the internet because they
needed to use the phone line.
So I loved this indie-synth band,
yet I didn’t know what they looked like or who they were. I couldn’t see their
faces anywhere because of the dial-up internet connection. Mam let us put on
our ‘Now’ CD in the car, that had all of the best current music on it, but we
had lost the case for it so I couldn’t see the track names. I’d say I went
around for a solid week quizzing people about that song, until finally I discovered what it was, and that, dear
reader, is the story of how the first CD I ever bought was ‘Hot Fuss’ by The
Killers.
Bringing it back to
Twenty One Pilots – It really does feel like I’m 15 again. It sure is nice to
go back to the fun part of being a teenager. Yes, there was one little fun
part, and that was obsessing over bands and singers and movie stars, and books
of course.
Some might say you
should focus on more important things as a teenager, but hey, those bands act
as a distraction from hormones for example, or having to do the Leaving Cert
exam.
In other news, it’s
almost just a week until I’ll be off on my holidays to Toulouse, Barcelona, and
Morocco. I can’t wait! I just need a break from all of the lesson plans, the
Irish assignments, the book writing, the weird block I’ve had with
self-confidence lately. It’s the self-doubt that comes with being a writer. And
yet even with all of the hard times, I know I want to keep writing forever
because it’s such escapism, and it’s so nice to see my words forming together
in a page's pretty patterns.
My clothes will just
be another five minutes in the washing machine, I’d say, and I already feel
less stressed from writing to you. Plus, I always have the song ‘Stressed Out’
by Twenty One Pilots to listen to when I’m up to my ears in TO DO Lists. (But
my personal favourite song of theirs is ‘We
Don’t Believe What’s on TV’)
I don’t know how to
finish this diary entry today. It’s like I’m just going to thank you in
Portuguese, or say goodbye to you in Italian like I so often do at the end,
with no proper resolution, and just a third cup of tea in waiting when I put my
writing utensils away. Well, sorry, but that is what’s going to happen. Because look, even with distracting
myself with tea and Twenty One Pilots, I’m still pretty torn up and weepy about
finishing my book last night and I can’t hide that. That’s just how it is. There
is no resolution.
However, I will give
you a more alternative ending this time, rather than just the Portuguese thank
you or Italian goodbye you’ve seen so many times on its own.
I was looking through the notes section on my
phone today where I often store my random thoughts, quotes from friends, or
descriptions that might come in handy for future poems. And, I found a list of
four names that I thought sounded magical enough to make note of, names that I
came across on dilapidated tomb stones in Southampton’s eerie graveyard last
February. (…But, that’s a story for another day)
I’ll leave you with
these names to mull over:
______________________________________________________________
Percival James
Samuel Stables
Reginald Noel
Rosina Mist ______________________________________________________________
My clothes are clean
now, and I am teething for that cup of tea and a cuddle with Manchot the penguin.
Ciao,
Madame Mayreed x
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