Test tube tears

For someone inching their way towards their late twenties, I cry an awful lot. At films, at songs, at books, and, more embarrassingly, at all kinds of things that happen to me personally – from relationships to lost belongings. Luckily for me, I’m quite a discreet crier and awkward situations have been minimal.

Over the years I’ve had plenty of tricky relationships; lovers I didn’t love or who didn’t love me. I cried every remnant of them out of my system. And that’s generally considered a healthy thing.

But I can’t stop myself from sometimes also welling up when a get a writing-rejection – the short stories I send out are captured and calcified parts of myself after all. I also occasionally find myself crying over a manuscript I can’t manhandle correctly. That’s on the days when the idea of not being able to reproduce that particular moment on paper is a terrible one.

So I’m looking at my life and my collection of tissues and I’m thinking: what’s provoked the greatest flood, the men or the manuscripts?

I’d slip into my finest mad-scientist-lady outfit if I thought I could juggle the test tubes to weigh up the tears, but I can’t help wondering if I’d really want to know the answer. I’m not sure what kind of person it would reveal me to be.

Two creators, one relationship

Question: how do two creative people with two contrasting creative processes and opposing needs live and love in harmony.

Answer: with great difficulty. But it’s worth it.

In the perfect world we have plenty of time to devote to all the important things in our lives and nothing would get left behind or swept under the carpet – least of all the things that really matter. In the real one we struggle to work out how to make enough space or time for the things we think are important.

So what’s the actual answer? No idea. But if I had the choice I wouldn’t stop writing and I wouldn’t want him to either. So maybe we need a list of what matters to us so anything that comes up can be flung into a category and we can know that things are only as important as we make them. Or maybe we need to play to temperamental stereotypes less… *shrug* whatever, it’ll be fine.

🙂