Too Shy to Scream

Hold me, please
I'm dying
And no one should have to die alone

He pulls me close and whispers
What cry of your heart
Has not been answered?
What is it
You've been unable to say?

This blog is my tool of expression and outreach, remedy and relation.

We must have freedom of speech, of self-expression.  It is CRUCIAL.  If we were given minds and voices, let us use them.  We are the earthly mouthpieces of God.  Even if you don't believe that much, you can agree how terrible it feels to be stifled.  Let us help eachother speak.  We must support eachother so we all have the confidence to be ourselves, knowing we're loved forever - no matter what we choose.

Recently I finished reading Names My Sisters Call Me by Megan Crane.  Thank God for roommates who love to read, and who are willing to lend you their books.
The main character, Courtney, is highly introspective.  I enjoy her thought process.

{ "I wasn't sure I was ready to go home.  I believed that this city was magical.  That it sang to me.  And it seemed to me that once you happened upon magical places you should stay there, happily ever after.  I wasn't sure why characters in the fantasy novels I read were forever battling to return to what they knew.  They already knew it--what mystery could it hold?  Maybe, if I stayed in San Francisco, I would discover who I was really meant to be." }

{ "He was looking through a record bin in some old record shop, and he was unaware that the camera was on him.  I thought I recognized his intense focus.  I loved his slight frown, and the determined set to his jaw.  He looked so at ease in himself, in his T-shirt and jeans, and also so purposeful.  When I'd been starting out on the cello, I would think of that picture of him and imagine myself making the same face as I concentrated.
Because the truth was, my father was just a myth to me.  I had no memories of him that weren't stories told by someone else or pictures interpreted by someone else.  Unlike my sisters, I didn't have even the smallest, foggiest memory of his voice or his face to cling to through the years.  It had always made me feel guilty somehow.  And more alone." }

{ "Sometimes I felt that way--that it was no big deal.  Other times, I worried it was a visible wound." }

{ "How could he look exactly the same as he always did?  How could he so nonchalantly shatter all the things I'd believed and bear no outward sign of it?  I didn't understand.  It seemed to me that if someone hurt you, there should be some kind of boomerang effect.  They should get hit with it, too, so it wasn't just you.  So they didn't get off scot-free while you marinated in the pain." }

{ "There was no narrowing in on this man... no understanding who he really was.  He was gone, and the only things that remained were stories, and how those of us left behind fashioned ourselves based on those stories." }

{ "I played loss and joy, discovery and anger. I played for the little girls who lost their father, and the adult women who lost him again and again, every time the story changed. I played for my sisters, and I played against them, then I played them off eachother. My family was a lush collection of sounds with a starkness woven into the spaces between. I played them all." }

{ "Lucas watched me close the distance between us.  His eyes were gray and far away, but I knew as he focused on me that he saw me with a clarity no one else ever had." }

{ "I think I'm having trouble letting go of who I wanted people to be... It turns out I have a lot invested in the roles we all play." }

{ "Driving around the pretty little town made me nostalgic and restless all at the same time.  It was as if ghosts of my former selves were hanging from the trees or just out of sight on every corner.  It seemed funny to me that growing up involved so much shedding of selves.  And when you least expected it, you tripped over your own ghosts again, because there always seemed to be something else to learn." }

Her problems and her necessary, yet painful, growth remind me of my life.  By the end of the novel, I was encouraged that I could make the better decisions right now and in the future.
Relating to a character is one of the most interesting parts of life, I think.  I love, love, love it when someone says exactly what you've wanted to say for years... whether in fiction or reality.
We mustn't lose the art of storytelling.  There's so much honesty in it.  The truth in the fairytale is what makes it worthwhile.


* "Too Shy to Scream" is an AFI song that I love.  It's a good one for swing dancing, if you have the skills to move that quickly.