Contentment and Loneliness

Contentment

She never wanted for anything. Since she was born, she has been happy with her life and those who are in it. To her parents, she was the golden child, never complaining and always listening to instructions. They never expected to have any problems with her as she grew up, but every teenager goes through rough patches as they try to discover who they are.

She met Loneliness when she was fourteen and, for a while, there were no similarities between them. However, when they were sixteen they became friends. Contentment found herself longing for conversations with him. When she was not talking to him, she felt an incredibly unfamiliar emotion. Until now, she had never once desired anything.

Her parents try to point out that their relationship was not good for her. He may be gaining from having her around – he does not have other friends – but she was no longer the calm and happy girl she had always been, and that worries them.

In the end, she does not make the choice to stop being friends. Loneliness simply draws away from her. She had always feared that he would, it is in his very nature, but it upsets her anyway. For a long time she was not herself, always trying to find him again in the empty corners of her once full life. She ends up disappointed.

Every trial eventually ends, though. Contentment is no exception. After a long period of struggle, she finally finds herself again. She finds it in music and dance. She finds it in new friendship. She grows up and realizes that she does not need anything more than what she already has.




Loneliness

He had always been alone. His parents both traveled for work and his siblings were all so much older than he was. The babysitters changed on a daily basis and he learned not to grow attached to any of them.

School was difficult for him. None of the other children were his friends and he spent recesses imagining great adventures of his own as he observed his peers creating them together. He had never known anything different, but he wished that he had.

He soon learned that it was much easier to pretend that he fit in than to be outcast from his peers. He found a group of kids his age who were willing to let him follow them around the playground. He was still doing this in junior high when he met Contentment. He saw how happy she was with her own life, noticed that she never had any complaints and that she had more friends than he could ever dream of having.

Their relationship nearly broke her and almost saved him. For once, he had a friend who wanted to spend time with him. He craved her attention and talked to her all of the time, but it was a challenge for him as well. He was busy one day and did not have time to spend with her. It soon became all too easy just to forget about her and go on with his strange new life.

Before he realized what had happened, Loneliness was back to the life he had led for so many years. He was alone. No one spoke to him and he spoke to no one in return. He was the one who was left broken and he had not even noticed when the destruction had begun.


These are an assignment for my creative writing class. We had to turn abstract words into people. I kind of worked in the opposite direction. I started using two real people and a real situation and then turned them into abstracts.

Wanna know the great thing about life?

When my dad moved to California almost three years ago, I no longer talked to him very much and I saw him even less. He recently(ish) moved to Oregon and it amuses me that since he seems to be a little bit closer (I'm not certain if Bend, Oregon is closer to Utah than where he was in Cali or not), we seem to talk a little more. He and I have been exchanging messages on Facebook about our lives and how far (in my opinion) or how close (in dad's opinion) March, and subsequently his visit to Salt Lake, is.

However, there are certain things that I just don't get from an internet conversation with my father. His internet voice is very different from that of our face to face conversations and that is something that I always miss. When I was younger I used to spend nearly every weekend with him. We'd spend two incredibly packed days with my sisters and then he would drive us all home. Most of the conversations that he and I had occurred in the van as we were heading to Salt Lake or going back home.

There is one thing that he always used to say to me when I was having a hard day. It is something that I was thinking about as I was brushing my teeth a little while ago. I hadn't thought about it in a long time, but it really helps me tonight after the week I have been having.

"Wanna know the great thing about life?" He would always ask me and I would never really answer, but looked at him or ahead at the road in front of us. "You can wake up tomorrow and start all over again."

I know that it is not something that my dad came up with - in fact, the idea is very cliched - but tonight it was exactly what I needed. Today did not go how I expected it to and this week has not been exactly easy. However, when I am done reading this blog I will go to sleep. Then tomorrow morning I will wake up and have the chance to start fresh. I can wake up tomorrow morning determined to be happy and have a good day at work. I can wake up and not worry about all of the bad things this week.

I can wake up tomorrow and start all over again.

Dad, I don't know if you read my blog anymore, but thank you for teaching me that no matter how badly I feel I messed up in a day, I can always wake up and choose to make the right choices and say the right things tomorrow. I love you and miss you so much, and I can't wait to see you in March.