I’m working on this story about a boy and a girl who like each other but the boy has these weird hangups where he is absent during important moments in the girl’s life. Times like when she needs help moving, when she throws her housewarming, that time she has to drive herself to the emergency room, those times her out-of-town friends come to visit and to meet her other friends, that party she throws, that other party she throws, that time she goes home from work sick but he stays out at bars until 6 a.m., that time her roof starts leaking really badly during a storm, that time she organizes 500 people for an annual get-together that took months of hard work and planning. The boy is just not there for these things. Sometimes he sleeps through them. Sometimes he just doesn’t answer his phone or texts until after the event has passed. Sometimes he has a whole elaborate scheme of excuses to explain why he wasn’t there. Sometimes he uses the word “whatever” when explaining why he wasn’t there for her. The girl doesn’t understand why the boy is this way, and every time he flakes on her, she spends several days pouting about the boy’s lack of shit-giving, but then eventually comes back around because she misses him, and he always swears he will do better. And it’s not like he never does anything nice for her. Sometimes he fixes her car and makes dinner for her, or sends her flowers when he has fucked up.
The girl is lonely, and full of the need to care for someone. She wants to care for the boy, but he makes it difficult. And what morsels of affection she gets from the boy she stores and lives on for weeks, until the boy does something to again remind her that he, for whatever reason, just cannot be bothered to care. Even though he says he does. He says he has a hard time showing his affection. The boy is telling the truth.
The cycle, without fail, sends her into a spiral of self-loathing that is, quite honestly, difficult to commit to paper or screen. She pleads with the ceiling sometimes to send her someone to care for who delights in her and the life she has worked so hard to build. She doesn’t understand why the boy doesn’t want in on her life. She’s terrified that no one will ever want in on her life, if this person who says he cares about her doesn’t even want in.
I’ve run this story past a couple of people. Everyone has said for months to shut it down. That it’s a sad story and that I can write a better one. I have waffled, and been reluctant to just abandon it, thinking maybe I can salvage it in some way. But I see everyone’s point.
It’s a frustrating story, and one I can’t make work, despite my repeated attempts.
So I’m shutting it down.
I’m sorry. I can say as a man, that often we suck. I don’t know the dude and I suspect he has tons of awesome qualities (or you wouldn’t dig him) but it sounds like it ain’t gonna work out.
I do know you a tiny tiny bit, at least enough to say that you certainly deserve someone who shows up (at minimum) and loves you deeply.
ugogirl.
Ed’s right; we men can often be pretty awful, and if we’re allowed to get away with it we’ll keep doing it. One thing to point out:
“And it’s not like he never does anything nice for her.”
Anybody can be nice *sometimes*.
As Ratbert said to Dilbert once, I agree with everything you’re saying here, so put me down as co-author!
Thanks, y’all. I worry that it’s my fault, that I’m a bad writer. But I think ultimately this just isn’t my story to tell.
If it’s been nagging at you, it is your story to tell and you shoudn’t hang it up. When a story’s on my mind like that, I can stop physically writing it but I’m still gonna keep writing it in my head anyway, with or without my conscious permission. Exorcise it. You don’t have to have the answers before you keep writing; sometimes if you just keep slogging out the words when it feels unclear you’ll find the answers. That probably sounds really pretentious, but it works for me.
…of course, it’s my nature to sniff at something, gnaw at it and run away, and come back to it, over and over, until I figure it out or barely limp away a last time. The story I’m writing right now is on its last legs, and the guy who started out as my hero is shaping up into something my protaganist is having to survive. But I know it’s not done yet. The boys in our stories may suprise us.