Akinari Kamiki 03-04/03
You've never liked finishing books. The end of a story, the dimming of the crescendo of the climax, the stretching silence of the beyond. Something about that is a little too final.
You prefer to leave the story somewhere in the middle, where the story is still full of possibilities. They haven't yet hit that point of no return, where the foreshadowing comes into play, where the end point is inevitable.
Some people forget the books they read, and can read them again and be surprised by the story. You can not relate. You have never forgotten the plot points of the books you have read. They live in your mind, and you think about them constantly.
Day dreams are easier than reality.
You like to think about where else the story could go. Where the possibilities are limitless. Once you know, you can not un-know, and with that knowledge the other universes become a little more out of reach.
It's about the anticipation.
And not every ending manages to land. You would prefer to let them fly forever in your mind.
You read many stories. You have book shelves full of them. You only have one for completed books.
It's hard to connect with other people. Connecting with a character is easy, you are invited to live in their heads for the duration of their story. Daydreaming about characters is easier. After all, they have a life to live.
Other people have that too, and so often they look at you with pity in their gaze when they hear you lack a future.
It breaks the connection that could be, and you become an object. A tragedy that they can not see beyond your expectation date. You are no longer a person in their eyes. Not really. And you hate it.
Someone who lives in your head can never look at you with pity.
A character's life has a meaning. A purpose. Even a tragedy is noble. A well written death will make people cry and connect over the story, in a bond that can cross languages.
In life people die everyday, and few who didn't know them, would mourn them. A character having a lung disease would have narrative purpose, where in life it is a fluke. A horrible awful fluke that does no one any good.
You wouldn't wish it on anyone, but people try to be understanding and they just don't. They don't get it! You wouldn't want them to!
But.
It's lonely.
You shouldn't burden people with it, but loneliness is something that is trapped inside of you that longs to break free. Sometimes you imagine it is a seed growing a plant within your lungs, roots growing tight as branches grow within your chest. That the pain will someday grow into something beautiful. One day you will die, and it will be able to see sunlight for the first time in its life.
One day… One day you will die. It's a reality you face every day, blinding like the sun, an afterimage trapped behind your eyes.
What will you have left behind?
Unfinished books.
Bills from the hospital.
Blood on perhaps thousands of tissues.
Tears on faces.
Garbage used.
Food eaten. Life ended to sustain yours.
People who loved you. Who knew you?
Strangers whose lives you knew in passing.
You want to leave something more.
You want to leave behind a story.
Your story.
The hardest parts of writing a story are the beginning and the end. The middle you slowly make your way through. You hope you can make it to the end.
Quietly, you also hope your story finds a fresh audience while you are alive.