Living in the Lion's Den

In summary, Ellen was such a godsend yesterday. There. My blogpost is done. You can go.


The following sounds extremely rushed, impotent, and cretinous. I apologize in advance.

Yesterday, Ellen and I switched projects for the last period of class, and it was one of my favorite parts of this project so far. I needed to change gears in order to get some ideas for this project.
So, I wrote some poetry about Enneagram Type One while Ellen worked on one of my Plays, gingerly titled 'Untitled: The 5th Swarming Edition of Wasps in the Zoo '. It's a pretty ridiculous piece, but it has a special place in my heart. Anyways, I ended up getting stuck. You know, once you accuse someone of coming from an unplanned pregnancy and her father of having a secret stash of Charlie Brown Specials, you know you have to take a time out.
So, Ellen and I switched. And it was exactly what I needed.
I've actually never been into rhyming poetry, I find that it tends to be repetitive and boring. At least when I write it. But Ellen's project was Songwriting so goddamnit I was going to rhyme. Even if it (most likely) killed me. And I actually had fun. It was more structured than I've been doing for the past couple of weeks (which was basically me writing poetry about why I was having a block with writing poetry). And Ellen was flashingly fabulous.
She gave me an entire scene that I just couldn't seem to write but it's perfect.

Schuyler and Mom stand together while Laurel sits down in front of a lion exhibit. Schuyler points behind Laurel.

SCHUYLER

Hey, look at that lion!

LAUREL

I don't care.

SCHUYLER

No look, it's clawing at Laurel's head! And it keeps opening its mouth...

MOM

Sweetie you might want to move away from that glass.

LAUREL

What are you-AHHHHHHHH!

SCHUYLER

Haha.

LAUREL

Be quiet Schuyler. You want me to repeat the story of the time the snake-

Behind them, a young boy approaches.

LAUREL

And a really fascinating fact about the lion is that it actually lives in the grasslands, not the jungle as many believe.

SCHUYLER

Yes, because I can't see the obvious informational blurb.

MOM

Shut up Schuyler, your sister is just being nice because a cute guy walked by.

GUY

What?

LAUREL

MOM!

MOM

Let me introduce you to my daughter Laurel. She is truly one of the most unbearable people in the universe and I think that you two will get along quite well.

LAUREL

I hate you for all eternity.

MOM

She's just oozing with charisma.

GUY

Umm, alright.

A girl appears from behind him and they hold arms.

GUY

Nice to meet you, and never speak to me again.

The couple walks off

MOM

Well, I tried.

I've cleaned it up from this version since yesterday, but it is still basically the same and I love it and I couldn't have done it without her. Kudos.

I'm not crying, I just got mauled by a Nuclear Missile is all.

I don't like thinking about myself. I feel like a pompous jackass when I do. I feel like other people are more important than myself and therefore I am more invested in other people's well-beings than my own.

This needs to stop.

I have to care about myself, right? I should be more focused about my wants and needs than those of others that I have never met and probably never will. This is why I can't watch game shows.
I get so invested in these people coming back every week with the real chance that they will be voted off at any moment. I don't understand how others just look at these people on the screen and don't acknowledge or realize that those are real people, that whatever chance they're taking in that moment could make or break their life/career/etcetera.

I need to find a middle ground. One where I can seriously commit to my own well being while still caring deeply for everyone around me. I feel like a goddamn mother hen sometimes, while at the same time, her baby chick. Sometimes I really hate being a Six.

In other news, I'm absolutely petrified of talking about my work on Friday. Don't be surprised if I'm not in school because of being hospitalized for stress ulcers which at this point, I am 76% positive I have or will have at some point in my life.

It's not only the fact that I stumble over my words and have almost crippling social anxiety, it's that I just restarted one of the plays today because I realized that I can't write zombie apocalypse plays without ripping my hair out, so now the main character has cotard's delusion and that's all I'm going to say on that matter. And I might go back to my original idea because I still have too much hair on my head and it was pretty cool to write, albeit quite hard. It has also made me realize that I have a strange obsession with mental disease. And serial killers. But that can be saved for another blog post, because that is such a tangent that I cannot justify including in this.