Why I Wrote

A random question to Benita today propelled me to revisit my writings from high school. Unsurprisingly, the moment I set my eyes on the paper, I wanted to puke. Here's an excerpt:

She is not a VERY beautiful woman, but I find her attractive and seductive in her own manners. She is my complete opposite who has changed my life. She has showed me how to laugh, be merry, and forget things. She has unintentionally taught me to treasure, try, and overcome my timidity. Her flames melted my frozen heart, and liberation has sought me, blessed me with hope.

That's only the beginning. What follows involves corny sentences, grammatic violations and ridiculous "sonnets" that make me cringe in shame and horror. I can hardly believe that I printed copies of these writings and distributed them to my classmates, teachers (the misters and misses), and the girls themselves. Girls?

My first flirtation with writing was in my Transitional English class, shortly after my arrival in Canada (maybe 2 months?). My instructor's exceptional friendliness was only matched by his exceptional laziness in teaching. The lazy methods, which included writing out vocabularies on the white board and asking students to take the entire class time to create sentences, inspired me greatly and ignited my passion in the English language. I started to write nonsensical sentences that occasionally managed to amuse their readers. I started to find confidence on paper.

Central to my incipient preference of writing over speech was my lack of interpersonal skills. Ten years of video game indulgence and all-boy classes in Taiwan completely eliminated my ability to communicate. Alas, I pictured my ideal world as a place where people would pass each other written notes (or electronic notes) instead of uttering words to each other. It was obviously to me that the most feasible option for my next step was to write sonnets to the girls I fancied. And yes, that is exactly what I did. It took me a while to understand the lack of appreciation and the rapid decrease in my popularity. The result, as you may expect, was a complete fiasco.

Nevertheless, I did receive feedback on my writing, from my very first heart-throb in Canada. You write well, she said. The compliment was delivered with an awkward smile, but it was enough to feed my juvenile ego. Afterwards, I began to write my reflection on the fiasco, titled "The Road to Enlightenment," documenting my very first attempts to resolve inter-personal ineptitude and overcome intra-personal conflicts. The document amounted to 32 pages. I started to give copies to my teachers, classmates, and the girls themselves.

So my original plan for the rest of the day was to mock more sentences, but then as I read on, I started to be moved as I hadn't been moved for a while now. Despite all the word misuses, mixed metaphors, and lopsided parallel structures - I wrote nothing but truth. No restraint, no omission of delicate details, no consideration for the audience. I wrote entirely for myself. Furthermore, I tried my best to describe my feelings, this one in particular:

I can't recall whether I had said BYE, but then again, it wouldn't have caused a great difference. I lurched along the hallway like a walking dead, and the moving people were shadows from another plane of existence. I couldn't hear anything as if a shell landed right beside me, knocking my nerves out. My limbs were all intact, but they were merely parts of my mechanical being.

If you allow me to praise myself, certain passages even felt insightful. Nevertheless, I doubt that at these moments of insight I was capable of realizing that someone, some authority was trying to teach me a lesson (as I was yet to make up Hermine). It wasn't until last year that I finally understood what I wrote in high school:

Now when I look upon her, I am filled with sorrow and a sense of helplessness. The misunderstandings are utterly inevitable [irrevocable?] and unredeemable. There's not much I can do. We have built a mountain between us, and every additional contact would add another layer of earth. Finally the soil hardens, and not even meteors can strike down this fortress of misunderstanding. She has already left the other side of the mountain, and for me, the only sensible option would only be my departure.

And for a moment, I remember why I wrote: to unleash my emotions, to lighten the burden of intra-personal conflicts - and above all to share the unspeakable with others. You may call that part in me an exhibitionist, although I would argue that rather than exhibiting my ineptitude, I long for understanding and compassion. I affect a comic tone, not only because I want to make others laugh, but also because I want to distance myself away from sadness. There is nothing more soothing than turning tragedy into comedy. There is nothing more therapeutic than crying by laughing. Don't you think so?

I was going to investigate the changes in my writing style, but let me leave that for the next entry.

Tata.