you could say that the pistol, with its cool metallic tip resting against the back of my skull is my Writing 12 assignment. Fully loaded, cold, unforgiving, and oh so threatening. My Ebus teacher, an educated well achieving stranger is unknowingly pressing this pistol further deeper into the back of my head. Not because she enjoys it, it is simply my imagination having a hay day in the horror movie department and decided that yes, she is would make a good assassin. my eyebrows knit together as I try not to think of the pain flooding all my senses; yes I can smell the pain. It smells like a cold sweat, shortness of breath, fingers losing their warmth, blood pounding in my ears. Yes THAT’s what I taste. Pretty soon that delicate finger, who takes part in writing helpful emails with smiley faces, will pull the trigger back, releasing my greatest fear.
“Not meeting expectations”.
That is what pressure feels like for me. A lethal weapon, just waiting to go off.
being a perfectionist, is well, a daunting daily routine. I am not your average teenager or maybe I am?, most of my friends don’t understand this undying need for everything to be ‘perfect’, sometimes its freakishly compulsive. I have anxiety issues over whether “my homework is good enough”, “have I studied the right things?”, “I am writing this essay correct?”, “Do you think my boyfriend would still like me if he knew of my anxious habits of perfectionism?” Hah. got to smirk there, there is no boyfriend to worry about, but i thought might as well mention it for future anxiety attacks. (You never know right?) Some guy might actually be fooled by my face and weird charm. Is there such a thing as weird charm? or is that just awkwardness?
this lack of concentration and confidence could also be a side effect from the concussion i got last week.
which seriously freaked the honey out of the freaking vending machine.
Brain injuries kind of throw you off ‘your game’. They give you this insecure feeling inside your own head. You don’t know whats happening to your precious brain cells up there.
So trying to force myself to come up with brilliant poetry that ‘exceeds expectations’ seems quite difficult for me at the moment.
Im not as bad as I used to be, thank god for that. But there is still this element, that sometimes, I must say I am grateful for, for when I’m shredding, hell the work is impressive. But other times, it gets in the way of completing the tasks at hand. Its like an illusion. the work you thought was decent now looks like well.. some three year old barfed cheerios and crinkled the Monday newspaper and handed that in.
I wouldn’t call it a ‘writer’s block’, more like a ‘writer’s insecurity’. Confidence is lacking in my poetry department, nobody usually sees my work and now I am all of the sudden being marked on it.
Scary?
I think yes.
Can I blame my procrastination on my insecurity?
not entirely, because sometimes… I really just don’t want to do it.
But the frustrating thing is when you DO want to complete it, but you just, you can’t, you can’t fathom handing in this “dirt” because you’re teacher is expecting a live iguana. Something that croaks- “I’ve got personality”
Dirt does not croak. nor does it speak.
it might hum,
like when your walking through a farmers field and its windy, you hear the dry crackling grain and you can feel the grit cover your eyelashes, cover your mouth. You can taste dirt.
You can taste success,
but unlike dirt, it is not so easily found.
xx
sallyann16 