Trying

This is me.

It's approximately 11:30pm my time and I've still got hours to stay awake; tomorrow I return to the land of the vampires. My current activity of choice; writing.

Or more accurately, attempting to write.

I'm going to be a little shallow, a little selfish with this post tonight. It's late and I feel like I need to say a few things. I'm considering this my warm-up piece before I work on the story itself.

I've been struggling for probably a year now in my writing. I was extremely caught off guard to find that a story that I had been writing and brainstormed with a high school friend is now being written with another high school friend; I thought they were both wonderful people. When I first found out about it, I was furious. They didn't tell me; I read a synopsis of the story online. After that, once it was pretty obvious that I had figured it out and acted a little distant, the one friend finally told me about it. Of course I was cordial to her face. To be totally honest, I was really excited that I found someone in my life who was still writing! I didn't really care that it was my potential story that I had started with someone else and that I was being shut out. I was just thrilled to find a comrade!

The more time that passed, the more frustrated I became. They slowly closed off to me even more. The other friend never said a word to me. The girl who was in town actively writing with me and stood up in my wedding for crying out loud...slowly began to distance herself until she was no longer in the picture. I log on to Facebook to find that the other friend came back to town, the two of them took pictures together and hung out (I also like photography a lot...and hoped to hang out with the long distant friend when she was here).

I was hurting way more than I thought I was going to. I've been really good at letting things go lately. And I'm really not so offended at the idea that they are writing this idea together. But being shut out hurts. It's always been a problem for me, ever since I was really little, no matter who was doing the excommunicating.

Now I feel like it's affecting my writing. I literally went over six months without typing a word. I figured, hell, I'm not good enough. If nobody wants to write with me, nobody wants to read my work, I'm not worth anyone's time or effort, why on earth would I bother?

Recently, since these night shifts have started, I've tried to pick up again. That picture at the top of this post? That and the rain outside my window are my attempts at getting myself in the mood tonight. I've learned the hard way before; sometimes I just have to bully myself into doing it, even if I don't necessarily feel like I can and the inner Darkness is whispering in my ear that all of my writing sucks.

So I'm going to get off of here now and try.

Never stop trying.

Edit: 12:40am. 2200 words later. I consider that success.