She sat at her desk and stared at the pristine white screen of her computer. Still not speckled with even a single word as she'd not been able to sort her thoughts. She had to submit her story in an hour--1,500 words on the death of a well-known, much-loved local artist. She'd met the family just hours ago; seen his mother weep and heard the pride in his father's choking voice. Just the thing she needed to move her readers to tears. A tear-jerker, her boss had instructed her when she sat down to write. After keeping her own tears bottled up for so long, she didn't know how to make someone else cry.
No. Scratch that. She definitely knew how to. The question was, did she Want to? Did she want to go to that place that she'd been avoiding for so long?
She'd read somewhere that actors would keep their emotions right below the surface where they could reach within and use it whenever a scene demanded a stirring performance.
She'd always felt that actors and writers were somewhat similar. They could be whoever they chose to be and could be someone different each day. A king today, a beggar tomorrow. Someone in love, or someone about to end his life. People saw only that side of an actor or a writer that they were shown, and more often than not, associated them with the person they were used to seeing or reading. Play the role of a happily married woman, and people see just that. Write about a little girl who's been given the Christmas gift she'd asked for, and readers visualize only that. Never mind the actor, never mind the writer. YOU remain hidden. YOU don't exist. Your role does. Your character does. Your protagonist does. YOU don't.
Her thoughts going back to the dead artist, she wondered for probably the hundredth time: Here she sat, writing about someone else's loss. There were possibly seven other journalists typing away at their desks at that very moment, plotting how to deliver a sob story that contained as much melodrama as possible to make the most stone-hearted reader shed a few tears. But what about Her pain? Who'd care to even write, let alone read Her story? And if what she'd read about actors was true, why should she use Her pain to make readers cry for someone Else? It seemed unfair. To use her own private memories to strengthen the memories of somebody whom she didn’t even know. All the while keeping hidden everything that enabled her to write this emotional saga she was meant to deliver in less than an hour.
She thought about where her life was, and realised something with slight annoyance. The fact that she sat alone in her dimly lit one bedroom flat—trying to overcome the silence that engulfed her previously ‘loud’ and cheerful life—did not actually bother her so much. She was getting used to this silence, this quiet existence that had become her life. Keeping herself occupied with as much work as she could physically manage, so much so that people began to call her a workaholic, was working really well for her. She didn’t really have any one to spend her free time with, and she realised that sleep was just as great a companion as a human being. Probably even better. And That annoyed her. This meaningless, hushed, private passing away of time that she didn’t even regret any more. She remembered everything that she had given up to get to where she was today, only it hadn’t worked out exactly the way she’d thought. Exchanging a life where people didn't know she existed, for a life where people pretended she didn't exist, was by far the most foolish deal she’d ever made. And for what? Those few stolen memories that only brought a pang of guilt every time she thought about it? Guilt, followed by sudden rage, and eventually replaced by the urge to cry. All of that replaced by a straight face the next morning, as she woke up in a dull mood, but picked herself up with a cheerful smile as she dragged herself to work each day. A strange way to live your life, one might think. Pretending to be someone you’re not, yet slowly becoming that person until one day, you can’t separate the real from the phoney.
She glanced at the time and saw she had only half hour to go, and the only thing that broke the whiteness of the screen were the red blurry shapes that had formed in front of her eyes from staring at the bright screen for too long. She had to get her act together if she wanted to complete her story on time. Her story, but someone else’s life. Exactly what her own existence had become.
She shook her head, straightened her shoulders and began typing. One word after another kept flooding her mind and spilling out onto the page. Words formed paragraphs that formed page after page. The artist came alive to tell his story one final time. His story, her pain. His life, her words. The black and white print gave birth to yet another character that the world would remember, not for the writer who told the story, but for the man whose story was told.
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts for his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
that he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
--Alfred Lord Tennyson
