writing

i just got my advanced composition portfolio grade back and i got an A.  i'm very happy.

i wanted to post one of my pieces here because the teacher said she thought it was my best one.  she called it "brutally candid" and i like that something i did was described with the word "brutal"  muahaha.

so i think this assignment was just to write something that was a memoir.  if any of the quotes sound forced, it's because we had to cite from a couple of assigned sources.  The La Dispute quoting was definitely all my idea.  :)

Memoir

“What a bunch of fools we lovers are/

When tempted by the taste of flesh”

(Dreyer, Future Wars).

 

I was once blind and reckless and only wanting of affection.  Augustine wrote it better, “But what was it that delighted me save to love and to be loved? Still I did not keep the moderate way of the love of mind to mind--the bright path of friendship. Instead, the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh, and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and overcast my heart that I was unable to distinguish pure affection from unholy desire” (Augustine 2.2.2).  It was years ago now, when we were such proud high school students, but it still stands as a strong reminder of what a good relationship is not like.

            I feel that I was much younger then, in mind more than body.  She was a bit older than I, and I had been delighted to find myself the object of another’s affection.  We had mutual friends, which afforded us opportunities to get to know each other.  There were the late nights of conversation from our own homes, in front of brightly glowing computer monitors.  Things progressed and soon enough we were dating, all too soon in retrospect.  Things went well for a while.  A year went by and it was pleasant to have some one to hold and to care for.

            Then there was some turmoil in the relationships between our mutual companions.  I sided with her against my friends and the two of us became somewhat isolated from them.  I deemed the decision as being for best once I saw my friends start living their lives in a way I had no desire to follow.  Seeing their partying that I would not risk my legal record by joining, I became of the same mind as John Winthrop when he said, “We observed it a common fault in our young people, that they gave themselves to drink hot waters [rum or other distilled liquor] very immoderately” (Winthrop, Mon. 3 May 1630).  Soon the “fun” seemed to be draining from our own relationship, at least in her perspective.  I spent much of my time trying to please her, make her happy, or provide some sort of entertainment for her boredom.  In return I was treated to complaints or cold silence.  I was too foolish to see the folly and utter futility of staying with her; there was no pleasant future there.  I was attached and didn’t want to let go.  After all, she still said, “I love you” back.

            She found a new group of friends that we started to spend time with frequently.  Then I started to get the feeling that she didn’t want me around them so much.  She wanted them to herself.  I was a bit confused and troubled, and she was hanging out with that guy an awful lot during the late hours of the night-- an awful lot, and it was turning my insides out to think about.  How well I knew, as Mary Chesnut put it, “We stand in need of wise counsel; something more than courage” (Chesnut 5).

            I talked a good deal about the situation with a friend who knew both of us well. After more than a week of considering it, I finally decided that I needed to end the relationship.  I wanted it to end, but I still kept such secret high hopes that she would realize how much I really meant to her and we would be reunited as a stronger and happier couple.  Those were foolish thoughts.  I remember exactly what we were wearing that day.  I had my tears and she wore a smile, neither was fake.

            For the next week I was heartbroken.  At the end of that week I heard from a friend that she and that guy she was spending an awful lot of time with were now dating.  It was my worst fear it and it had come true.  Looking back though, I see that this was the best way to keep me from ever wanting to go back to her.  I would never have been happy with her, because she would never have been happy with me.  She could hardly be happy with herself, and now I understand that was a major part of the problem.  I learned what type of personality and behavior is unhealthy.  I learned that a girl like her will only drag me down to where she is and I would never become something more within a relationship like that.

 

Works Cited

Augustine. “Chapter XII, Book Nine.” Confessions.  Albert Outler, ed. U Pennsylvania

1995. 8 Oct. 2008 http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/augustine.html

            Path: Texts and Translations; Confessions; English translation (Outler)

Dreyer, Jordan.  “Future Wars.”  Vancouver.  Friction Records, 2006.

Winthrop, John. Shipboard Journal. The Winthrop Society. 1996. 8 Oct. 2008

            <>

            Path: Texts; Journal of the Crossing of the Atlantic

Chesnut, Mary Boykin. A Diary from Dixie: Electronic Edition. Documenting the

            American South. University of North Carolina. 1995. 8 Oct. 2008