Synonym to: absorbing, amusing, appealing, attractive, compelling, curious, engaging, engrossing, entertaining, gripping...

I’ve been told I’m interesting. Interesting. Interesting. What a word. The word it self is interesting, in turn, this extract a response by the sound. The ebb and flow of the reverberation made between the “in” and the “tere” tailed by the “sting”.

But those are things I learned in linguistics. Linguistics is a class that was interesting. We learned about language, the spoken form coughed from the throat curled off the tongue like an illicit act. So there are noise-forming words with meaning, which in turn, are also interesting.

I suppose there are interesting aspects about me. I have dimples. I have a deviated septum. I'm articulate. I can drink more alcohol than the average person. These might be interesting. Or more so, they might be inches above the average stimuli of positive emotion. That sentence was interesting.

But here is an interesting snippet about me: I wore a body cast up to my armpits from the age of two to three. Yet, I only remember what I’ve seen of that moment in my life from pictures. To fine-tune that statement, I remember the pictures I’ve seen of myself not the year I spent immobile or the way the plaster felt against my skin. I don't remember the year I spent learning to walk after that. I remember a Polaroid I’ve seen of myself.

Photographic memory. I have one of those two. That’s interesting.

Keyboard Sized Scars

I’ve been told I deal with pain best through my writing. As though each word, each letter that is stamped onto the blank, white page is a representation of myself. Maybe the letters are the smallest instances of my interior. I form them into words to give a better image of where I’m hurting. I put these words together to form sentences, sentences of courses to show why I’m hurting.

Or the “best” might, just might be a transient notion.

Yet, I think there is a truth to that statement. But the words in that previous claim, those pleasant words are in reverse. I do my best writing when I deal with pain. I’ve spread much of my core across word doc files and text scripts and social network blurbs throughout my time with a computer. There is less of a filter when I’m hurting, less of an inhibition. Because I figure, what does it matter what people think about this clause or this use of diction or this formatting style if I’m already hurt? Why would it matter?

It doesn’t when you’re a good writer. Nothing hurts you when you are a good writer. Or at least nothing hurts your writing when you’re a good writer.

I’m a great fucking writer. But I’m hurting.

Maybe that’s why this sentence, this sentence right here, right now sounds so good to me. As I read it in my head, a choir, a church one at that, accompanies it. My favorite choirs are in Southern Baptist churches. They sound good when they hurt too. They sound good in my head as I type this.

Of course, I have doubts about all this. Well, about the writing not the pain. I know I’m in pain. I know I hurt, these hurts are tangible to me. These are realities. But the writing, once and a good while I question if I’m a great writer or even a good writer. I think about the people who tell me I’m good and I’m great. Some have books published, some don’t. One sits on a Foreign Relations council. Most, or indeed all the others don’t sit on anything like that. They sit in chairs or they sit around with me. But these people tell me I’m good and sometimes great. But I have doubts, maybe they’re lying. Maybe, maybe. Maybe not? I question their credentials, even the professors with NEA fellowships and Pushcart Awards. They’ve seen my pain in my prose, but at times I just think they feel sorry for me. They tell me pretty words about my writing so I don’t flounder around their offices.

But maybe it’s me who feels sorry for me? Maybe I'm causing my own hurt.

Can’t be not I, the great writer who is in pain and hurt and so on and so on and so on (forth).

But pain, I’m in pain right now. I don’t really know why. But, to me and only me, it’s substantial. I’m lying in bed in pain dealing with my writing. Or is it dealing with my pain while lying in bed writing? Or writing in bed while dealing with my lying? Or lying with my dealing in bed, pain? No, maybe it’s dealing with my bed while pain writes me a letter? Wait, what letter? Hmm, maybe it’s dealing with my—