I have never handled embarrassment well. I blush like crazy at the slightest provocation and have been known to go so far as to, in scientific terms, "freak the hell out" when the situation was dire enough. One of the things I am the most easily embarrassed by is other people reading my story bits written down on napkins, in my notebooks, and in various word documents all over my laptop.
So one day I was over at my dearest Mat's house (well, his parents' house) and writing in my notebook. He noticed and took it away, attempting to read the story I was working on. I let him because, well, he's my boyfriend, and he let me read his writing, and he's always interested in everything I do... but mostly I let him read because my handwriting is terrible. He complained about a headache two sentences in and I turned away, satisfied.
Only he kept reading.
It eventually came to the point where I had to take the notebook away from him. Or rather attempted to take the notebook away from him. You see, he's so much bigger and stronger than I am; he's some big guy who used to wrestle and I'm just a little girl who used marching band as PE credit. An epic battle ensued, if you call "he held the notebook over my head and laughed while I jumped for it" an epic battle. He eventually surrendered the notebook, sad that I wouldn't let even him read the things I had written.
I took one very important lesson from this: I must destroy everything so he doesn't read it.*
But everything I've worked on, no matter how terrible (and believe me, some of these things are terrible), has a little piece of me in it. Even the things on the bottom of my pile of crap were giving me little twinges of guilt as I went to delete them from my computer. And then I recalled the confession turn that my blog had taken recently, and plan began to form. I started a new post on blogger and began copying quotes into it. When I had finished going through the stories (and done the all-important task of emptying the trash can), I began writing the explanation for these quotes, and... oh, I think we've caught up to the post in real life.
So here are some tiny bits from these stories resigned to the trash can. I will not explain any of them further because, as much as I am becoming comfortable with confessing things, I don't want to find out if I can burst into flames from sheer embarrassment.
"He buys a car seat and supplies, and then is on the run with a baby."
"He glanced at the men, then moved a bit closer to her and leaned over as far as he dared. 'Your water,' she said. 'Pour it on me.'"
“Never! I’ve told you, we have no reason to kill you as long as you cooperate!”
"The complete opposite in automobiles flashes past; bright red, fast, young, and obviously working."
"That was what she had hoped he wouldn't ask. She pulled her legs up into the chair and spread her skirt over them, aware that her movements had caused him to look at her."
"However, I soon gave up, for there was no way he was actually going to go back to her. It was temporary. I wouldn’t allow him to go back to her."
"And what could be stronger than hate?" "I wouldn't want to frighten the children."
"'What have you done?' Dead silence followed. Well, not really dead silence; the dead don't listen with such intensity that you can practically feel it."
"He didn’t care if she had been expecting to be invited to his expensive flat that night. He had other plans and other guests."
"Sometimes she felt like the glove on her left hand overpowered the rest of her."
*Okay, okay, so I also loosened up a bit and started letting him read what I was writing. But only because he is adorable when he pouts.
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