Conflict Resolution

It’s fresh and exciting, the new book. 

The cover gives me an impression that may end up predictable to the story within. But at that time, as I stare at the cover, I see a story full of unexpected twists and turns that the cover would have never told. Full of characters that are waiting to be fleshed out so I can experience their joys, their rages, their heartbreaks as if they were my own. 

It’s fresh. Paperback. Brand new.

I open the book. 

It’s not a new chapter in my life, but a new volume. I have put the old one on the shelf, of my first year and a half of high school, the preliminary war grounds, of times spent online with a video game that was more foolish than serious and a boy who had left myself and himself both confused about feelings of what may have been love or a desire to be loved.

This new book opened up with you. The beginning.

You came in interestingly enough, as a quiet friend of a friend, who I added to my collection after the boy. Along with you were worlds that were waiting to be crafted, characters that I didn’t know existed in my head just yet, and a friendship that I was sure to last a lifetime, just as I naively presumed each lifetime would last with every one. 

I loved this book and the new adventures it promised.

Of the boy named after the goddess, of the girl that started wars, of the Danish and the Norwegian. We laughed over the stories we created together, and you sometimes cried, though I was never really quite sure why. 

I found it a bit funny as I stared at the tearstained pages. 

You would present illustrations to the book, a new depth that wasn’t quite there before, and I kept writing stories with you. 

Even when the lands of my world grew dark and frightening, as I battled the demons of composition and chemistry. Every day I would torture myself a bit through the war ground to make it to the library for that hour of time in which I could continue weaving new stories with you. 

New faces would come in and out. The effeminate boy who would be humorously masculine. The girl that danced through life. The boy that told stories in a way that we couldn’t tell them. 

We’d laugh. You’d draw the illustrations. I’d prop up the plots.

I started crying more often. The pages became tear stained from my tears. 

Not over the stories we wrote, but over the war grounds. 

This would be my first crisis.

Over the struggles in my story that was interweaved with yours, with theirs, but I tried to keep my head held high. I tried to keep pushing forward with my own weapons of pencil and laptop, to keep that promise of speaking to you once a day to weave more stories, because I could no longer weave stories on my own. 

And I think you couldn’t weave stories without me, too. 

That’s how this book came to be. Co-written.

I won the war in the end, with pencil and portable electronics. You were there in the first resolution, in front of me, with a happy smile and slightly awkward nature. I introduced you to the characters of my life story, that hadn’t quite made it into yours or the ones we had created together quite yet, and you gave me the feeling of being loved. 

That feeling that I was so eager to give back. 

End Act One. 

Begin Act Two, when you leave to that comfortable distance place, and we begin to talk once more. 

Things may have started to fall apart then. I start a new war ground, but this time, it’s with chess pieces instead of by myself. I have grown and know my limits of what I can and can’t do, and I move the pieces forward, while you navigate the beginnings of your next volume. 

I see that we’re running out of pages and I panic. 

I don’t want this book to end. This wonderful book, though with numerous struggles, had characters I loved. It had ideas and stories that I couldn’t create with anyone else, much less by myself. It had a beautiful life, with it’s worn and food stained pages, being kept under my pillow at night. 

Always nearby. 

We have my second crisis, your first one. 

You say I’m weighing you down. 

The story gets even more tragic from then on out.

We argue. I scream, you stay calm in a way that I can only describe as frightening. I yell at the book, gripping at it in my hands, then throwing it against the wall in frustration saying I never want to see it or read it again unless it’s on my terms.

That only lasted a day. 

Funny, how this repeats the last volume, with the boy. It’s almost as if I’m retelling the same story with you.

We make up. The resolution is there for only a couple months, and I begin to weave hastily written stories for the sake of our friendships, to be lived through others that only resided in my head. 

The girl that heard voices like I do. The other girl who was so unlike me in every way imaginable. The boy who’s obsessions we swore would kill him one day. 

We enter the last crisis, the final conflict. 

We argue again. 

This is all has been played out in a previous volume, just with a different player. 

I yell at you, comparing you to him, the boy in the last volume. You have suddenly turned into a dark faced villain that kept things in my head isolated and alone. You seemed to have taken away my gift from me, a gift that I loved so dearly, but now I can hardly master. 

“It’s not my fault you’re taking my words the way you are,” you say. 

Even you should know that words have power. 

Even you should know that one has to be careful with words. 

Haven’t we learned that together? 

Even if you meant one meaning with your words, I could take it an entirely different way. 

And clearly, I did. 

End Act Two. 

Conflict Resolution. 

With ripped, worn, tear-stained pages. With pages covered in food and grime. With pages dropped in puddles on the way home from the school war grounds, with pages doodled on with your illustrations. 

I place the volume lovingly on the shelf. 

I’m ready to start a new volume on my own.

Maybe I’ll read our story again someday, when the wounds have partially healed, when I look upon you with more fondness than hatred. When you’re more protagonist than antagonist. 

But for now, I let our volume gather dust.