The Beginning of the Beginning

A small snippet introducing the mindset of Art and her initial standpoint of love and relationships

There are two things that are tremendously addictive in our world. Freedom is addictive. Freedom is addictive when you're loveless and you have absolutely no intentions of being any different, or maybe you do but you don't really know what you’d be getting yourself into.

That's where I was. The definition of life as I knew and loved it went something along these lines: 

To never care about another but to be cared about. I loved it and it charged me and I did whatever I wanted knowing that I would still be accepted. I liked to roam and drift and jump from whatever love I felt like falling into that day, with any stranger I wanted, at any point in time, and I could leave whenever I wanted. Nobody got hurt, or at least I didn't, but that's all I could see. I only saw my freedom and my feelings and nobody else ever mattered.

I was 14 at the time and a freshman in high school, and the rollercoaster I had built for myself didn't come crashing down until I was 18 and a freshman in college. By then I had experienced every type of guy and every sort of situation there possibly was and though I spent my time constructing a wall to keep any unwelcome soul out, in the end, heartbreak was inevitable. Heartbreak from the unavoidable pain of having to break your heart out of the other most addictive thing: imprisonment.

It all started in the cozy laid-back beach town called Royal Cove, in a public high school right on the the sandy Southern California shore. 

Beth Van Zandt and I had been best friends since the 7th grade and we were inseparable. She was awfully tall and stunningly beautiful with her long blonde hair and goddess-like flare about her. She outshone me in so many ways, but she had no interest in learning what she could from guys and I admit I envied her for that. She was independent and she didn't care and she stayed away from the lowly guys of our own public high school. 

Not to say that I wasn't one to compete with her although we never had to nor did we ever want to. She had her own thing and I had mine. We both had our fair share of confidence but I always had a way of thinking I was a little bit more special than anyone else I came across. Maybe it was good and maybe it wasn't but I always did think a little extra confidence went a long way.

It was a sunny, 85 degree day on our beach-side high school campus when Beth and I were off to lunch. We couldn't drive yet so the famous Lunar Bliss cafe where all the vehicle-operating upperclassmen spent their lunch was out of the question. We were traveling by foot but we hadn't a care in the world.

He came in disguise, in the form of my introduction to a side of of emotion I had yet to see, the beginning of my experimental journey, my first peek through a telescope from which I could examine myself through someone else’s eyes, the very first era, and that day he came walking up.

Reviews

[Ben Barton]

This is an excellent start to what, should the inclination take you, would make an excellent book! There are a couple of issues with sentence structure, but that's minor stuff that will be picked up and changed by editors and proofreaders; very useful people to know, they are, pedantic as they may be.

Anyway, this is great! I like the subject, and I really enjoyed the way you write. It's descriptive without being cloying, and that is always a tricky line to tread.

Keep on writing! :)