| Message | This is the first couple of pages of a book i’m writing, can you please give me some feedback and let me know if it’s worth me carrying on with it or if i should come up with something different.
They looked at each other; there were two of them, a woman and a man, neither of them seemed to want to be the first to talk. Eventually the woman, youngish with brown hair if I remember correctly, started talking to me, started telling me… telling me everything. I don’t remember how I felt or the exact words she said, all I remember is staring at the paper people I’d cut out earlier in the corner and visualising every single one of them being ripped apart from the others, that’s what I was, ripped, not in two, but in thousands and thousands, a rip for every stab of emotion, every loss, every tear.
One of my harshest memories is from a few hours later, I wanted someone to run to, someone who could listen while I cried and who could comfort me, that’s when it fully hit me, I had no one, the people I needed were gone, they were the reason I needed someone. I felt completely trapped, I had no way forward and even if I did, I had no one to help me take the first few steps on the way there. I lay curled up on my bed for hours, crying silently and thinking about everything over and over. I eventually fell asleep, just a fragment of what I’d been when I’d woken up that morning.
I’d never wanted him to go, we’d all heard horror stories about what went on out there, It was a scary dangerous place miles away from the comfortable life I was used to. I didn’t think he had to go; it was for other people to worry about, nothing to do with my family or me. I didn’t realise how lucky I was, how selfish and spoilt I was. I guess the old cliché you don’t appreciate what you’ve got until it’s gone is appropriate here, before that day I never realised the heartache involved in that realisation.
I got to stay in my house, the man said so, my guardian, an old family friend, would be moving in to look after me. I hadn’t seen her since I was very young, about two or three and couldn’t recall anything about her. I imagined her as a tall thin woman who would yell at me and go to bed early, I was not looking forward to her meeting her when she arrived the next morning.
The brown haired woman, a social worker I now knew, stayed in the house overnight until my guardian arrived. The man, my fathers lawyer, left soon after explaining about my living arrangement and what I’d been left by my parents, a substantial amount of money, the house and all the items in it. What they also left me, and what the lawyer didn’t mention, was a huge empty space. This empty space seemed to follow me everywhere I went, it was there when I walked around the house, there when I lay in my bed, it was ever present.
The empty space made me feel like I was floating on air, no step I took had any direction or purpose, I was just there. It was like everything I thought and felt went straight to my head, my body no longer existed, I was just a mass of emotion and the same wishes repeating themselves over and over as if this could bring some truth to them.
My main emotion, my most powerful emotion, was hatred. I hated my Dad for going to war, I hated my Mum for killing herself, I hated the government for starting the goddamn war, everyone I could blame I did and I hated them all, I wanted them all to feel how I felt, to see what their selfish decisions did to other people. The government just wanted money, bloody money, literally, it was stained with the soldiers blood, their final sacrifice for little pieces of paper, easily ripped. Why didn’t they rip the money, why did they make little paper people like me and shred them into little tiny pieces? I don’t know what Dad wanted, glory? Did he think going to fight in Iraq would help people? What about me, did he think about if it would help me? And Mum… I know what she wanted, she wanted Dad. He died and I wasn’t enough, she shot herself before I’d even heard the news that he’d been killed in combat.
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