my submission

I realized at midnight, and I hadn't pu anything on here yet today, so i wanted to mention that i submmitted my story "Rooftop loneliness" to three mags today. I revised it a lot, and I think it turned out good. I'll probably get rejected, but I' ok with that.
I just moved into my new apartment, an it's workig out great. Now, if I could find a guy. . . .that would be nice as well. My room-mates constanly have guys one's practicly engaged, and Im just lonely I decided. curse-edness. anyway, here's my loneliness piece


Rooftop Loneliness

“I had a strong sudden instinct that I must be alone”
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

I watched the clouds come in across the sky, pushing their way into the mountain. They didn’t want to rain, but I needed them to. I needed to feel the wetness on my face, to lose myself in the sound of drops hitting the earth. Night started to take over, and I could see a few stars, the ones that outshone the streetlights that were blinking on all over. I was on the roof top again, the one spot I could go to and let my mind calm down for a moment. I was hit with the desire to get out. I didn’t know where it came from, what part of my brain decided to turn around and say “Hey! You have got to be alone. Right now, be alone”. All I knew was that I couldn’t get rid of it.
I was working two jobs and going to school full time in the summer. Every day I’d sit in my Shakespeare class at Southern Utah University, trying to understand the characters in King Henry the Eighth or something like that and I would realize that I had been staring out the window at a pine tree blowing in the wind for the past half hour. For Freshman Orientation, one of the jobs that kept me busy, I’d always volunteer to be the back up guide on the campus tours. I wouldn’t have to talk to the Freshmen, I could meander around campus, bringing up the rear of the tour group. While the front guides would explain about the Administration building, I could sit on the steps by the water fountain, lost in the trickle the water made coming down the rocks, watching the leaves twirl under the bridge.
Why hadn’t I gone yet? It was already the end of July, when the storms start coming more frequently here in the desert. It wasn’t that I hated Shakespeare, things weren’t spinning down into the toilet of life, I was making plenty of money between both jobs to support me even next semester. Yet my backpack was sitting by my bedroom door, half packed, almost begging me to quit my jobs, quit school, top the pack off and hitch hike to the Appalachian Trail.
Instead I took walks. In the afternoons, between work and school, I would travel the streets of the town. I noticed the worms in the gutter, the shadows of birds across the asphalt. I didn’t ever pay much attention to the houses and the streets. In fact, I avoided the streets I knew would have kids playing on them, or other people. I chose a path that would lead me around Cedar City that most people wouldn’t take for any reason. I knew exactly where to stand on a certain street so I could turn one way and smell sage, turn another way and see the canyon, another and watch hummingbirds fight over a feeder. The sage reminded me of the mountains, and after two weeks of smelling the sage everyday I thought I was going to explode. I couldn’t stand the thought of the real world. I didn’t want to have to worry about what was going to happen tomorrow. I didn’t want to have to plan my days off of work two weeks in advance. I didn’t want to have to pretend anymore, to tell everyone I’m doing just fine when inside I was aching to get out.
More often than not my roommates had to say my name more than once to get my attention. A textbook would be sitting in front of me on the kitchen table, but my thoughts weren’t involved in the pages. I was imagining being in the mountains, just me and the wilderness. Some place where I was by myself and didn’t have to concur with society.
That’s why I’d lie there on the roof, trying to ignore the noises in the house below me, staring through branches into the dark sky. It was then when my urge to be alone simmered down, content for the moment, when it was silent, after my back was numb and everyone else had gone to sleep. But come the next morning, it returned with a vengeance, realizing it had been fooled by a rooftop
I had a friend who lived out of his Volkswagen van for six months; he said it was the best time he ever had to just live life day by day and to not to worry about anything. Now he walks around campus with his feet bare and dreads in his hair. He doesn’t care what people think of him or how he’s doing in relation to others. He’s still living day by day and that’s what I wanted. My older sister told me that I could come visit her for a while, that it would be good for me to get a break. She told me I’d regret quitting school when I was so close to graduating. The last thing I wanted was to spend a weekend with my sister in the Salt Lake Valley. It would be easier to take a shovel to the hole I knew was growing inside of me.
And it is a hole; it is a deep dark hole that was trying to take over my life. There is actually no trying; it’s taking over my life. There’s a part of my brain that fights back though. It knows that I couldn’t leave, no matter how much I need to be alone, like Fitzgerald, or else I will most assuredly crack-up. Reason slowly takes over and talks me out of it. Reason pushes my loneliness into a box and sticks it in the corner of my mind where it knows it will sit for a while. What reason doesn’t know is that it could break free at any moment. That instinct that I must be alone. And as the rain slowly starts the pelt the rooftop around me, as the darkness of the clouds cover the stars; I know that this time I can’t resist it; reason won’t be able to stuff my desire back into a box, won’t be able to stop me from being alone. For whatever reason, I know that I have to be alone. So I’ll walk down the street, stand in the right spot and turn around; smell the sage, look at the canyon, and watch the rain drench the hummingbird feeder.


so that's what i turned into three lit mags. . .boy it's going to be sad when i get rejected. . .