Great piece, a few lines in this piece real spoke to me. Today I am just going to share 3 that really stood out and how they made me feel, despite the whole piece really being a wonderful insight to how YOU felt.
“The beginning feels so long ago” …”The end feels so close.” Fuck, I feel this everyday. IN. SO. MANY. WAYS.
“Feeling’s good. It’s numbness you got to worry about.” Wow, and SO true. Once you stop feeling, once you go numb you are basically dead. Someone very dear to me, was struggling with extreme emotional fluctuations so he decided to have his therapist prescribe medicine to try to level it out. After a relatively short period of time, less than 2 months, he decided that being robotic was as more painful than feeling super sad or joy. It’s been my great privilege to help him understand that it is okay to feel strongly, he is not abnormal he is just on further to the left on the bell curve of how people “feel” the world.
“The emotions don’t have to make sense, they can make you feel uncomfortable. You can even be frustrated that you feel them at all. But don’t compound the issue by making yourself ache because you ache”. So profound and insightful, just going to leave it there!
It makes me happy that you found some resonant stuff in here. This was one of the hardest situations to convince myself to write about: the feeling of loss contrasted with that unshakable sense that I was shallow or weird. This was the biggest thought in my head and heart, but I worried about sharing it. As it turned out, that hashing out process was productive for me to better inspect my emotional response, and where I landed—simulated conversation, but more or less counseling myself like I would a friend—helped me realize how deeply I believe in what I share with others.
I have a lot of friends who suggest to me that I should seek medication to narrow the band of emotion I feel. While I know they mean well, that wide breadth of feeling…is me. It’s part of the essence of who and what I am. They want me to feel better, but they miss that minimizing an essential part of me only creates a new problem to solve. I’m glad your person tried it, but I’m also glad they had the strength to say “This doesn’t work for me.”
Thanks for the feedback on this one. It’s one I’m secretly really proud of and learned a lot from. I listen to that song whenever I think about it (or Trachtenberg) and I like how that feels, even though it isn’t exactly a happy feeling.
There is so much to this that I’m fascinated by. The openness with which you and your friend talk is so moving. I don’t know how common it is for guys of our age (your only a few years older than me) to speak so vulnerably. I have maybe one or two friends where we are this open.
On the writing, I think you do wonderfully with the mix of dialogue and narration. The dialogue does so much to move the story along and then the little bits of narration you insert saturate the scene with so much more vividness. And on the narration specifically, I really enjoyed how you kept retuning to the different looks in your friends eyes as a way to convey how he felt—that was so effective.
And finally, (and I hope this remark doesn’t imply that I failed to grasp some fundamental part of the story), but I was totally left wondering ‘who is this guy I do not know’ and ‘why do you keep telling me I don’t know them’. I found this so intriguing!
I really loved writing the dialogue and narration. When I wrote the novel in 2020, dialogue was not a strength. It read a bit too stilted, and I needed my friend’s feedback to improve my narration between exchanges. This is all to say—your words are high praise. I’m trying to get better at all the things you mentioned, especially because I find it comforting to write dialogue.
And now the confession: both speakers are me. I didn’t have anyone to talk this through with, and when I tried writing it more traditionally, I felt weird and too self-conscious to share it. So I rewrote the entire thing as a conversation. There’s a old kids’ TV trope where a character says they’re “asking for a friend” when it’s suspected they mean themselves—they just don’t feel comfortable admitting it’s them that’s scared or anxious or hurting. I adopted that because I felt those things trying to express why Michelle Trachtenberg’s death had me so down.
You aren’t the only person who read it as an actual buddy—I got that from two other people—so I know I need to work on telegraphing that more haha. In a way, though, it’s comforting that it read authentically like two guys talking to you. I have had conversations like this one with my oldest friend, and that’s who I should have called, but it felt pitiful to be hurting like this—too pitiful to interrupt his life for. I had to work through it myself, so I had me talk me through my feelings.
Thanks so much for the response. This was one that came out of nowhere—her death, obviously, surprised me—and I’m really relieved that it worked for you. It’s also cool that I didn’t get to talk to anyone about this situation, but this comment exchange means ultimately I did. Again, thank you.
Firstly, I certainly think your dialogue here is really good. When I write dialogue, even more so, most of the dialogue I see, is normally only one or two sentences. It’s never that long, whereas some of yours is long sprawling speech — which is way more accurate to real life conversations. In fact, I’m not trying to shower you with praise or anything, but while I was reading it, I did think that the dialogue is kind of like a lot of Dostoevsky's in how long and deep it goes.
Secondly, that’s so freaking awesome as a creative piece of writing that it’s actually a conversation with yourself. I had a sneaking suspicion you was referring to yourself — because like, who else would some of your blog readers ‘definitely not know’.
But yeah, as you mentioned, the fact that I did think it was a convo between two buddies actually speaks to just how good the dialogue was. To refer to Dostoevsky again, I remember hearing once that he often created characters that’s represented different parts of himself and he would have them battle it on the page as way to resolve or even come to a conclusion about what he ultimately believed. As in, he did not know what the outcome would be when he started writing it, which I just think is amazing. And which it kinda seems like you did hear, almost as if you act as a friend or therapist pulling your realisation out of yourself. It’s very cool.
And finally, I’m sorry to hear that Michelle Trachtenberg’s passing hit you so hard. We never really know until it happens how much people, even ones we don’t really know, mean to us. When I was 17, a then famous Australian skateboarder died, he was only a year or two older than me, and I had never met him, but it really hurt. I’ve never forgotten that.
Yeah, uhm, that’s really high praise. Thank you. I love that you’ve put into words something I hadn’t been able to wrap my own around: actual dialogue doesn’t always look like the back-and-forth I picture when someone says “dialogue”. This style, which I used in Banach-Heartski as well, matches the rhythms of the conversations I have. It’s the kind of conversation built around trust: one person talks openly, exploring the ideas, while the other listens. Then there’s a pause and the other person thoughtfully responds. I’m so happy it came across realistically because it felt realistic to me, even though it was happening in my own head.
And I appreciate that last commiseration (if that’s the right word). It’s hard to capture the precise emotions swirled together into a feeling of loss like we’re describing because it’s so different from the grief of losing a loved one. It’s about someone we didn’t know, but that almost makes the grief more personal because it’s generated internally by us, not precisely by the deceased. I don’t know how to think about it, but I do know that, again, appreciate that this became a small dialogue about it. Even though I’d rather this not be a familiar feeling to someone I care about, there’s something reassuring to that fact.
The dialogue definitely came across realistically. And if it felt that way to you then that’s all that really matters in the end (I say that second part more as a reminder to myself than anything else).
And yes, grief and loss seem to be one of those things for which there are no ‘right’ words, but fortunately (or unfortunately) it can be shared, and somehow that seems to help.
Great piece, a few lines in this piece real spoke to me. Today I am just going to share 3 that really stood out and how they made me feel, despite the whole piece really being a wonderful insight to how YOU felt.
“The beginning feels so long ago” …”The end feels so close.” Fuck, I feel this everyday. IN. SO. MANY. WAYS.
“Feeling’s good. It’s numbness you got to worry about.” Wow, and SO true. Once you stop feeling, once you go numb you are basically dead. Someone very dear to me, was struggling with extreme emotional fluctuations so he decided to have his therapist prescribe medicine to try to level it out. After a relatively short period of time, less than 2 months, he decided that being robotic was as more painful than feeling super sad or joy. It’s been my great privilege to help him understand that it is okay to feel strongly, he is not abnormal he is just on further to the left on the bell curve of how people “feel” the world.
“The emotions don’t have to make sense, they can make you feel uncomfortable. You can even be frustrated that you feel them at all. But don’t compound the issue by making yourself ache because you ache”. So profound and insightful, just going to leave it there!
Thanks again for a thought provoking piece.
It makes me happy that you found some resonant stuff in here. This was one of the hardest situations to convince myself to write about: the feeling of loss contrasted with that unshakable sense that I was shallow or weird. This was the biggest thought in my head and heart, but I worried about sharing it. As it turned out, that hashing out process was productive for me to better inspect my emotional response, and where I landed—simulated conversation, but more or less counseling myself like I would a friend—helped me realize how deeply I believe in what I share with others.
I have a lot of friends who suggest to me that I should seek medication to narrow the band of emotion I feel. While I know they mean well, that wide breadth of feeling…is me. It’s part of the essence of who and what I am. They want me to feel better, but they miss that minimizing an essential part of me only creates a new problem to solve. I’m glad your person tried it, but I’m also glad they had the strength to say “This doesn’t work for me.”
Thanks for the feedback on this one. It’s one I’m secretly really proud of and learned a lot from. I listen to that song whenever I think about it (or Trachtenberg) and I like how that feels, even though it isn’t exactly a happy feeling.
There is so much to this that I’m fascinated by. The openness with which you and your friend talk is so moving. I don’t know how common it is for guys of our age (your only a few years older than me) to speak so vulnerably. I have maybe one or two friends where we are this open.
On the writing, I think you do wonderfully with the mix of dialogue and narration. The dialogue does so much to move the story along and then the little bits of narration you insert saturate the scene with so much more vividness. And on the narration specifically, I really enjoyed how you kept retuning to the different looks in your friends eyes as a way to convey how he felt—that was so effective.
And finally, (and I hope this remark doesn’t imply that I failed to grasp some fundamental part of the story), but I was totally left wondering ‘who is this guy I do not know’ and ‘why do you keep telling me I don’t know them’. I found this so intriguing!
Thanks Michael :)
I really loved writing the dialogue and narration. When I wrote the novel in 2020, dialogue was not a strength. It read a bit too stilted, and I needed my friend’s feedback to improve my narration between exchanges. This is all to say—your words are high praise. I’m trying to get better at all the things you mentioned, especially because I find it comforting to write dialogue.
And now the confession: both speakers are me. I didn’t have anyone to talk this through with, and when I tried writing it more traditionally, I felt weird and too self-conscious to share it. So I rewrote the entire thing as a conversation. There’s a old kids’ TV trope where a character says they’re “asking for a friend” when it’s suspected they mean themselves—they just don’t feel comfortable admitting it’s them that’s scared or anxious or hurting. I adopted that because I felt those things trying to express why Michelle Trachtenberg’s death had me so down.
You aren’t the only person who read it as an actual buddy—I got that from two other people—so I know I need to work on telegraphing that more haha. In a way, though, it’s comforting that it read authentically like two guys talking to you. I have had conversations like this one with my oldest friend, and that’s who I should have called, but it felt pitiful to be hurting like this—too pitiful to interrupt his life for. I had to work through it myself, so I had me talk me through my feelings.
Thanks so much for the response. This was one that came out of nowhere—her death, obviously, surprised me—and I’m really relieved that it worked for you. It’s also cool that I didn’t get to talk to anyone about this situation, but this comment exchange means ultimately I did. Again, thank you.
Firstly, I certainly think your dialogue here is really good. When I write dialogue, even more so, most of the dialogue I see, is normally only one or two sentences. It’s never that long, whereas some of yours is long sprawling speech — which is way more accurate to real life conversations. In fact, I’m not trying to shower you with praise or anything, but while I was reading it, I did think that the dialogue is kind of like a lot of Dostoevsky's in how long and deep it goes.
Secondly, that’s so freaking awesome as a creative piece of writing that it’s actually a conversation with yourself. I had a sneaking suspicion you was referring to yourself — because like, who else would some of your blog readers ‘definitely not know’.
But yeah, as you mentioned, the fact that I did think it was a convo between two buddies actually speaks to just how good the dialogue was. To refer to Dostoevsky again, I remember hearing once that he often created characters that’s represented different parts of himself and he would have them battle it on the page as way to resolve or even come to a conclusion about what he ultimately believed. As in, he did not know what the outcome would be when he started writing it, which I just think is amazing. And which it kinda seems like you did hear, almost as if you act as a friend or therapist pulling your realisation out of yourself. It’s very cool.
And finally, I’m sorry to hear that Michelle Trachtenberg’s passing hit you so hard. We never really know until it happens how much people, even ones we don’t really know, mean to us. When I was 17, a then famous Australian skateboarder died, he was only a year or two older than me, and I had never met him, but it really hurt. I’ve never forgotten that.
Thanks Michael :)
Yeah, uhm, that’s really high praise. Thank you. I love that you’ve put into words something I hadn’t been able to wrap my own around: actual dialogue doesn’t always look like the back-and-forth I picture when someone says “dialogue”. This style, which I used in Banach-Heartski as well, matches the rhythms of the conversations I have. It’s the kind of conversation built around trust: one person talks openly, exploring the ideas, while the other listens. Then there’s a pause and the other person thoughtfully responds. I’m so happy it came across realistically because it felt realistic to me, even though it was happening in my own head.
And I appreciate that last commiseration (if that’s the right word). It’s hard to capture the precise emotions swirled together into a feeling of loss like we’re describing because it’s so different from the grief of losing a loved one. It’s about someone we didn’t know, but that almost makes the grief more personal because it’s generated internally by us, not precisely by the deceased. I don’t know how to think about it, but I do know that, again, appreciate that this became a small dialogue about it. Even though I’d rather this not be a familiar feeling to someone I care about, there’s something reassuring to that fact.
Thank you on all counts.
The dialogue definitely came across realistically. And if it felt that way to you then that’s all that really matters in the end (I say that second part more as a reminder to myself than anything else).
And yes, grief and loss seem to be one of those things for which there are no ‘right’ words, but fortunately (or unfortunately) it can be shared, and somehow that seems to help.
Thanks Michael :)