i am a mollusc, you are an irritant, and i am actively coating you with successive depositions of nacreous material which will eventually render you beautiful, silent, smooth, and quite dead
Whoever paid to have the âEverything Will Be Okayâ billboard put up along 24 yesterday after the election results, that was a very kind thing to do. I needed to read it. Iâm sure many others did too.
Sorry to break it to you but you literally have to face your fears and slaughter them. Otherwise you will live a small life that you do not want. You literally have to view your biggest fears and attack them head on. You have to fall into the abyss to find your way out. The easy path does not exist. There is no get out of jail free card. You have to allow yourself to die a spiritual death over and over again in order to reinvent yourself into the person you are actually supposed to be. And you have to be painfully honest with yourself and the people around you. Itâs horrible but itâs truly the only way.
âHow many times did I tell you I wasnât happy there?â Georgie asks. âSeriously, how many?â
Every call from Georgie had a few constants. Georgie loved him. Georgie missed him, missed BU. It was weird being one of the only new guys on the roster. Georgie felt overwhelmed.
âHow the fuck was I supposed to know you werenât just bitching?â Robbie asks. âFuck, I bitched about my environmental economics class every fuckingââ
âI had no friends there,â Georgie says flatly. âLater, maybe, but not at first. They needed me to be good, and I sucked. The more I tried not to suck, the worse I sucked, and the harder I tried, and it just â it never got better. I didnât get better. I was supposed to be franchise, and I was a liability taking a spot away from someone who deserved it more. They didnât like me. They didnât want me there. I didnât want me there.â
âYou didnât tell me that,â Robbie says, but he did. Never as bluntly as right now, but. He did.
âI told you every time, and you didnât care,â Georgie says. âBecause how could you be mad at me for leaving you behind if I hated every minute of it?â
(but always in tandem, pt 35)
How it's going:
âGeorgie,â Robbie says. âWhat the fuck was that?â
âAn old friend,â Georgie says.
âOh yeah, seems like a close one,â Robbie says. He doesnât get a laugh that time either. âHe was being a complete dick.â
âYeah,â Georgie says. âWell. I wasnât very good for them, was I.â
âThe fuck does that have to do with anything?â Robbie asks.
Georgieâs shoulders jerk. Itâs the first time heâs moved, and it looks more like a flinch than a shrug, abrupt and sharp. âWe should get to the bus,â he says. âWeâre probably keeping people waiting.â
It's been over a decade since I started writing David. When I started writing about this grim, angry kid from Ottawa, a city I'd only been once in my life (I've now lived in Ottawa for almost nine years), I expected to embark on a fairly typical rivals-to-lovers story. Instead stumbled into writing a massive bildungsroman about a character on the spectrum trying to navigate a world he feels deeply uncomfortable in.
David's coming of age story, directly and indirectly, lead to me being diagnosed myself, which has completely changed my life and lead to my own sort of coming of age (or at least, coming of coping mechanisms!).
I think to say that David and I have been on a journey together would be an understatement: it's been a whole ass odyssey. I cannot begin to say how much this character means to me; the fact that he means so much to so many of you as well has been one of the biggest triumphs of my writing career.
Between the Teeth is now on Amazon (other ebook markets to follow in the coming days).
If you're a Goodreads member, ratings and reviews mean a lot and spread the word.
you came back wrong and i am racked with guilt because i cannot bear to see you like this and i should have let you rest. i loved you so much that i defied death itself but i do not think either of us are happy
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