friendluv & friendjealousy

stencil graffiti: your existence gives me hopeGood morning!

Listen, have you seen the movie Bridesmaids yet? Will you go see it, so that we can talk about it here?

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Quick reminder: Early bird registration for the Summer’11 writing workshops ends this Friday! The Write Whole: Survivors Write and Declaring Our Erotic begin on June 13 and June 16, respectively — I’m so looking forward to these workshops.  Please let me know if you have questions or would like to join us!

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I want to talk about friendjealousy, the kind that happens when your good friend has another friend/is amazing/has something you want, and you’re happyjealous, thrilled for them and aching with frustration all at the same time. I can actively remember feeling this, first, in elementary school, and it only grew. Maybe it’s fair to say that I felt it earlier, around my sister, but that gets into sisterlove & sisterjealousy, and that’s different.

I can’t tell you how much I identify with the main character in Bridesmaids, how much I’ve been thinking about friendjealousy recently, the ache to be the one and only bestfriend for your friend, that kind of deep and vulnerable love and desire. This is not the same thing as significant-other/lover jealousy: in some ways it can feel more knife-y, more difficult, more scary.

So, more on this soon. It’s a bigger topic than I have time for at this moment, but it’s throbbing around in me, wanting out onto the page. Maybe I can journal about it on the bus.

A prompt, though: friend-jealousy — have you and/or your characters experienced this? What are its contours — I mean, really, what’s its shape? What does it feel like inside your skin? What are you/your character jealous *of*? This might be something happening now, or something that happened back in high school — whatever arises as you read this prompt, begin there, and follow your writing wherever it seems to want you to go, for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes. Just let yourself write.

Thank you for your honesty about your feelings, even when it’s just deep inside the most secret places of you. Thank you for knowing what matters to you. Thank you for your words.

One response to “friendluv & friendjealousy

  1. Pingback: /frustrated « writing ourselves whole