Sean

As this is just a way of expressing myself and a way of digitalising my memory, I wanted to share some of my recent writing on here. 

Sean was a text I wrote to skirt around an all-consuming and overwhelming romantic disaster that completely broke me in every way. I think it wasn’t the person, but much rather the feeling that caused me to just lose myself in my insecurities and the obsessive “what-ifs.”.

It’s a very direct text, so maybe I’m a bit fucked with that one by putting it on here. However, I think that using any creative tool as an outlet for your emotions is the right way to do it. Only then do you actually process it and look at the events from an outside perspective; here it is that of a writer removing any feelings and thinking about the perfect words to use. I don’t think that by writing about stuff I’m attacking someone or calling them out; instead, when I decide to write about something, then it’s not about that individual anymore but about what I can create as a young aspiring writer. 

Anyway, this is just a simple little text, so I hope someone likes it.

Sean

 

Sean, this is my good friend. And, dear, this is Sean, my roommate.

We nod at each other. His face is still the same from last week, so is his name.  I’m sure he thinks that about me, too. Nevertheless, we say hello, we shake hands, and he gives me a dirty grin. He knows I know.

Do you want anything, dear? Do you want to stay downstairs for a while?

My lover looks at me in the doorframe, an eager foot on the stairs that lead to his bedroom. I almost laugh, am I supposed to give an answer to someone who keeps my tongue in his mouth? His foot talks for me, his back tells me not to respond.  But then I remember that Sean is still watching me. Blond hair, blue eyes that I never see, because he keeps his head low, and a grin that leaves me nauseous.

Sean, Sean, Sean. I wonder if his parents were big Beatles fans back then. Although, naming your child after a rockstar’s abandoned son seems a bit weird. (Was he the abandoned one?) Maybe Sean is an abandoned child. His parents were skint Americans who lived in a filthy apartment in Portugal, his father was a drummer, his mother a sculptress. Sean was unplanned but looked after. No, loved after. No, he was neglected. Or he had 5 older sisters and was raised by his least favourite one. He didn’t live in Portugal, his parents aren’t American, he’s got a posh British accent. What brings him here? Probably work. He looks like he’d work with computers, maybe an underpaid engineer. Do those exist? Do I ask him?   

Sean, did your parents love you by any chance?

I couldn’t ask him that. It seems inappropriate. Weirdly personal. He hasn’t been inside of me; unlike his roommate who stares at me impatiently from the hallway. Did his parents love him? Sean, you need to help me here. Do you even know? Maybe I think too much about things that don’t matter. Maybe that’s what’s weird.

Sean, I’m sure you would adore me if you’d knew me. If only you saw me more. You don’t, but I pretend you do. Glances turn into stares, little nods are pitying smiles, when you leave to go upstairs with your headphones, I’m sure it’s because you cannot stand the moans coming from a juvenile girl who isn’t being loved right. You’d fuck her better, you wouldn’t even need any other girl.  But she comes back to his bed. Does that make you sad?

 

Maybe I should have loved you, Sean. Or the other housemate who keeps barging into rooms to ask about the whereabouts of a vacuum cleaner – I'm pretty sure no one knows exactly where it is. Or maybe the pretty woman who shook my lover’s shoulder when he proudly presented the burnt food he had cooked for me to her. I forget her name now, maybe he should have introduced us a third time, then it would have stuck.

Sean, when I think of you now, months after deserting my lover, your face is blurry, and your grin doesn’t haunt me anymore. But does it matter what you look like? Do you even remember what I look like? Did you not have to pretend? Ignore the eyes of the child who talks about her homework and her dreams of university. (A lie, we never talked) 

Did you think I was too young back then? Do you think that about his other girls, too? Or do you not think? Do you not contemplate about my sad existence, and where I went? Because I do that with you.

Sean, you are the bane of my existence. You follow me into the corners from my memory, and I run from you until your grin reaches me in the deep waves of embarrassment. You must find it hilarious that he keeps forgetting about our meetings. I’m sure you always tell him afterwards.

Dude, you know the girl you brought over? This is the fourth time you’ve introduced us to each other. Do you think she knows? I mean she must know. But she still comes back. You must be a beast, dude!

You probably don’t talk about me. You seem like the person who wouldn’t care about that stuff. I looked you up, Sean. You rarely post anything, but you like the woods, and you definitely enjoy a good whisky. (You’re also an engineer, and I had to laugh.)

You’ve been living in that house for four years now, Sean. Don’t you want to leave? Come with me, we can escape together. Do you even have a car? You must have, but I’m never around long enough to confirm my theories. They’re conspiracies about your life, Sean. Or maybe desperate attempts of deepening a shallow grave. My lover and I aren’t in love, you know that, Sean. But your smirk tells me that you can see the sand shovel I’m hiding behind my back. I went to look for it in my dusty attic when my lover kissed me for the first time, but my tight grip doesn’t mean anything. I promise.

Do you grin, because you think I’m pretty? Too pretty? Too sexy? Too smart? Too good for him? I’m not. Don’t make those assumptions. Defend me, Sean. When my lover washes the bloody sheets, tell him I’m better than all the other girls. He’ll disagree, but, Sean, you’ll defend me.

I know what you’re like, Sean. We know each other. You raise your left eyebrow first when I enter the room. You look at him first. Are you wondering if I’m still the same girl? Or maybe you think exactly like me. Maybe you’re making bets with me, estimating whether he will introduce us again.

Dude, that girl must have no self-respect. At least she’s a good fuck. I can always hear her crying out for you. She’s always begging for you.

Maybe I should have called myself Sean, and you are the dear friend. Do our names matter? Yours does. I have it carved inside my arms. Blood is always the same, just like us.

It doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, what I’m doing here. It means nothing. You are nothing. I am Mother Earth, and you are nothing. You mean nothing to me, Sean. (Please, let him introduce you to me again.)

You’ll tell me I’ve got it wrong, Sean. He’s a nice guy, and you don’t judge. And maybe I have, I mean, got it wrong. You don’t like me, you don’t think of me, you don’t know me.

But when I come over again, and you put out your hand for me to shake, you’ll know a new me. And I will meet you, Sean, for the first time.

 

Leni