The Break

by Katie Sise

We tell ourselves all kinds of stories about our past. And maybe we even convince ourselves they’re true. I tell myself and everyone else that I live in the sordid worlds of my novels because of my father’s stabbing. That I write mysteries with heroines who solve them because I could never solve his murder. I have no idea whether these things make me a good writer or a good liar.

Now I wonder if it isn’t just a tiny bit cruel to be so unwilling to look into dark corners.

Maybe marriage hardens things for every couple, makes the edges sharper and dulls the surface so it isn’t a shiny, perfect thing anymore.

We’re all walking around with these big brains that can misfire and split and repress and obsess or hurtle into insanity at any second.

I don’t know what went wrong to make me like this. I guess I’m hoping if everyone is busy noticing how beautiful and full of light I am, then maybe they won’t see my gaping dark holes.

I still need it: the zip over my skin, the thing that reminds me I’m alive. But I’m twenty-two now and I need more than cold water.

Her love was the ultimate dopamine hit—intermittent and unpredictable—and now I look for it everywhere.

I’m suddenly exhausted, as though telling the truth has zapped me of everything I’ve been holding tight in my chest the past few weeks.

Opening conflict. Introduce your characters. Main character is actionable and drives the plot forward. Obstacles galore. Emotional conflicts everywhere. Setbacks. Twist—three or four, if you’ve got them. All characters hurtle toward a boil, and then boom: unexpected consequences. Twist again. Revelation: the truth surfaces. Resolution.

Every character wants something on every page. When you figure out what that is, and how all the characters’ motivations and scheming fit together, you have a story. Tweak it lighter or darker until you know what you’ve got: drama or comedy. For some writers the line blurs, but for me it’s always a drama.

Maybe I shouldn’t look into it that much, but isn’t that kind of what marriage is? Increasingly subtle apologies for larger transgressions?

I think of how out of place my parents seemed when they were here, and I wonder if me living here will make me less and less like them. How much of where we are determines who we are?

Then they had me, and I’m not sure my mom has ever forgiven Jed and me for tethering her to my dad like a noose.

Love is love in all its deadly forms, and we all want it like something primal.

who prints out photos anymore? They live on our phones, destined for nothing.

I’m just scared I’m more like my mother, so messed up with the constant searching for something—the feeling, the want, the adoration. I’m worried it’s going to kill me.

Isn’t that one of the cruel things marriage does to us? The one-ups and resentments; the agony of battle, of climbing back on top, of losing and winning and never being on the same team the way you were when you first fell in love.

there have been things I’ve been willing to do to get ahead, rules I’ve bent, ways I’ve lived outside the lines of what normal people do.

Maybe it’s the whole point of being here on this planet; to be close to each other and love each other.

It’s kind of awful, isn’t it? How you can want the stare of someone so very much—and then feel sick to your stomach when it’s the wrong man.

I hold back tears because now he’s said the thing that breaks me, the thing I fear is the most true: that I’m not shiny and good, that I’m just untalented, selfish, unlovable June.

Maybe all of us are more things than we can count.

I’ve started going upstate every month for an overnight at my parents’ house. Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s not. But it’s my family: the only one I’ve got. My mom and dad have come to every opening night of my performances, and I can always make out the precise ring of my dad’s chuckle from the audience. It’s gotten to the point when I write now, I know the lines he’ll find funny, and sometimes when I get writer’s block I imagine writing only for him, and I find it’s easier to keep going. On opening night this past weekend, my mother brought me a bouquet of red roses. Her hands were shaking when she gave them to me.