Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

By Jack Ujejski

It was the very first day of school. As such, my mother had given me a blue Five Star fresh with lined paper that yearned for me to write in it. I imagined myself writing the greatest story ever told. My first story was a basic one. In order to be a successful writer, I had to be critical. And so, I observed that my first story’s only interesting qualities came from the bland descriptions of action and questionable use of margins and grammar. No matter how critical I was of my story, I still managed to love it. I knew it was horrible. I read it to my parents, and they only loved it because I loved it. However, love ignited the passion that I needed to carry around this blue Five Star notebook everywhere. It made me write about everything. It was all terribly boring, yet over time, the writing filled up the pages. My teacher was proud that she could finally preoccupy me and my terrible behaviour with something. Writing made me forget about what I was doing. I felt exhilarated every time I picked up that pencil and began to write. I craved it.

My parents were happy, not for the stories I began to write but for the fact that I decided to do something productive. They looked at me as I sat writing on the couch, bewildered that I had decided to leave mid-dinner again to sit and write in that blue notebook. It wasn’t for an assignment or project; it was for my own simple enjoyment of writing stories I could control. It crept up slowly, but I realized what I wanted, the ability to control. I got better at writing creatively; I soon began whipping up stories of knights so strong they could break down buildings with single strikes and of the fastest person alive running around the world. Yet my stories felt unfair. I lacked that control I craved. I wanted to be the strongest, I wanted to be the fastest.

It only took a short while when I used that notebook to write myself into the story. It was a story in which I was the best and I was the king. I had evolved. I wasn’t Jack anymore, I was whatever I wanted, and I believed it. My stories gradually tainted my mind. They messed with my overpowering greed for control over everything. My stories grew dark and bloody, and nothing was able to stop me in my story. I lived for the time I got home from school and was able to write about the fantasies of the day, fantasies in which I was the best in gym class, the teacher thought I was the smartest, and she liked me more than that stupid Nicholas. The writing had been drugging me with something far more powerful than anything I could withstand. 

I stopped talking to my friends, only thinking about what I could write at home. I was the one with all the control, but no one knew. My self-esteem was a rollercoaster on an endless loop. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was the best in that notebook, to the point that I missed out on living life outside the notebook. Life was moving on, and I was stuck in the past. 

It had to go. 

This notebook which I found so much joy in had tricked me into thinking I loved it. I didn’t have control; it had the control and I was too dumb to see it. Was this the good ending I had been looking for? Was everyone happy? I didn’t care anymore. I finished my last sentence and put in my last period. It was done and no one would know it was a masterpiece.

***

Countless years later, I find myself walking into a class on the first day of school. The class hums with an electrical sound of an air conditioner running. I sit down, place my bag down on the grimy floor, and look at my desk in anticipation. There it lies, as if in a fortress of nightmarish memories I wanted to forget. It’s a darker blue than before, but the brand remains the same. It’s a notebook, and I have no choice but to open it.