Why You Should Never Fall In Love With A Writer

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A writer is controlling. She’s used to commanding the characters to do as she likes, she is accustomed to manipulating the words that come out of their mouths. She has invented whole worlds and your genuine attempts at replicating them will not be quite enough for her. She will find you frustrating. She will never be satisfied by real life. She will never be satisfied by you. She will picture the things you could have done better, she will think of the words that would have suited the moment more. And she will get frustrated.

Fall in love with an actress. She understands emotions in a way that will astound you. She can inflect meaning and feeling and truth into the most banal of words. She brings little moments to life, she us energetic and zesty and beautiful. She can transform herself before your eyes. She will never lie to you, though. She will come off stage and wipe off her make-up, she will take off her costume. You will see exactly who she is, you will appreciate the canvas that takes on layers to become someone else. With you, she will be strike you with her emotional honesty, with her acknowledgement of complexity. And in public, she will take on a character and charm her enraptured audience.

Don’t love a writer.

A writer has a phenomenal memory. She is always collecting material for her stories. She’s filing everything you do and say away onto well-organized bookshelves in her head. Nothing you will ever say to her will be off the record. Your words and your thoughts and feelings will find its way onto her page. You will see yourself through her eyes. Others will see you the way she does. You may not like that. She will be unapologetic. She warned you of it, she told you she was a writer. And she will hurt you.

Fall in love with an artist. She has a flair of expression that you will struggle to understand. She will throw paint haphazardly on a canvas, and it will be beautiful. She will transform her pain into an intricately bizarre sculpture. She is mysterious, but you will grow to appreciate her raw talent and the lengths she goes to execute her ideas. You will drive across town to search for particular materials with her, you will spend afternoons setting up exhibitions that will never quite fulfil the vision in her mind. She will need you, and you will get to watch her create freely and beautifully. You will observe others as they look at her art, you will wonder if they see the same things as you. They probably don’t. But that’s what you’ll love about her, she’ll reveal something new with each passing glance.

Don’t love a writer.

A writer is capricious. She’s prone to changing her mind. She will spend hours, days, weeks, working on something, only to delete it on a whim. A writer’s messy. She has dozens of thoughts and ideas scribbled in booklets and in Word documents. She may be consumed with one of them and then forget about it two days later. A writer is easily bored. And so one day, she will get bored of you.

Fall in love with a pianist. She has spent endless hours at her instrument. She is patient and diligent and wise. She has carefully mastered the theory and the practice. She is fiercely intelligent and has a calculated mathematical mastery to her thinking. She takes great care to strike the right keys. She takes great pains to plan everything through. She makes it all looks devastatingly easy. She will hardly ever hit a false note, and if she does, she will practice the piece until she never will again. You will see only a slight portion of the effort she puts into her work, she is always modest. She will appreciate your audience, even though she will not need your suggestions or support. You will give her a standing ovation every time she plays.

Don’t love a writer.

A writer is reckless. She may say something purely to spur on a reaction, she may act purely out of a desire for a particular experience. It isn’t dishonesty, it isn’t disingenuity. She wants to understand people. She wants to understand herself. She wants to improve her writing, and for that, she needs impulsivity. She needs to experience everything in order to be able to express it in words. She needs you desperately, but she needs to hurt you sometimes. Her rashness, her occasional irrationality, will lead to situations she ought to regret. But she never will, because she gained something from each of them. She cannot write if she does not live. You will grow to resent this, you will find her frustrating. And she will sit down and write about that.

Fall in love with a dancer. She is physically indestructible. She has been injured countless times, she has rubbed her feet raw. She is fearless. She has been thrown around by partners on stage. They have dropped her. She has stood up and carried on dancing. She is resilient and unyielding. She is determined and powerful. She will inspire your friends’ jealousy, they will ask about how flexible she really is. She will appreciate your support but she will never need it. She has a strong framework of friends in her company. A dancer has spent whole days in a rehearsal studio with other dancers, and enjoyed that. A dancer will appreciate your addition in your life. But she will never need you.

You see? Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

Never love a writer, my friend.

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