(This is a follow up to a previous post. If you have not read it, you can find it here: The Wolves.)
I recently received fantastic news.
My pitch that I submitted into The Moth was accepted to be processed into their Listen & Vote section. What this means is that the pitch that was sent into the website will now be available for all to hear. Now, I discussed this topic previously and I said that I would not tell the story again until it was accepted and processed. Now that the story has made it a little further, I am beginning to feel very optimistic about the whole experience.
After I first submitted the story, I was anxious. Nervous is also a good word to use. However, I felt relieved. I spoke of how I was ashamed of this story and how I wished to free myself from its chains because I no longer wanted to carry this weight around with me. I no longer desired to be left in the dark wondering if this was a pain that only I carried, or if it was a pain that my brothers and I all shared. It was time for me to tell this story. After I recorded my pitch and played it back, I submitted it… and then my mind was cleared of the story. It did not haunt me or plague my thoughts every now and then. Instead, it simply vanished into the internet to be judged by The Moth and deemed good or not good. Luckily, it was determined to be worthy of competition, and with that comes the anxiety of reliving the story. See, I lied… I told someone the story last night, and frankly, all of the same emotions came back as I was telling the little tidbits of the story. The listener simply looked at me as I read the story. I wanted to look at her to see her reaction, but if I did, I knew that I would lose my train of thought, and with that I would also lose my emotional state. She held a slight smirk as she listened carefully as I opened up a piece of me that no one has really ever been able to see. The thought of all of this passed through my head relatively quickly in the matter of a split second as I told the story. At the end of it all, though, I felt an odd sense of comfort. She smiled really big after, and told me she enjoyed it. All I could do was insist, “really?”.
I expressed my joy and fear in possibly having the chance to tell this story. I told her about how I wanted to tell this because it was finally time to let whoever was willing to listen hear it, but I told her I feared my family hearing it because of this situation: what if none of this was felt by them, and instead, only I felt this weakness and pain? What if this is nothing more than me over analyzing and thinking;killing myself with these thoughts of separation and deceit? The thought of this left me in an odd limbo.
I still am waiting for the pitch to finally appear, but when it does, I will post the link.
(Here is the link to the page where you can find my pitch. At the time of posting it is on Page 4: Christian L – The Wolves of the Pack)
Best,
Christian
