Today is a day that gives me mixed feelings. According to what I was told, when my dad was a teen this was the day of his dad’s funeral and when I was a kid it was also the day of dad’s mom’s funeral. Since it is his birthday, that had to hurt a lot. Not only did he lose his parents a couple days before his birthday, but someone thought having the funeral on his birthday was a good plan . . . twice.
It being dad’s birthday is also part of why I have mixed feelings on it since I lost dad eight years ago. I miss him a lot and it’s still strange to me that I can’t just go find him and say hi or tell him about things going on in my life whenever I want to. It also hurts that my sisters’ kids don’t have the chance to get to know him.
While the previous angst prompts have been regular writing prompts, this one is a dialogue prompt, because angst prompts are not focused on format, but on the emotions of the characters. And this character is certainly feeling strong emotions.
The prompt isn’t about the pain of an in real life loss, it’s about fictional pain. By fictional pain, I mean pain that is caused by events that happen in fiction and not necessarily that the pain isn’t real. It might not be, but it also might be as you can get very attached to fictional characters.
This came about while rereading a scene in one of my current favorite series where I knew something was coming, but it still set my off bawling, again, just as it always does. I think this author does a phenomenal job at making you care about what happens to these characters and when the main character was told she couldn’t meet with the people who are her support system any more because it would ultimately cause a lot of problems for all of them and then she told them, it just hurt and that is despite knowing the whole book this scene was coming having read said scene at least twice before. Ever reread a scene or series of scenes like that. No matter how much you know it’s coming, it still hurts?
The characters the prompt is based off of are children. They are not a romantic pairing and never will be, but the prompt itself could easily lend to that. Or perhaps to a parent being separated from a child. Considering the content of the series, I could just as easily have written the exact same prompt based off that as that painful scene also happens in the story and also makes me bawl every single time I read it. What kind of pairing do you think the first character is talking about and do you think it really hurts as much as they say or are they messing with the other person?
