It is time to hurt the ones I love. I will admit without a tincture of shame that I am in love with the boy I have created in my "Daniel" series. I have, with loving attention to detail, expressed my affection for him in deep and nuanced ways. I have raised an icon in him that I am in the throes of a passionate, if too rarely consummated affair with. That he is a figment of my imagination, and a literary creation does not change the fact that I have strong feelings for him.
But I need to make him hurt.
He's spoiled. He's had it too easy. He's cocky and simply must start to suffer or risk lacking in character. It will give me no pleasure. It will hurt me more than it hurts him. Or maybe I'm afraid that it will give me a sadistic thrill to twist him and make him cry uncle. Maybe I am blocked with writing this not because I am too busy or too tired, but because I don't want to look at how cruel I am willing to be.
I've been putting it off, lingering over better days when it was new and flushed with innocent and compelling curiosity. Flushed with new love, I shaped him with my hands and breathed life into his limbs. I became his goddess, the focus of his rapt and fevered attention. Now I need to pull him up by the root and cast him into the world to fend for himself. I need to tear his heart out and feed it to raptors. I need to crush him, hurt him, bloody him a little.
He's a nice boy, but he needs to become a man. Everything costs something. I can't cling to him and protect him anymore. He'll thank me for it later, I can only hope.
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