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Start your story with the words: “Grow up.”

Posted in Angst on Oct 25, 2022

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✍️ 61 stories

Tongue-Tied to Each Other

Submitted to Contest #139

“Aw c’mon, man. Grow up!” Ralph laughed after accessing my latest girlfriend. “You can’t be serious. Her?”            “What’s wrong with Kacey?”            “Nothing, if you like bubbleheads. What do you have in common with her? What do you talk about?”            “We really don’t talk a lot,” I replied, smiling.            “Y...

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Good bye.

Submitted to Contest #139

Tw: drug use, cursing, mentions of SH, Suicide, SA Grow up. A term I hear way too frequently. Anytime I'm eager, fearful, cheerful, or perhaps even bitter over a small inconvenience. “Grow up”, What does that phrase truly signify? To act older? To grow taller? This has been on my mind for a bit. I keep hearing this expression over and over and over. At school, at home, at the grocery store, at the doctor. How can I “grow up”? It's not like I can miraculously get older or taller or more mature but I'll keep trying because I don't like...

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Forever Unspoken

Submitted to Contest #139

TW: mention of alcohol use and abuse. ************************************* “Grow up.” Those were the last words my father ever said to me before I left for college. The last words he ever said to me before I left this world and joined my mother in the afterlife. Our relationship had been rocky since my mother passed when I was thirteen. The night of my thirteenth birthday, my mother and I had collided with a drunk driver on our way home from the local art gallery. It was a head on collision and I was the sole survivor. I had spent...

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all part of growing up

Submitted to Contest #139

"Grow up. Grow UP. You have to grow up", they always say. I don't want to grow up. What's the point in maturing. To be exposed to more pain and suffering? To realise that the world isn't like how the fairy tales said it would be? To know that you'll never be enough, despite your desperate attempts to live up to society's standards? I'm not ready to leave my childhood behind. The warm, joyful, carefree days. I miss running across a wide open field feeling as though I had the world beneath my feet. I want to be able to think of all the t...

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Confessions of a Co-Dependent

Submitted to Contest #139

(Note: This story deals with codependency, alcoholism and death) “Grow up!” That was what we told you, didn’t we? Time and time again. It was like a catchphrase from the old cartoons. We said it so much it was as if we couldn’t end the day if we didn’t say it. So we did. Jesus, man, I can’t count how many times we’ve said that to you. I bet you really got sick of it after a while, eh?        Who am I kidding? I know you did! Otherwise, how could I be standing here and you there? I hate that we’re in this ...

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Daphne

Submitted to Contest #139

Grow up, she said in her letter. Her words cut deep and upset me. I thought she was my best, my one and only friend. I thought she was the person I could turn to when I needed someone.There was nobody at work I could talk to or even wanted to talk to. Granny, Auntie, Uncle and Cousin Bob who I was living with at the time were not the conversational type and so I could not turn to them either.I felt lost and alone.I wrote to Daphne and told her I felt like a bird with a broken wing. In my mind, I imagined a Blackbird with one wing dangling li...

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Am I free?

Submitted to Contest #139

“You need to grow up” My mother always told me that. So did my father, and the kids at school. Even the teachers told me so. They all told me that I needed to grow up. So I did. I stared at myself in the mirror, my hair was no longer in small braids with butterfly clips, it was curled and in a pony tail. my lips was no longer covered in bits of chocolate but tainted light red. I looked into my own brown eyes, ‘Who am I?’. Because I was no longer the girl who laughed when I was running, who found everything pretty, who loved to dress in all...

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The Tides that Turn

Submitted to Contest #139

“Grow up” A faint cry from the next room pings her ears like the signal off a cell tower. Both feet hit the floor and she is approaching the source of the sound faster than speed dial. It does not phase her; she is focused yet in a daze from having been awoken at 2 in the morning. Instinctually she scoops up the crying infant and breast in hand offers of herself the nectar that soothes all pangs. All righteousness and holiness have been restored and once again the house returned to a peaceful state with only the sweet sound of a baby cooing...

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DINNER

Submitted to Contest #139

Maureen J. Patrick                                                                                 1350 words 3411 W. Bay Ave. Tampa, FL 33611...

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Grow Up

Submitted to Contest #139

Grow up” my dad, John, snarled down at me. “Grow up and try being a man and stop behaving like a snivelling cowardly little excuse for one.” John Hardaker, my dad, was a tall brute of a man and that was the only piece of paternal advice I ever got from him. But I was only ten years old at the time and all I wanted to do was run to my mum’s comforting embrace and cry. In my father’s world “only sissies and poofters cried.” I guess it would be fair to say my dad was old school in his thinking on the order of things like gender and role modelli...

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Black and blue and yellow and green

Submitted to Contest #139

“Grow up.” My father says when I come home with stuffed toys. “Grow up.” My mother says when I refuse to go to school. “Grow up.” My friends say when I tell them I’m tired, tired of everything, tired of nothing. I wish I could grow up. I want to grow up to be a tall strong man who is always invited out for drinks with his friends but often has to decline with a booming laugh because his wife and three kids are at home. I want to grow up to be a man who will be applauded and cheered when he gets promoted. I want to be some...

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The less perilous path....

Submitted to Contest #139

“Grow up!” He barked it like he meant it, as if he could control how anything grew. He had stood there for some time before he spoke and I wondered if he would ever make a sound. He looked so intense, as if his glare might produce the desired result. We were in the living room . Well, that's what we called it but living wasn't much done in reality. My family was well, how shall I put it? Taciturn? Yes that will do, though it would have my grumpy father reaching for a dictionary. Always assuming there was one in the house. Or that he knew whe...

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Buried Rage

Submitted to Contest #139

(CW: References to alcohol abuse and related traumatic events) “Grow up.” Captain Westheimer glared at Private Jahn as the younger man was giggling every time some unsuspecting soul sat on the whoopie cushion he had placed on the bench outside one of the prisoner barracks—that whoopie cushion happened to be invisible, and Jahn had been holding the spell for quite some time, enjoying people’s reactions whenever they sat down and immediately when searching for the cushion. “Come on, Captain, it’s hilarious. They can’t figure out where the ...

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Just Grow up

Submitted to Contest #139

“Grow up”, my mother said to me when I was 5. I couldn’t count how many times I’d heard that: the first time I had to sleep by myself in the dark room without a nightlight, the first time I remember falling down and skinning my knee, the first time I begged her to stay with me when she left me in the car while she went into her friend’s house for what she called just-a-minute, (and wasn’t), the first time I asked for a puppy for my birthday, the first day of kindergarten when I was afraid to go through the big doors alone. She probably said ...

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Bill

Submitted to Contest #139

“Grow up, kids” Mom said, her soapy hands on her hips. She had been doing dishes in the stained avocado green sink. “Mary, quit hassling your brother. Shawn, quit making fun of her hair. It’s perfectly lovely the way it is.”  I ran my fingers through my shoulder length blonde hair. Mom continued, “Now both of you kids out of the kitchen before I make you finish the dishes.” She turned back to the sink, her apron strings flapping behind her. We scattered out of the kitchen. Shawn went to his room in the basement with a stack of comic...

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