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Weekly Contest #349
After everything, I have discovered that the darkness ends if you are willing to stop asking, "WHY ME?" Five years ago, my life ended. Everything I had ever known was gone. I struggled to do things I had learned by Kindergarten: brushing my teeth, combing my hair, dressing myself, and even tying my shoes. All of the hopes and dreams I had carried for forty-three years vanished in an instant: the beautiful property we had, the Multigenerational Forever Home we were building, driving to work with a cup of coffee beside me, the windows down, ha...
Weekly Contest #331
(Trigger Warning: domestic violence, child abuse/neglect, childhood trauma) I am five years old and I live with my Mommy. Sometimes, my Daddy can be scary and mean so he lives in one house and we live in another. Almost all of the girl’s I know have a Mommy and a Daddy, all except for Nicki. She is my cousin ‘cept, I’m older than her. Her Mommy and Daddy live in different houses, too. Her Daddy can be scary and mean, just like mine. I like Nicki. I like her Mommy, my Aunt Patsy, too. I spend the night with them at their house a lot. I sl...
(Trigger Warnings: profanity, mental illness, addiction, domestic violence, prison/parole) December 31, 2028, 12:45 AM Son, Happy Birthday! I realize your birthday is technically not until around 8:08 AM, but I’ve been having a difficult time falling and staying asleep lately. Ryan tells me he has very vivid dreams that he’s a motorcycle - I tell him it’s called snoring loudly enough to wake the dead. I think I’m developing a Unisom habit simply because he refuses to take a sinus pill. I am sitting at the dining room table, and guess what...
Weekly Contest #299
I was fourteen the first time I snuck out. As a lowly freshman, I was trying to overcome a heart-wrenching breakup with my first love. He was a senior—handsome, kind, and funny. He came from a wealthy family, though I didn't care one way or the other, even if riding in his Acura totally boosted my cool factor. He was at the top of his class both academically and in popularity. I considered him completely out of my league. It shocked me when he asked me out and further shocked me when we fell head-over-heels in love. Our relationship began at...
Weekly Contest #276
I met him when I was twenty.I dropped out of high school ran and away from home at sixteen.I got married at seventeen. By nineteen, I had two young daughters.I was a collection of banal statistics.My husband, Jim, had hair that hung straight down his back, parted in the middle; the color, two drastically different tones. You could catch him walking hurriedly across campus clad in vertically striped bell bottoms, an old t-shirt, and no shoes. He wore square, green-tinted, ironic little gl...
Weekly Contest #259
December 24, 2003She draws me to her small chest, her sinewy arms closing around me, wrapping us in faux seclusion. I’m drowning in the scent of her cloying perfume. “Would it kill you to be a little more social? People are going to think you are rude!” She says with a smile that could shatter teeth. She takes another sip from her flute of water. For her, “water” consists of one part water, and three parts gin.Oh no, I might appear rude!? As if that would be the most horrific thing ever! ...
Weekly Contest #256
I sling my spikes over my right shoulder and shuffle to the starting line for the 200-yard dash. Not even thirty minutes before this, Coach had asked me to run the event. It was not one I'd ever run and was seriously anxious about it.Suuure, Mia has 'horrible cramps.' It was more like she had the Irish Flu. My best friend, Andi, tagged along with me, giving me words of encouragement and that strangely obligatory quick smack on the ass as we got to where the other girls were. My running mates were already stretching. The sky was growing darke...
Weekly Contest #255
{TRIGGER WARNING: emotional, physical, abuse, serious illness, mental health}Across the hallway, at the Nurse’s Station, I hear the frenzied murmuring of voices. Something really must have stirred the hive to get them buzzing like that. Over the barely moving air, snatches of conversation; like little scraps of paper wafted across the sanitized hallway.“I’m not gonna be the one…”“….The Dragon Lady…”“…it’s not our fault the Rehab Unit doesn’t have their shit together …”“…I’m working today of all days! No fucking way; they don’t pay me enough…...
Weekly Contest #244
It was late evening. We had just finished dinner and as I had cooked, my husband was on clean-up duty. I was in my bedroom, reading. My oldest daughter, Holly, had just vacated the foot of the bed and was en route to grab a shower before bedtime. Though she had her own bathroom inside, she had recently become very adamant regarding privacy. We had a separate room outside off of the carport. I thought it was weird that she wanted to shower out in what was essentially our second laundry room. Granted, it was a private, spacious room complete w...
Weekly Contest #214
I grab the watering hose and give a low, whispered shout to my daughter to turnthe faucet on full blast. I hear water, burbling, and gurgling, wending its waytoward me, emitting the random expulsion of trapped air, and after a flex ofthe hose, water begins to spray from the attached nozzle. I take care tospray the grass around the fire pit area. I had already carefully poured dirtand sand onto the embers of that night’s campfire. I turn the nozzle on thehose to the “rain shower” setting and soak the area around the old fire pituntil my ...
Weekly Contest #211
TAP, smack, smack! TAP, smack, smack! TAP, smack, smack! I make my way from the bottom of the wide staircase to the living room. The room is dark except for the soft, orange hue from the dying embers in the fireplace. Taking my time, I carefully navigate across the thick, multi-color, braided rug on the floor. At the fireplace, I lean my cane against the hearth and grab the two of the remaining logs, and feed them, one after the other to the fireplace. I stoop to grab some old newspaper that I crumple up and tuck here and there between ...
Shortlisted for Contest #209 ⭐️
**Warning: Possible Triggers! Explicit Language, Mental Health, and Some Violence** “I HOPE WHEN YOU GET HOME, YOU GET DRUNK AS FUCK AND YOU BLOW YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF WITH A SHOTGUN, FUCKING BITCH!” The voice; screaming , spittle flying, from the backseat through plumes of thick cigarette smoke belongs to my fourteen year old son. I am eighty-four days sober and am about to drive without a valid license to take him, for all practical purposes, to a ‘mental institution’ roughly seventy miles away. Smoke continues to roll toward the fro...
Weekly Contest #202
**** TRIGGER WARNING ****(Substance Abuse, Mental Health, Suicidal Ideation)*******I sit across the patio table from her. I watch her down beer and chain-smoke. She is bright pink toenails and make-up, smiling serenely out at something only she can see from behind immense sunglasses. She is as laid back and buzzed as a teenager on the cusp of their first real spring break. I sip some sugar-free, peach-infused iced tea concoction my mother made, just for me! I have just made it to the six month mark in abstaining from alcohol and pills. I sig...
Imagine a meteorite hurtling blindly through space toward planet Earth, unintentionally about to wreak havoc upon it. Earth sits spinning serenely on its axis as the meteorite continues along its path, each oblivious to any discord one meeting the other might bring about. This scenario is not far removed from how events unraveled following my mother falling in love with and marrying a man who would have a lasting and deep impact on my life. At the time of my mother’s marriage t...
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