The woman had spent an hour hot-iron curling her auburn hair into perfectly pinned ringlets that fell to her shoulders. She had to be perfect, this was it, the day, the day she became an adult. The test was supposed to prove if she was ready to be an adult or if she was to go into the field of matrimony instead. Biting her thumbnail she looked down at the paper in front of her, twirled a number 2 pencil around in hand, and read. INSTRUCTIONS: There is one question and a total of 30 possible points. You must score a total of 21 points to receive the Adult Cert and a plastic bag containing two XENIX. A few things to remember before getting started: Please answer the questions to the best of your ability. Take your time. Inhaling and exhaling are required at every stage of the exam. When you are ready please turn this page over, WRITE YOUR LAST AND FIRST NAME at the top left-hand corner and begin. Question #1: You have gone to a local pub and had a pint of Cider containing 5.6% of alcohol and costing $7.50. You bring your MacBook Pro with you and write 1,500 words of an essay that is due tomorrow. You spend the four hours you were at the pub doing which of the following activities:
Author note: This is the third story in the 12-part series that looks at one aspect of being a female and what it feels like to live in a world where you're not sure of anything.
0 Comments
I’m running away, but it’s acceptable now because I’m 24. 24 year olds are supposed to be away from their childhood home. So it’s okay. Except it’s not because my dad just died and 12 months prior my grandma died and 5 years prior my grandpa died. Everyone is dying and I’m running from death. I’m also running from him. Because, fuck him and all the lies he told me to get into my pants. So this is where my story starts. On a plane bound for London. God save my heart. I thought I started planing our lives the moment I saw him. I was wrong, I started planning my life way before I met him. And he, well, he had qualities that synced with the imaginary man in my fantasy. But that’s what we were. A two week fantasy bound to dissolve. If I could have one more conversation with him — and I’m not sure I’d want to. I’d tell him that now, when I think of love, I don’t see it as something worth dying for. I think I would die to save my brother, my mother, my three best friends because that’s all that love I have in my life. But I wouldn’t die for man. I’d tell him that he made me that way, that every single person who rendered me insignificant and unimportant in my life has irreversibly implanted an idea of irrelevancy in my mind. I’d tell him that his leaving me, his unwillingness to even try has set me on a path to carve out this notion that I am irrelevant. Because I am magnificent and I’ll prove it. I’d tell him that he met me during a time in my life when I was hopelessly lost and not looking for a way to be found. I’d tell him that his hurting me, his liking me, his presence in my life showed me just how deeply I had been digging a hole and burying my pain. I’d tell him that I hope he gets those three kids and never has to know what it’s like to kill someone. I’d tell him that I mourned for a long time how I won’t be apart of his life. I’d tell him I’m sorry that I used him, that I’m angry he used me. I’d tell him goodbye. This isn’t a story of magic, it may contain intrigue and it most definitely will have moments of mortification. But it’s going to be true and real because I’m amazing all by myself. Fuck the people who made me think I wasn’t. I’m not looking for miracles. I’m looking for people who’ve struggled. I’m looking for survivors. I’m looking for hope. This is the story of that journey. This is my opportunity. Author Note: This is the second short story in a 12 part series that deal with the pressures associated with being a female and not understanding what that means exactly.The girl wondered as she people watched from the checkered patio of a tiny café, how she got to the place she was at now. Sipping slowly, almost methodically one could say, on the Vietnamese iced coffee she watched as the condensed milk separated from the melting ice. What am I doing here? A swirl from her straw stirred together the milk-coffee and water. The girl had never gone anywhere in her entire life, and she was cresting the rip old age of 19. She was still living in the tiny town she'd been born in, still praying to her parents' God, wearing her mother's handed down Levi's, grandma's pearls, and great-grandma's locket. Spoiling herself with a once-a-week 'exotic' coffee. If one were to believe Mrs. Babanoux's menu. It had never occurred to the girl to leave her town, to get on the local bus, take that bus to the nearest functioning city then get on the nearest Amtrack and take that Amtrack somewhere where they had more than one coffee house, more than one outlet mall, and less slightly-racist iced coffees. No one ever leaves, she realized. Barbarous. She thought. Ludicrous. All these people staying in the same place, like sedentary animals disinterested in the unfamiliar. Maybe it was because she'd started community college last Fall that she had all these adventurous thoughts. Maybe it was because Summer session had made trek into Finals week and the girl felt like even the air suddenly had so much more weight to it. Or rather, it was that she could no longer exert enough force to counteract the airs weight. Either way, she had gotten to a point where she no longer wanted to read of History or look at the Mona Lisa in a Textbook. She wanted her life to be a history novel, compact, intriguing, but above all scandalous. She wanted to live in a world where people didn't stay in the same place for more than two years. But most of all, she wanted to see just how tiny the painting of Mona Lisa actually was. She to see the face of God, pray because she had faith, eat very little or very much without fearing how her nonexistent husband would react if she gained four or ten pounds. An hour later with her coffee gone, croissant finished, and Roman history final studied for, the girl picked up her crocheted bag, unlocked her pale green Electra bike and rode home. She turned down the dirt path flanked by leaning Spanish moss trees and sunflowers, dropped her bike with a clatter, and sunk her sandaled feet into damp marsh. Her cotton dress swayed around her legs in the breeze as she walked up the four creaking steps to that never changing house of hers. Sidestepping the broken strip of wood in the middle of her Mama's wraparound porch the girl, like always, kissed two of her fingers and placed them onto the front door of the white house her family had had for generations. Closing the door beside her and letting her bag sag onto the hook next to an iron mirror and picture of a Confederate solider she couldn't help but think: I'd probably just end up on the wrong side of history if my life was a history book anyway. This family always seems to choose the wrong side. And so Amandine, like her bag had, sagged into the monotony of finding enjoyment in familiar things. Author's Note:
|
Hi There,This page is dedicated to all the books I read and all the things I write. Archives
February 2020
Categories
All
|