The Good Life and Where to Find It
My friends were in a computer screen and my dad let me stay in my room to talk to them, so long as I went to church the next morning. My grandma bought me flip flops and jean shorts and cheap flowered shirts. They talked about how lazy I was. I punched myself in the chest when it all got to be too much.
In my daydreams, I was a child in soldier’s clothes, carried off from my family and martyred in some proxy war. But I was a girl and the Holy Roman Empire didn’t want me. So I tried to get away by chasing boys and going to their basketball games late at night and kissing them when I thought they would like it. They were all lanky and quiet and sad. I was curly haired and a poet and vulnerable, still growing into my shoes. Some boys seemed kind, but their love for me was a riddle or a funny joke because they couldn’t even love themselves. They didn’t know how.
One day at a time, I grew up. School stopped being easy when everything had to be in APA format, and I often wanted to stay in bed and never wake up. Politics and people on the Internet made me angry, and I thought they should be beaten over the head with a Bible. I eventually realized that I was crazy because my family was crazy. At some point, I forgave them. When my dad dug in the garden, I helped him even though I was so tired, just because I hated to see him out there alone.
I slowly quit going to the Internet for advice and started going to sweet old ladies. They told me I knew in my heart what is right, so I said goodbye to an awkward, gifted boy who I adored and would’ve married but who refused to grow up. I went to bed earlier. I tried to listen to my preacher and my professors, even though I still mistrusted them. I stopped hating children and their joy and their innocence.
War is real in many places right now, and while I am safe in my little small town bubble, maybe my brother and his friends will have to answer the call of duty soon. For now, I’m planning my wedding to a blue collar man, writing research papers, and cooking suppers every day. The chickens peck and squawk and make babies out the window in the front yard. I go out and pull up the carrots from last fall and smile into the sunshine, grateful.
Grateful that my heart has been gently bruised to the point of softening. Loneliness will do horrible things to a child, but as an adult, every day I decide to make war with it. Sometimes, I choose to ignore my doubts.
I let my mind be conditioned to believe in the good life. I am so glad I that I did.
Metallica’s poetry, Kafka’s floating cage, bathed in sunlight, and amputational karma.
In our tenth broadcast on Prose. Radio, we dive into forms colliding to form a formidable form from the form formidable first. Thank the coffee for that one. But, on the show, Last leads first, and then a doctor of an exact mark of punctuation closes the broadcast with a piece leaving you lighter, yet heavier. You'll have to hear it.
Always loved sound influencing the page, or maybe just moving it along differently.
Here's the link to the show, and we'll leave the pieces and writers in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QCJQl8jc-k&t=66s
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Love Always
Dear friend,
How'd you come across me? Are you lost? Or did you just stumble upon me? Either way, I hope this reaches you at the perfect time. If not, let this be a small reminder for today.
Whatever you're going through, I hope the void in your heart will soon be mended with tranquility.
Whatever you were doing, I hope you have something you find solace to, whether that's writing or reading or literally anything that makes you feel like you have a purpose.
Whoever you are, I'm proud of you.
You're here.
And alive.
And you never gave up
despite going through the days you thought were impossible.
Let that be enough today.
Love always,
Rayniverse
everything is a kind of dying
making out on the basement couch is worthy of subterfuge and celebration
and it's death. the ghost of innocence watches me from the corner of the room
lamenting.
graduation, the end of high school. it's death of all your circumstantial friendships and the way the sidewalk feels under your feet in your neighborhood
it's getting drunk and confessing things we shouldn't have
done in the first place. it's an epitaph for something that's already dead
nostalgia is a sister to grief. the past is dead
that boy from summer camp bleached his hair blonde and shaved it off
the cells were already dead, right?
these people at the party you argue with while you kill your liver with alcohol
they'll never call you back
they slip out of the room prematurely. the night takes them unannounced like death
even the paper i write on, the tree someone killed to make it. i ruin it with ink, it's tainted even in death.
the grease on my fingertips erodes the keyboard. but the apple juice i choked out and spit
still makes the keys stick.
i guess there's something immortal about that.
Short Story Collection Being Released
Hi everyone!
I just wanted to share that I'll be releasing a collection of short stories on February 1st. Many of the stories in this collection have been featured here, while others haven't. If anyone is interested, you can find it on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CRQZTJM5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=CRDHZ7RB04E0&keywords=theres+gold+in+those+hills&qid=1704751382&sprefix=theres+gold+in+those+hill%2Caps%2C185&sr=8-1
I'm pretty excited about this and I just wanted to thank The Prose community for being the major reason for this collection. Before I joined this community, my writing was directionlesss and you've help me find direction.
So, thanks everyone!
I Regret Not Speaking Up.
Trigger Warning: Discussions of SA
I'm not going to try to be poetic here. I'm just going to be honest and real.
About two years ago, I had my first genuine friendship with a girl that I will call her Chloe. I'm going to keep her anonymous. This is not her real name. I knew when we first met, something clicked in between us, like a lightbulb starting to flicker after decades of being lightless. Keep in mind that we were young and we didn't know better about most life lessons. We met during school and I was surprised when she wanted to be my friend. A friend. I had a friend.
During the summer, things took an unexpected turn. This was when we were both struggling with our mental health, so we weren't at our best, and we knew that, but one thing I regret to this day was not properly communicating with her when things went wrong. There were countless days where the things she said offended me, and I regret not speaking up about it. I just let her continue to hurt me because I didn't know better back then. I didn't know how to stand up for myself. I was afraid of her reaction if I ever spoke up and created boundaries. I grew up in a household where expressing my feelings, especially my negative feelings, were invalid and that if I ever spoke up about my negative feelings, that was practically asking for a free punishment from your parents.
It'd gotten to the point where it was starting to truly affect me emotionally. I'm not saying that Chloe was the reason why at one point I was in my depressive state, but she was able to contribute to everything that was already adding up in my plate, when everything was so overwhelming for me. But back then, I didn't know how to open up, so I just essentially suffered in silence. There were so many stories out there talking about their bad experiences of opening up, and that eventually influenced me to not do the same.
Fast forward to a new year in school. It was a rough start. I was SA'd by a student. Before that time period, it was a family member. Multiple times. The student got away with it because I never spoke up. I never told my family about the family member one, but I told them about the student one. They didn't take it seriously. They assumed that the student just wanted to play with me and I was being the mean one but that wasn't the case. I was afraid of what was going to happen if I ever did. I told Chloe about it. Chloe then proceeds to make jokes about it. She also then proceeds to say that it wasn't even that bad. It hurt me. It really fucking did. And at that point, I just kept my mouth shut because I was afraid.
Thinking about it still made my heart turn into fragments.
I was thirteen.
All of this was because I was stubborn and I should've spoken up. I never spoke up about my problems and when I finally did, she invalidated all of them, stating that it could've been worse. Yeah, it could've been worse, but that doesn't change the fact that I was hurting. I knew she was hurting too. I knew we were both hurting. I knew that I shouldn't take everything so personally. But looking back at my old journals, back in the days where I would write about my feelings every time I got upset, I swear, there were so many times when I tried to justify all of her actions and blamed it all myself, because again,
I regret not speaking up earlier.
If I spoke up, all of the future conflicts could've been avoided.
I truly believed it was my fault. I really believed that it was my fault that she was saying those things to me. And honestly, part of it was. Because I never spoke up. I never stood up to myself. And even worse, when I noticed a change in her behavior, perhaps a more hopeless mood, I never spoke up. I never really went out of my way to ask how she was doing. That made me a bad friend. That made me an awful one.
I knew I was trying back then. I was trying, I really was. But the problem was, I didn't know how to love.
We then ended our friendship not even a year later. We couldn't last a year. A goddamn year. Eleven months, even. But I hated how I was so attached so easily because that was the first time that I actually made a friend. I was thirteen. Thirteen-year-old me never really had a friend. I was lonely. I thought I was finally out of that darkness. I mean, I was, for a short moment.
This is why I regret not speaking up.
But I don't regret regretting it. Because I'm older now. I know better now.
I know how to be a better friend.
I'm not a perfect friend, but I'm getting there.
I'm learning how to love.
The Cowboy Rides A Black Horse
Stemming from a Challenge by Huck Hoo, today's feature goes into an absolutely beautiful set of work from a writer we strongly suggest you read, if you aren't already.
It was so good to narrate this author this morning.
From the channel description that says, "Two pieces on the site that turn this writer into an instant classical diamond in the cream color of our published pages," these are from the heart and soul of a writer, a writer who made me want a shot of whiskey in my coffee, while I looked at the plains over a dusty pair of boots fronting a crackling couldron, and then into the woods of inspiration from some of the greatest writers to live, mentioned in the second read.
I'll tag the author in the first name below, as always.
Here's the link to the channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRmBlhgzfr4
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team