One hundred word challenge - any takers?

One hundred word challenge - any takers?
On this Six Word Saturday, I am using my 6 words to describe another counted activity. A friend of mine used to give me writing challenges to hone my skills....I thought I'd revisit one of them and pass on the activity: write any piece that is exactly 100 words long. That's it. If you accept the challenge, feel free to leave the link to your post in the comments, I'd love to come visit and take a read!!
--



"End" (100 words)

Once I could again breathe,
I didn't know whether to be angry or ashamed.
I had been hit with every name in the book
And both of his fists...
I'd been thrown into the wall, then onto the bed -
Last vision was him overhead
Before hands unclenched
(Just enough to fit my neck)
And then pressed down.
Time slowed.
He did not --
Holding my gaze
And my breath hostage.

And then it was over.

"I should go," he said,
Taking the stairs
And my pride.
But leaving the ring.

And then an hour later, he came back for that, too.
--

Six Word Saturday

Changing my expectations of, well, everyone. 

I grew up as a Cosby Show family - board games at family get-togethers, feelings that my siblings could (and would) protect me from the cold, cold world. I had Norman Rockwell paintings etched into my subconscious as the standard by which families should be measured. Actually, that's not exactly true....it was just the yard stick I used for my own family. But as we grew up and as I gained an extended family of in-laws and as my older siblings developed subsections of our ever-expanding clan, I realized that we were coming up a little short of my Cosby-Rockwell expectations.

Or were we?

We never did see the Cosbys when Rudy was graduating from university or when Vanessa was about to turn 30 and had embrarked on her own journey of self-reflection.  Maybe she, too, had discovered that her family wasn't exactly what she expected.  If we had seen that, maybe she (and I) could've changed our expectations, popped an Advil for the growing pains and wrote a blog about it....

Oh yeah....I guess one of us just did.

Wednesday's Words Unspoken

Dear Daddy,

Where have you been?

And what I mean is this: it's not like I haven't seen you daily. We've shared the same address forever, but never, it seems, the same life space. And now my life's spaces that are left empty by our distance have created a vacuum of feelings that I have tried over and over to fill with someone else...

Daddy, they could never be you.

In every man I know, I look for pieces of what we missed. I mean, you rarely even kissed my on the forehead before bed. And I have found many who were willing, but daddy, they're not you. The innocence was missing from their kisses. They were misters looking for a misses and I happened to fit the part. But, they never were able to fill that hole in my heart....so I kept looking. I found imitation after imitation and all I wanted was an unadulterated version of love. The kind a daddy is suppose to give his little girl - the kind that respects and protects and finds magic in her smile and I want that from you, daddy.

I want to cry into your shoulder at my wedding when I know I've found the only man who will treat me with the fullness of love that you have; that reflects the love of both my earthly and heavenly fathers. I want to see in him what I knew from you, which showed me just a glimpse of how God sees me. I want to know he is capable of loving your daughter the way you loved me.

But I don't know what that love is like. Maybe you didn't know how to give it.

So, I'll keep looking, daddy. I will look and never settle for anyone absent. I'm filling in that heart hole with love for you. And maybe, one day, you'll learn to love me as your little girl, too...even though I'm all grown up.

Six Word Saturday

Eat. Pray. Love. Regret. Repeat. Reflect.

My life this far....

Wenesday's Words Unspoken: A Thank You

To the loves of my life: Words, Sounds and Movement;

You are my expressive and consuming lifelines that allow me to cry without tears, bleed without breaking the skin, and bear my all through an ever-present covering.  I thank you for your flexibility - for changing and growing with me, for allowing me to remain me while evolving into a whole new creature....for enduring as I create, destroy and mend relationships with others as well as myself.  Thank you for the wisdom of your words, the kindness of your sounds and the way you move so perfectly within my life. Thank you for being the common thread by which life tends to hand, for stitching up the gaping wounds in my heart, for icing my temper, my bruised ego and my battered body.  You are my earthly joy. You fill my life with poetry, prose, jazzy riffs, soothing ballads, choreographed experiences and freestyled gestures of love.  There is not match to what you have added to my life.

-Just Another Blogger-

Setting the Bar

Right isn't always easy, popular or painless - but it is always right.

I spent the last two years in a relationship, trying to recover from setting my initial bar way too low...allowing myslef to be convinced by my partner (and, often, by myself) that things would get better.  And they did.  For six weeks here and two months there. Then, inevitably, things would go back to looking like they did in the days of "bar set too low."  Increasingly, our conflict was over these "new" expectations.  It seems you can't re-establish your bottom line - you can't re-set your bar.

Then something interesting happened.

After a year and a half of conflict and abuse, after an engagment and the breaking of an engagment, after many, many (almost) breakups....things started to get better.  Like, a lot better.  And you know what's funny about that??  It didn't matter anymore.  Too much damage had been done.  Too much trust had been lost.  Too much pain had been inflicted.  I had seen, heard and felt too much to go back.  So, at the time that our relationship was the best it had ever been....we ended it.

I guess that makes me single again.


-Just Another Blogger-

Six Word Saturday

 

  

Another day. Another thought. Another blog.

 

I'm definitely not new to blogging. Sometimes I have to step away, take on a new project (or twelve) and revisit the bloggin' world when non-cyber life calms down.  Well, I haven't found the calm in the storm yet, but I have learned a lot in my 29th year and as I round the corner to 30 (I'm about 3 months away), I've decided to share some of my lessons.  Grab some popcorn and laugh at my pain, cringe at my misteps and learn from mistakes.  (Oh, and let me know where I can visit you, too!!)

 

 

-Just another blogger-