#89 - My Life, Not Yours

Today’s words: Fund, Top, Exultant, Mundane

Word count: 384

Completion time: 19 minutes

Summary: If you haven’t figured your life out when you’re ‘supposed’ to...who cares? Live life on your own terms.

--

So, I’m lying here on the top bunk, one semi-bare leg poking through the wooden bars and my eyes are closed, imagining a future where, “What do you want to do with your life?” isn’t a phrase that exists. Nor does, “What do you want to be when you’re older?” “What university are you going to?” “What is your dream for the future?”

I inhaled, squeezed my eyes together tighter, and exhaled through my mouth. My life was mundane, fruitless, a dead-end...well, that’s what my relatives seemed to think.

“So, Emily,” my aunt’s high-pitched, whiney voice would begin, “what career would you like? You must be sick of that dull nine to five by now.”

“Oh, I dunno,” I beamed, exultant and carefree, “maybe one that involves me slapping that smug look off your face every time you decide that your voice is worthy of the same air that I breathe. You think someone would fund me for that? Cause I would gladly do that ‘til the day I die.”

Okay, I didn’t really say that; instead, I smiled sweetly, said, “it’s not so bad,” and walked away.

I turned my body so that I was on my right side and drew my legs up to my torso. I had just turned eighteen years old and already my life was deemed pointless unless I had some big goal in mind. I wasn’t a football player, or a contestant on Deal or No Deal who aimed for a certain amount of cash, I was an eighteen year old girl who had the rest of her life to decide what did and didn’t suit her.

Why should anyone care that my life wasn’t very exciting right now? Why should my parents look concerned when I say that I might give university a miss? Why am I made to feel guilty for not having my life planned out like a complex flow-chart?

What if I liked the way that my life was now? My job wasn’t very exciting, but I loved my co-workers, the money wasn’t bad, and I painted as a hobby...most importantly, I felt happy.

My eyes fixed themselves on a few university prospectuses that my parents had gotten for me, and I closed my eyes again.

Just...let me decide what’s important for me, okay?

#87 - I'm [Not] Sorry

Today’s words: Teeny, Boring, Edge, Iron

Word count: 464

Completion time: 32 minutes

Summary: Even if something you say or do wasn’t meant to hurt someone and it does...it makes sense to apologise

--

Accidents vary in their severity; some people swerve to avoid another car and are admitted to hospital, some slip on spilt liquid without a hazard sign, and some slam somebody else’s fingers in a door when they’re not paying attention. All of these are accidents, but all deserve apologies. None of them meant to cause any harm but once they do, the damage has already been done.

Astra’s young life was boring to any outsider, but to her, it was full of adventure, strange lands, and long journeys that would take days to get to. Once she closed her eyes, she was on a pirate ship with a loyal crew, next she’d be in Disneyland posing with Minnie Mouse, and on weekends she’d pop to space play hide and seek with aliens on Mars; it was a good life. Being partial to daydreams however, her teeny body was usually unaware of its surroundings: she’d bump into doors, people would trip over her in the street, and she’d need her name repeated at least three times before she answered (seven if she was in space, it was pretty far away after all).

One hot July afternoon whilst her father was ironing, Astra was fighting a tiger who she eventually managed to calm and befriend. As she put out her hand to stroke the striped feline, her real hand crept over the edge of the ironing board, retreating hastily when it made contact with the scalding iron. Snapping her eyes open and looking at her hand in confusion, she began to cry, then wail like her lungs would give out.

It was the first real pain that she had ever felt, it was nothing compared to a scraped knee or being knocked over in a department store by frantic shoppers; it felt closer, like it would never stop hurting.

Her father put the iron down and regarded her with a puzzled expression. “What’s wrong?”

“It hurts!” she cried between sobs that were heaving her whole body.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, so why are you sad?”

She continued to cry, holding her hand out for him to soothe.

“It was just an accident, I don’t understand why you’re so hurt. I was only ironing, I wouldn’t hurt you on purpose, Daddy isn’t like that.”

“It hurts, it hurts!”

“Stop overreacting. You’re acting like I meant to hurt you, darling, but I didn’t. All I wanted to do was iron. It’s your fault that you got hurt, don’t make me feel bad for your pain.”

He said all of this with a blunt, even slightly offended, tone.

He hadn’t meant to hurt Astra, but he had and that was blatant...yet, because it wasn’t his intention, he didn’t feel like he should be to blame.

Sound familiar?

#44 - It's My Life

Today’s words: Patristic, Ensure, Perfect, Retrieve

Word count: 282

Completion time: 32 minutes

Summary: Choose what to do with your life, not what people tell you

I was the same age as the girl from this story when I was ‘allowed’ to stop attending church by my mother, so I guess it stems from my childhood.

Don't assume that I think religion is stupid or pointless, this is a fictional poem.

~

That day that she came back from church on the Sabbath

She put her scripture bag filled with patristic theology on the floor

And told me that she wanted to create her own religion

She told me she wanted to ensure that ‘perfect’ wasn’t something to be achieved

It was something that didn’t exist

She wanted to embrace ‘imperfection’ and mistakes that can be put right

She looked me dead in the eyes like she wanted to kill a man and said:

“Isn’t it possible to be good without fear of eternal damnation from Satan?”

I anticipated that it was going to be a long one, so I sat down.

“Can it be me who decides what’s good and what isn’t for myself?

I don’t want to follow something that tells me what’s right, I want to make my own right.

I want to say that it’s okay for people to do as they like as long as it’s what they believe,

What they cherish and stand by no matter who says they can’t.

If they do good, their reward will be self-love, not a heaven that may or may not exist.

If they do bad, their punishment will be a sense of failure and disappointment.

Nothing is worse than feeling that you’ve let someone down, and that includes yourself.

I don’t need to be told that I’m going to a place that might not be real just because of the way that I want to live my life.”

She went to retrieve her bag from the floor and when she picked it up, she added:

“My life is no-one else’s, so I’ll do with it what I want.”

She was eleven-years-old.

#43 - Question

Today’s words: Sold, Self, Report, Dusty

Word count: 441

Completion time: 38 minutes

Summary: What’s truth? What counts as good or bad? Who’s right? Who’s wrong?

I had trouble tagging this because it isn't really fiction, a story, or a poem, I just went a little far and started talking about life from my perspective...but it's a great read anyway! In keeping with the blog's title, pretend that the person speaking is fictional.... 

~

Who am I?

Is my ‘self’ made up of what people think of me, or is it what I think of myself?

I guess for me, my ‘self’ is what I think of me, and what other people think of me is how they experience and see my ‘self’.

If everyone I knew was asked to write a report on me and they all thought that I was an asshole, would that make me an asshole, even if I thought that I was a nice person?

That’s how trials work, right? If someone’s found guilty by the jury, they’re sentenced.

Majority rules.

Would I have to prove that I’m not as asshole? What if I couldn’t? Without proof, does the fact only exist as an illusion of truth?

People would have to be sold the idea, a reason to believe in me.

“Because I believe in myself” doesn’t cut it, right?

What reason would anyone have to trust me?

What reason would anyone have not to trust me?

What if I had a visual condition that made me see surfaces as dusty even though other people saw them as clean?

We would both see the exact same surface but in a completely different way.

Who would be right?

Unrealistic situation, maybe...

What about physical attractiveness? I could look at a picture of someone and think they’re drop-dead gorgeous, but someone else could see the same person as ugly.

Who would be right?

Me? Them? Neither?

I’ll settle on neither because those experiences are subjective, just like the idea of me being an asshole.

Moving back to the idea of the law, if I was found guilty because I really did break the law, would that make me a bad person?

Yes, right? Unquestionably yes?

Why?

Who said that breaking the law was bad?

Would I be wrong for breaking the law just because the law says it’s wrong?

People made those rules, people who have the ability to decide what’s wrong and what isn’t, so why were they right?

How did they decide? Because those laws, if broken, would hurt others?

Why is hurting others wrong?

It is, I believe, but why?

Subjective, again? Or objective?

If someone genuinely thought that hurting others wasn’t a big deal, would their view be taken into consideration or would they be wrong for saying that hurting others wasn’t wrong?

What about animals?

People who don’t think that eating animals is wrong, and those that do...who’s right? 

We need proof again, right?

There’s no need to kill animals, so why is this view seen as mostly an okay thing to do?

Why?

Why?

Think about it.