It was August 5, 2015. It was a sunny, hot day in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. For most people, it would have been a perfectly beautiful, day. However, for me, it felt like my life was ending. I got into my dad’s car and he drove my mom and me to the airport. While in the car, I felt that my face was wet with tears and was becoming red. I couldn’t believe it, but I was crying. My dad noticed and turned around. He told me that everything was going to be all right. His words made my tears stop…
knew that the medicine made her hair fall out, but she still let me play with her wigs. I knew that grandy had cancer, but I couldn’t see the true pain it caused her and my family. At the age of six, this was the extent of the knowledge I had on her life with cancer. My childhood innocence shielded me from the true horrors of this illness and the brutal pain it could have caused my family. Looking back, I cannot believe how easy going I was about her cancer. My feelings were: by this point she had…
"So what, your life 's just one day of shit-reeking demons after the next? That sucks, dude. No wonder you 've got something stuck way up your-" Wynonna 's eyes intimated she silently chided herself, even though he looked almost amused. Almost. A hint of a smile that could 've actually just been a trick of shadow or a twitch in his cheek. Feeling him trying to size her up, Wynonna almost felt the small frenzy of insecurity. Everyone in Wynonna 's world 's mind was pretty much made up about her…
like your mother. Someone that not even worth a penny.” My dad laughed. I could not hear this anymore; this conversation that has been in my house for the last 7 years. I did not want to hear any more insults, yelling or complaining. I wanted my life to be mediocre like every other teenage girl. I can not even remember the last time someone ever said they loved me. I rushed throwing myself on my bed. There are three holes on my wall covered with pictures. One was a picture of me and my parents…
All throughout my life I have struggled with loving myself. I tried over and over again wondering why it was not working and then slowly I realized the reason. The reason was because I could not accept myself. I struggled with finding myself and self-issues. Loving yourself starts with finding yourself and accepting what you found. My grandmother always said to me, “You have to love yourself first before you can love anyone else.” I never understood why she always said it to me but deep…
After I finish writing my daily note to my mom, I decide to go downstairs. As I walk downstairs, I see that my dad has already started to brew a pot of coffee. A great way to start a Saturday morning I thought. For an 18-year-old about to head off to college, I would love to always wake up to this, I think, imagining how great this would be. But as I get closer, I see that the coffee has overflowed and has started to spill on the floor. “Dad!” I yell “Where are you?” As I see a small movement out…
out how he would make use of the days left. I was 22, though may as well have been 18 for all I’d figured out about my life. I worked in outdoor pursuits while enrolled in undergraduate writing classes. I camped in the branch in the road, unsure about which track was mine. I wanted a role model, a guide through choices. Dad had written, but for only nine short years in a life bookended by confusion. He needed a Virgil through the thicket of death, and neither of us was willing/able to be the light…
maybe when I die you die with all the stars I had to write about her for days on end. no one could comprehend I see no world except her eyes. We were both madly obsessed with each other that 's why we wrote about each other everyday for we 're one life story. I had a theory that she was trapped in my poems, in my words in my pain somehow. I knew she loved me and I loved her, she revealed more of myself, every time. I write I see something of her in me and I in her, she is dead I 'm dead too a dead…
heart, was the original recycler. She did things that embarrassed me like washing off the aluminum foil after she cooked with it, and then reusing it. She was always saving things for a rainy day and reminding us that you never know what 's around the corner. I couldn’t begin to count the times my parents told me to slow down and stop and smell the roses. As a child, I didn’t have a clue what that meant. Today, the thought of those special roses I barely had time for fill my mind with the sweetest…
facing the worst life has to offer, none of these spoiled kids I went to school with turned out great. They’re the complete opposite of self-reliant. My reality is very simple: you’re either pushed out of your nest forcefully, like I was, or you have to jump on your own. I’m sure it’s really comfortable up there, I have no idea, but unless you strive for independence, you will never fulfill your true potential. You will never really be able to survive on your own and sooner or later life will push you…