Like any other orphan, Tobias was curious about so many things. When he was younger, he wanted to know who his real parents were and why they had abandoned him. As he got older, he wanted to know what it was like to be outside the walls that surrounded the orphanage, or what it was like to attend a big school, or join a basketball team, or go to a mall, or own a mobile phone or fall in love.
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Dialectic
Your brain is a film played at 5x speed - the images barely intelligible, leave no room for thought, only gut. Meanwhile, the theater is collapsing in slow motion.
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Cell
I handed over my watch and shoes, and we approached the turnstile where I was to enter. He supported my hand, moving it towards the small glass panel where a red beam would have scanned my thumb. Instinctively, I struggled and kicked. I was instantly cuffed by the four men who accompanied me there. The cold metal of the handcuffs cut into the skin of my wrists. I stopped struggling so that I wouldn’t hurt myself.
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Sifting Through the Ashes
I thought it was strange that my mom called me so early in the morning. It was 7:30am for me, so it must have been 4:30am for her. It was Wednesday, August 9th. “I wanted to call you before you saw the news. There's a fire in Lāhainā, Kīhei, and Kula. Everyone in our family is safe and accounted for. I might go pick up grandpa from Kīhei today. Your cousin was in Lāhainā, but escaped to Nāpili. Aunty has not heard from him since last night. I will keep in touch.” My cousin called my aunty the next day to check in. He was safe and helping with the…
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I’m Becoming My Mother, But That’s Not a Bad Thing!
When I was a child, my mother told me I’d grow up to be just like her. She said it to me in a tone that let me know I’d dread what I experienced once the change happened. Now, I’m “grown up,” and, as she predicted, I am exhibiting more and more characteristics that initially belonged to my mom alone. As I get older, not only do I look more and more like her, but I act like her, too.
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My Partial Program Experience
I have been depressed before, and depressed since. Arguably I am always hovering at some degree of “depression,” but at this time in my life, in early 2019, it was a darker, uglier color than it had ever previously been. I was immobile, frozen in time; I had become nothing but a fixture on my couch that occasionally moved to lay down in bed instead. I had long shed any sense of personhood and was a shadow of myself.
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Heartbreak Journal
I can’t even explain how much my heart ached from the pain I felt during those years. I was a teenager. I was naive. I was just too nice. Others mocked me. I should have known better. What did I do wrong? Nobody warned me he would break my heart. There were no signs of it. He played the part well and he had me playing his game. I never grieved so much in my life. The unbearable strain my heart felt was a load on my shoulder. Actually, a part of me was missing him. It made me wonder, “how could I fall for someone who gave his heart…
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The Choice
The end feels so inevitable when it comes. At least, mine does. I am in my final moments, of that there is no doubt. I stand in the biting cold of winter, my bones aching, my wounds bleeding. I know this is where my story ends. I should feel afraid. I should feel absolute terror. I’ve seen it in the faces of those I’ve bested, in the faces of men I held in their final breaths. Men that I respected, brave men, have lost their courage in the face of it time and time again. I always expected fear in the end, but now it has not seen fit to…
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Wear Yourself to a Shadow
It is always difficult for me to explain what depression is and how it makes me feel. I’ve seen and read people describing it as a big black dog, or drowning.
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Elf Counsel
Poised high the moon pools silhouettes of hedgerows on the milky ground, Alfred pulls his cloak around steps out onto a reedy shore.
