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Paper Doll Tears

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       When I was in the fourth grade my best friend Mary was hospitalized with appendicitis. While all of the other students' paper dolls were moved forward to represent progress in grades and good behavior, hers stayed alone at the starting line.         Maybe that's why one day I began to cry and could not stop. "Why are you crying?" My teacher demanded.      "I don't know!" I wailed.     But that wasn't what she wanted to hear apparently. Her eyes narrowed and her jaw tightened. "Well, I'll give you something to cry about." Then she wrote "no recess for Emily" in large spindly letters on the chalkboard.      Before I burst into fresh tears, I thought I heard a few kids gasp. Later that day, my mom, also a teacher, pulled me aside and scolded me for making my teacher uncomfortable. I was practically ordered not to cry in her class.      I learned an important lesson that day, my feelings do not matter. My feelings are too l

Hello

       Hello, online blog, that I hardly use and hardly no one reads.  I am trying to write more but am not sure if this is the place to do so. I am not sure what to do with my writing or how to write anymore. It's so hard to understand my place in my writing and my writing's place in the world or even just my world.  

Rainy Night

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The rain used to make me sad for the longest time, but slowly I am able to feel at peace rather than sad. Rain washes the world clean   and maybe it washes the sadness away sometimes. 

Socks From Dad

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  The socks Dad gave me his last Christmas with me are tearing. The socks Dad gave me my last birthday with him are tearing. I thought about mending them, Making them last just a bit longer. But into the trash they went. They are just socks, Just socks from Dad And not Dad himself. Sometimes you just have  to let things go.

Pain Pit

  Doubled, layered on top of the pain Layers and layers of bullshit. Lies people tell you, Lies you tell yourself, Lies upon lies, sprinkled with confusion. So much shit, so much fucking shit! Seeing out is like digging out of mud. And yet And yet, People do it all the time. They see the way out. They get out. Maybe, just maybe I can get out too.

Filling a Void

       Why do people eat when they are depressed? Usauly, being upset or depressed has physical effect, making eating far from my mind, but sometimes, I feel so utterly emptied out by my grief that my brain translates it as hunger. Or, I am in extreme duress and feel at a loss to do anything but eat.      In both cases, eating doesn't actauly help, but that doesn't sink in. I have to fill the void created by extreme emotions and so I eat whatever is at hand, usaly the small candy bars we keep stashed at work. I shove them in my mouth sometimes while crying, sometimes even after I feel sick. It's not pretty and thank God it's extremely rare , but it hurts to feel that way at all.      If you ever feel like this, you're not alone. We all have voids that need to be filled and sometimes maybe oftentimes , we have no idea where the void is or how to fill it. Prayer helps, counting to ten, taking note of small details, these all help to ground me and hopefully you too. Em

Autumn Beauty

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  Sometimes we miss out on beauty because we have very specific expectations about where to find it. We see impossibly bright fall foliage on Instagram and think, “I need to find that place. That is where true beauty lies.”           Yet today, I found beauty sitting in a Barnes and Nobel on a grey, drizzly day. The cafĂ© windows look out unot the parking lot and above the clumps of cars and the local Lowes are hills dusted with pale green, yellow and red trees. Above the trees stretched a grey sky. It was beautiful, faded like an antique painting tucked away behind racks at a thrift store.