I might be a retired track athlete, but I refuse to let go of my team spirit. Above my bed hangs a banner of sloppily-sewn together track/XC t-shirts, on my nightstand sits a little stuffed goat that once served as my team's mascot (affectionately dubbed Douglass, for the abolitionist), and on my shoulders sits my 2019 team hoodie, with my last name emblazoned across the back in all-caps Varsity font. The kicker? I didn't actually run.
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I think the best element in horror is seeing something new and terrible normalized. It proposes an alternative reality where something could be possible, and we as consumers enjoy experiencing all the implications of this new proposal. This is what makes fiction a good vehicle for delivering horror—our schema of the world has not been eroded into compliance. In dystopian novels and psychological thrillers, because the reader never existed in the proposed society which normalized the change, they are primed to recognize and reel at all of the consequences. The proposition is handed to the reader without context or grooming, and that is what makes it so horrible—but also pleasurable to read.
Everyone has one solid, totally irrational fear that makes no sense and is too embarrassing to publicly admit. Maybe your fear is a full-on phobia, or maybe it's a subconscious one that even you are not fully aware of, a miniscule fear that resides in the back of your mind and is subdued enough to go unnoticed but powerful enough to subtly adjust your behaviors, to accelerate your heart rate and breathing but when someone asks what's wrong all you can muster is that it's probably the coffee, or the flight of stairs you just walked up. If you don't have one of these fears, you're a liar, go back to the top of this blog post and read it again from the beginning until you can come up with one.
My bedroom setup is a bit strange. For starters, I don't have curtains or blinds - just two large windows that alert me of the sunrise. These windows function as a fantastic natural heater, night light, and alarm clock. It's good that I don't seem to care much if my next-door neighbors can see me having solo Taylor Swift dance parties late at night. In fact, they should consider themselves lucky for front-row seating to my fashion shows. All models had to start somewhere, right? The problem: I can see through the windows to my neighbors' house.
It was a late Tuesday night when I heard the back door behind my bedroom slam shut. Okay, it was a late Tuesday night for me. It was 7:30 P.M., but the sun had gone down already, so I was wrapping up my day, gently at terms with the fact that anything occurring from now until the moment I would fall asleep would be of no interest to me or anyone else in this world. But, having been stuck at home for somewhere between nine months to an eternity, the sound of the back door launched me out of bed. My dad was going somewhere! Possibly the store! On an adventure! I yelled after him to wait for me, sprinting through the house to throw on my hiking sandals and the first sweater at my disposal, a navy-blue and appropriately bedazzled Yale crewneck. As an NPR reporter discussed the stormy state of politics over the car radio, I leaned forward to tie up my still-sweaty hair using the only stretched-out elastic I could scavenge from underneath the car seat.
Motherhood is really, really painful. I know this, not because I am a mother, but because I have one. Since my early childhood, I have received no shortage of reminders about what a gift my life has been (albeit, a gift I do not remember consenting to), and that my mother can simply remove me from this life at a whim. Would she? That's a question to ask her, not me. But on a more serious note, I wonder what my mom's life would have been like had she declined to raise two troublesome girls. Would she have pursued her dream career of becoming a teacher? Would she have picked up an interesting hobby, such as writing novels or building eccentric yard sculptures? Or would she have simply directed her spite at an alternative target, such as my dad? Since my conception, I have been nothing short of pain, racking up what probably amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses for my family. My sister, probably double that. In careful observation of my mother, I gradually arrived at the conclusion that I would never, as long as I live, desire to be a mother, which is why when I read on WebMD that my acute abdominal pains were symptomatic of a possible pregnancy, I was shocked, appalled, and felt a litany of emotions that can only be described by words that are rude to use in public.
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About MeHi! I'm Andrea. I really like words. Categories
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