self-discovery

  • Whose House?

    There was a woman living in my house who looked exactly like me. I noticed her before I saw her. That is how these things usually begin. Not with apparitions standing at the foot of the bed or doors slamming themselves in the middle of the night. Nothing so theatrical. It began with a coffee…

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  • The Fourth Wall

    When the character looks directly at the reader is a strange moment. Not toward them. Not past them. At them. For a long time, the writer had pretended not to notice. The writer knew when the pages were being turned. They could feel the slight disturbance in the air every time someone arrived looking for…

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  • The Reader

    Some people are merely reading the chapters of their life as they are exposed, not everyone can be a writer. There is something unsettling about realizing you have been holding the book upside down. You thought the blank pages meant you were supposed to fill them. You thought the pen belonged to you. It never…

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  • Almost

    You wake up one morning to let what will happen happen. I suppose you already know that. You always seemed to know things before I did. There is no fighting this morning. No words exchanged with the universe. No desperate attempt to force an answer out of something that has never explained itself particularly well.…

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  • Why?

    If time were currency you would spend less on the bullshit. You would. You would stop handing entire afternoons to people you don’t even like. You would quit spending Tuesday arguing with strangers who will be forgotten by Thursday. You wouldn’t donate perfectly good years to jobs that make you miserable, relationships that already died,…

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  • Crossroads Again

    The mind will tell you things that are not true then make you responsible for the outcome. It is a terribly convincing liar. It knows your voice. That is its greatest advantage. It does not arrive like some villain dressed in black, dragging chains through the corridors of your thoughts. It does not announce itself…

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  • The Mourning Room

    At some point you have all the answers and then those answers disappear quickly leaving an empty space where comfort once lived. Nobody knew exactly why the room was called the Mourning Room. Perhaps because of the black velvet curtains hanging over windows tall enough to belong in a cathedral. Perhaps because of the ancient…

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  • The Un-vacation

    Everyday starts off like an ordinary day until it isnt. That’s probably how most things happen. Nobody wakes up Tuesday morning expecting Tuesday to become the reason they start looking at plane tickets by lunch. The coffee tastes the same. The computer turns on. The same people need the same things they needed yesterday, except…

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  • The Conference Room

    There is no time to sit idle when the world is spinning round and round. She arrived carrying a suitcase, a laptop, and a mind that had no intention of staying where her body had been placed. The hotel lobby buzzed with polished shoes gliding across marble floors, rolling suitcases announcing new arrivals, and conversations…

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  • A person who sits with their demons long enough realizes that they are all teachers wearing masks. I used to think they came carrying pitchforks. Turns out they arrived holding mirrors. Funny how disappointment always introduces itself as punishment until enough years pass for you to realize it was simply an instructor with terrible bedside…

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