Writer's Workshop

Choose a prompt that inspires you most. Write. Paste your blog URL into the Mister Linky that will be up...this way anyone can click on your name and head over to your place to see what you wrote.

The Prompts:
1.) Why did you do it?

2.) What is a common misconception about you? That I think I’m perfect. If only people could see inside my head and heart. This is something I need to pray about.

3.) Describe a moment when you felt afraid. I was followed by a man with a crow bar once. It was pretty creepy.

4.) In what ways are you turning into your mother? I think being like my mother would be a great answer for #3.

5.) Are you always right? No, I’m wrong . . . on occasion.

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I did it because I felt as if I had no other choice. I still wasn’t sure that the choice I was making was even right.

At 15, how do decide which the worst of two evils is?

Spring break of my eighth grade year my family was going through some difficult problems. For us, problems were the norm, but this problem was much more serious. In my parents’ minds, the solution to their problem was to send me away and ignore the issue hoping it would go away. I wasn’t the source of the problem, but I quickly became the scapegoat.

It was decided that I would move 800 miles away to live with my older sister and her family. Thirteen is a difficult age in and of itself. Moving so far away with but a few days notice was incredibly difficult. Knowing I wasn’t wanted was worse. I left one weekend in March with no more than two bags.

Mississippi wasn’t all bad. It was a more rural setting than I was used to. I sounded weird to the other kids, who sounded equally as weird to me. It was a completely different world. It wasn’t all bad. I made some wonderful friends, and aside from my great fear of snakes, I really enjoyed country life.

Home life, however, was difficult there as well. My sister and her husband both had substance abuse problems. This was something I wasn’t used to. They also had a very unstable relationship. While I had fought with my parents, this new level of verbal conflict was something entirely new to me. Add to this, some serious problems I was experiencing in my new high school and I soon felt again as if I didn’t really belong.

For a time, my mother left my dad and brought my younger siblings to stay with us until she got on her feet. It was nice to have them around, but the tensions in the house grew. The arrangement didn’t last long. Soon my mother snuck my siblings out of school and left without any sort of goodbye to me. It was months before she even called. I’d been abandoned again.

Eventually, my parents got back together and began speaking to me again. They wanted me to come back to live with them. One weekend while my sister and her husband were away, things worked out that my dad would be in town.

I decided to go. I wasn’t certain that the situation there would be any different than it had ever been, but the situation I was in wasn’t working either. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. At fifteen, I don’t feel it was a decision I should have been faced with. I did it because I wasn’t sure I could handle another year.