A/N: Hi everyone! It has been ... too long to count since I was on Tumblr! Life has been busy, but I am trying to come back semi-regularly! Mostly to revive my creative writing practice. So, to start I decided to get a random writing prompt because I couldn’t think of any ideas. Here’s the link if you’re interested: https://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/ This sort of ended up turning into almost a PSA about how childhood trauma and experiences can shape our mental health when we’re older. ANYWAYS...
If you read, please tell me what you think and feedback would always be appreciated. If not, or if you don’t want to comment, no big deal. Enjoy it however you’d like. :)
Title: Sorry. Again.
62. Slip Up: Write about making mistakes.
Damn it. God damn it. God fucking damn it. He was mad again. She had pissed him off, again. Why couldn’t she just have… God fucking…
Diana was used to making mistakes; she made them all the time. Diana also hates making mistakes; she hates it every time. Since she was a child, that was all Diana really knew how to do; that was all she ever did.
“Diana, why did you do that? You know that was daddy’s favorite glass. Oh god, when he finds out… God damn it, Diana. Why did you have to go and break daddy’s favorite glass?”
Oh god. Oh god. Why? Why did she have to mess up all the god damn time. Why did she have to ruin everything. Every time something good was supposed to happen, she always fucks it up somehow. Every. Single. Time.
“All right, Diana! It’s time to blow the candles off of your-- Diana Michelle Fenton! What have you done to your brand new dress? Is that mud on your behind? And that rip… Diana, say sorry to your guests this instance! This is not how an eight year old is supposed to behave and look! Now go inside and clean up. You better come out clean and dressed. And don’t even think about getting any of that cake. Now go!”
In. Out. In. Out. Diana rocked in her bed while trying to take deep breaths to calm her nerves. What should she do? She had to fix this. She couldn’t risk losing him; losing her home; losing everything.
“God fuckin’ damn it, Diana. Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me? I got your report card in the mail and girl you better kiss your god damn social life goodbye. You got a B in fuckin’ math. What the fuck is that? I don’t give a shit about your god damn excuses. You had better get that grade up to an A or god help me you better see if any of your friends are willing to house you.”
She had to fix this. Maybe by starting off with an apologizing. Tell him that she didn’t mean it, that it was a mistake, and that she will make it up to him however he wants. Would that make him less mad? Would it be enough or would she need to do more? It was a good start nonetheless wasn’t it?
“Where did I go wrong, Diana? You are almost sixteen fucking years old and you don’t even have the decency to apologize to me. No ‘sorry for making you worry, mom’ or ‘sorry I am a god damn fuck up’. This is not how I raised you! God damn it, Diana!”
But he also gets mad when she apologizes. He thinks it’s annoying, that she says it too much. It probably doesn’t even mean anything to him anymore since she always messes up, always slips up. So, maybe, then she should give him space. Yeah, that was always a good idea. Give him a chance to cool down and maybe forgive her.
Or he’d get mad at her. What if he thought her lack of presence around him meant that she was mad at him; that she did this on purpose; that she was trying to be passive aggressive? Oh god, what if that makes it worse.
In. Out. In. Out. In. OUT. IN. OUT. IN. OUT.
She was starting to panic. Diana’s brain began to spin and she felt dizzy and light headed. Was this a panic attack? It couldn’t be. But it might be. What if he thought she was just trying to get attention? What if he thought she was faking this? What if…
“Diana, baby, are you in here?”
Diana froze and closed her eyes. In. Out. In. Out. Steady breathing now. Get control. Breathe. There it is. Control the shaking; pretend to be asleep. There it is. She’s got this. She’s practiced this for years. This is the one thing she can do perfectly, now.
“Diana? Is that you? Why are you crying? It’s 4:30 in the god damn morning, why are you crying right now? Are you fucking kidding me? God damn it, Diana. Get a hold of yourself. That is a ridiculous reason to cry and you are just over reacting. Go to bed and save this for your drama class.”
She just had to wait until he left and closed the door. No matter how mad he is at her, he would never wake her up just to yell at her or ask what happened. He would never do anything like that. He was kind, considerate, generous… far to good for a fuck up like her. Why has he stayed this long?
Click. Diana heard the door shut softly and let out a steady breath, that she hadn’t realized she was holding. She just had to wait for one to two minutes to make sure he was out of the vicinity before she dared make any sounds. If he realized she was awake he would probably--
Suddenly, Diana felt a familiar shift in the bed followed by a pair of arms wrapping tightly around her and pulled her back into a tight hug. Mickey, her boyfriend, buried his face into her hair and took a deep breath as he pulled her even closer to his chest.
“I love you, baby.”
It was barely a whisper, right into her right ear.
Then he moved his head into the crook of her neck and began to leave soft pecks from the nape of her neck to her right shoulder and back again. These unpredicted movements makes Diana lose her grip for a moment and a sob manages to escape her lips before she is able to regain control. And, with her luck, Mickey, of course, heard it. Will he leave now that he knows she’s actually awake and crying? Will he get knowing that he will have to work harder if he was trying to wake her up and seduce her? Maybe this can be her retribution. Maybe she can convince him that--
Mickey loosened his arms from around her and took a deep breath. Diana squeezed her eyes tighter together to keep herself from watching him leave; to stop herself from reacting to his departure. She counted to 30, hoping that by then she could release some of the control that she was using to suppress her sobs.
1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6... 7--
“Baby.”
Mickey’s left arm slid between the bed and Diana’s left side before he engulfed her in body covering hug. She loved when he did that. She loved when he wrapped his arms and legs around her and hugged her close to his body. She felt safe. She felt protected. She felt loved.
“Baby, you’re crying and I don’t want that.”
She waited for the rebuke; for the command to stop. But as she prepared, she also knew it wouldn’t come.
“I don’t know who hurt you, baby, or how, but I promise they will never hurt you again. I will never let them hurt you again or make you cry. I don’t care who it is. Even if it’s the old lady at the bus stop.”
Diana let out a soft chuckle and smiled for a moment. And when that moment was over, she began to cry once again. This time, she did it openly. She couldn’t help it. Mickey had a weird effect on her.
“I messed up.”
She tried to say it, but it came out as a whisper. She could barely even hear herself say it. It didn’t matter though. She knew he heard it. He was always so good at listening to her.
“Diana, is that why you’re crying? Oh baby, you did not mess up. I know you think you did, but it’s okay. It is just a video game and I can go back to a previous save point. You didn’t do anything wrong and I’m sorry I yelled. You know how I am when I play video games, I get louder than I already am. I didn’t mean to yell at you and I’m especially sorry I made you cry. I never want to make you cry baby. I’m sorry.”
Mickey’s hug loosened and he began to press kisses on the nape of her neck. But he shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t be holding her. He shouldn’t be the one to apologize. It was her fault. It was always her fault.
Diana tried to curl into the fetus position to get away from Mickey. She didn’t deserve his hugs. She didn’t deserve his affections. She doesn’t deserve him. Mickey. The man who always forgives her; who always comforts her; who always loves her. She didn’t deserve anything from him.
“Hey, there. Don’t you try running away from me. I’m not letting you go, Diana. I will never let you go.”
Mickey tightened his hug to stop her from bending forward. He held her close to his body as he buried his face into the crook of her neck just the way she liked it.
“Take me with you!” Caramip shouted, and Kite the winged dragonborn hoisted the fearless ranger up in his arms and flew her over the grand Inner Wall of the city of West Point.
And flew her unconscious body back an hour later. Who would’ve expected.
Not a Thursday Night session until the dragon man gets hijacked by his evil alter ego, stabbed with his own sword, tied up, and interrogated with the aid of a mind-reading potion in an apocalyptic ritual chamber by a gnome fed up with him calling her a goblin.
I’m not good enough at HTML/CSS to resize portrait images. This thing is gigantic. Send help.
“Whether the Andrea Gail rolls, pitch-poles, or gets driven down, she winds up, one way or another, in a position from which she cannot recover. Among marine architects this is known as the zero-moment point – the point of no return.” –Sebastian Junger, “The Perfect Storm”
Posts like this aren’t my usual fare, but there’s a lot of readers on Tumblr. So y’all might be interested – or, if not, you really should be.
On Monday, this went down:
That’s the bloodless, matter-of-fact, ho-hum business event way of describing it. Let me paint you a different picture.
On Monday morning, every single Barnes & Noble location – that’s 781 stores – told their full-time employees to pack up and leave. The eliminated positions were as follows: the head cashiers (those are the people responsible for handling the money), the receiving managers (the people responsible for bringing in product and making sure it goes where it should), the digital leads (the people responsible for solving Nook problems), the newsstand leads (the people responsible for distributing the magazines), and the bargain leads (the people responsible for keeping up the massive discount sections). A few of the larger stores were able to spare their head cashiers and their receiving managers, but not many.
Just about everyone lost between 3 and 7 employees. The unofficial numbers put the total around 1,800 people.
People.
We’re not talking post-holiday culling of seasonal workers. This was the Red Wedding. Every person laid off was a full-time employee. These were people for whom Barnes & Noble was a career. Most of them had given 5, 10, 20 years to the company. In most cases it was their sole source of income.
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