Yearly Archives: 2014

I know this kind of love. An old remembered intimacy. I learn that wooing, loving comes after the hurting. First, pain.

If I could eradicate any word from my vocabulary, that word would be perfect. It is an ugly word that causes more problems than it solves. Over the years, I have poured myself into it, allowed myself to bleed over its connotations of clarity and beauty, and shed somewhere between its two syllables.

so for those of you who would never bring it up and then later say, when I finally do, "I was going to say something but I didn't want you to get upset." I'M ALREADY UPSET. You mentioning it doesn't make me upset. it's not like until you brought it up....I forgot about that piece of me I'll never have again. For anyone who says, "You need to stop thinking about it. It's making you sad. I am ALREADY sad. And by the way... What's wrong with sad?

I know how to shoot to kill, but I can't shoot a gun out of a man's hand. Civilians always think cops can do that, but only Annie Oakley could have pulled off that sort of trick. I know how to stay married, but I don't how to keep passion burning in a long marriage, and maybe I also view those who say they can as I do Annie, rare, unlikely, and highly skilled.

I want to be a good person. I know I can be an a-hole sometimes. We all can. But I want to do good. I want to leave this world better.

A 16 year old reminds us, “The fact that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted while in college should frighten all of us.”

Because I wasn’t able to really love myself, I could not accept the love from another.

I’m well acquainted with loss. I know there are no words to console a mother who outlived her son who was one of the good guys—a journalist seeking the truth in dangerous circumstances who was unlucky enough to be unarmed and attacked, but I also know that perhaps in these dark times that it is comforting to know that one is not alone in their grief.

I have to hear more narratives. I can’t just keep listening to mine. I don’t get a world where we can’t breathe. I don’t get a world where babies and mourning mothers and lost daughters and sons and uncles and fathers don’t matter. I need to hear narratives of change, of justice, of human rights – not on some far-flung continent, but right here at home.

It was textbook. I was scared, and angry, and confused, and all I wanted was for him to hug me. Instead, I accepted his violence.

Welcome to The Converse-Station: A dialogue between writers. With the site getting so much traffic (my Facebook page is reaching over 18 million people)...

Why am I an alcoholic? What in my life made me take this road? When exactly did this road become mine? Why can I have this wonderful life and still be plagued by this LIQUID imitation of life? But most importantly, when will I fix myself? When will I stop? Will I ever stop? Will I live to see 50? Will my children ever have to learn that their mom died because of alcohol use and she could have stopped it? How can I ever overcome this?