My new year's resolution was to set aside at least one afternoon for writing per week. I love submitting to short story and flash fiction competitions! ✍️ So far I've kept my resolution but we're only two weeks into the year! You can check out a selection of my work here: https://ko-fi.com/carrieonwriting and of course I've entered the Biopage contest! 😀 https://www.biopage.com/post/de-dahlification

Three days. That's all it had taken for my luxury life to come to an abrupt end. That's all it had taken for my parents to break up. For them to become divorced. For them to move into separate houses. For me to never be in the same house as both of them ever again. Three days, seventy-two hours, four thousand three hundred and twenty minutes. You would not think so much could happen in such a short amount of time. It all started when I heard the screaming. The shouts that echoed through the narrow hallways of our two story house. The shouting was quiet at first, more like two people trying to talk at once. I thought that my parents must just be having their weekly debate on who was making dinner or who was going to drop me off at practice. They always fought about silly things. I never thought once about their fighting back then. Their constant bickering was just part of our lifestyle. Why should an argument end any different this time? However, this time, the argument was prolonged for much longer than usual. About 10 minutes into the argument, I could begin to make out most of the words from my bedroom doorway. I was slowly trying to inch closer to the stairway without making any noise. I did not want them to know that I was eavesdropping, but I had a feeling they knew that I could hear them. “I had told you! What? Only like, a thousand times by now! I can not pay the taxes if you don't make enough money for me to pay them!” I could hear my mom snapping at my dad. “How am I supposed to make enough money to pay for the taxes and your endless shopping sprees? Don't you know that there are more people than just you in this household?” My dad snapped back. They had been fighting over taxes the whole time. But, once they finished their argument over taxes, even though neither one was happy, they moved on to other topics. Like me. Their house. Their marriage. Who will get the house? Who will make the money? When will the child, me, come to visit? None of the questions made sense to me. Unless, the one thing that I dreaded would happen was finally coming true. Divorce. Finally making it to the top of the stairway without making any noise, I sat down on the top step and thought about what I just found out. I did not even bother listing to the rest of their conversation. The last thing I heard was “I'll call the lawyer tomorrow,” and the sound of my dad slamming the front door. It's been three days since my dad left and within that time, they had gotten divorced and my dad had moved out. I've spent most of the time in my room, eating junk food and watching videos on my tablet. When I was not being lazy and sulking over what had happened, I was contemplating what I would say to my dad when I saw him next. Would I be snotty and tell him that I would never forgive him? Or, should I forgive him and try to keep in touch? I was so busy trying to decide what to say that when the time came for me to see him again on that third afternoon after the divorce, I still did not know what to say. I only knew one thing. He was my father and no matter what happens, he still will be. I should not hold a grudge against him even if it was his fault. I was brought into this world because of him. I still wanted him to be a part of my world, even if we no longer lived under the same roof.

The bare bones of writing comes down to expressing a thought, idea, or feeling. We use it to communicate with others, as a way to convey a message we find important or personal. The bare bones doesn't care about brilliance, complexity, mistakes, or your chosen medium (pen and paper, anyone?). It's significant in only having written your word or words of choice, and the rest—be it a masterpiece, or just a grocery list—is up to you. When I was a teenager, the act of writing was a way to release, and to entertain myself. I wrote stories with characters that accurately, if not dramatically, conveyed the emotions that I had a hard time expressing in my adolescence. The themes crossed paths with things I experienced, and things that I anticipated to experience. It was my world, glittering and bright, even through the dark themes and circumstances that were written. While I didn't know it at the time, it was an important self-reflection through elaborate plot lines and quirky characters. It didn't matter that it wasn't what I had deemed publish-worthy. All that mattered was that I conveyed my feelings, and sometimes shared them with others—and with that, catharsis. I stopped writing like that years ago. These days, writing has become something of a chore. The pressures I put upon myself to just write something good, or even better than good, made my joy burn out like a candle wick. I put writing on hold while my life unraveled into the milestone of young adulthood. Through it all, I'm certain that my life would have a clearer direction, and my soul a happier glow, had I written... anything. No matter what though, I couldn't bring myself to do it, even if it were simply “Today sucked.” The desire to create was burning in my veins, but my self doubt riddled me with a hate plague I couldn't shake. Taking a look back, I knew I yearned simply for life experience. I wanted to experience without reflection, even if that took me through a lot of impulsive choices that I regret now. It also took work to sit down, focus, and write. Now, with the desire to be heard, to be seen as articulate, and with something to offer, I still struggle. The fear of a page written with utter garbage is a greater fear than of an empty one. And I want to change that—even if the page is merely filled with one word, I'll know I've put forth an effort to say something. In today's world, where everyone puts out their best image, their best work, and the edited, filtered versions of themselves—I vow to allow myself to be raw, messy, mediocre, and riddled with mistakes. To speak what's on my mind, to dare to create, to do. It's now my time for honesty, even if it masquerades as a poem, a crime drama screenplay, an essay, or an account of my day. The bare bones are all that matter, and even if to no avail, it all ends up in a graveyard—then, at least for a moment, they lived.