Ashraf
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Stories (29)
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When the Sky Fell Down
Liam never believed in miracles. Raised in a small, rust-belt town in Ohio, where factory smoke painted the skies gray and dreams were something you outgrew, not something you followed. He was the youngest of four, the quiet one, with a father who worked long hours at the steel plant and a mother who aged through worry, not years. Life for them wasn’t a tragedy it was routine survival. He was 17 when the sky collapsed. It was an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. His father hadn’t come home on time, but that wasn’t unusual. What was unusual, however, was the call. Just one ring sharp, sudden and everything changed. The hospital. A heart attack. Gone before goodbye. There were no final words, no slow fading. Just a hole where the man had been. Grief didn’t hit Liam like a storm it dropped like a silent bomb. His mother turned into a ghost overnight, fingers trembling over unpaid bills, her eyes vacant even when open. His siblings either shut down or lashed out, each trying to make sense of the loss in their own broken ways. Liam? He disappeared in plain sight. He dropped out of high school, buried his dreams, and took his father’s place at the steel plant. Every day, he walked past the security booth where his dad used to crack jokes. Now, the guards just nodded, awkward and quiet. They didn’t know what to say to a kid wearing grief like a second skin. The factory roared with machinery, but Liam’s thoughts were louder relentless questions, dead ends, and an anger that had nowhere to go. Home offered no relief. The dinner table had an empty chair and the walls seemed to breathe sadness. Then one evening, after a double shift, Liam came home to find his mom crying over a broken heater. No drama, no panic just quiet tears. That was worse than screaming. It was the kind of crying that says: I’m exhausted from pretending we’re fine. That night, something changed. Not a breakdown a decision. He grabbed a beat-up notebook and scribbled: What can I learn for free? Coding tutorials. Online classes. Reddit threads. Anything. Mornings were for steel and smoke; nights became sacred his time to fight back. He taught himself web design from library Wi-Fi and borrowed books. His hands were calloused from labor, but his mind was burning with purpose. Failure followed. His first interview? A disaster. His résumé? Mocked. His speech? Unpolished. But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t.
By Ashraf 7 months ago in Motivation
The Girl Who Never Backed Down
People used to look at Kiki with a mixture of pity and sadness in their eyes. No toys in her hands, no smile on her face just a tiny, fragile child connected to wires and machines, fighting to breathe on her own. In the sterile silence of the hospital, her mother whispered the same quiet prayer every night, hoping it would reach somewhere beyond those blinking monitors.
By Ashraf 7 months ago in Motivation
The Man Who Was Never the Favorite
He was never the favorite. Not in school, not at home, not even in the faded family photos where others stood proudly in the center. He was always near the edge, like a forgotten brushstroke on a finished painting. People didn’t dislike him. They just didn’t see him. And sometimes, being unseen hurts more than being rejected.
By Ashraf 7 months ago in Confessions
The Body Broke, But the Will Did Not
No one ever entered that room with a smile. It was buried beneath an old city hospital dim lights, thick silence, and air that smelled like forgotten stories. People brought here had nothing left to say. Their eyes had lost all light, their hearts no longer fought. This was the room where people waited to fade away.
By Ashraf 7 months ago in Motivation
A Light That Burned in the Dark
There was a time when Nathan didn’t know how to breathe. He wasn’t choking, not in the physical sense. But every morning felt like drowning inside a glass room, suffocating without water, without a cause, without a way out. People around him would casually say, “It’s just a phase,” as if agony was temporary like a passing flu, or a scratched record you could replace. But Nathan knew otherwise. Inside him, there was a silence deafening, persistent that crushed every budding thought before it could bloom into hope.
By Ashraf 7 months ago in Confessions
The One Who Lived After Breaking
There was a time when David could hear his heartbeat echoing in the silence of his apartment. Not the romantic kind of silence. The kind that screams. The kind that folds around you like a heavy winter coat soaked in rain cold, unwanted, and impossible to take off.
By Ashraf 7 months ago in Motivation
When the Night Ended
There was a time when Ethan stopped opening the curtains. Not because the sun was too bright, but because it mocked him. The warmth outside felt cruel when his insides were frozen. His apartment was quiet not the peaceful kind, but the kind that rings in your ears and fills every breath with a question you can’t answer: “Why are you still here?”
By Ashraf 7 months ago in Motivation
The Letter He Never Sent
The box hadn’t been opened in years. It sat on the top shelf of Miriam’s closet, tucked behind the coats she never wore and the suitcase with a broken zipper. The box was nothing special just cardboard held together by old tape but it held the quiet ghosts of a life too busy to look back.
By Ashraf 7 months ago in Motivation
From Silent Collapse to Roaring Comeback
The Man Who Refused to Drown He didn’t want to be remembered as the one who gave up. He wanted to be the one who rose. No one saw him when he broke. Not the neighbors, not the coworkers, not even the mirror that once reflected his tired smile. Every day, he walked the same cracked sidewalk, nodded at the same faces, replied to the same questions with the same rehearsed lie: “I’m fine.”
By Ashraf 7 months ago in Motivation
