humanity
For better or for worse, relationships reveal the core of the human condition.
Maybe Tuesday
The last time I went outside, I got asked for a cigarette. If that wasn't enough, I also got asked for the time of day after I was unable to dig up an extra smoke. I guess walking with your head down draws attention. It's been eight days since then. Wait, has it been eight days? Anyway, that'll teach me to leave my apartment again. The noise of the city grows muffled as I shuffle down the alley way toward the back entrance of my building. I must avoid the masses. I can listen from the window with a safe distance. You see, I'd much rather hear the faint sounds of the streets from my apartment buried in a belly of brick. It becomes like the buzzing of ultra violet lights. The hymns of a big city. I knew there was a reason I chose this place. It's got character. Well, I'm the only character. Definitely not much of a bachelor's pad. Indeed not! Thankfully, I bought a bag of bran flakes or I would have nothing to snack on. Three handfuls a day. Is the toilet running? A soloist has entered my daily theme music in the form of dripping water. It reminds me. Once before , in the middle of the night, I heard dripping from the bathroom. I got up to stifle the sound if I could. It wasn't loud but it disrupted the rhythm of my twilight time. Off key and out of sync. I walked into the bathroom. Blurry eyed and careless. Have you ever hit your shin against something solid unexpectedly? I did. It felt like I had been shot below the knee! I tried to absorb the pain but I cried out anyway. CURSE WORD! Why not, I doubt anyone's listening. Ow everyone! There was a girl that I dated briefly who was a makeup artist. That line of work sounded very intriguing to me. She seemed very passionate about it. Always lightly dusted in some kind of facial applicant. She gave me a hug once and a cloud of powder puffed out as I patted her back. The patting turned into me wiping the dust off of her. It was like she had sheet rocked an entire house by herself or someone put baby powder in her blow dryer. She showed me several different photographs of different subjects with various styles of makeup. Before too long I started wondering if anyone in these pictures was still alive. In the pictures some of them looked dead. I went ahead and submitted that she had talent. Then, another thing came over me while flipping through the photos of these made up people. What if this girl uses her own face to practice her makeup skills? Not a crazy notion. What if we started to live together? What if I went stumbling into the bathroom and she was making herself up in front of the mirror? I walk in on what was otherwise a normal Monday to her face painted like Joan Crawford or Bozo! HOLY HELL! That has potential for horror written all over it. It would be very hard to get used to. I started to wonder what kind of past leads you to a career as a makeup artist? What made her make faces? Well, it didn't work out. I think of her often when I hear the drips. Maybe I should call the landlord to see if he can fix the problem in the bathroom? Bad idea. I probably shouldn't call anyone. If I start making calls, it will open the floodgates for interaction. I'm not making the first move. I'm getting thirsty and it's getting to be that time. I should go to the store for some essentials. I need more water. Water to wash it down. Not today, though. Not yet. It's too soon. Maybe Tuesday.
By Austin Gates5 years ago in Humans
Point of View Creates Your Reality
Sometimes I feel so abundant, sometimes not. Sometimes I am grateful for all I have, sometimes it feels like not enough. And some days my Gemini Brain goes back and forth within seconds between the two worlds. Today was one of those days.
By Anna Boisvert5 years ago in Humans
An Open Letter To My College Bully
Believe it or not, you never truly apologised. That's okay, an apology would mean I'd have to let you back in. You were filled with hatred for me as soon as we met. We maybe had one normal conversation in which you didn't put me down or try to humiliate me in two years. I don't think you knew me then. You sure don't know me now. I don’t know myself anymore either. I tried for a year afterwards to treat you as a friend. Some people can't keep a lid on their true colours; some people can't stop their darkness from beaming through a prism, to appear as a baleful rainbow of a sky clouded over with the isolation and misery they drive into others. I stood, sat, slept and lived under the iron blanket of doubt for too long.
By Remy Dhami5 years ago in Humans
Wings of Salt- Chapter 1
Chapter One The cries of seagulls were carried along a salty sea-brine breeze, from the cresting waves below, to the jutting grey rock where Zendaya Ruby crouched. She gritted her teeth against the sting of sea water biting into the cuts and rope-burns peppered along her hands, as she hauled up the last fishing net. A score of crabs writhed against the ropes, claws near-shredding the sun-worn threads.
By Siobhan Monaghan5 years ago in Humans
A Silly Cow story
Here is another bummer of a tale that I thought I’d share. I know it’s all ‘BOOHOO POOR ME’ but I do feel better typing it out. So today’s tale starts... many... years... ago... in primary school. I had many bullies in primary school as I’m sure lots of people do ( I feel for you). I was bullied for being Autistic... which I was, people said nasty things and played mean jokes on me. One time some kids scared me by telling me that the dead were going to kill me and i didn’t go to school for two weeks, I was so scared. All the girls would push me and constantly call me out about my Autism. I spent my primary school days just walking around the school by myself. It wasn’t bad the only thing that bothered me about it was the teachers constantly telling the girls that bully me to let me join them and all they did was give me dirty looks even when I sneezed and ignore me so I would walk away. I had a few bullies who would look at me with a dirty look every time I walked in the classroom. There was one particular, he was a tall bloke that always yelled at me and gave me the evil eye all the time. He was pretty scary and he made me afraid to go in the same class with him sometimes. I did most of my work at the Special Education building. When I left the school because we had to move it was a bit of a relief... the next school wasn’t much better but anyways... Many years later when we moved back around that area my mum told me about a conversation she had with a relative of the guy from primary school. It was at the persons workplace... I don’t remember where that was. My mum told me that he was also someone who was bullied because people thought he was fat... which was bloody ridiculous I never thought he was fat. And he also lost a lot of weight. Unfortunately for me because I hold grudges for eons, I was still mad about the mean stuff he did and all the other people that were mean to me. And then about two years later the most unexpected thing happened, my sister was looking around on Facebook for old students she used to go to school with and I thought I would do the same... out of curiosity. I was wandering around Facebook and I decided to find that guy. I saw his picture and clicked on his page. I scroll down and see all these sad pictures and messages and at the top of his page there was a pinned post and it said that this guy passed away... he got sick and he died. I felt pretty bad. I went to tell my mum about it and she was pretty sad aswell. To be honest I was freaking out a bit after thinking that I might have cursed him with all my grudge holding. I started to think I was evil for thinking anything bad at all. About three or four days I was thinking about it and suddenly all the grudges that I was holding on to from my primary school years just went away. I was telling myself “I need to stop feeling sorry for myself. It is only hurting me more and making me more stupid. I am not the only one that has problems, everyone does. You don’t have the worst problems in the world. You are healthy, you have a roof over your head and your family when you need them, you need to shut the fudge up”. That was an example... the original version had more f bombs. Yes I do need to work on my grudges. I am a silly cow.
By Taylah Fraser5 years ago in Humans
Cleaning Guns
Cleaning Guns On one end, I had a nice life. I lived in a brand new townhome in a nice area. I had nice clothes, nice cars, I had my dog that we raised since he was a puppy, we went out to nice dinners, and got to do a lot of nice things. We went to New York, Florida, Arizona, stayed in nice hotels and resorts, etc. Egor had a brand new motorcycle. We road to different places along the beach with his cousin and his wife. I mean we had a pretty good life.
By Krista Hamilton5 years ago in Humans
The World in 2020
The hardest part about being an agender person is you don’t get to choose if you want to be or not it’s more of do you accept yourself. What fits the definition of an agender person, doesn’t fit the norm of a female or male. Some are more masculine and others more feminine according to the gender spectrum. I on the other hand, would be considered gender-masculine because even though I was born female, I’m so masculine that I continuously get misgendered. Once I noticed the reception I got from people I realized I can’t just keep calling myself a stud. Dating for me is a bit awkward only because I feel like women don’t know how to receive me. They’re attracted but don’t know what to do because they don’t like women. Any woman attracted to me would be considered ceterosexual. If people were educated on it they would feel less weird about it. I have pronouns I go by but no one calls me them so I’ve given up enforcing it. Something you go through as an agender person, another thing a lot of people like me just call themselves dykes not realizing or thinking to look deeper into who they are. I chose to look deeper and give a more full description of what this is and what we are. We’re not feminine at all, we have masculine features physically and mentally but you can still tell we’re not guys. I consider myself agender/transmasculine. I don’t call myself transgender because I have no desire to be another gender there’s a difference. Another thing about me people ask often is are you transitioning or on T/hormone therapy because I’m so masculine. I’m here to say I’m not at all this is all natural for me which is why I feel so “different” from the average woman. My voice is deep, my stature is slouchy, I have a masculine build, and a strong face it just came out of nowhere. I’ve transitioned into more of a masculine person.
By IM GOOD ❤️ ENJOY5 years ago in Humans
No One Will Love You
"No One will ever love like I do. You're lucky to even have me." He bent over and hollered at me as I crouched down against the wall covering my head, praying he wouldn't hit me again. I could feel a painful lump forming on my head in the spot where he decked me with the current hard cover book I had been reading at the time of this particular attack.
By Xenia Headley5 years ago in Humans
The Story of a Lost Girl
There were many things that happened in Lilly's life after her and Henry went their separate ways, Lilly learned a little how to get out of her shell and become someone different. She had to grow up fast, because she had her first child at the age of 18. You could say it was a live and learn trial, begin and 18-year-old mom can be difficult at times. She was glad she had the support of her mom and dad to help her with her little girl. She especially had help from her best friend, they were cousins but best friends as well. They did everything together from going out and having sleep overs, once Lilly had the baby her cousin did not leave her side, still going out to eat and having sleep overs. She was always there to have her back; she became Lilly's daughter's god mother.
By Daisy Rodriguez5 years ago in Humans
If You Take Anything From This..
I was raised in a home where what other people thought meant more than what you thought. I remember thinking “there is something wrong about that”, even at the young age I first realized what this meant. I have always wanted to live my life out loud. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t share everything and I definitely don’t want that. But what do I want? I want a world in which we can wear what we want, be who we want and as long as our actions aren’t harming or negatively affecting others, then it would not matter to them. But instead .. we hide so much of ourselves in fear that people will judge us and probably worse, leave us. I am here to tell you that you can share all your dirty laundry and be exactly who you are and I will love you just the same. And if you have the right people in your life, they will also love you just the same.
By Sara Caramella5 years ago in Humans
I’m not going to apologise again
I’m sorry we aren’t friends any more. No I really am. But realistically when and where was this friendship going to have life? It was one of those situational ones. The situation ended. This was unexpected that’s true but the team disbanded... it happens constantly throughout life. It’s so normal. I know Facebook has cropped up in the past decade to disrupt that natural ebb and flow. But that is where, if anywhere this connection would have resided.
By Gillian Lesley Scott5 years ago in Humans
