Young Writers Society

It happens early on in the day. How unfortunate for our household. The intense emotion, the repressed anger you have toward your tattered family. This broken hate consumes me, too. Every time I hear a fight break out I think, why us? But I suppose everyone has their demons in life. Their own evils they must confront. And how unfortunate, again, for us all to be seeking refuge from such demons.

You throw your first hateful words toward a man you've been married a decade or more. Although I've never always been a fan of this two-faced machine, I know as a person who is wrong as the fire erupts in your bedroom. You tell him such things and in a way I can only barely come to comprehend. The alcohol takes your rationality away. Remaining of you are shattered remnants of a fed up person.

I'm aware life has never treated you well. You've suffered through a lot more than could be fair for any human being. And I hurt for you when I see this unworthy past consuming you so by the venomous alcohol coursing through your tired veins. But I've witnessed you take pity through your alcohol before, mother.

I wonder why I stand behind you, when you would never do the same in an inverse situation. Because you have never experienced true love in your life you cannot give it the way I can. Betrayal and bad memories lay with it all. There's too much damage to heal your wounds. Such a truth saddens me.

You've learned to expect nothing from family. A family that's never fully lived up to their title. And I understand. I know you better than anyone on this planet. I know of the mistakes you've made, the abuse you've suffered; every trial and tribulation. I know what makes you tick and why you do this to yourself. What I don't know is why you can't love and respect me in the same way I do for you. I thought you were suppose to be the mother in our relationship. But here I am, once again, experiencing your abuse. The pain that hurts most, is the pain you feed to me. But I'm sure you'll never realize this. You're too consumed, and too far gone.

As the yelling progresses, I listen, but don't step in. In my bedroom I'm praying things will cease, and everyone will go to bed; just as the night wishes for. Like a blazing inferno, the fires can be tamed at one moment. Things become unimportant, insignificant. But like fire in the same, the fight re-erupts. Only to come back stronger, and fueled with more hate.

In your mind, things become only as you perceive them. The truth is blasphemy. Inconceivable to you. I hold back my muted urges to step in on things. I've learned from past experience, that interfering does not lead to anything good. I don't wish to be a part of anything. This becomes harder to tell myself the more and more I hear, and the louder the yelling gets.

You attack my brother next. I sensed it coming before you could. When you're drunk, everyone is knotted together. You place us all against you. I hear the words that escape your mouth like razor blades cutting at my eardrums. How could one person have such ugly buried deep inside of them?

My thoughts are interrupted as you open my door and pound through my now shattering sanctity. I do not wish to fight with you next. You make all my wishes unheard by your screaming and yelling. I'm buried in this household, along with all its drama and many burdens. It's only when you become this fatal person that my once enemies of the house come to protect me from being sucked into your fight. It is your fight.

You ask why I defend them, when I only try to keep you from verbally abusing us all. You tell me such hateful things when you're this way. And to think I had a chance to ignore it by leaving my door closed, and keeping away from everybody.

If I were only so lucky.

You raise your hands at my brother. You're a puppet to the alcohol. He grows impatient and furious, flinging your hands down and away from him. You accuse him of putting his hands on you, and find a way to further threaten. I use all my strength to push him back from you as he yells in your face. I don't want you to drive everyone away. I want more for you than you do sometimes. It's sad, but I don't question my logic. Your love is a poison to me. 

You tell him to leave so many times, that eventually he does go. It's nighttime, and he's just fourteen. But you couldn't care less. I don't worry for him because I know where he'll go. I know he has friends, and safer places. You're so vindictive, I know you'd do anything in your power to turn this on him if you could while in this influenced state of mind. Report him as a runaway. You did it to both of us before. The last time this happened.

He is gone, and now I am your main attention. You target me next because I am the only one left who flees from your fight. But I too become sucked in, and suffer the abuse and power you have in your words alone.

You begin to scream things I know are not true. Evil things. In fact, I can honestly say you have a habit of using the devil's tongue itself. You bring up everything irrelevant, and that will surely break me and penetrate this wall I've built up emotionally to abstain from the hatred you evoke.

You tie in my father of all things. You yell at me with those hazy eyes how he's a fucking molester. . . The sad part, you're no longer screaming lies in anyone's face. You directly abuse the one who loves you most, and it stings.

I start to cry, and fight the anger through salty tears. Your husband tells you to get away, to stop. He tells you that I'm your daughter, and that you're not going to drive me away again. Like you did the last time. Of course, anything you feed to this person only comes back contorted and stronger as she throws it back at you.

You scream why he defends me. You yell all the things that he's ever said. How he's called me a bitch, lazy. When I've never been anything near. And this is my defender. A two-faced machine whose last straw has put him in the situation to liking me more than my mother. I don't want the charity of help. And the sight of a grown man crying in anger throws me into a whole new kind of misery.

The fight rages on, and I lock myself out of it. Only after shutting every window in my home. I want to keep the neighbors from hearing such embarrassment. But at the same time, I cringe as I close myself into this hell. I am trapped in it.

You begin to accuse rotten things, you begin to pound on my door. I don't want to leave the security of my room, but I do, as you enforce kicking me out. I did not want to leave the frightened dog at my side, but I did leave finally, and with nothing but the clothes on my back, and purse on my shoulder.

I head down the dark street, and search through my contacts for some haven of relief. The only one I have to be there for me is my grandmother. We seldom speak due to the separation of our lives, but I call her to come pick me up. Only with this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that seems to knot up every time I think of the choice I had to make.

I was pulling someone innocent and oblivious from the outside world into our drama, and I hated every moment of it. I hated the idea of making my elderly grandmother drive at night, when her eyesight is so unwell. It would be on my conscience if something happened to her, if she got into an accident.

I find a bench in the park to sit on and wait. The world is such an unfriendly place to girls like me in this kind of dark. I attempt to stick out the wait in the chill of the air, and the ominous silence of the children's playground. I sit, and I cry.

All feels helpless being so young, when you have no job and no place to stay. No good friends you can trust and depend on. It hurts most when you think of the future you wish for yourself, and see all the obstacles that bury you away from it.

It hurts to hear when your mom wishes rape upon you for running out into the night, fleeing from her abuse, and know that she doesn't mean it.

You hope she doesn't mean it.

And you always hope she cares.

But like the consuming black of the night, there's always the possibility of seeking only the nothing that is there.

Wow. This is really well written! I really enjoyed this.Good job! Keep up the amazing work!

So it's going to seem self-serving of me to apologize now after asking you to post something like this and then becoming too tied up in my own affairs to give you a review. Regardless, I'm sorry for the lack of timely review, and hope that the following somewhat makes up for my lateness.



Once again, you manage to evoke emotion straight from my heart, which I long ago dismissed to be a shrunken piece of charcoal. And once again, I find myself wondering how much this was inspired by real events versus how much of it you have conjured up in your own head. Is this a re-telling of a typical Friday at your home? Or is this something you found riding on a wave of your own inspiration? You don't have to answer; the fact that I ask this question means that you've written a story so engrossing and absorbing that I can no longer tell fiction from reality.

You said this would be a depressing piece. It's not quite depressing, just because the voice you use is not hopeless. The narrator is not wallowing in her misery. On the contrary, she remains hopeful that her mother does not mean any of the things she says. And yet, at the same time, she does not directly blame alcohol for it -- I did not see any lines such as "alcohol has shattered this family" or anything like that. Alcohol here is just a fact of life. The narrator does not make any attempts to make her situation any worse than it is, she only says things as they are -- that's not something I see very often on these forums, but it is something that makes your works as emotionally effective as they are.

I'll be honest. I would not read a novel like this, just because the subject matter is too heavy, too emotional, and -- dare I say it -- too well-written and believable to bear for an extended period of time. This story, at its length, succeeds perfectly at what it attempts to do. There are minor stylistic issues, but I believe you said you were aware of them and this was just a draft, so I won't point them out. I guess this is just another piece where I have absolutely nothing negative to say -- and not because of guilt that this is what really happens to you and I'd feel bad for writing bad comments about the work, but because it is a genuinely stunning piece of literature.

My favourite passages:

The pain that hurts most, is the pain you feed to me. But I'm sure you'll never realize this. You're too consumed, and too far gone.

In your mind, things become only as you perceive them. The truth is blasphemy. Inconceivable to you.

You begin to scream things I know are not true. Evil things. In fact, I can honestly say you have a habit of using the devil's tongue itself.

Simple language, intricate sentence structure, all loaded to the brim with emotion. You've a gift.

I'm going to cut myself off here, because this is less a review and more an over-long marriage proposal. But I hope I managed to get across that I really did enjoy this piece, and I think you've earned yourself a follow.

Your guilty bystander,
cC