Today Is The Day

Sam stares at the mirror in disbelief. “Ok girl, today is really the day” The longer she stares, the more her emotions begin to bubble over.

Tears threaten to crawl from her eyes. She quickly channels her inner Cesar and instructs them to stay. She simply can’t allow her emotions to get the best of her today. After all, she can’t ruin the moment and delay time any longer with a makeup retouch but then again why should she have to continue to suppress her emotions? Weren’t they valid? Wouldn’t today be the perfect day to show emotion?

Sam knew that her years of being beaten by her foster parents and told to “shut up before I give you something to cry about” had really done a number on her mentally but she quickly refocused. Her thoughts were all over the place. So many emotions yet so little time to properly process them.

As Sam looked at her neatly pinned hair, flawless makeup, pearl white floor length dress, pearl drop earrings, and embellished open toe pumps, she felt like a beautiful princess. “This time tomorrow, I’ll be, Mrs. Samantha King”. At the thought, Sam smiled so widely, that her cheekbones burned. She began to bubble over with excitement at the thought of dancing with her soon to be husband in just a few hours and moving forward with starting a family of her own.

Sam always wanted a family to call her own. She wanted to be able to take family vacations in the Poconos, have family movie nights with freshly popped popcorn, wear matching Christmas pajamas, and just begin to experience the pleasure of having a stable and reasonably normal family. She wanted a family void of the sounds and touch of violent fists hitting a face or obscene words oiled with scotch, gin, cigarettes, and rum.

Yes, this is the day that she’d been waiting for all of her life. It felt so real, yet so magical. She promised herself, that she’d never expose her husband and future children to the horrors and instability of her childhood.

Sam closes her eyes, deeply inhales the wonder of the moment, and is suddenly jolted awake by her neighbor’s fighting children. She lays in her bed for a moment, allowing her mind to comprehend her surroundings. She then realizes that she’s in her studio apartment in Brooklyn, NY and she’s not getting married. As a matter of fact she can’t remember the last time that she’s even had a date. Her trust issues and fear of vulnerability haven’t exactly rolled out the red carpet for friends let alone a potential romantic partner. She slowly sits up and positions herself to sit on the side of her futon bed. She lowers her head into her hands in defeat and frustration because while she wants so badly to experience genuine love and to give genuine love, the fear of being hurt imprisons her heart. She knows that until courage grows stronger than her fears, she’ll be limited to only dreaming of her capacity to give and receive unconditional and vulnerable love.

Comments 2

Tom N

3 years ago

I like your description of tears threatening to crawl down her eyes. I think that’s a powerful image of that moment just before you cry. I completely misunderstood the “inner Cesar” part - is that related to Cesar Millan, the dog guy?   You wrote “had really done a number on her” - which makes total sense but is much more of a colloquial expression. It’s something you might expect someone to say, but I don’t think it quite works so well outside of that context. How could you express this better? Perhaps using other imagery: “Sam’s years of being beaten by her foster parents left emotional wounds far deeper than the scars left behind on her skin”.

Could you use more imagery when you begin to describe what Sam is wearing/how she’s dressed. Flawless make-up doesn’t really tell us much, and could mean different things to different readers. Instead, paint a picture. What made her make-up flawless?

There was a slight mix up between present and past tense. You started with present “Sam stares” and continue later in the present “Sam closes” but throughout the piece you switched to past “Sam looked” and “Sam smiled”.

I like the sad twist at the end that it was all just a dream and her reality is still sad and empty. I wonder if you could have added some more showing and less telling in that final paragraph. You described Sam’s current state by telling us about her trust issues and fear. But what if there was a way to show us instead. Even if that was simply her laying back and slipping into another daydream about the things she wish she had.   Overall, this was great Pearly Bee! You’ve got plenty of good descriptions and help us understand a lot about Samantha and her traumatic past. Keep it up :)

Rebe

Writing is therapeutic for me. I write to express and not to impress. I hope to become a best selling author someday. I also hope that my writings will encourage and inspire others.