Word Count = 650
Estimated Reading Time = 3 minutes 15 seconds
Hello loves. So August came and went and here I am again at the end and beginning of things. I have to admit that this month was rather eventful. My story wasn’t published, I chucked the website revamp, my cousin passed away and somewhere in there I forgot about my dad’s birthday.
Every time I make a submission, I always do so with the awareness that it might not take. Often I hope for the best and sometimes it pays off. Sometimes I just see a bunch of other more talented writers get published and I realize that perhaps it just wasn’t good enough. In this case, however, I choose to see God in everything, even in my rejection.
Sweet Little Virgins is a piece I wrote a while back that carries a huge chunk of myself. There was once a time when I was sweet, little and a virgin, not just in the sense of sexual purity, but as regards my life.
I have been shielded from a lot of life’s blows that kept me buffered and comfortable. Perhaps it has come a time when God has decided that I have had enough of that comfort zone. I think this is the part where he gets to throw me off the cliff, not to watch me plummet to my death, but because he knows I can fly.
So in spite of the fact that my special story hasn’t been published on someone else’s bigger, better platform as I had wished, I am grateful. I will not grace you with the splendor that is Sweet Little Virgins. I will allow it to remain a treasured unspoken gem. That said, it will always have a place of honor in my secret stash.
The website revamp was also a bust. I got carried away with what other writers were doing and forgot about the pleasure of creating and sharing for art’s sake. So I cleaned everything up and decided to use my platform to shamelessly promote myself. I pay a heck of a lot of money at the end of the year, money I don’t have. I will therefore use every bit of it to showcase who I am and not to mirror what I think you should see. This is me.
My cousin passed away and it brought everything back. It was like I was burying my dad all over again. Somewhere in all of that commotion, my sister reminded us that it was in fact his birthday. Man… I miss him to heaven and back. He’d be 66 and we’d probably have celebrated it with a cake and cliché selfies. It would have been great.
Instead we were right in the middle of fresh grief and the celebration was lost. It sucked big time and I ended up hating everything about this month. It’s funny how life and death for that matter are unperturbed by our issues.
It didn’t matter to the plans that be that I wasn’t ready to go through all of that again. It happened and will happen again and again. I guess the secret is to find a way to keep going even when and after it happens.
I’m genuinely surprised that I’m still writing. If I keep this up, I can be able to say that nothing, absolutely nothing can keep me down. At the end of the day, we learn how to adapt and somehow the body wills itself to go on. I pray that it keeps and that as the season persists, I will find a reason to smile at the sunrise.
The cold is gone now, at least and I welcome the summer heat with open arms and toast to warm sunny days, filled with hope and imagination.
What about you? How did your August look like?
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