“I told my grandmother everything I could remember of that night, every detail of what he told me. My whole life changed in an instant; one day I had a family, then my family became smaller. I blamed myself for what had happened. I always thought I was dirty and an awful person because of what happened.”
“‘Do you know who Lisa and Jerry are?’ Again, I nodded yes. I recognized my parents’ names. ‘Do you know who Jamee and Isabella are?’ I couldn’t recall. The names seemed foreign. My own children.”
“She looked at me and said, ‘I’m fat?’ Tears started running down her face. Just that morning, I took photos of a confident girl who truly loved who she was and by night she refused to eat. She trusted our doctor and he betrayed her.”
“I’ll say, ‘don’t do that again.’ He’ll look me square in the eyes, and do it again. And again. And again. I must be royally screwing everything up.”
“I knew this van was a push-start because it was one of the first things I said when I test drove it. ‘Ooooh this is so boujee!,’ I even told the sales man. You literally just push a button! It’s OBVIOUSLY not that hard.”
“We got married young, had 3 beautiful children and had a bitter divorce. Three years later, that relationship is much different.”
“My daughter is a waitress at a local diner. She is also 7 months pregnant and working still to save as much money as she can. This will be her first child and she is so excited. She has a lot of regulars, but this was not one of them.”
“It was hard to keep it hidden anymore. The hope that these symptoms would go away was fading fast. I never told any of my friends or my school teachers because I felt too embarrassed.”
“The doctor squeezed his little heart between his fingers. He came back, but my baby didn’t look like my baby. He was blue, but pale at the same time. Machines beeped. Alarms sounded. I looked it up to see other children’s pictures. You know that feeling where you’re so shocked you could cry, but nothing comes out? That’s where I was. I wanted to scream.”
“Jon and I met on an online dating website and hit it off right away. When I flew to Louisiana to visit him for the first time, we both knew. This was it. As I delved into wedding details, I was plagued by lower back pain that wouldn’t go away.”
